[NYTr] Military Families Live in Dread, While the Rest of Amerika Goes Shopping (Still)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2147643,00.html

Military families live in dread, while the rest of America is busy
shopping

With the army stretched by Iraq to the brink of restoring the draft, US
politicians rely on the distraction of a tax cut

by Gary Younge

"Mom, I had another friend die today from a massive ied [improvised
explosive device] and many more wounded with shattered bones and
scrapes. We used to be in the same platoon. 1st platoon and the same
squad when I first arrived at fort hood for a good 7 months or so. He
was 17 then and barely a day over 19 now that he has passed away.

"It's tearing me up so badly inside. I just can't stand it. I can't get
rid of the feeling that I probably won't make it home from this war. I
have this horrible feeling that his fate will soon become my own. I
don't want to die here Mom. Don't tell Erin bc I know it will devastate
her. But if somehow I don't make it, I want you Mom and Dad and all the
family and especially Erin to know I love you all so so much and
appreciate everything you all have done for me in the thick and thin.

"The most important thing I want you all to do, is to use all of your
connections to do everything in your will to use my death as a tool
with the media to end this pointless war. Contact Michael Moore or
whomever it may be to get the word out about how disgusted with our
government I am about forcing us to come here to wait for death to
claim us. I want it to end. How many more friends, sons, daughters,
mothers, and dads must die here before they say it's enough? And if you
don't die, the worst part you have to live with is the guilt of
surviving. Surviving this war and not dying like your buddies to your
left and to your right in combat.

"I love you all so so much.

"love, Zach"

"Wednesday August 8 2007, Baghdad"


'Death," said Donald Rumsfeld, the former United States defence
secretary, "has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

Zach Flory, 23, didn't start his military career depressed. He enlisted
full of idealism about the potential of American power. Raised in
Clinton, Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi, he came home on
September 11 and asked his parents for permission to join the military.
They refused. They wanted him to finish high school first. "He was a
young man with a conscience," said his mother, Marcia, who has always
been opposed to the war. "He wanted to make things right." They hoped
he would change his mind. He didn't. In February 2004 he enlisted in
the first cavalry infantry division and signed a three-year contract.
He did his time, serving in South Korea and Texas, and should have been
discharged in June. Instead, the army forced him to extend his service
by a year in what is known as the stop-loss programme - a form of
indentured servitude that can keep soldiers working beyond the
expiration of their contract for several years - and sent him to Iraq.
Shortly before he left he married Erin, whom he has known since
childhood. "Zach's greatest fear is to have to shoot innocent
civilians," said Marcia shortly after he left. "What is this war doing
to our fine young men and women?"

Even as Iraq has dominated America's political stage it has occupied a
parallel universe in mainstream society. Military families may listen
intently to every news report and live in constant fear of a visit from
two uniformed officers in the wee hours. But the rest of the nation is
shopping. This is the only war in modern American history that has
coincided with a tax cut. "People seem to think war is OK as long as it
is someone else's kid doing the fighting," says Zach's dad, Don.

Serving in it falls on the shoulders of the poor and the dark, who are
over-represented in the military. And the casualties fall
disproportionately on white men from small towns - like Donald Young,
Zach's recently departed teenage friend. Iraq remains the number one
issue of political concern, but it is rarely the central topic of
conversation.

Needless to say, Iraqi deaths barely feature at all. The US military,
which ostensibly came to liberate Iraqis, does not even count their
corpses. So their death toll is approximate - rounded up or down by the
thousand rather than counted individually. We'll never know what tender
words an insurgent might send to a family member following the death of
a fellow combatant, let alone the final farewell of an unsuspecting
civilian slain by American troops or a car bombing. Perhaps if we did,
it would help those with a limited imagination and compassion humanise
the horrors of this war more easily.

Fortunately, this is not a competition. Unfortunately, there is enough
misery to go around.

This is an American story. A tale of imperial overreach, military
fatigue and political hubris as it affects a midwestern boy in a far
away land who wants to get home. "You can tell a true war story if it
embarrasses you," wrote Tim O'Brien in his Vietnam war novel, The
Things They Carried. "If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care
for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote.
Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty."

The army is "about broken", said retired general Colin Powell last year
- before Bush announced an escalation in troop numbers. British
military standards dictate that a soldier should have two years at home
for every six months deployed and that anything less than this 4:1
ratio could "break the army". American troops currently serve 15 months
followed by less than a year's rest - a ratio of 4:5.

US military leaders deny the army is strained. But in recent years they
have lowered standards and changed entry requirements in order to
bolster flagging recruitment, including a push to attract non-citizens
and to lift the upper age limit for new recruits. Since 2001 it has
raised by half the rate at which it grants "moral waivers" to potential
recruits who have committed misdemeanours and lowered the educational
level required. Steven Green, the former soldier who now faces the
death penalty on charges of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and
murdering her family in Mahmoudiya, entered the military on one such
waiver.

On Friday the president's new war adviser, Lieutenant General Douglas
Lute, said it was time to think about restoring the draft.

"I think it makes sense to certainly consider it," he said, suggesting
that some soldiers' families could soon reach breaking point
themselves. "And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the
table."

There is gruesome irony in the fact that such a possibility should come
from an administration headed by a president who dodged the draft and a
vice-president who "had other priorities" than serving in Vietnam. But
American conservatives have a curious inability to put their children
where their mouth is when it comes to the war. All of the main
Republican contenders back it; none of their children are in it.

On the day that Zach sent his email home, Republican frontrunner Mitt
Romney addressed a town hall meeting 50 miles from his home town.
Romney was asked why none of his children are serving in the military.
"One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping
me get elected because they think I'd be a great president," he said.


VIDEO:

Zach Flory's parents tell Gary Younge their views on the American
military:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/page/0,,1937424,00.html