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FORGOTTEN WAR; CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT MEDIA; SELFISH AMERICANS
05/05/2008
The debate over the Iraq War is strangely missing from the presidential contest these past few weeks. While we had one of the deadliest months in the past year in terms of American troops lost, we prefer to talk about Jeremiah Wright's patriotism, Obama's faith, white working class voting patterns, Hillary's beer drinking and whiskey shots, a gas tax pander, Hillary's claim that she is just plain folks, and the media's rambling on and on about why Obama can't "close the deal."
In the meantime, 47 Americans died in Iraq in April, while 925 Iraqis died in Sadr City alone.
Since we as a country don't much care about Iraqi deaths, let's just focus on the 47 Americans who have died. Let's think for a minute about the 47 families who just received the worst news ever. Let's imagine the tears, the screams, the nightmares, the depression, the gut-wrenching pain as one realizes that the person you loved so much is never coming home.
That person will never celebrate another Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, or Valentine's Day. If you are one of the ones suffering this loss, you know you will never again hear the voice of your loved one, never again feel the warmth of their arms around you, never again see their smile, because even if you see then again in a coffin, there will be no smile, no twinkle in the eyes that remain closed forever. You will never again send a birthday card, or receive a birthday card, never shop for a present or open a present, never share a beer or a hamburger or a joke with that person.(I understand this pain - my only brother died at the age of twenty.)
Imagine then, having to visit the mortuary and the church to make arrangements for the funeral, having to go to the funeral, hear taps played, hold the folded flag to your breast as your insides are torn apart. Imagine telling your children that their father or mother will never kiss them goodnight, never read them a story, never attend a baseball game, take pictures before their prom, or walk them down the aisle on their wedding day.
These agonies faced by 47 families this month, and 4000 families since the start of the Iraq War (again, not to even mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who suffer the loss of someone they love) is the complete responsibility of George W. Bush. The buck stops at his desk, with his lies, and his propaganda so he could have a tough guy legacy and finally be better than his daddy. Of course he has accomplices, like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all the right-wing think tank warmongers who propagandized the insanity of this war. They, too, have blood on their hands.
And John McCain, should he become president, will bear a great deal of responsibility for supporting this war, and for continuing it. Yet we would rather talk about Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons than face what we have allowed our president to do and what a vote for McCain would allow a president to continue to do.
And if Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will bear responsibility for the deaths of not only the 4000 already gone, because she voted for the war resolution and to this day will not apologize nor do penance, but for the deaths of all those she will kill in her fantasized obliteration of Iran.
In our willingness to let the media get away with its obvious racist rants against Wright, and silence on the sins of self-serving and fabulously wealthy ministers such as Hagee, Robertson and Falwell, we have also been unwilling to talk about the 1000 suicide attempts a month by soldiers in and returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. 1000 suicide attempts a month!
What could possibly cause so many beautiful patriotic Americans to want to end their lives, especially after they have actually survived their time in a war zone?
Here I have more understanding than I have ever had before. No, I have never served in the military, nor even come close to a war. No, I have not worked with thousands of returning vets (though I did work with a number of Vietnam vets when I was a young therapist). But I have recently learned what it is like to live in a constant state of chaos and alarm. I know what it is like to never be able to relax, to feel the adrenaline pumping non-stop through your body, to be constantly waiting for that emergency situation that you must respond to instantly.
I am taking care of my mother, who has leukemia. My father who is disabled cannot drive her to any appointments nor help her with her treatments. I am an only child and I have full responsibility for my mother's care. She is taking an experimental drug to control the leukemia cells and has blood tests twice a week to monitor how much the drug is killing all of her good blood cells. On any given day we could get a call from the doctor telling us she must come in immediately for a series of injections to raise her white blood count, or a transfusion of platelets or a transfusion of red blood cells. (Last week she had to go in seven times.) When we get the call we have to make arrangements for someone to stay with my father who cannot be left alone. Since my mother cannot drive, I am on call every day, and have come to dread the ringing of the phone. I know she is in a fragile state, and anything could happen at any time. The treatment she is undergoing will not cure her, nor even put her into a remission. It is only prolonging her life for a few months, so she can do what she wants to do - care for my dad as long as possible.
I think I have prepared myself for any eventuality, but how can you really be prepared? I know stress hormones are pumping through my body every day, as they must be pumping through the bodies of soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how my mother and I feel some days, uncertain as to how long we can keep this up, so I can only imagine how it is for the soldiers, many of whom face the possibility of their own deaths every day, many of whom have watched buddies die, and have struggled in vain to save them.
No, my situation does not come close to that of the soldiers, but the human body is the human body, and stress hormones are stress hormones. It's hard to describe what this is like to someone who has not gone through it, but the best I can do is this: it's as if I have an on and off switch. I wake up at 4:00 a.m. and the switch automatically goes on. I am on alert, ready to go, ready for anything. I sit down on the couch at 8:00 p.m., the switch is turned off and I instantly fall asleep. I know I have thought many times that I couldn't keep this up for years, and yet we know that soldiers are serving their third, fourth and even fifth years in these wars. Just last week it was reported that a soldier died in Afghanistan on his seventh tour. It is unconscionable to expect this of our soldiers. It is criminal of our president to demand it.
This war is one of the most important issues in this election, and yet the media is barely covering it. Instead, we have had seven days of the subtle racism of the story of Jeremiah Wright, and now seven days of gas tax nonsense.
If the American people are willing to vote for either John (100 years in Iraq) McCain, or Hillary (obliterate Iran) Clinton for the empty and never to be fulfilled promise of a few dollars in gas tax reduction, while their children and grandchildren may be fighting and dying (by bullet, grenade, IED or suicide) in the Middle East for 100 years under Clinton or McCain, then they are truly the most ignorant and selfish people on the planet.
And the media that refuses to report on Iraq because it is no longer glamorous (as it was to those embedded reporters at the beginning), or "romantic," as George W. Bush recently suggested it was, or horrific (except to those 47 families last month), is criminally derelict in its duties.
-Ellen Terich
Check out my blog: http://doctordem.blogspot.com/
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