Deanie's Blue Inkblots

"History's verdict is all we have left. And when tomorrow calls today into account, some of us want to say we stood up. We called out. We were not silent."
--Leonard Pitts, Jr., "Gestures of Conscience Bring Solace," Baltimore Sun, March 19, 2006

AMAZING RESPONSES TO THE "SLUMP" POST ON TPM

This entry was posted on 4/22/2007 10:57 AM and is filed under uncategorized.

Guys, I have been blown away by the response to my last post, "I Feel the Old Slump Coming On" over on the TPM Cafe section of Talking Points Memo: http://talkingpointsmemo.com.

For one thing, they have posted this blog entry over on the home page of the TPM Cafe section, rather than leaving it in the Reader Blog section, which means it is attracting some serious attention. So far, there have been seven "thumb's-up" ratings posted just since I put the thing up around ten p.m. last night, which is an indication of how readers are responding to it even if they don't post a response.

But what caught me by surprise was the eloquence and power of some of the posts left by military family members. This was left by Morgan Pardee:

While the rest of the nation reacted to the shock of losing 32 young people in one instance of violence on the campus of VA Tech, we members of military families have been experiencing this kind of shock every day for more than four years -- FOUR YEARS.

As of this writing, 3,319 troops have died ... four more than yesterday. At the rate our troops are dying, that count could be at 5,000 by this time next year. Just as Bush doesn't want a time limit set on fighting this war, he apparently doesn't want a limit imposed on how many troops can die either.

During my son's first deployment in 1993, (I think she probably means, 2003) I learned that my job, as his mother, is to bolster his morale and to keep him focused on "getting the job done." And, most importantly, to keep my doubts and concerns to myself.

So, I've been sitting and watching as the number of casualties roll over like the electricity meter on the side of my house ... silently, relentlessly, out of sight to "real people" (as one commentator on this blog calls those who are not connected to the military.) I live in fear that my son may have to pay the ultimate price for this adminstration's gross mishandling of the war, making him just another blip on that meter, no matter how brave or heroic he may have been in the service of his country.

My son is now on his second deployment in Iraq, fighting al Qaeda in Diyala Province with the Army's Stryker Brigade. He believed this administration's lies about WMDs until he returned home from his first deployment; he believed he was bringing democracy to the people of Iraq until he got to Baghdad and was getting shot at by the people he helped free; and he believed he was defending us here at home from terrorism ... until he got to Diyala and realized that the terrorist are everywhere in the Middle East and increasing in number and skill -- no matter how many were killed.

And when he got the news that his deployment had been extended by 4 months, he didn't know who or what to believe. Now he's just fighting to get through the next six months so he can come home to his family.

I don't know what goes on in the minds of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or Karl Rove or any other power-crazed, greed driven, middle-aged white man of excessive privilege with no military service record or children serving in the military, but I do know this: they haven't a clue what our lives are like or what our troops are going through.

This Commander in Chief has wrapped himself in the American flag, has us military families covering his flank with our silence, and stands behind troops who took an oath to serve the President, shielding himself from any criticism or accusations of wrong-doing.

This president is acting more like a schoolyard bully or authoritarian king than head of the world's strongest democratic nation.

Our troops won the war they were sent to fight. What we have now is "King George's Oil War." Even our legislature failed to do its duty of oversight, putting the cost of this war onto our children and grandchildren.

Surreal, that pretty much describes my reality, caught in a state of nonexistence where I have no voice, no say, and no power to extricate my son from a very, very dangerous situation. The parents of the surviving VA Tech students could rush to their children, scoop them up and shelter them from further acts of senseless violence. We military families cannot, we are told to go home, keep our lives as normal as possible and pray -- no matter how badly our civilian leadership fails to protect them from harm.

But I think it's time we military families wake up, get out into the public arena, empower ourselves and BE HEARD. As long as we are silent and invisible, THIS NIGHTMARE WILL GO ON.

I can no longer sit and wait for common sense or decency or truth to prevail. And I'm certainly not going to wait for this administration to finally get its act together -- this president has had more than six years to prove himself.

And he has failed -- miserably.

And my friend, Susan Porter, posting as Suse, wrote this:

When his peers were partying their freshman year through college my son was preparing to go to war. When my friends were talking to their children about grades and next semester's classes my son and I were discussing his will. When his former teammates were playing baseball my son was sitting in Baghdad drinking a 7-Up, having a smoke and reflecting on the events that brought him there. He wrote a letter that day--six pages of tiny, cramped writing describing the realities of combat. It was the first we'd heard from him since the war began nearly two months before. I read that letter through a haze of tears, read it over and over until I had it memorized. And then I slept with it under my pillow until he came home.

"Normal" people don't have a clue.

By the time he was twenty-one his hair was coming in gray--but not as gray as mine. He said he felt like he was forty--and I felt like I was old enough to have a son that age. There were two deployments under 'our' belt by then, the second the assault on Fallujah. That's where he says the boy I knew, the son I raised him to be, died.

"Normal" people don't have a clue.

He didn't think he would survive the third deployment--but he did. He came home to hear the men who sent him there say we're making progress--but he's seen with his own eyes that's not true. In the beginning it was about winning hearts and minds. In Fallujah it was just about winning. Now it's all about staying alive until you get out.

"Normal" people don't have a clue.

Some of those who post simply offer their support, like Charles Nicholson:

The large majority of americans have sacrificed nothing for this war, unless you count civil liberties. Vietnam vets were quickly forgotten by the masses after that war. In our haste to forget what a debacle our role in the war was we never took the time to learn from our mistake.

The soldiers of this war were forgotten before they got started. This administration is oblvious to the physical and emotional damage these undertrained and underprotected "guys" are.

You, the soldiers and their families, are the ones who sacrifice without the appreciation you deserve, or the repsect from those who dictate their lives.

The real people of this country can only imagine the depth of your sacrifices and losses. We pray for the hasty end of this war and the return of everyone's children.

What I am hearing, by and large, and in response to other posts I've made at TPM Cafe that I don't necessarily post here, is a growing chorus of military families who remained silent for a very long time because they were afraid that if they spoke out, it could make trouble for their loved ones.

I have been absolutely shocked to discover that it is not unusual for something a family member says in an e-mail or someplace online, to get forwarded around the globe to the CO of a troop serving in a combat zone, and for that soldier or Marine to then get his ass chewed. If they are in it for a career, it can actually harm them.

As if it was his or her fault, as if there is anything they can do about it from Iraq, as if it matters worth a flying damn when all they need to be thinking about is STAYING ALIVE.

During one of my son's deployments, while struggling with the military bureaucracy to get his taxes filed for him in his absence, I sent an e-mail to a family-readiness volunteer and grumbled that the sergeant I'd been dealing with was a "desk-jockey."

She very helpfully forwarded that complaint to the sergeant himself, who then forwarded it on to his staff sergeant and on up the chain and around the globe, to my son's CO.

Turns out the sergeant I'd been griping about had done two deployments to Iraq and was a bronze star recipient. I got my own ass chewed by his first sergeant, and sent profuse apologies, but it did not help my son. He got royally chewed out and had to call me from Fallujah to ask me politely to shut up.

It was during my fourth or fifth I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY that I could hear him shouting, "MOM! I'M NOT MAD!"

Since then, it became a family joke, how Mom pissed off the entire Marine Corps.

So what Morgan wrote, about how the president hides behind the shield of troops and their families who are afraid to speak out is a very real reality of military life. This is what makes this groundswell of protest from military families so powerful.

We just can't remain silent anymore.

And while, yes, there are a cross-section of military families who wholeheartedly support the president and his war--just as there are in civilian life--the truth is that, across the board, the families have just gotten worn completely out.

We love our warriors and are deeply proud of them and of what they do, but we are sick and tired of war.

If I can raise my own tiny voice and use what writing gifts I possess to join the chorus and end this war, then I will do it. I will continue to do it. I will keep on doing it until this travesty ends.

Even if it does piss off the entire Marine Corps.

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4/22/2007 3:20 PM Sharon A wrote:
I've been a member of MFSO, Military Families Speak Out, which has done a lot in the way of opposing Bush's Quackmire from the beginning of the invasion. I hesitate to recommend such groups for the same reasons you outlined, Deanie, our soldier sons and daughters might be singled out and punished for what we say publicly. However, during the invasion, it was comforting to be able to talk with military families about events we could not discuss publicly.

My problem with groups such as MFSO and others is that while I might agree with what they're doing initially, these groups might tack into waters I cannot endorse.

I received an email from my son today. As it was loading, I had that sinking feeling I always get when he calls or writes -- this may be it. This may be him telling me he has his orders to return to Iraq. Today, that wasn't the case. I still suffered the anxiety nevertheless. We're always waiting for the other shoe to drop with this wicked Bush administration.

That is the mark of an abuser! Uncertainty. And according to DailyKos, Bush was on television with a map showing all the new neighborhood bases of our troops!!!!! Has this man no shame? Here he is telling US to remain silent for fear of giving critical information to the terrorists while he is pointing out their positions on television.

Gates was quoted today in a Nevada paper that Bush will be evaluating the political progress of the Iraqi government by summer to decide whether to bring extra troops home. Since he's out there declaring success, dare we hope that he's about to declare victory and leave? I'm not holding my breath.
Reply to this
1. 4/22/2007 4:23 PM Deanie Mills wrote:
  Yeah, I got disenchanted with them when they started sending around "talking-point" e-mails and when they requested that any time any of us were to give a media interview, we were supposed to mention MFSO in the interview.
  
  And, I haven't been too thrilled with some of their tactics, though I'm glad they are there. There was a time that just reading their website and knowing I wasn't alone was terribly important, if you will recall the early days in the war--my own sister told me that if I even THOUGHT anti-war thoughts I was harming my son. She meant well, God bless her, and I don't think she feels that way anymore, but that was the prevailing attitude at the time. To this day my sister-in-law whose son did 3 deployments with the Marines gets very angry at those who speak out against the war. So needless to say, I don't usually send her a link to Blue Inkblots ha ha.
  
  And yes, I've seen the map--can you believe it???? The next few months are going to be a war between Bushies touting success of the surge and opting for more troops and more time, while the facts on the ground will work to reveal the lie.
  
  Not that it matters. Bush is going to do what Bush wants to do. He thinks he's friggin' Harry Truman.
  
  More like Warren G. Harding.
  Reply to this