Tag: iraq

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The Always-On Military

Monday’s New York Times features a long story on how the military’s speeded-up schedule of war-zone deployments and redeployments is affecting troops and their families. One thing comes through in so many of these stories: the lack of enthusiasm so many of the interviewed service members have for the job that’s been dumped in their lap. They come off as stoic and steadfast, determined to carry through on their military commitment and to stand up for their buddies. But you don’t read about any of the lower-rung troops who get quoted in these stories to talk about the “march of freedom” or “transformative power of liberty” or any of the other catch-phrases that Bush and his crowd throw around. Maybe the reporters just leave out those quotes and focus on the doubts and dissatisfactions they’re hearing. Or maybe the ones who have to go and face the reality of this war aren’t really seeing or feeling the nobility of the cause. Or hell, maybe even in World War II, which my generation and those following see at a great distance, the men sent to fight saw it just as a job. Maybe, even then, there was no explicit talk about the bigger issues and forces involved.

Anyway, you feel for these people and their families, so many of whom are now subject to constant upheaval in their lives, not knowing when the next deployment will happen of what it will bring when it comes. The story ends:

“In Tucson, Elena Zurheide is preparing Christmas for her 7-and-a-half-month-old son, Robert III. ‘I hate Christmas,’ Ms. Zurheide said. ‘I hate holidays. I hate everything right now.’

“Her husband, Robert Jr., was a lance corporal in the Marines. He was killed in Falluja this spring, a few weeks before their son was born. He was on his second tour to Iraq.

” ‘I never wanted him to go a second time,’ she said. ‘I just started having the feeling that we were pushing our luck too far, and he thought so, too.’

“She said she wrote to Corporal Zurheide’s commander before he left, asking that her huband be permitted to stay behind – or that he at least be allowed to wait for the birth of their son. She said she never heard back.

” ‘I should have broken his arm to keep him here,’ she said. “‘ knew it was too much to go again.’

“Her son, Ms. Zurheide said, looks just like his father.”

The story says that 100 of the 1,300 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have occurred among soldiers and Marines on their second tours. Times columnist Bob Herbert’s Monday column, talks a little more bluntly about the effects of the repeat deployments.

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‘When All the Laughter Died …’

My usual chain of random thoughts just led to this recollection: That one Christmas, my mom gave me a copy of a book called “When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow.” It’s the autobiography of Lance Rentzel, a good Dallas Cowboys and University of Oklahoma wide receiver whose career was pretty much killed after he was arrested for exposing himself to some little girls.

Why did I think of that just now? I was contemplating an excellent Washington Post story from the other day talking about one big problem the United States is having in Iraq is simple wear and tear on equipment. Since the war planners made such blithe (or unforgivably superficial) assumptions about how the military action would go, they grossly underestimated how many tanks, Humvees, Bradley fighting vehicles and other workaday army equipment the campaign would need. Since the toughest duty expected in Iraq after the first few weeks was dodging bouquets flung at the liberators, the repair budget was grossly underestimated, too. (Eventually, that leads to things like National Guard troops looking for armor scraps in garbage dumps in Kuwait.)

And thinking of that story made me think of Saddam and his henchmen and their laughable warnings that

Baghdad would become the graveyard for the invaders. I laughed to myself, anyway. And then I thought about how we’ve had 1,300 troops killed in Iraq so far and 10,000 wounded. Yeah, that’s hardly a morning’s work in some wars — check out the Civil War battles of Antietam. Or Fredericksburg. Or Chancellorsville. Or Gettysburg. Among many, many others. But Iraq, of course, is a much different kind of war. And numbers aside, there’s nothing about that old “graveyard” rhetoric that seems funny anymore.

And that made that book come into my head. I always misremember it as something like “When All the Laughter Turned to Tears,” or some variation on that. It’s a tragic story. From what I remember of it, Rentzel talked about how hard he’d driven himself throughout his childhood to excel. The book was part of his therapy, as I recall, part of coming to terms with why he’d done what he’d done. The book was praised, critically, and I imagiine Mom just saw it at Maeyama’s, the dependably good bookstore in Park Forest, and picked it up for me. Judging by the publication date, I must have been 18.

I’ve always wondered whether there was some kind of message in the gift, whether Mom was afraid I was a pervert in the making or something. Probably not. I hope not. It still occurs to me, though.

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Portraits of Crazyworld

The New York Times has a fine story on an artist, Steve Mumford, who’s gotten himself embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq as a combat artist. He’s been working for Artnet, which has posted a 15-part Baghdad Journal featuring Mumford’s drawings, paintings and dispatches. I’ve only looked at a couple of the more recent installments. I think they’re frank and human in a way you don’t often see in the mainstream press. In the Times story, he says his view of the war has changed. When he first went to Iraq, he thought the whole operation was a “huge blunder.” But he says he’s been won over to the view that the U.S. mission could succeed, partly by talking to Iraqis, partly by seeing firsthand what U.S. troops have been doing to fix things in Baghdad (which one Army officer he quotes calls “crazyworld”).

Despite his expressed optimism, his picture of Iraq — the violence, the apparent distrust of anything American, at this point — looks anything but hopeful. His most recent dispatch ends:

“When I get back to my hotel the following week Baghdad’s streets feel more dangerous than ever. A rocket has hit the nearby Sheraton; reporters are largely confined to their hotel rooms amid a rash of kidnappings. Only five other people are staying at the Al Fanar: an American contractor, his Iraqi wife and a British colleague, a rather mysterious Japanese woman who tells me she runs a massage parlor in the Green Zone, and a reporter, a young French woman who I occasionally spot in a headscarf, in the lobby.

“Drivers and hotel staff, with little work to do, hang out there, watching TV, while a lone macaque monkey in a small cage stares quietly out the lobby window at the street. In an effort to salvage something from this depressing scene I’d tried to arrange for this monkey to be transferred to Baghdad’s zoo, but the hotel owner refused to sell.

“For several days I stay within the confines of the security zone around the hotels, while my friends Esam and Ahmed come to visit. I’m quite sure my movements are being watched, and when I’m finally ready to leave Iraq I tell the hotel staff I’m going to visit a friend for a day before leaving town.

“However, the hotel driver, Farouk, looks not in the least surprised when I ask him to take me directly to the airport. We drive past the blighted landscape of palm tree stumps next to the highway, cut down and bulldozed to lessen the danger of ambushes. After 30 minutes we pass the first military checkpoint at the airport’s outskirts, and I breathe a sigh of relief.”

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November in Iraq

Quotes:

“At some point in time, when Iraq is able to defend itself against the terrorists who are trying to destroy democracy, as I’ve said many times, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

–President Bush, December 2, 2004

“There are some who feel like — that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on.”

–President Bush, July 2, 2003

Numbers:

The deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began: 137 killed (compared to 135 killed in the second-deadliest month, April 2004, when both Shiite and Sunni fighters rose against U.S. forces. Another comparison: About 128 U.S. troops were killed in the first 30 days of the war, from March 19 through April 17, 2003. The total number of U.S. troops killed since the war started is 1,260).

Eighty of the 137 American Marines and soldiers who died last month were killed in the eight days from November 8 through November 15, when fighting was heaviest in Fallujah and areas where insurgents counterattacked.

The wounded in action in November: 1,265 or so. The Defense Department reports 654 of the wounded returned to duty within 72 hours, and 611 did not. The total wounded in action for the war so far is 9,552, including 5,049 wounded too seriously to immediately go back to their units. (The count of all troops evacuated from Iraq because of non-combat illnesses, injuries, and other medical reasons, such as psychological problems encountered on duty, is much higher. For instance, the Army alone reported 14,452 medical evacuations from Iraq through the end of September).

About one in nine U.S. military deaths in Iraq occurred in November. About one in eight of those wounded in action suffered their injuries during the month.

In November:

  • 125 U.S. troops died in action; 12 deaths are listed as “non-hostile,” mostly vehicle accidents.
  • By service: 72 Marines and 12 Marine reservists; 38 regular Army, 4 Army reservists, 10 members of the Army National Guard; one each from the Navy and Air Force.
  • By rank: One major, two captains, four lieutenants, 33 sergeants, one petty officer, 68 corporals and lance corporals (all Marines), 15 Army specialists, 15 privates (all Army).
  • By age: 73 of those killed were 19 to 22 years old; 34 were from 23 to 25; 19 were from 26 to 29; and 11 were from 31 to 45 years old (the oldest was an Army command master sergeant, Steven W. Faulkenberg).

Unknown:

How many enemy fighters or Iraqi civilians died during the month.

The Commander and the Troops:

“… If the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.”

–“Henry V,” Act 4 Scene 1

[In the play, King Hal does what a modern leader would do and answers by saying that what a subject does is a subject’s responsibility, not the king’s: “Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage.” So, if you’re ready to meet your maker, the king, or president, is doing you a favor by sending you to your death in battle.]

Sources:

Bush quotes: www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/business/02text-bush.html and www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030702-3.html



November casualties: icasualties.org/oif/ and www.defenselink.mil/news/

Army medical evacuations: www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/medevacstats/200409/oif.htm

“Henry V”: www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/