thedrifter
10-26-05, 06:25 AM
A personal look at a few of the 2,000
Praise of sacrifice, protests of war's toll
By Robert Reid
The Associated Press
Salt Lake Tribune
BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Army sergeant dying of wounds in a Texas hospital. Marines cut down in the dusty wasteland west of Baghdad. The painful cost of a war that has now claimed 2,000 young American lives.
It is a sacrifice praised in the halls of Congress and mourned by families across a nation that is increasingly asking its leaders to justify a war launched in March 2003 to destroy Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. None was ever found.
In Washington, the U.S. Senate observed a moment of silence Tuesday in honor of the fallen 2,000.
''We owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their courage, for their valor, for their strength, for their commitment to our country,'' said Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
Critics of the war also acknowledged the sacrifice, even as they questioned the policies of those who lead it.
''Our armed forces are serving ably in Iraq under enormously difficult circumstances, and the policy of our government must be worthy of their sacrifice.
Unfortunately, it is not, and the American people know it,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat.
For the Bush administration, the 2,000 death marker was an opportunity to rally the country for more sacrifices in what it describes as a noble and necessary battle in defense of America's most cherished values.
President Bush warned the U.S. public to brace for more casualties in the fight against ''as brutal an enemy as we have ever faced, unconstrained by any notion of common humanity and by the rules of warfare.''
''No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead,'' Bush said in a speech Tuesday before the Joint Armed Forces Officers' Wives' luncheon in Washington.
Outside the White House, peace activist Cindy Sheehan - whose 24-year old son, Casey, died in Iraq last year - said she and others plan to ''die symbolically'' each night over the next four days to protest U.S. involvement in Iraq.
''I'll be laying down and not getting up,'' said Sheehan, who planned the protests this week expecting that the U.S. military death toll would hit 2,000.
In the latest casualty reports, the Pentagon said Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, died Saturday in San Antonio of wounds suffered Oct. 17 in a blast north of the Iraqi capital.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of two unidentified Marines in fighting last week in a village 25 miles west of Baghdad. Those announcements brought the U.S. death toll to 2,000, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.
It was unclear who was the 2,000th service member to die in Iraq since the U.S. military often delays death announcements until families are notified. On Monday, for example, the American command announced that an unidentified Marine was killed in action the day before - after the deaths of the three service members reported Tuesday.
In an e-mail statement to Baghdad-based journalists, command spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said media attention on the 2,000 figure was misguided and ''set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives.''
Ellie
thedrifter
10-26-05, 12:37 PM
October 26, 2005
2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark
By JAMES DAO
Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, fresh off the plane from Iraq and an impish grin on his face, sauntered unannounced into his wife's hospital room in Georgia just hours after she had given birth to their second son.
For two joyous weeks in May, Sergeant Jones cooed over their baby and showered attention on his wife. But he also took care of unfinished business, selling his pickup truck to retire a loan, paying off bills, calling on family and friends.
"I want to live this week like it is my last," he told his wife.
Three weeks later, on June 14, Sergeant Jones was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on his third tour in a war that is not yet three years old. He was 25.
"It was like he knew he wouldn't come back," said his grandmother, Ima Lee Jones, who buried Sergeant Jones beside towering oaks near her home in Sumter, S.C. "He told me, 'Grandma, the chances of going over a third time and coming back alive are almost nil. I've known too many who have died.' "
Sergeant Jones's tale may be unusual in its heartbreaking juxtaposition of birth and death, but it has become increasingly common among the war dead in one important way: one in five of the troops who have been killed were in their second, third, fourth or fifth tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many of those service members returned voluntarily to war because they burned with conviction in the rightness of the mission. Others were driven by powerful loyalty to units and friends. For some it was simply their job.
But as the nation pays grim tribute today to the 2,000 service members killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, their collective stories describe the painful stresses and recurring strains that an extended conflict, with all its demands for multiple tours, is placing on families, towns and the military itself as they struggle to console the living while burying the dead.
"Two tours is more than you should ask anyone to do," said Randall Shafer, 51, an oil industry consultant from Houston whose son, Lance Cpl. Eric Shafer of the Marines, just finished his second tour in Iraq. "They know they could die anywhere at any time. That will take a toll on anybody. And it takes a toll on their families."
The milestone of 2,000 dead was marked yesterday by a moment of silence in the Senate, and President Bush said that "the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission." But the nation seems as divided over the war as it did in September 2004, when the 1,000th death occurred in the midst of a heated presidential campaign.
The differences between the first 1,000 and the second 1,000 dead illuminate recent trends regarding who is serving in Iraq, who is dying and how the war is progressing.
Most strikingly, death has come quicker, a sign of the insurgency's increasing efficiency. While it took 18 months to reach 1,000 dead, it has taken just 14 to reach 2,000. More powerful and sophisticated explosive devices are a major reason, causing nearly half of the deaths in the second group.
Whites, who represent the vast majority of combat troops, accounted for a larger share of the dead among the most recent 1,000, about three out of four. Blacks and Hispanics died at a somewhat slower rate over the last year.
More than 420 service members, the majority of them marines and soldiers, have died while on repeat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. That number is expected to climb steadily as the Pentagon continues to rotate its main front-line combat battalions into Iraq.
The Marine Corps suffered a particularly heavy toll, accounting for a third of the second 1,000 deaths, though marines represent less than 20 percent of the American force in Iraq. Marines have been stationed in some of Iraq's most violent precincts and assigned to lead dangerous anti-insurgent sweeps in restive Sunni areas like Falluja.
The nation's part-time warriors in the National Guard and the Reserve also shouldered a larger burden, accounting for about 30 percent of the deaths, an increase of more than 10 percentage points. The heavier toll came as Guard and Reserve forces were called to combat in larger numbers than at any other time since Vietnam, a role the Pentagon plans to scale back in the coming year.
Every state in the country was represented on the roster of the dead, as were Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, Guam, Micronesia, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. California and Texas had the most deaths, as they did for the first 1,000, followed by New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. At least 17 of the last 1,000 dead were women.
For Iraqis, too, the death toll seems to have accelerated. Estimates for Iraqis are not precise and are subject to much controversy. But according to figures compiled by the allied military forces in Iraq and analyzed by Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a nonprofit research group, Iraqis have suffered on average more than 50 casualties a day in 2005, including wounded and dead, compared with fewer than 40 a day in 2004.
Iraq Body Count, a nonprofit organization, estimates that 26,000 to 30,000 Iraqi civilians including police officers have died in the entire conflict, though it does not have a figure for military personnel.
Multiple deployments have clearly embittered some American families, driving them to push their children and spouses to quit the military. But others say the willingness, sometimes sheer determination, of loved ones to return to battle has made them see a deeper value in the mission, no matter how deadly or open-ended it may seem.
"I thought initially that we should never have gone to war," said Karen Strain, 51, of North Hero, Vt., whose son, Cpl. Adam J. Strain of the Marines, was killed by a sniper in August.
"But now I feel we have to finish the job," Ms. Strain said, pausing to fight back tears. "Adam gave me more insight for how sad it is for those people, and how we can help give them their freedom. Adam changed my views."
Multiple Tours
With Each One, Death Seems to Loom Larger
It was the tour that was not supposed to happen.
Last year, Sergeant Jones signed a contract with the Army certifying that he would be sent to Kentucky to be trained as a scout and then deployed to Germany. He had already served two tours driving heavy equipment into Iraq from Kuwait, and his wife was pregnant with their second child.
But his unit, the 104th transportation company of the Third Infantry Division, was short of soldiers, and at the last minute the Army changed his orders, dispatching him to Iraq. He dutifully deployed in February, while complaining bitterly about the Army's broken promises and voicing deep concerns about poor equipment.
"He was angry, angrier than I've ever heard," said Ima Lee Jones, his grandmother. "He said, 'I don't mind going. But what the insurgents haven't blown up or burned, we can't get parts to fix. The trucks can't drive more than 40 miles per hour. It's like having a bull's-eye on the door.' "
Sergeant Jones was driving one of those trucks when it was shattered by a roadside bomb on June 14, killing him.
Like Sergeant Jones, more than 300,000 American troops have served more than one tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of them in Iraq. But just how those troops and their families are coping with repeat tours is the subject of much study and debate, as repeated deployments to a war zone are a relatively new phenomenon.
In World War II, many service members deployed for the entire war. In Vietnam, conscripts typically served single 12-month tours, rotating through units that remained at war. It was only after 1973, with the all-volunteer military, that the Pentagon began rotating entire units overseas, theorizing that battalions that trained and deployed together would be more cohesive.
Iraq and Afghanistan are the first conflicts since 1973 to demand large continuous rotations of troops.
In dozens of interviews, parents and spouses described the seven-month Marine or 12-month Army deployments to Iraq as periods of unremitting tension.
Roberto Rivera of Chicago, the father of a recently returned marine, said he jogged every day to relieve stress, losing 40 pounds over a seven-month tour. Thomas Southwick of San Diego said he stopped watching the news during his marine son's third tour of duty, which ended in September.
"You're just a constant nervous wreck," Mr. Southwick said, "waiting for a knock on the door."
Many parents said they found second and third deployments more gut-wrenching than first ones, partly because they had learned from their children about the gruesome realities of war, and partly because death seemed to loom larger with each tour.
"How many times can you go out there and be so lucky?" Diana Olson of Elk Grove Village, Ill., said she told her 21-year-old son, Cpl. John T. Olson of the Marines, after his second tour. But he re-enlisted in 2004, only to be killed when a bomb caused his truck to tip over last February on his third tour.
So far, the emotional turmoil of repeated deployments has not taken a toll on re-enlistment rates for the Army or the Marine Corps, which provide most of the American forces in Iraq. Both exceeded their re-enlistment goals this year, aided by signing bonuses of $20,000 and more. But many experts said that could change if the war dragged on and troops were asked to serve more tours in combat.
"Multiple tours have long been a problem for families," said Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point. "And these are dangerous, high-stress tours."
Like many other soldiers, Sergeant Jones was fatalistic about his third tour, telling his wife, Kelly, that he had "a bad feeling" about returning to Iraq. While there, he wrote letters and journal entries musing on death. His wife found one among his belongings after his death.
"Grieve little and move on," he counseled her. "I shall be looking over you. And you will hear me from time to time on the gentle breeze that sounds at night, and in the rustle of leaves."
Mrs. Jones, 26, said she struggled at first to contain her anger that her husband was sent to Iraq instead of Germany. But she has consoled herself with the conviction that he died for a cause he supported. And she firmly rejects the antiwar protests of Cindy Sheehan, saying they dishonor the fallen.
"I hope she doesn't have my husband's name on a cross," Mrs. Jones said. "My husband, if he had a choice, that's how he would want to die. As a soldier."
Race
As Opposition Rises, Black Enlistment Falls
Sandra Williams-Smith never supported the invasion of Iraq, even though she is married to a former Air Force sergeant and has worked on military bases as a nurse. But Mrs. Williams-Smith kept her views mostly to herself, particularly after her oldest son, Jeffrey A. Williams, joined the Army out of high school in 2003. He saw the military as a steppingstone to becoming a doctor, and she encouraged his ambition.
But on Sept. 5, Specialist Williams, a 20-year-old medic, was killed by a roadside bomb in Tal Afar, Iraq. Mrs. Williams-Smith, 42, is silent no more. Though her oldest living son is in the Navy, and her youngest son wants to join the Marines, she openly rages against the war and President Bush.
"It's time to bring these boys home," said Mrs. Williams-Smith, of Mansfield, Tex. "My feelings for Bush are harsh. He should have taken care of the needs of his own people before going across the ocean to take care of someone else's."
The anger Mrs. Williams-Smith, who is black, feels toward the war is shared by many other African-Americans, according to polls, military officials and experts. And that opposition is beginning to have a profound effect on who is joining the military - and potentially who is dying in Iraq, many experts say.
For most of the last three decades, blacks joined the military in disproportionately high numbers, either because they saw it as an equal-opportunity employer or were attracted by its training programs and college benefits. The Army in particular came to rely heavily on blacks to fill its ranks: in the 1980's, about 30 percent of active-duty soldiers were black, Pentagon statistics show.
But black enlistment has fallen off, particularly in the Army, and the war in Iraq is hastening that decline, military officials and experts say. Lower black enlistment means that the military looks more like the United States in terms of racial balance than it did a decade ago, when it was disproportionately black.
This year, about 14 percent of new Army recruits were black, down from nearly 23 percent in 2001. Army officials say improved job opportunities in other fields is one reason. But a study commissioned by the Army last year also concluded that more young blacks were rejecting military service because they opposed the war, or feared dying in it.
"More African-Americans identify having to fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier to military service," the study concluded.
Not all blacks feel that way. Specialist Toccara R. Green joined the junior R.O.T.C. as an ebullient freshman at a Baltimore high school and became enraptured with the discipline and camaraderie of military life. Even after Specialist Green, 23, was killed by a roadside bomb in August, her parents continued to see the Army as a proud and honorable career.
"Toccara hated Iraq, but she loved the military," her mother, Yvonne, said. "It was in her blood."
Polls indicate that support for the war has dropped among whites as well. But the disparity between blacks and whites is immense: while 45 percent of whites said the invasion was a mistake, 77 percent of blacks felt that way, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last month.
As black enlistment has declined, whites have come to represent a larger share of the Army's lowest enlisted ranks, and a larger part of the dead: 78 percent for the second 1,000, up from 70 percent in the first 1,000. The death rate for Hispanics and blacks declined in the second group.
Some experts say the increase in white deaths cannot be attributed solely to lower black recruitment, asserting that more study is needed before any conclusions are drawn. But there is broad agreement among military experts that if black enlistment continues to fall, it could create long-term manpower problems for the Army.
In many ways, Patricia Roberts is hoping that will be the case.
Ms. Roberts's son, Specialist Jamaal R. Addison, was part of the invasion of 2003 when his convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces near Nasiriya. The attack became famous because six soldiers, including Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch, were captured. But nine others from the unit died during and after the ambush, including Specialist Addison, who was 22.
After his death, Ms. Roberts, 45, said she lost her job as a customer service representative because she frequently broke down in tears. After much prayer, she resolved to devote her life to offering alternatives to military service to young blacks.
Since then, she has formed a nonprofit foundation named after her son and begun raising money for mentoring, motivational and scholarship programs. Ms. Roberts, who lives near Atlanta, says she will not discourage anyone from joining the military for patriotic reasons. But too many blacks, including her son, have joined solely for the paycheck or college tuition, she asserts.
"If they are saying, 'There's nothing out there, I'm going to end up selling drugs, I can't get a job,' that's when I want to talk to them," she said. "To show them that there are other ways."
Sgt. Jonathan B. Shields, 25, might have been one of those people. The eldest of four children raised by a divorced mother, he saw the military as a way out of his low-income, high-crime section of Atlanta. After marrying a woman with three children in 2003, he also began to see it as a career, re-enlisting while in Iraq last year.
He died in Falluja last November after an American tank ran into him.
His mother, Evelyn Allen, 48, of Decatur, Ga., said she had been unable to work since Sergeant Shields's death. Ms. Allen has sought to relieve her grief by participating in antiwar rallies. But she fears that her protests will not shorten the war. So she is focusing on a more attainable goal: preventing her three living children from joining the military.
"They would not even think about it," Ms. Allen said. "Our loss is just too drastic."
Marines
A Love for the Corps, but Weary of the War
From the time he was a child in California playing with G.I. Joe's, to the day he watched the World Trade Center collapse as a high school freshman, Adam Strain knew he wanted to join the Marine Corps.
Horrified that he was so determined to go to war, his parents pushed him to think about college, acting or even modeling. He was tall, athletic and handsome, and the Gap put him in print ads during his junior year of high school in California. By his senior year, an agent thought he could land a part in a hit television show, "Dawson's Creek."
But he was also idealistic, and when a Marine Corps recruiter described the suffering of Iraqi children, he signed up just before graduating from high school in 2003.
"He said, 'I can always do the modeling and acting when I come back,' " said his mother, who now lives in Vermont. " 'This is what I'm needed for now.' "
When Ms. Strain asked why he did not join the Navy to avoid combat, he replied, "I want to be on the front line."
Lance Corporal Strain was killed by a sniper in Ramadi on Aug. 3. He was two weeks short of his 21st birthday, six weeks short of coming home from his second tour of duty.
His unit, the First Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment, or the 1/5, is one of the most battered units in the service that has proportionately taken the heaviest death toll in the war. In three deployments to Iraq, including the invasion, the battalion has suffered about 20 deaths, all but six of those in its most recent tour, which ended in September.
One of the first units to enter Iraq during the invasion, the battalion returned when the insurgency gained momentum in 2004. That April, the 1/5 assisted in the assault on Falluja that left more than 50 Americans dead. It returned early this year to patrol the streets of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, where nearly 700 American troops have been killed, the most of any Iraqi province.
Despite the repeated deployments and heavy casualties, Marine Corps officers say that morale in the 1/5 remains high and that its re-enlistment rate remains strong.
But at a homecoming celebration for 260 members of the 1/5 at Camp Pendleton in late September, many parents who said they loved the Marine Corps also expressed deep weariness with the war, and said they hoped their children had had enough, too.
Bob Krieger, 53, a corporate pilot from near Grand Rapids, Mich., said that during two tours in Iraq, his son had seen a friend shot dead, retrieved the bodies of fellow marines blown to pieces by roadside bombs and endured close calls of his own, including having a rocket-propelled grenade shot through his pant leg.
Now, Mr. Krieger, who initially supported the invasion, says it is time to bring the troops home. "It just feels like there is no light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
His son, Cpl. Jeff Krieger, 23, agreed, saying he planned to leave the Marines next year. "Even $20,000 isn't enough to make me go back," Corporal Krieger said.
Another member of the 1/5, Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, rejected a $24,000 bonus to re-enlist. Corporal Starr believed strongly in the war, his father said, but was tired of the harsh life and nearness of death in Iraq. So he enrolled at Everett Community College near his parents' home in Snohomish, Wash., planning to study psychology after his enlistment ended in August.
But he died in a firefight in Ramadi on April 30 during his third tour in Iraq. He was 22.
Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."
His father, Brian Starr, had been preparing a basement apartment in his home for Corporal Starr to live in after leaving the Marines. Now Mr. Starr plans to turn it into a memorial of sorts, to display Corporal Starr's war ribbons and the neatly folded flag that once draped his coffin. Perhaps he will also install a pool table there to remind people of his son's fun-loving side.
Mr. Starr, an accountant, said he remained convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. But he said he would also like firsthand confirmation that the war, and Corporal Starr's death, were not in vain.
"I'm hoping, my wife is hoping, that we can visit Ramadi," he said, fighting back tears. "And feel safe. And feel like Jeff died for something."
Ellie