’Bring us home’: GIs flood US with war-weary emails

"An unprecedented internet campaign waged on the frontline and in the
US is exposing the real risks for troops in Iraq. Paul Harris and
Jonathan Franklin report on rising fears that the conflict is now a
desert Vietnam"
Paul Harris and Jonathan Franklin
Sunday August 10, 2003
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1015684,00.
html
Susan Schuman is angry. Her GI son is serving in the Iraqi town of
Samarra, at the heart of the ’Sunni triangle’, where American troops
are killed with grim regularity.
Breaking the traditional silence of military families during time of
war, Schuman knows what she wants - and who she blames for the danger
to her son, Justin. ’I want them to bring our troops home. I am
appalled at Bush’s policies. He has got us into a terrible mess,’ she
said.
Schuman may just be the tip of an iceberg. She lives in Shelburne
Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, and says all her neighbours
support her view. ’I don’t know anyone around here who disagrees with
me,’ she said.
Schuman’s views are part of a growing unease back home at the rising
casualty rate in Iraq, a concern coupled with deep anger at President
George W. Bush’s plans to cut army benefits for many soldiers.
Criticism is also coming directly from soldiers risking their lives
under the guns of Saddam Hussein’s fighters, and they are using a
weapon not available to troops in previous wars: the internet.
Through emails and chatrooms a picture is emerging of day-to-day
gripes, coupled with ferocious criticism of the way the war has been
handled. They paint a vivid picture of US army life that is a world
away from the sanitised official version.
In a message posted on a website last week, one soldier was brutally
frank. ’Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in
[Iraqi] eyes. We don’t feel like heroes any more,’ said Private Isaac
Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company.
Kindblade said morale was poor, and he attacked the leadership back
home. ’The rules of engagement are crippling. We are outnumbered. We
are exhausted. We are in over our heads. The President says, "Bring
’em on." The generals say we don’t need more troops. Well, they’re
not over here,’ he wrote.
One of the main outlets for the soldiers’ complaints has been a
website run by outspoken former soldier David Hackworth, who was the
army’s youngest colonel in the Vietnam war and one of its most
decorated warriors. He receives almost 500 emails a day, many of them
from soldiers serving in Iraq. They have sounded off about everything
from bad treatment at the hands of their officers to fears that their
equipment is faulty.
The army-issue gas mask ’leaks under the chin. This same mask was
used during Desert Storm, which accounts for part of the health
problems of the vets who fought there. My unit has again deployed to
the Gulf with this loser,’ ranted one army doctor.
Some veterans have begun to form organisations to campaign to bring
the soldiers home and highlight their difficult conditions. Erik
Gustafson, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war, has founded Veterans For
Common Sense. ’There is an anger boiling under the surface now, and
I, as a veteran, have a duty to speak because I am no longer subject
to military discipline,’ he said.
A recent email from Iraq passed to Gustafson, signed by ’the Soldiers
of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division’, said simply: ’Our
men and women deserve to see their loved ones again and deserve to
come home. Thank you for your attention.’
Another source of anger is government plans to reverse recent
increases in ’imminent danger’ pay and a family separation allowance.
These moves have provoked several furious editorials in the Army
Times, the normally conservative military newspaper. The paper said
the planned cuts made ’the Bush administration seem mean-spirited and
hypocritical’.
Tobias Naegele, its editor-in-chief, said his senior staff agonised
over the decision to attack the government, but the response to the
editorials from ordinary soldiers was overwhelmingly positive.
A further critical editorial is planned for this week. ’We don’t
think lightly of criticising our Commander-in-Chief,’ Naegele said
’The army has had a rough couple of years with this administration.’
Mainstream veterans’ groups too are angry about cuts being proposed
at a time when politicians have heaped praise on the army’s
performance in Afghanistan and Iraq and want to launch a recruitment
drive.
Veterans plan protests to highlight the issue. ’We are going to show
them that veterans are people who know how to vote,’ said Steven
Robinson, a veteran and executive director of the National Gulf War
Resource Centre, one of the websites where veterans’ issues are
raised.
Susan Schuman too is planning a protest. This week she plans to join
members of a new group, Military Families Speak Out, who will travel
to Washington to make their case for their sons, daughters, husbands
and wives, to be brought home from Iraq.
With soldiers dying there almost daily, comparisons have already been
drawn with the Vietnam war and the birth of the protest movements
there that divided America in the Sixties and Seventies.
Political scientists, however, think the war will have to get much
worse before anything similar happens over Iraq. ’To put it crudely,
I think the country can accept this current level of casualties,’
said Professor Richard Stoll, of Rice University in Houston, Texas.
That is little comfort to Schuman, who says she just wants to see her
son, Justin, return alive from a war she believes is unjust. ’It is a
quagmire and it is not going to be easy to get out,’ she said.
’That’s where the parallel with Vietnam is.’
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003