The no escape clause on Iraq
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
“Be
all you can be” extol the commercials inducing naïve
youngsters to enlist. The pictures show attractive people learning
skills, not killing or getting killed, wounded or psychically
scarred. The palpable glorification of the military gets reinforced
through welcome home parades in small towns and repeated celebratory
references by the President, Congress and the patriotic media.
At
ball games, announcers use the 7th
inning stretch to pay tribute to those serving in the military.
From
the words, the TV commercials and countless movies, one would
conclude the U.S. military is invincible. Such accolades about the
presumed success of U.S. military campaigns success collide with the
facts. Indeed, failure at war still infects U.S. domestic politics.
In 2004, John Kerry got “swiftboated.” Bumper stickers still
refer to the MIAs in Vietnam.
The
bitterness reflects reality. The celebrated and very costly military
hasn’t won a war since 1945 when the United States belonged to an
alliance, in which the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the fighting.
In Gulf War I, the U.S. perpetrated a technological massacre against
an Iraqi enemy that didn’t fight back. Every time an enemy resisted
the United States withdrew from the conflict: Korea and Vietnam;
eventually, Afghanistan and Iraq. No one in Congress or the
mainstream media dares draw the obvious conclusion: the solders in
Korea and Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, have had nothing to do with
defending the United States. None of those countries attacked or
threatened our homeland. But each military escapade produces
unintended and thorny domestic consequences.
Illustratively,
the April 6 New
York Times
headlined its lead story, “Army is Worried by Rising Stress of
Return Tours.” The report added unpleasant facts to the already
high levels of anxiety the distressed public suffers under the weight
of Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The article refers to mental
troubles vets experience upon returning unwillingly to war zones.
Repeated tours, the story states, leads a considerable number to
suffer post “traumatic stress disorders, low morale, mental health
pressures, and stress related work problems.”
The
war has come home in the form of countless wife and child abuse
reports, divorces, lost jobs, murders, suicides and homelessness. The
November 8, 2007, NY
Times reported
that more than 400 U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
live in the streets, including female veterans.
"Sexual
abuse is a risk factor for homelessness," said Pete Dougherty,
of the Veterans Administration. Veterans make up 11% of the adult
population, but 26% of the homeless.
The
VA estimated that "more than 250,000 veterans may be homeless on
any given night and that twice as many veterans experience
homelessness over the course of a year. Many other veterans are
considered at risk because of poverty, lack of support from family
and friends and precarious living conditions in overcrowded or
substandard housing." (Alexandra Marks, Christian
Science Monitor,
Feb. 8, 2005)
Pentagon
statistical charts don’t include hundreds of thousands of vets who
haven’t lost limbs, eyes or pieces of brain, and don’t show body
wounds, but carry the equivalent of chronic bleeding in their psyches
that MRI’s can’t see. The “support our troops” Administration
does little to help them in their difficult re-entry to civilian life
processes. A November 8, 2007, Associated Press story cited a
Pentagon report noting almost 1,600 returning Army Reservists filing
complaints with the Labor Department about the government not acting
to get their old jobs back. Thousands more complained to the Defense
Department.
The
media has not adequately covered the plight of vets who think they
have finally come home from Iraq and then get “stop-lossed,”
referring to the loophole in the soldier’s contract that allows the
President to send the GI back to Iraq for another tour of duty.
The
problem, as implied in the NY
Times
article, becomes the source of “Stop-Loss,” an artfully
dramatized new film by Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”). The
opening scenes of fighting in Tikrit surpass previous war “realism”
in Hollywood. Even more “in your face” than the openings scenes
of “Saving Private Ryan,” the surround sound in the theater for
“Stop-Loss” amplifies the soldiers’ terrified breathing as well
as the more voluble sound effects of shots and explosions as an army
check point patrol chases a car full of insurgents into an alley —
an ambush. The sergeant barely hesitates before commanding his men to
pursue and then, in the ensuing battle, three of his men die and
another gets seriously wounded. In the firefight civilians also die,
including women and small children.
In
Paul Haggis’ “In The Valley of Elah” (2007), each member of a
returning platoon from Iraq had morphed from clean-cut young men into
killers, drug addicts and patrons of sleazy sex bars. They also had
become pathological liars and, a few became sadistic — thanks to
their bitter experiences in Iraq. Like “Elah,” “Stop Loss”
shows through graphic images how this war drives its combatants into
states of mind that vitiate their reentry into civilian life.
Once
back in a small Texas town, the three buddies from the Tikrit squad
that survived the ambush no longer think about soldiering as serving
their country, the corny words used by podium speakers extolling the
virtues of the returning heroes after the parade in their honor.
The
men in the opening battle scene show they have the courage to face
death. For the remainder of the film, the question becomes: do they
have the inner fortitude to face life? Clichés about war’s
nobility, fighting terrorism or spreading democracy become laughable
abstractions when shooting starts. Daily encounters with death have
led the squad members to bond, ties that grow so strong that their
wives, girlfriends and mothers cannot compete with them. The survival
instinct has pushed the neurons of their psyches to re-knit, to
produce magnetic attachments to each other and, when they return
home, repel their wives and lovers.
How
does Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the guilt ridden, traumatized
soldier shed his uniform and become his new wife’s passionate
lover? How does Steve (Channing Tatum), the battlefield hero with
thoughts of death and destruction dominating his brain, please his
horny
girlfriend (Abbie Cornish)
Tommy’s wife throws him over. Steve’s girlfriend calls for help
after he hits her. He
fails to perform in bed and then, drunk, he digs a hole in her front
yard and crawls in, pistol in hand. Tommy retreats to Steve’s
ranch, lines up the wedding presents and with his army buddy uses the
gifts for target practice, symbolizing his rejection of the most
sacred of civilian institutions. Like the anti-hero in “Elah,”
the men in “Stop-Loss” record their experiences on video.
We
hear and see,
a baptism in the barracks, and unrelenting death on the Iraqi
streets. Basic humanity turns into kill or be killed. Unlike his
squad mates, Sergeant Brandon (Ryan Phillippe) seems eager to rid
himself of the army world. He cannot bear the thought of returning to
the responsibility of leading men into ambush and death. But when he
appears for his discharge, an army clerk notifies him that he has
been “stop-lossed.” Brandon must return to Iraq. Against his
patriotic father’s advise, Brandon goes AWOL, and plans to appeal
to a Senator who told him — when he was a returning hero — to come
to him for any help
The
film takes the hero to a military hospital where the armless, legless
and eyeless get “rehab.”
The
film opened just before General David Petraeus made yet another
supplemental budget request to continue Bush’s Iraq war and
occupation — on April 8. None of the funds he desires would go
toward dealing with the consequences of continuing to deploy U.S.
troops in a hostile place.
Herold
Noel, a homeless Iraqi war vet, sleeps in his jeep in New York City
in places where police will not ticket him. "I saw a baby
decapitated when it was run over by a truck — I relived that every
night." In Iraq, Noel drove a fuel truck for the military. (AP
July 5, 2006) "Our troops are cracking under the pressure and
pain," wrote Steve Hammons. "Non-stop danger, buddies being
blown to bits, urban warfare, ever-present roadside bombs and many
other very severe stressors are pushing them over the edge."
(American
Chronicle,
June 2, 2006)
Members
of Congress should see “Stop-Loss” before voting for more death
money abroad and social problems at home.
Saul
Landau’s new award winning film is WE
DON’T PLAY GOLD HERE.
He is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD
(forward by Gore Vidal).
