What's In A Number?

“One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”- Joseph Stalin

Though hardly mentioned in mainstream media, this week the Pentagon released notification that three more American soldiers have died in Iraq, bringing the American death toll to 2,500. With the Bush Administration’s typical Stalin-esque callousness, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow glibly dismissed the tragic milestone saying, “It’s a number and anytime we reach one of these 500 benchmarks, people want something.” To him and the Administration, the 2,500 dead and 130,000 Americans currently serving in Iraq are just numbers, numbers that do not include any of his loved ones or the loved ones of anyone serving publicly in the Administration. This flippant dismissal cannot lightly brush aside the pain, anguish and utter destruction brought by this war. If the Administration truly believes this war can be reduced to mere numbers, perhaps we should consider some statistics left out of Mr. Snow’s arrogant, insensitive and inflammatory remarks.
Mr. Snow makes no mention of the estimated 18,490 American troops wounded in Iraq, 8,500 of whom were not able to return to duty. Nor does he mention that this war has created a new medical term “polytrauma” to describe troops who have been so horribly wounded that they require teams of doctors and scores of nurses to care for them. Mr. Snow makes no mention of the 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking mental health care. He makes no mention of the 3 VA hospitals that will be closed this year as the number of veterans eligible for services sky rockets. Mr. Snow’s “number” does not include the 226 of the so called “coalition of the willing” who have sacrificed their lives in this war, many from countries who have already realized that victory is impossible and disentangled themselves.
Chief among the “people who want something” are the Iraqi people, who have sacrificed more than 4,800 police officers in the line of duty. As many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in a war over which they had no control. Thousands more have died or contracted illnesses from the lack of electricity, poor sanitation, and dirty water created by this war. The statistical view also obscures the psychological impact of thirteen years of constant bombing, destroyed buildings, ruined homes, unemployment and utter despair felt by many Iraqis. The majority of Iraqis believe the occupation is destabilizing their country: 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease when American troops are withdrawn; 67% of Iraqis believe that day-to-day security will increase when American troops are withdrawn and 73% of Iraqis believe that the political process will be more cooperative when American troops are withdrawn.

On his second point, Mr. Snow is right; as Americans begin to feel the impact of this seemingly endless war, we want something. Recent polls show that nearly 50% of us want our troops withdrawn within the next year. Moreover, 72% of troops serving in Iraq believe the war should be ended by December of this year. Perhaps that is because the troops have spent significant time on the streets of Iraq as opposed to Mr. Snow’s one day photo op in the heavily insulated Green Zone.

Mr. Snow is correct, in the literal sense, 2,500 is just a number. But we must never glibly dismiss what that number represents. It represents hundreds of children that will grow up without a parent. It represents thousands of men and women that will not grow old with their spouses, and it represents thousands of grieving parents that will never spend another holiday with their children. It also represents a war that defies logic and responsible government by even the most conservative standards. After enduring thousands of pointless deaths, the majority of Americans want what they wanted when the death toll was only 2,499: we want the war to end. The American people want the war to end, the British and other coalition countries want the war to end, the Iraqi people want the war to end, and we want it to end before Mr. Snow is dodging another tragic benchmark.

Mr. Anderson Goes to Washington

On April 27, along with two Iraqi women, I testified before the COngressional Out of Iraq Caucus. The following day my statement was read into the record by Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey of California. Below are my comments.

Congress Woman Woolsey, Representatives and Distinguished Guests, it is a pleasure to again appear before you to discuss the need for a military withdrawal from Iraq.

I joined the United States Navy at age 19, immediately after I graduated from school. Like most young people who join the military, my reasons were both philosophical and economic. I wanted money for college, I wanted skill training, and I wanted time to decide what I really wanted from life. But more than that, I wanted to serve a cause greater than myself and I wanted to defend the American ideals expressed in the constitution. I believed that the navy would be my career for that majority of the nine years I served. I am still honored to have served my country. However, the events that occurred in Iraq made further service impossible.

I boarded a plane on February 1, 2003. The reasons I was being sent to war were reported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties between the Saddam Regime and the Al Qaeda Network. At the time I regarded the validity of this information largely irrelevant. Soldiers do not set policy, we enforce policy. We follow orders. We have no choice save to do what we are told and hope that our nation’s leadership will not send us into combat for the wrong reasons. In this case, the government of the United States of America failed us.

I was completely untrained and unprepared for what I experienced in Iraq. In the seven years preceding my deployment to the Middle East, including two years with a Marine infantry battalion, I had not set foot in the desert or had any training how to fight or survive there. I had fired my nine millimeter service pistol exactly once, in the summer of 2000. I was such a poor shot that the range safety officer threw me off the range. The next time I fired my weapon was around April 13, 2003 in what is now Sadr City, Iraq when my convoy was ambushed. Following that engagement, I was told I would not be issued replacement ammunition because there was none to be had. My platoon Sergeant told me “do not shoot unless your death is imminent,” as though I would be firing my weapon for any other purpose.

My battalion “crossed the line” on March 20, 2003. We moved up to Basra then across near Nassaria and then finally, straight up the center of the country to circle Baghdad and enter through what is now Sadr City. We fought three major engagements and took a total of four combat dead and one to friendly fire. We were redeployed to the United States at the end of May almost as soon as President Bush issued his “Mission Accomplished Speech.” I knew at that time redeploying forces from the theatre would be a mistake because we were still encountering resistance and no major units had surrendered, they had just evaporated into the cities. Major Combat was over only in the World War II sense. However, the Guerrilla War was just beginning.

I watched through the summer and into the fall as the American death toll continued to rise. However through this time I was dealing with my own demons. Each time a firecracker went off or a car backfired, I dove for cover. Once while driving on Camp Lejeune, I drove past a rifle range that I did not know was “hot” until they began firing. I realized two miles down the road that I was doing over sixty miles an hour. I was having nightmares and insomnia. I had a short temper and frequent flashbacks. These are classic symptoms of PTSD, yet like most veterans I know, I was in denial. It was not until I spent New Year’s 2003/2004 curled up behind my couch as my neighbors launched fireworks that I realized I had a problem I could not handle. I sought treatment and was eventually discharged from the Navy.

The crisis for veterans is very real. At a time when our government is creating combat veterans exponentially, it is simultaneously diminishing the care facilities. We should be opening VA hospitals not closing them. Veterans should be able to get care immediately and be offered services through a live contact outreach program, and finally there should be seamless transition from the DoD to the VA. By this last comment I mean that records should be transferred and much of the burden of proof left to the DoD, not the individual to substantiate a claim, because the individual will often be retraumatized by the experience.

I am before you today representing a 250 member national veteran’s organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War. We were formed in August 2004 with the following goals. First, we advocate for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. Forces from Iraq. Second, we want full, mandatory, funding for the VA to care for all veterans eligible for services. Finally, we want funding available for the Iraqi people to rebuild their country. This can be easily accomplished legislatively. A bill meeting these requirements would be laid out in the following manner:

1. We express the intent of the United States that all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Iraq within thirty days and from the theatre of operations with in one hundred and eighty days.

2. Funding for the VA will be mandatory and a one time immediate emergency supplemental appropriation will be made to prepare the agency for the returning veterans. A study can then be conducted to determine an accurate figure to operate and strengthen the administration.

3. A supplemental budget will be determined for the nation of Iraq to pay the costs of reconstruction. The allocation will be paid annually for a period of ten years. This allows the Iraqi people to determine what their nation should look like and how they will rebuild it.

Can We Come Home Now?

My friend Doug died on Martin Luther King Day. I hadn’t known him long, but we had a lot in common. We both lived in the south, were both veterans of the Iraq War, both felt betrayed by our government for sending us to a war without purpose. Both of our marriages had been destroyed in the aftermath of the war, and finally we were both struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Doug and I both fought during the invasion of Iraq, he was an army National Guardsman and I was attached to the marines. I don’t really know how Doug’s PTSD first manifested, but I do know he had a different battle than I did. I had been back less than a month when I found myself diving for cover when the neighbors launched bottle rockets. Soon I was unable to stand any noise that sounded like gunfire. I felt profound guilt that I had come home alive when others I knew did not, and I was plagued by nightmares of the horrors I had experienced far from home.

Because I was still in the navy, I was able to refer myself to the psychiatry department at the local military hospital and was diagnosed with PTSD. After a year and a half of treatment, I was discharged from the military with disability pay. Doug was not so lucky; he was a National Guardsman and not entitled to care in the regular military system. He had to turn to the Veteran’s Administration who determined he had a Personality Disorder. A malady which, by definition, exists before a person becomes of military age and thus, the VA will not compensate for it or treat it. The VA thus would not acknowledge his subsequent PTSD that afflicted him in Iraq. So Doug suffered the demons of war without adequate treatment. He struggled for two years trying to make ends meet, all the while fighting with the VA for the disability benefits he had earned in the sands of Iraq. He drifted from job to job because of his temper or as he put it because he had been trained to kill and that was what he knew. Yet, even though our paths were different, we had yet another thing in common. After fighting so hard against the torment of life after warfare, we were both tired. We just wanted our lives back and Doug knew, as I do, that this can never happen.

Doug and I are not alone. 30% of Iraq veterans have Stress related mental health problems. The divorce rate among Iraq Veterans is very high. Homelessness, unemployment and drug abuse are also on the rise. As Doug put it in an article written shortly before he took his own life, “All is not okay … for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers … will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.”

Doug and I are America’s returned veterans, her sons, left on our own to suffer after the torment of war. I still struggle through life. I often remind myself that I have to bring myself through for my daughter. I force myself to hope that even though my personal finances are in shambles, my marriage destroyed, and nearly everything I once held dear left on the rubbish heap created by this war, this torture cannot last forever. Some days I believe it, on many I don’t.

Though some may question his actions or his motives, Doug was just one of thousands of the forgotten casualties of the Iraq War. He was killed in action long before he died. On my darkest days, I almost envy Doug, because he had the courage to end his suffering. But in reality, I know that his act was not one of courage, but one borne out of the deepest despair. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraq veterans, 150,000 still in Iraq and every one of us is in harm’s way. Doug has gone to rest, but you the citizens of America cannot; you do not have that luxury. While you are tucked safe in your beds, we veterans are still out here in the cold asking, “Can we come home now?”

An Open Letter to Bubba

I’ve seen you around. I’ve seen you driving your gas guzzling SUV with the “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the back. I’ve seen you wearing your pro-war/pro-bush t-shirts as you walk right past me in my Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt as if I don’t exist. And I’ve seen you at anti-war rallies and meetings where I often speak, as you wave your American flag and call me a traitor. In this country we have freedom of speech. But you owe me and every other veteran of this war the respect of listening to our experience.

Your magnet says “support our troops,” but what have you done for us? Not a penny of the proceeds go to us, instead they go to sweatshops in China. You say that I am not supporting the troops when I say that they should come home. But I am, because I know that there was no threat to our nation from Saddam Hussein, I know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and I know that we were not welcomed in Iraq as liberators. I know that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. I know, because I fought there. You say I’m confused. But what do you know about Iraq? You’ve never been there.

You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don’t support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to Iraq unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn’t even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making Iraq a democracy, but yet the “insurgency” worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.

At present, 2,241 of my brothers and sisters in arms have died. In some way, they may be the lucky ones. Over sixteen thousand others have been wounded in this war, thousands more than planned. The term wounded sounds sterile, bland, and inoffensive. But, in reality, many of them have been so horribly damaged that medical science had to create a new word to describe their wounds: polytrauma. These people would have died in earlier wars, but because of the gallant efforts of brave doctors and medics, they get to live. They get to live with teams of ten or more doctors just trying to get their broken, mangled bodies through another day, as their families look on in horror. They get to live in a physical and emotional hell, not able to recover and not able to voice the pain they feel or the psychological demons they face. All the while suffering with a Veterans Administration under funded by nearly three billion dollars and unable to care for them in the manner they deserve.

So which one of us supports the troops? You, who has never set foot in Iraq and wants to leave my brothers and sisters there until they complete whatever the undefined mission of the week is, or me, the veteran of this war who has seen the carnage of battle, the rampant indifference of my countrymen, and just wants to bring my brothers and sisters home alive and care for them when they get here?

Keep coming to the rallies. Maybe I’ll get through your thick skull eventually. But remember I waved my flag in Baghdad, so you can sit down, shut up, and listen to me.