...The overall outcome seemed to be just an endless production of casualties with no perceivable goals attained. Regardless of how well one worked, sweated, bled and even died, the outcome was the same...

Since my last post, "What the Troops Really Think: Voices from Iraq," I have been thinking about why the response to it was so anemic. 

It seemed as if the only persons who had read it over at TPM Cafe (except for one) were my friends or those with family members of their own in this bloody war. And here, no comments at all, and any hits I got went to other posts. 

I was stunned by this, distressed about it, depressed, ready to quit. 

It wasn't just the twelve hours of work that went into the post, or the fact that I'd been saving comments made by troops on the ground in Iraq and reported in various newspapers for months and months for it that bothered me. 

And it wasn't the little propaganda patrol posted over on TPM Cafe by someone calling himself or herself "Lt.Army"--the comment that was comprised of only a link to a short happy video depicting American troops passing out toys and soccer balls to a crowd of smiling Iraqi children to background swells of sentimental music, designed to point out to me, I suppose, that an edited two-minute clip of one incident outweighed months of reporting from all over Iraq that, put together with no narrative from me at all, went on for six pages of supreme frustration felt and experienced by soldiers and Marines forced into an impossible situation and expected to get some sort of "victory" that can then be used to put politicians in office both here and there.

I didn't even include many such remarks made by members of my own family who have fought bravely in this miserable war and come home angry and devastated at the waste.

(Yes.  I used the word "waste."  So did they.  And they should know.) 

It was more than just the ho-hum response to my post that bothered me.

Over the course of the week that I made that post, I'd had an e-mail problem with my server that enabled me to visit websites but not download my usual New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and others such as the Los Angeles Times, various UK papers, the Military Times, and more.

So I read almost a weeks' worth of newspapers in a single day, and discovered not one article in any of their online versions that pertained to the Iraq war.  Then General Pace resigned and the tempo picked up, but it wasn't just newspapers. 

It was also the broadcast evening news.  For the better part of a week, no mention.  (This was before the recent flamboyant bombing in Samarra.) 

On the Sunday morning talk shows that week, immigration was all the rage, not the war.

Except for one thing:  at the end of George Stephanopolous's This Week, when they run the list of war dead, there were thirty-seven.

I looked at the endless list of names scrolling down, all of whom represented families--high-ranking officers along with grunts--and I stood weeping in the middle of my kitchen floor, and I felt very alone.

We've grown weary of war, I thought, and some of us are walking away.

Of course, the highly vocal and very visible Cindy Sheehan had pulled back from the anti-war movement, no longer wishing to be regarded as its symbol, to much hue and cry from bloggers and one ridiculously hypocritical statement by Bill O'Reilly that I'm not even going to dignify with a link.

I haven't always agreed with Sheehan--although, when people who don't know me find out that I've been fighting to end the war, they immediately link us in their minds--and I have to explain that we are not the same.  Sheehan was a peace activist and a pacifist for many years before her own personal tragedy, and she channeled much of her grief and rage over the loss of her son into the things she wrote about the war and about Bush.

I come from a family of warriors.  I don't mean just retired or active-duty military, I mean WARRIORS.  Marine infantry.  Special Forces.  Paratroopers from the 101st Airborne. You can't be a pacifist and live with those whose job it is to train for and wage war.  But on the other hand, no one knows better than those who have seen combat the utter futility of war, and only those who have known the reality of war will do everything in their power to resist it.

I like to quote Sen. Barack Obama: 

I don't oppose all wars.  What I am opposed to is a dumb war.  What I am opposed to is a rash war.  What I am opposed to is a cynical attempt by...armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and harships borne.--remarks made in October 2002

So I've never advocated a complete shutdown of the war machine, but rather a highly responsible and conservative use of it.  (I mean "conservative" in its original meaning.  Careful. Cautious.  Judicious. Sparing.)

Still, I have never--and would never--say anything critical of Sheehan, because my son lives, and hers is dead.

But the point is that it appeared to me that long week that the country had reached some sort of critical mass, brought on by the long and exhausting and emotionally bloody congressional fight to attach a timetable for withdrawal to Bush's war-money.

You can call it burn-out.  But I prefer to call it battle fatigue.

Those of us who have sent loved ones into battle suffer at home, and it is a trauma.  Not to be compared with picking up your buddy's body parts off the melting pavement, of course--don't get me wrong!--but traumatic all the same.

I know of one mother who, when her son called home from the war for the first time, she screamed, dropped the phone, and burst into tears.

(I don't recommend that reaction, by the way.  We should at least TRY to be as brave as they are.)

I know of another who, when a family readiness officer called to tell her that her son had been wounded on his FINGER, treated, and returned to his unit--she, too, screamed, dropped the phone, and burst into tears.

(Again, I would recommend allowing the man to actually finish his sentence before screaming.)

I know family members of deployed troops taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication, going into therapy, sinking so deeply into depression that they can barely function.

When my dear, late mother-in-law was my age, she had TWO sons in combat at the same time, in Vietnam.  My husband was a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne in a nasty area and his older brother was in his second tour with the U.S. Army Special Forces.

During the day, she went about her business as if nothing were happening.  But she told me years later that she would have such horrifying nightmares about the boys that she would jump out of bed in her sleep and run straight out the door and right smack into the wall.

It's not just mothers, either.  When my son was deployed the first time, my daughter dreamed that she went into her brother's room and he was sitting up in bed with a strange look on his face.  She looked down and his leg was missing, and blood was soaking the mattress and pouring out over the floor.

What I'm trying to say is that the loved ones of those who are deployed suffer a post traumatic stress of their own that can take years off their lives.

And I think that, with this vicious debate about Bush's boneheaded and heedless plan to ship MORE American troops over, his casual mention that more were sure to die as a result, the hyped-up overdrive of talk-show mania that resulted, the congressional dismemberment--all coupled with news coverage leading up to the vote that showed that, clearly, not only was the troop escalation not working, but was not GOING to work, and yet, thanks to Republicans holding the veto-proof majority, we had a long hot summer ahead of us of MORE DYING while they waited for their excuse to admit they were wrong (Gen. Petraeus's report)--

--PLUS the letdown following the Democratic members' relenting and the signing of the bill...

I think it gave pretty much the whole country a case of battle fatigue.

School's out.  Vacation season's started. 

We all feel helpless, trapped by a situation that we can't seem to change, worn out by the fight, hopeless that our efforts have made the slightest difference.

In fact, we feel the same sort of symptoms--to a much, much, much lesser degree--of post-traumatic stress felt by our soldiers and Marines.  A sort of battle fatigue, if you will.

The quote that opens this blog?  I took it from PTSD Support Services, in a post about symptoms of PTSD, which can be "chronic or delayed."

Those suffering from PTSD often complain about a feeling of emotional numbness, where they can't seem to feel anything--not even joy at, say, their children's laughter or making love to their spouse.

This leads to avoidance.  A withdrawal from loved ones and friends that can make them feel even more socially isolated.

They may feel rage about their feelings of powerlessness, and survivor's guilt for those who didn't make it home.

Military families feel much the same thing.  My friend Morgan Pardee and her sweet daughter-in-law attended half a dozen memorial services for fine young men who had died in two roadside bomb horrors--both of which Morgan's son managed to survive, though injured.  How do you think they felt?  Relief, of course, but such, such sorrow for those who did not get to feel that same relief. 

It is a terrible, conflicted feeling.

Please do not misunderstand me, here.  I have seen family members who have survived war forty years ago and war today, and I have watched their struggles and their triumphs. 

And I can tell you that it never goes away.

When my husband was a young lieutenant, he sent a team down to the creek to refill the platoon's canteens.  They were ambushed.  You ask him today to name the young private who was killed and he will do so with eyes filled with tears, and this is a six-foot, four-inch cowboy.

So I'm not being flip in my comparison, by any stretch of the imagination.  I understand very well the difference between someone surviving war, someone watching a loved one survive it, and "regular people" who have fought in vain to end that same war.

Just so you understand.

But I am saying that I think right now, those of us who consider ourselves activists in the anti-war movement--to whatever degree-- are feeling emotionally numb when it comes to the war, and are raging at our powerlessness, and are depressed that nothing seems to be changing, and are actually AVOIDING talking about it or reading about it right now because it just hurts too damn much.

But here's the thing.

When my son was deployed, I made it my private mission to try and be at least as brave as he was.  I never cried over the phone in conversations with him.  Somehow, I made it through the toughest conversations you can imagine, and then I hung up and sobbed and railed and shook my fist at God.

But I held it together for him.  I had to.  My husband, daughter, and I (and his beautiful girlfriend and good buddies)--we were his only lifeline, his only connection to sanity, love, goodness, and a sense that, no matter what, HE WAS STILL HIMSELF.

We knew he was getting shot at daily and we knew he was forced to kill or be killed, but whether we talked about the war or not in those brief, staticky satellite-phone talks--he was still our boy.

He had to know that.  It was the only thing that kept him from getting lost in the madness.

You can come back from a war physically alive, but your soul has been murdered.  We had to keep his soul alive.

Not that he wasn't brave enough and sensible enough and thoughtful enough and spiritual enough to keep his own soul going--but we gave him the grounding to make it possible.

And it took its toll, believe me, on all of us.

Anyway, what I'm saying is this:

We can't grow weary of the fight, because they are not allowed to.  They have to keep fighting even when they want to lay down their guns and come home.  They have no choice.

WE HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING FOR THE FIGHTERS.

We can't walk away now, no matter how weary of war we may be.

We can't walk away, no matter how frustrated and depressed we are over our own little battles.

We can't look away from war news or shut out the warrior's voices because it's too painful to watch and listen.

Do we sometimes need a break?  Of course.  Even soldiers get R&R.  Sometimes I need to put it completely out of my head so I'll be stronger when I need to be strong.

But after that little mental vacation, we need to gird our loins yet again, shield ourselves, and head back into the fray.

They need us too much, you see.