A woman who works in my office asked me
the other day to sign a petition supporting President Bush. “But I
don’t support him,” I said, perhaps a little sharply.
“What, you don’t support our
troops?” she asked, aghast.
“It’s not the same thing,” I
replied with a sigh, and she was clearly confused. “Why do you feel
obliged to personally support Bush?”
“Well, he’s our President,” she
said.
“I suppose so,” I said. “Though, as
a resident of Florida, you know how questionable that election was.”
“Yeah, I’m a little embarrassed to
admit it, but the only reason I voted for him was because I thought it
would be cool to have a son follow his father into the White House.”
Now it was my turn to be aghast. The
reason we are in an unnecessary war opposed by the vast majority of
earthlings from the Pope to the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, as
Michael Moore put it at the Oscars is because a handful of
not-so-deep-thinking Floridians thought it would be “cool” to anoint
a chip-off-the-old block as commander in chief. I bit my lip in an
effort to let a cooler head prevail, but the continual drone of drivel
has driven me to distraction.
“Support our troops,” the current
regime in Washington demands. “Now that the war is underway, we’ve
got to support our troops!” the jingoistic commentators of talk radio
and Fox Cable News cry over and over again. “Anti-war demonstrators
don’t support our troops,” complain the Polly-Parrot followers of
whatever their leaders tell them, falling in line without so much as a
question as to where their government is taking them. It’s so much
simpler to be a part of the team, to yell rah-rah for the obvious, than
to invest in any critical thought processes. Questioning authority seems
to be as out of fashion in America today (including among the leaders of
both major political parties) as it was in the Germany of the 1930s.
Well, surprise to those of you who
disrespect dissenters. EVERY ONE OF US supports our troops, anti-war
people perhaps more than most. And, despite claims to the contrary by
people with faulty memories, that’s the way it was during the
Vietnam-era peace movement, too, when a major rallying cry was “bring
’em back alive.” What better way to support our troops than to
remove them from harm’s way, saving their dedicated service for a time
we really need it. On the other hand, to waste their young lives in an
ill-conceived crusade to foist change upon an already disabled country
is a highly suspect way to champion our military volunteers.
This little war originally touted as a
one-round sparring match with a price tag of a mere (cough) $75 billion
and its long aftermath are likely to bedevil us for the better part of a
decade. We’re making even more enemies in the region, and according to
latest projections the cost to our treasury could easily reach one
trillion dollars (that’s $1,000,000,000,000, in case you’ve never
seen such a gargantuan figure enumerated before). A lot of American
senior citizens could receive affordable health care with that money; a
lot of children could have smaller classrooms and hot lunches. Sure, we
all support the troops. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight like
hell against the policies that endanger them and threaten our nation’s
future.
Then there’s the troubling predicament
of “supporting our gay troops,” which is almost an oxymoron based on
government policies and practices. The government our gay troops work
for doesn’t accept their right to participate openly in the military.
Yet they are supposed to dutifully sacrifice themselves for the military
that routinely oppresses them.
We’ve been hearing a lot about Fort
Campbell, Kentucky, because of casualties suffered in Iraq by soldiers
headquartered there. But there has been other suffering at that base, as
well. The anti-gay atmosphere at Fort Campbell resulted in the 1999
murder of 21-year-old PFC Barry Winchell. A report by the Army’s
inspector general subsequently discovered troublesome anti-gay attitudes
among members of Winchell’s company in the 101st Airborne Division,
and research by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) found
that “anti-gay harassment and threats are as common as the uniform”
at the base. Yet, despite all the publicity surrounding the case, there
was no outburst of public sentiment to “support our gay troops at Fort
Campbell.”
America’s only major ally in this war,
Great Britain, allows gay soldiers to serve openly. However, even with
an increased effort to retain military personnel, the Pentagon’s
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law remains in effect, and gay service
members continue to be discriminated against and discharged solely on
the basis of sexual orientation. SLDN received a record number of 170
requests for help by gay military personnel between January 1 and March
1; that’s a 30 percent increase over the same period last year.
Despite facing sharp criticism for discharging seven Arabic linguists
for being gay, the armed services are expelling more gay linguists at an
alarming rate. And the Department of Defense still refuses to issue a
department-wide directive to make clear that mistreatment and harassment
are unacceptable, as required by the original “Don’t ask…”
compromise, which was forced upon President Clinton by homophobic
military brass.
The best we have achieved at Fort
Campbell, as reported by the SLDN, is a little “sensitivity”
training during which soldiers have been urged to report rather than
beat up anyone who is seen engaging in such acts as same-sex French
kissing. Given the government’s current disdain for anything French,
perhaps the homosexual nature of the act is less bothersome to military
brass than its nation of origin.
Even though the systematic persecution of
gay service members continues, patriotic lesbian and gay Americans
remain willing to serve on the front lines. And I have yet to hear a
single word of endorsement for them from any of the government
officials, broadcasters and talk-show callers who are most vocal about
supporting our troops. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?
What’s most wrong with the big picture
of Washington’s war against Iraq is the failure of so many of our
citizens to do their homework about the consequences of this particular
war. Few of us take the time to carefully read a variety of newspapers
or books on the subject of Middle Eastern culture and politics, or even
to spend a couple hours a night surfing among network and cable news
broadcasts. We might miss Survivor or American Idol.
As some of us old-timers learned during
Vietnam, the more people study war, the more they are likely to demand
peace. The anti-war sentiment domestically will certainly grow louder
the more body bags come home to Dover Air Force Base. But what a sad way
to relearn an old lesson. Americans will begin to wonder why we didn’t
give the United Nations a little longer, why we have shattered so many
lives (American and Middle Eastern) and why we’ve blown so much of the
next generation’s financial resources for so little gain.
My father used to say that history is
destined to repeat. I would argue that point with him, maintaining that
humanity can learn from its mistakes. But, maybe he was right. Contrary
to the best efforts of tens of millions of anti-warriors around the
globe, the boys who pull the strings in Washington have no interest in
listening or learning at least not yet.
Don’t let anyone intimidate you. Read,
study, get organized and respond. Light a match at a candlelight vigil.
Or, sit down to block an intersection of a major highway. Whatever you
choose to do, support our troops—straight and gay—by bringing them
back alive.
Former
Rehoboth resident Bill Sievert has written about social causes since the
1960s; send your hate mail to him at allforthecause@aol.com.
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