Home > Don’t Extend Them & Don’t Replace Them Just Bring ’Em on ...

Don’t Extend Them & Don’t Replace Them Just Bring ’Em on ...

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 31 July 2003

Don’t Extend Them & Don’t Replace Them Just Bring ’Em
on Home Now!

By STAN GOFF

Counter Punch
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff07262003.html

July 26, 2003

On July 23rd, my son, who is assigned to the 82nd
Airborne Division, was told along with the rest of his
company at morning formation, to get his affairs in
order. They are going to replace the 3rd Infantry
Division in Iraq.

Jessie spent his first thirteen years around the
military, from which I retired just seven years ago
right there in Ft. Bragg. It’s no surprise, then, that
in the face of all my protests he joined the army
anyway. The military is ’normal’ to him.

His mother and I have been scrupulously ’normal’ for
the last few days, self-consciously so. We show great
attention to detail in our day-to-day activities. We
stay busy.

I reassure her and myself that he is a light wheeled
vehicle mechanic, that he won’t be participating in
convoys when his unit goes to Iraq in September, that
Baghdad airport, where the motor pool probably is, has
by now been turned into an impregnable fortress, that
perhaps there wasn’t as much depleted uranium fired
there as in some Baghdad neighborhoods, that he won’t
be obliged to take lives and lose that little piece of
his soul, that he won’t fall into the habit of calling
Iraqis ragheads or hajjis, that he can just save some
money, do his job, and stay busy and out of harm’s way.
This is what people say to each other who are in our
position, because there is no alternative way to think
and still go to work, still attend to the needs of
other children, still manage relationships, and still
maintain some modicum of self-control.

On July 3rd, I wrote a piece for "Counterpunch"
expressing my reaction to George W. Bush’s remark about
"bring ’em on." I went after this remark for its
counterfeit courage, for its puerility, for its utter
hypocrisy and insensitivity. But now I am reminded, now
that my son is going to go there (at his age I was
already in Vietnam), that George W. Bush and his
coterie are more than offensive. They are obscenities
with a lot of blood on their hands, and their
wretchedness is something far more terrifying and
unspeakable —viewed as a parent —than this bit of
schoolyard mouth.

The "Counterpunch" column about this Texas preppy’s
remark elicited a stunning reaction. My email was hit
by a tidal wave, hundreds of responses an hour at
first, reactions of empathy and outrage that told me
there is a vast reservoir of doubt, fear, and rage
filling up beyond the ken of the cringing institution
that calls itself the press. Around 40 percent of those
responses came from troops, military families, and
veterans. There is a great well of sullen anger
smoldering out there against these pop-opera
generalissimos. Now, as parents facing our son’s first
combat tour, we are even more part of that burning.

The recent news stories about the Bush adminstration’s
mountain of lies was not news to those of us who
learned long ago to seek sources outside offcialdom.
Millions of us said they were lying over a year ago.
And we parents —many of us —know that our enemies are
not in Iraq. Our enemies are in office, and they have
the blood of children —some of them ours —on their
hands. Everyone is someone’s child, even when they are
grown. Even when they take paths we don’t approve of.
Even when they become soldiers, and are sent to pay for
lies with their bodies and hearts and the blood of
others.

I replied to every email, most perfunctorily, some at
length. I skimmed at first, until I realized I had
overlooked a letter from a woman whose son struggled
for four years with post traumatic stress disorder
before he took his own life. Not long after, his young
wife did the same. This bereaved mother wrote to say
thanks for giving her a voice. But it was she and
others like her who are giving us a voice.

I made calls, and the people I called made calls, and
within four days a small group of activist veterans and
military families had formed a coordinating committee
to figure out how we might find those other voices and
amplify them. We bought a web domain, made more calls,
wrote statements of purpose, developed outreach
literature, conferred for two hours at a time on the
phone from the west coast to the east. We did more
organizing in two weeks than I have seen with most
initiatives in six months. As the word has leaked out,
we are getting phone calls and email. What is this
thing you are doing? Military Families Speak Out,
Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
Citizen Soldier, and others —these dissident military
communities have networks!

So we are going to give troops, their families, and
critical veterans a voice. That’s the reason-for-being
of "Bring Them Home Now!" We are using our web site
www.bringthemhomenow.org as a communications
clearinghouse to publish the voices of military
communities and to link them to the networks and
resources they will need to organize themselves. When
military families rebelled recently at Ft. Stewart, the
brass didn’t hesitate to issue veiled threats that
criticizing the war might impact on their loved ones’
careers. The brass will have no control over us,
however, and those same people (mostly courageous
women) will be able to say what they want, when they
want, and we’ll protect their identities if that’s what
they need. Through them, we will communicate with the
troops in combat zones, whose recent public dissent
brought a swift and clear injunction from the CENTCOM
commander threatening retaliate with the full force of
the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

We are going directly to those upon whom our would-be
emperors depend to carry out their grandiose and deadly
vision ---the military. A friend of mine who passed
away this year once said, "Soldiers [and their
families] are political scientists. No-one cares as
much as they do about what it is they are asked to die
for." For these political scientists, ’Bring Them Home
Now!’ will be a conference room, a classroom, and a
loudspeaker.

We will turn up the volume and the political pressure
to bring our loved ones home, NOT ’replace’ them with
more of our children and spouses, and to leave the
people of Central and Southwestern Asia to determine
their own futures without Bush’s bombs and bullets.

Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s
Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press,
2000) and of the upcoming book "Full Spectrum Disorder"
(Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member of the BRING
THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired
Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an
active duty soldier. Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is
bthn@mfso.org.

Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org