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Have Journalist Been Deliberately Murdered in Iraq by the US
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Now
I had just gotten to the gym yesterday,
and had started on the treadmill, when a barrel-chested young
former marine recently returned from a second tour in Iraq walked
past. Looking at my shirt, which sports the slogan "No US
War on Iraq" on the front, and a peace sign on the back,
surrounded with the number of U.S. dead in the war, he stopped
and said coldly, "If I see you here again in that shirt,
I'll tear it off you myself."
Momentarily taken aback, I
looked him in the eye and said, "This is a free country,
buddy, and if you touch me or my shirt, I'll have you charged
with assault."
As he stormed off, I reminded
him that America isn't Iraq, and that here being stronger doesn't
mean you automatically get your way. I added that he was insulting
all of those who died in Iraq thinking they were defending American
freedoms. He didn't turn around.
I started my jogging again,
but then found myself getting increasingly pissed off. Who did
this guy think he was making threats like that?
I went out and informed the
YMCA's executive director of what had happened and said I wanted
this guy informed that he couldn't go around threatening people
who didn't agree with him. Although she was reluctant, she followed
me back into the weight room.
I went up to the guy, who now
was doing arm curls with two 50-lb dumbbells, and said. "You
messed up my run. Now I'm going to mess up your exercise routine.
I pay for a membership to be able to come here and work out in
peace. There is no rule barring the wearing of political statements
on shirts, and I wear what I feel like wearing here. If you want
to criticize me, my politics or my shirt, that's fine, but you
are not allowed to make threats and if you do, you are going
to have to leave."
The director backed me up,
albeit limply, agreeing that threats were not allowed.
The guy finally grimaced and
said, "Okay, I'm sorry."
As I went back to my treadmill,
four people in the room came up and thanked me for taking a stand.
Mulling over what had happened,
I realized that this guy, who had fought in the bloody US assault
Fallujah in late 2004--a pointless massacre that featured the
use of prohibited weapons like napalm and white phosphorus, and
that leveled one of Iraq's largest cities, with the slaughter
of thousands of innocent civilians--was really reflecting the
frustration of the loser,
Less than a month ago, American
voters cast out the Republican leadership in Congress in what
was primarily a protest against the war in Iraq. Polls are showing
that two thirds of Americans now see the Iraq invasion as a giant
mistake, and want exactly what my shirt calls for: an end to
the war. Back in 2003, and even 2004, American troops in Iraq
were seen almost universally as heroes. Now, like the soldiers
of the Vietnam era, they are being deliberately forgotten--an
embarrassing reminder to those who once supported the war of
the idiocy of that mission (just try finding any of those once
ubiquitous yellow ribbon magnets). Reports of rapes, torture
and murder by American troops in Iraq haven't helped things.
The would-be bully in the gym
has seen his status plummet from hero to, at best, victim.
Clearly, it's not fair to blame
the troops--or him--for what's happening. He and tens of thousands
like him were sent into Iraq on a lie, told by their commanding
officers and by their commander in chief that they were going
into Iraq as "payback" for 9-11--even though the 9-11
attackers included not one Iraqi, and even though there was never
any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. They were given
inadequate equipment, inadequate body armor, insufficient troops,
and an assignment--pacifying and establishing democracy in a
tribal nation--that was clearly a fools' errand. And they have
been left to kill, and to be maimed and killed themselves, in
that quagmire now for nearly four years simply to protect the
president from having to say he messed up.
Having said that, we are also
starting to see the human and social cost of the horrors of that
war. People like this former Marine are damaged goods--returned
to the U.S. with chips on their shoulders and with an anachronistic
militaristic mindset that says the guy with the gun gets to make
the rules.
I'm reminded of a similar experience
I had back in the late 1960s, when I participated in an event
called "Vietnam Summer." Back then, with the Vietnam
War going downhill for the U.S., I volunteered as part of a national
campaign to go door-to-door in my neighborhood handing out literature
about the war and talking about it with people. I knocked at
one door of a ranch house down the street a ways from my home.
A woman I didn't know answered the door. When I told her why
I was there, and handed her a flier, she looked at me funny,
and said with some irony in her voice, "Honey, there's someone
here to see you."
A big crew-cut man 10 years
older than me came to the door and asked what I wanted. I repeated
my spiel to him and gave him a flier too. He glanced at it, his
face contorted with anger, and said, "Just a second."
He walked into the house and returned holding an unexploded mortar
round. It was painted red, had a hammer-and-sickle logo, and
a set of brass fins. He said, "You see this? It's a Viet
Cong mortar. The only reason I'm here talking to you is because
it didn't go off when it landed next to me! Some of my buddies
weren't so lucky. Now scram before I lose my temper and ram this
into your head!"
I split in a hurry! But years
later, my father said that the guy, retired from the army, mentioned
the incident to him and apologized, saying, "I should not
have done that. I was angry at the time, but your son was doing
the right thing. The war was wrong from the start."
I don't know what horrors this
young man lived through, though I overheard him telling one shocked
woman in the gym that his time in Iraq represented "the
best years of my life." I do know that what U.S. forces
did in Fallujah in late 2004 was a collective war crime, with
captured and wounded enemy fighters shown on camera being executed
point-blank, residential neighborhoods leveled by bombs and tank
fire, innocent men and even boys illegally barred from fleeing
the scene of battle, fleeing civilians shot as they swam for
safety across the river carrying white flags, and hospitals attacked.
The entire assault on Fallujah, for that matter, was a case of
collective punishment--something outlawed since World War II
as a war crime. No one who participated in that mass atrocity
could walk away unimpaired in some way.
The most positive thing I can
bring away from this encounter is the recognition that the anger
and frustration expressed by this ex-Marine is a sign that the
American war in Iraq has truly been lost. Back in late 2003,
I wrote a piece about this same shirt, which I bought and began
wearing on the day of the Iraq invasion. I had observed that
when I first wore it in March 2003, it mostly elicited angry
denunciations and hand gestures from people caught up in the
blind jingoism of the moment, but that by late September, just
six months into the war, the majority of people who saw the shirt
had positive comments. Over the years, as the war has become
even more of a disaster, the shirt, despite becoming pretty seedy
looking from long use, has become increasingly popular, with
people now asking where they can buy one like it.
I view this veteran's belligerent
response to my shirt and its message as just a corollary of this
changed political environment. As the "cause" for which
he gave up several years of his young life--and in the name of
which he almost certainly lost friends and comrades--goes down
the drain, to be remembered as one of America's historic policy
disasters and one of its few military defeats, he is reacting
in the way he has been trained: by threatening violence.
In that, he is reflecting the
mentality of the current administration, both in its failed approach
to international affairs, and in its hostile attitude towards
American freedoms.
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