by Larry Minear
Voicing an alternative view of the Iraq war with equal passion is Col. Mark Warnecke of the New York National Guard. “The vast majority of the Iraqi people want us there,” he argued, and “don’t want anything to do with the insurgency. It is forced on them and they’re forced to live with it. The insurgents make it a policy to punish those that support any activities against them. Their goal is to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state similar to what was in Afghanistan under the Taliban throughout the entire Middle East and in all Muslim countries. That’s their goal and they’ll do this and maintain it by whatever terrorist means it takes to do it. We need to be there.”21 “I support the war 100 percent, said Nebraska’s Joshua Townsend, as does “almost every soldier I know.22
“Do I think we’re making progress?” asked New Hampshire’s Sgt. Steve Pink in The War Tapes. “No, I don’t know. I think any country should be allowed to have its own civil war without people getting in the way. But I also believe that there are some pretty dangerous people in Iraq.”23 Establishing the proper balance between the two elements that Pink identified—the sovereignty of adversary states and the protection of U.S. national security—is the stuff of presidential decision directives and congressional pronouncements.
The undisguised breadth of opinions on matters political was striking for Andrew Carroll, who edited ten thousand pages of writings submitted by soldiers into a single volume, Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families. “There are contributors who voice staunchly antiwar opinions and accentuate in their writings the pain and destruction the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan have inflicted,” he noted, “while others express a strong sense of pride about going off to serve and focus on the positive achievements made in both countries over the past few years.”24
Some boots on the ground have difficulty concealing their irritation with the political debate in Washington and around the country about the appropriateness of the U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Let’s stop crying about whether we had reason to go in there or not because we can fight about that forever,” said Moriarty. “It’s a done deal. We’re in Iraq.”25 SSgt. Brian Shelton, who served with the New Hampshire National Guard in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003, recalled a Chinese proverb: “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” He went on to observe, “For all the people that are saying we can’t accomplish what we were sent there for, we’re doing it every single day.”26
Others were more tolerant of having a wide variety of views aired, viewing public debate as affirming the very values the troops are fighting for. In the final posting in his blog before returning to the States, 1st Lt. Rusten Currie of the California National Guard, who believed that the coalition was winning the war in Iraq, thanked “those of you who engaged in healthy and heated debate with me over our political views. Soon we’ll see one way or the other, won’t we? Those of you who continue to question this war and why we are here, good for you; without different opinions, there is no debate.”27
Interview data also suggest that the views of veterans on the global war and their own involvement in it have undergone changes over time. “Everybody goes through a cycle,” observed SSgt. E-6 Bradley Burd. After two months on the ground in Iraq, he says, soldiers doubt the mission of the troops; after four months they’re unsure; and by six months they’re thoroughly persuaded in its importance.28
Some of those interviewed confirm that progression. A number who had been ambivalent about their mission upon deployment became more persuaded over time. “You don’t necessarily agree why you’re fighting,” explained Spec. James R. Welch, a Toledo, Ohio, native who served for seven months in the infantry in Iraq. “But when you get over there and you see the way these people are living, and you see the way Saddam was living and his family was living, you really want to give these people a better life, because you know what you have back home…. Regardless of what the government says you’re doing it for, regardless of what your superiors say you’re doing it for, you know you’re over there doing it because you’re freeing these people from a dictatorship they’ve been under for the past thirty years. Whatever keeps you going from day to day is why you’re doing it.”29
Others became more doubtful or even cynical over time. “I was pretty gung-ho at first,” recalled Army Sgt. Gregory Mayfield, who saw intense combat in Iraq. “But now, I question a lot of policies and the politics of it. I mean, you just don’t go to war for any damned reason. You’d better have a good reason to do it, because it is so damaging.”30 A CBS documentary detected gradual erosion in the commitment of a contingent of Iowa Guardsmen to the Iraq mission. In one instance, two members of the same family ended up with opposing appraisals of the war. With the passage of time, however, the view that the troops were advancing freedom for the Iraqi people had fewer and fewer proponents. By May 2007, CBS found growing disenchantment. One reporter who spent time with the 82nd Airborne Division found, “A small minority of Delta Company soldiers—comprising the younger, more recent enlistees in particular—seems to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families, and a desire to complete their mission.”31
The three soldiers who chronicled their experiences in The War Tapes also grew disenchanted over time. Pink, who had enlisted to “test myself and make sure I could accomplish something,” said upon returning, “I don’t want to tell people what it was like over there. What a fucking mess, you know? I went over there and I did the job I was supposed to do.”32 Moriarty, who described himself as a “substantially patriotic person,” had contacted a recruiter shortly after 9/11 and said, “You slot me into a unit only if they’re going to Iraq.” But front line exposure chastened him. “I’m so glad I went. I hated it with a God-awful passion and I will not go back. I have done my part and I feel like it’s someone else’s turn.”33
Zack Bazzi, the third in the trio, joined the Army after graduating from high school in hopes of seeing the world. “Most soldiers,” he observed on returning, “want to think they’re there for a good cause, something noble. You’re fighting for freedom and everything that’s right. It was tough, because you have to do some not-so-nice things sometimes.” His conclusion: “I love being a soldier. The only bad thing about the army is you can’t pick your war.” Two of the three felt that guaranteeing oil resources had been a compelling reason for U.S. involvement. All three had medical and/or post-traumatic stress issues needing attention upon their return.34
Whatever their specific views, soldiers of all ranks, along with families and veterans’ service organizations, are playing a much more visible role in public policy debates than in earlier wars. Family members in particular feel less constrained in expressing personal views. “Being anti-war and being patriotic are compatible,” says Carole Welch, whose weekly column, “My Soldier,” in the Bradford Vermont Journal Opinion kept local people in touch with the activities of her son, Army Spec. James Welch, and his unit. Reflecting on the negative impacts of the experience on her son, his family, and her own life (she resigned from a job in order to care for his young child), she makes no secret of her view: “War is having a big impact on unraveling the things that this country and community were built on.”35
POLITICAL ACTIVISM
The involvement of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq over most of the past decade has led to an upsurge of political activism on the home front, with many soldiers and families deeply engaged. For many who before enlisting had lacked a sense of purpose or passion in their workaday lives, military service in Afghanistan or Iraq has provided a new sense of direction. They returned home with a new understanding of the importance of family, community, and nation. “They came back with a sense of individual empowerment from having taken on a difficult assignment and performing it well,” noted Ernest Loomis, chairman of the New Hampshire Committee of Employer Suppor
t of the Guard and Reserve. Many also had “a new-found sense of the worth of our way of life and our type of government.”36 Some became leaders in the movement to bring the troops home.37
One veteran who attained particular prominence was Maj. Ladda Tammy Duckworth, a helicopter pilot in the Reserves and a major in the Illinois National Guard. “I was not originally slated to go to Iraq,” she recalled, but when the troops she had trained were activated, “I called my commander up and said, ‘Listen, please take me. I can’t be one of the only aviation officers in this state standing here waving good-bye to the unit as it goes to war.’”38 In Iraq, she lost both legs in an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) attack in 2004 and nearly died. “I can’t deny the interest in the fact that I am an injured female soldier,” she commented during her bid for the House seat for the Sixth Congressional District in Illinois. “Understand that I’m going to use this as a platform.”39 Head of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, Duckworth won the Democratic primary in March 2006 but lost narrowly to the Republican candidate in November. She was under consideration to fill the Senate seat vacated by then-Senator Barack Obama following his election to the presidency in 2008, and she ultimately accepted a senior position within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Health Diplomacy
Linda McHale (AFC2001/001/47162), Photographs (PH01), VHP, AFC, LOC.
* * *
U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan were involved not only in combat and security operations but also in providing training and technical assistance to government ministries. In each country, the infrastructure had been destroyed by the conflict and the host government struggled to restart the delivery of services to its population.
Linda McHale, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, came from a family with strong traditions of military service. Her father had served in World War II; her brother and a brother-in-law had been drafted during the Vietnam War. Linda trained as a nurse and joined the Air Force reserve, in part because it allowed her to remain in her rural Texas community with her husband (also in the Air Force Reserve) and two children.
In 1991, she was detailed to a base in England where wounded soldiers from Operation Desert Storm were treated. “I wasn’t so much a warrior as I was an administrator,” she recalls. However, her 2004 five-month stint in volatile Iraq represented “the first time I actually had to be a true warrior.” Issued a weapon upon arrival in Kuwait, she recalls, “as a nurse it was very difficult to think about … carrying a gun.” Arriving in Baghdad, she settled into her duties at the Ministry of Health, carrying her weapon but dressing as a civilian and liaising with Iraqi counterparts in the ministry, with whom she worked to devise a nursing system for the country.
She made “wonderful friends” with Iraqis, discovering they shared much in common. “They want to take care of their children, they want to send them to school every day, they want to go to work every day and be safe. So many of their desires in the nursing field were so much like ours. [Her Iraqi colleagues] just wanted to promote the ability of nurses to provide good quality care and to have an opportunity to progress in their field.” She viewed her mission as one of “health diplomacy.” “[We’re] there to show them what it is to be an American…. The fact that I was military was a secondary.”
In February 2004 when her daughter took the picture, Linda was departing Denver for training at Fort Bliss, Texas. Thinking back, Linda reminisces, “Not only could I not spell Baghdad, I also had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Going to war-torn Iraq was the hardest thing I did in my thirty-three-year Air Force Reserve career, but it was definitely the most rewarding.”
* * *
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who serves as a naval reserve intelligence officer, is one of five members of Congress serving in the Reserves as of 2009. In early 2005, he took the lead in introducing the Americans in Uniform Act of 2005, a measure designed to improve the quality of life for reservists and their dependents. “In the Cold War, the Reserves were a force of last resort, rarely called to active duty,” he explained. “Today they make up almost half of the forces deployed in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.”40
Some soldiers upon returning from Afghanistan and Iraq take a new level of interest in community activities, participating in civic affairs and seeking out positions in town and city government. Ryan Aument, an Army captain from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, believed that his safe return from Operation Iraqi Freedom was God’s way of giving him an opportunity for public service. He helped out first as a volunteer in town affairs, was appointed and then elected to the town council, and eventually considered running for county or state office.41
Upon returning to the States, several soldiers have founded organizations geared toward helping civilians displaced by the conflicts. One such group sought to provide food to Iraqis who had fled into Jordan, another to arrange medical treatment for Iraqi children abroad, and a third to raise funds for hospitals and schools in Iraq. The trend struck Anna Badken, a Boston Globe reporter, as noteworthy. “This kind of outreach may seem surprising,” she wrote, “in a war that teaches many soldiers to see every civilian as a threat: a farmer could be a guerrilla fighter, and a woman on the street can bomb a convoy. But it also suggests a new response to the war: An idea that the troops’ responsibilities don’t end when they deploy back home.”42
Returning in disillusion and ill health from a five-month tour in Iraq in 2003, Army Capt. Jon Soltz arranged for a meeting with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who was laying the groundwork for a run for the presidency. “I’m the guy that went to Iraq with no armored vehicles,” he told Kerry. “I’m the guy that was ambushed the first time he drove in. I’m the guy who after one of my men died, I heard my commander in chief say, ‘Bring it on.’ I’m the guy who looked my friend and fellow soldier in the face when he was blown up in the hospital and asked, ‘Is it worth it?’ I’m the guy who got help at a VA hospital, and my commander said he was going to close that hospital.” Soltz signed on as the Kerry campaign’s veterans’ coordinator for Pennsylvania.43
Other veterans found candidates of their choice in the 2008 primaries and elections to assist, functioning as the public’s “eyes and ears of a controversial war. Informed and impassioned by their wartime experiences, they aid candidates whose views on Iraq mirror their own,” wrote Irene Sege in the Boston Globe.44 Fearing that active-duty military personnel would become engaged in election campaigns, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a stern reminder in mid-2008. “The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote Adm. Mike Mullen. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway. The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia.”45
About a dozen veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq ran for federal office in 2006. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat from Pennsylvania’s Eighth Congressional District in suburban Philadelphia, became the first Iraq veteran elected to the U.S. Congress. After the 9/11 attacks, he had volunteered to serve overseas and was sent first to Bosnia and then to Iraq. With assignments including the House Armed Services Committee and the House Select Committee on Intelligence, he played an active role on issues relating to the war, supporting (along with then-Senator Obama) an unsuccessful measure to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. troops. His autobiography, Taking the Hill: From Philly to Baghdad and the U.S. Congress, published in 2008, spurred public debate on issues of the war.
Veterans’ organizations have been a barometer of the upsurge of interest in the political arena. The nation’s oldest such groups have generally continued their accustomed role of supporting U.S. foreign and military policy. With respect to the Bush administration’s “surge strategy” announced in early 2007, for example, which committed additional troops to Iraq at a time when those already there were taking substantial casualties, groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (founded in 1899) and the American Legion (1919) “issued pro-war position statements and lob
bied skeptical Republicans to back the current Iraq strategy.” With memberships of 2.4 million (VFW) and 2.7 million (the Legion), they were courted by the administration and in turn recruited others “to argue for the surge strategy at town hall meetings.”46
But the lay of the land had been changing. Upon returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, some soldiers look to veterans’ organizations to play a more critical and cautionary role. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have spawned some new veterans groups, many of which are in a rebellious mood,” noted National Public Radio’s John McChesny in early 2007. “They have different agendas and different approaches.”47 Among the newcomers are the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and VoteVets.org. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), comprised of active-duty personnel as well as retirees, was perhaps the most antagonistic to Bush administration policy at the time, offering ten reasons for opposing the war, including that it ostensibly violates international law.48 Vets for Freedom, established on Veterans Day 2007, describes itself as “the largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans’ organization in America” and is firmly committed to “success in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the overall war on terror.”49 The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, founded in 1993, is supporting legislation to prohibit discrimination in the armed services based on sexual orientation.50
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also generated new organizations comprised of families with sons and daughters in the armed services who have become actively engaged in the political sphere. “Today’s families are less likely than those of previous generations to just accept the situation,” observed James B. Peake, former secretary of Veterans Affairs and the object of intensive lobbying on a range of issues.51 One such group, Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), counts as its members more than 3,400 military families opposed to the war in Iraq and working to bring U.S. troops home. A subset of that number is the one hundred Gold Star Families Speak Out, modeled on a similar Vietnam-era group of persons who have lost family members due to hostile action or suicide. Organizers of the new Gold Star group explain that their organization was set up not to counter other voices, but to be a voice in their own right.52 The original Gold Star Mothers, established in 1928 to link people who had lost “a son or daughter in service to the country,” has been encouraging officials to “stay the course” in Iraq.
