The Progressive: Broken by This War

[marmar]

Broken by This War
By Stacy Bannerman
February 2007 Issue

I was folding fliers for a high school workshop on nonviolence when my husband, a mortar platoon sergeant with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade, walked into my office and said, “I got the call.”

We hadn’t talked about the possibility of him being deployed for months, not since President Bush had declared, “Mission accomplished.” But I knew exactly what he meant; I didn’t know then what it would mean for us.

We weren’t prepared, and neither was the Guard. The Guard sent him into harm’s way without providing some of the basic equipment and materials, such as global positioning systems, night vision gear, and insect repellant, that he would rely on during his year-long tour of duty at LSA Anaconda, the most-attacked base in Iraq, as determined by the sheer number of incoming rockets and mortars, which averaged at least five per day.

Unlike active duty military, the National Guard had no functional family support system or services in place. While the Guard was scrambling to get it together, my husband was already gone, and I was alone, just months after we had moved to Seattle.

Twenty-four hours after Lorin boarded the plane for Iraq, I hung a blue star service flag—denoting an immediate family member in combat—in the front window. Then I closed the blinds, hoping to keep the harbingers of death at bay. They still got in, through the phone, the Internet, the newspaper, and the TV.

Each week, I heard of a friend’s husband or son: wounded, maimed, shot, hit, hurt, burned, amputated, decapitated, detonated, dead. A glossary of pain. I checked icasualties.org all the time, cursing and crying as the numbers rose relentlessly, praying that Lorin wouldn’t be next. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_bannerman0307

[PDJane]

1. This is not a war.

It's an illegal occupation, and American soldiers and their families, as well as the Iraqi infrastructure and civilians, are paying.

I have no words to make it better.

America will have to choose between empire and democracy, and the choice is almost beyond making.

[ixion]

2. exactly: illegal invasion

I've never allowed it to be called a 'war', because it was never really so.

[niyad]

3. May each and every person who created this horror, who supports it, who doesn't give a DAMN

about the lives destroyed, receive EXACTLY what they deserve.


Those of us who were lucky enough to actually have our loved ones return from 'nam, all too often found that the military did not return the same people to us we had given them, however willingly or unwillingly. Some families managed to cope, for others, the changes, whether mental or physical, or both, were simply too hard to deal with. Many of us vowed to do everything in our power to make sure other families never had to endure what we live with. And yet, there are now two more generations having to go through the same, or worse. I am heartsick beyond imagining for all our families, on all sides of this nightmare.