thedrifter
01-14-07, 11:26 AM
The parts of war just don't add up
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Last week the news rushed in almost faster than it could be dealt with.
In the end, despite a much-heralded but largely incomprehensible health-care plan announced by Gov. Schwarzenegger, followed by the traditional State of the State speech, the week was about war. None of it was joyful, but neither is war.
It came down to these parts of the whole, in no particular order.
- President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq.
- An intersection in Oceanside, Coast Highway and Cassidy, that knows a thing or two.
- Jason Dunham, who isn't here anymore.
1. Bush's plan was the most prominent. He said he believed that 21,600 more troops under deployment might turn the tide in forlorn Iraq. He said mistakes had been made, but this time the Iraqis themselves ... democracy ... live in freedom ... save the Middle East ... will go it on their own. Eventually.
He sounded like Lyndon Johnson explaining why he was sending 100,000 more sailors, then 150,000 more, then more and more Marines and soldiers to Vietnam to fight the unbeatable foe.
Bush has furious and outspoken opposition this time. It's not merely that the Democrats control Congress ---- although that is important ---- but that minority Republicans have turned loudly and proudly against the war, too. Sometimes they're more adamant than Democrats, with the exception of Nancy Pelosi.
It is not that Republicans have gone all giddy-moral about the war, although perhaps a few have. It is that Bush no longer has coattails; he's a lame duck. Republicans in Congress don't need him anymore. They can instead listen to (a) the polls about what Americans think, said polls reporting that most want out of Iraq; or (b) the imperatives of decency, for just this once.
2. Was there ever a greater shrine in North County than the bedraggled fence at the corner of Coast Highway and Cassidy Street in Oceanside? Not likely.
It was there that a few good souls slipped silently in, time after time, and attached the dog tags of Camp Pendleton Marines who had fallen in Iraq --- to date, 317. Skimpy bouquets of flowers adorned the tags. Little messages, too, of thanks and love and goodbye.
You could walk along that fence and learn more than you ever wanted to know about war. Dog tags have names, and these bore the names of men you'll never say hello to out in the street, or up at Pendleton. They're not there.
But, before you could say Panera, Starbucks bought the corner, which once was a gas station, and in the legal rigamarole that followed, the tags came down. They weren't stolen, not exactly. They were put in a sort of pile, and calls were made, and claimants appeared.
There still isn't a Starbucks there, or wasn't last week.
But something bigger even than a new Starbucks has come to Cassidy and Coast Highway.
Right at the corner, on that chain-link fence, a few dog tags have reappeared.
There probably are not more than 20, if that, but it's a wonderful little band. They huddle together at the corner, with a daisy here and half a carnation there, perhaps wondering where their comrades went.
The corner's searing artwork was not dreamed up in the White House of George Bush. It was not decided upon at the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld. Congress had nothing whatever to do with it.
It transcends them all. No policy, strategy, tactic or plan begins to approach the soul-deep importance of the scruffy corner. Bush's ideas on increasing the number of troops he'll send off to bottomless Iraq pale beside the day's end truth of tags and fence in Oceanside.
3. The man of the hour in last week's drumfire of military-this and war-that was Cpl. Jason Dunham. No need to put off the truth: He's dead.
He was a Marine who fought in Iraq, for a time. He fought until April of 2004, when he received word that a Marine convoy had been ambushed on a road near Husaybah. He led his men to the site. They stopped a different convoy of departing cars.
Dunham and two of his men approached one, intending to search it. An insurgent in the car, the Marine Corps said, grabbed Dunham by the throat. They struggled, and a grenade fell to the ground. Whose grenade? Does it matter?
Dunham yelled, "Grenade." Then he covered it with his Kevlar helmet, fell on it, and the grenade exploded against helmet and protective jacket. He died. His fellow Marines lived.
For this, Dunham was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor last week. It was presented by Bush to Dunham's parents in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. It was a somber event.
Said Bush of Dunham: "He was the guy who signed on for an extra two months in Iraq so he could stay with his squad. As he explained it, he wanted to 'make sure that everyone makes it home alive.' Corporal Dunham took that promise seriously and would give his own life to make it good."
Maybe there is an order to these three events of last week. Critics would say so. They'd say that the sum of the parts greatly exceeded the whole. They'd say that Dunham should have been first, and honored in prime time.
He might have been followed by the story of Cassidy and Coast Highway, where the tags rattle lightly against the fence and each other, teased by breezes that neither Dunham nor the other dead Marines will feel again.
They'd say that to send more men and women is grotesque, that politics and policy cannot approach the importance of the death of one man, one woman, and certainly not 317, and never 3,000.
They'd say, listen to your country and bring them all home now.
In fact, that is exactly what they are saying.
Contact staff writer John Van Doorn at (760)739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Last week the news rushed in almost faster than it could be dealt with.
In the end, despite a much-heralded but largely incomprehensible health-care plan announced by Gov. Schwarzenegger, followed by the traditional State of the State speech, the week was about war. None of it was joyful, but neither is war.
It came down to these parts of the whole, in no particular order.
- President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq.
- An intersection in Oceanside, Coast Highway and Cassidy, that knows a thing or two.
- Jason Dunham, who isn't here anymore.
1. Bush's plan was the most prominent. He said he believed that 21,600 more troops under deployment might turn the tide in forlorn Iraq. He said mistakes had been made, but this time the Iraqis themselves ... democracy ... live in freedom ... save the Middle East ... will go it on their own. Eventually.
He sounded like Lyndon Johnson explaining why he was sending 100,000 more sailors, then 150,000 more, then more and more Marines and soldiers to Vietnam to fight the unbeatable foe.
Bush has furious and outspoken opposition this time. It's not merely that the Democrats control Congress ---- although that is important ---- but that minority Republicans have turned loudly and proudly against the war, too. Sometimes they're more adamant than Democrats, with the exception of Nancy Pelosi.
It is not that Republicans have gone all giddy-moral about the war, although perhaps a few have. It is that Bush no longer has coattails; he's a lame duck. Republicans in Congress don't need him anymore. They can instead listen to (a) the polls about what Americans think, said polls reporting that most want out of Iraq; or (b) the imperatives of decency, for just this once.
2. Was there ever a greater shrine in North County than the bedraggled fence at the corner of Coast Highway and Cassidy Street in Oceanside? Not likely.
It was there that a few good souls slipped silently in, time after time, and attached the dog tags of Camp Pendleton Marines who had fallen in Iraq --- to date, 317. Skimpy bouquets of flowers adorned the tags. Little messages, too, of thanks and love and goodbye.
You could walk along that fence and learn more than you ever wanted to know about war. Dog tags have names, and these bore the names of men you'll never say hello to out in the street, or up at Pendleton. They're not there.
But, before you could say Panera, Starbucks bought the corner, which once was a gas station, and in the legal rigamarole that followed, the tags came down. They weren't stolen, not exactly. They were put in a sort of pile, and calls were made, and claimants appeared.
There still isn't a Starbucks there, or wasn't last week.
But something bigger even than a new Starbucks has come to Cassidy and Coast Highway.
Right at the corner, on that chain-link fence, a few dog tags have reappeared.
There probably are not more than 20, if that, but it's a wonderful little band. They huddle together at the corner, with a daisy here and half a carnation there, perhaps wondering where their comrades went.
The corner's searing artwork was not dreamed up in the White House of George Bush. It was not decided upon at the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld. Congress had nothing whatever to do with it.
It transcends them all. No policy, strategy, tactic or plan begins to approach the soul-deep importance of the scruffy corner. Bush's ideas on increasing the number of troops he'll send off to bottomless Iraq pale beside the day's end truth of tags and fence in Oceanside.
3. The man of the hour in last week's drumfire of military-this and war-that was Cpl. Jason Dunham. No need to put off the truth: He's dead.
He was a Marine who fought in Iraq, for a time. He fought until April of 2004, when he received word that a Marine convoy had been ambushed on a road near Husaybah. He led his men to the site. They stopped a different convoy of departing cars.
Dunham and two of his men approached one, intending to search it. An insurgent in the car, the Marine Corps said, grabbed Dunham by the throat. They struggled, and a grenade fell to the ground. Whose grenade? Does it matter?
Dunham yelled, "Grenade." Then he covered it with his Kevlar helmet, fell on it, and the grenade exploded against helmet and protective jacket. He died. His fellow Marines lived.
For this, Dunham was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor last week. It was presented by Bush to Dunham's parents in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. It was a somber event.
Said Bush of Dunham: "He was the guy who signed on for an extra two months in Iraq so he could stay with his squad. As he explained it, he wanted to 'make sure that everyone makes it home alive.' Corporal Dunham took that promise seriously and would give his own life to make it good."
Maybe there is an order to these three events of last week. Critics would say so. They'd say that the sum of the parts greatly exceeded the whole. They'd say that Dunham should have been first, and honored in prime time.
He might have been followed by the story of Cassidy and Coast Highway, where the tags rattle lightly against the fence and each other, teased by breezes that neither Dunham nor the other dead Marines will feel again.
They'd say that to send more men and women is grotesque, that politics and policy cannot approach the importance of the death of one man, one woman, and certainly not 317, and never 3,000.
They'd say, listen to your country and bring them all home now.
In fact, that is exactly what they are saying.
Contact staff writer John Van Doorn at (760)739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie