|
by Dave Lindorff
 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.
 |
Writings 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
