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The war is over, again

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Staff

By Robert Dickson
It was nine degrees on the Saab’s thermometer as we drove north on I-95 in the black predawn of Jan. 18, 2003. I had on every bit of warm clothing that this Southern boy owned.

Vicky, Anne, Patrick and I were on our way to Washington, D.C., to urge our president not to invade Iraq – just us and a couple of hundred thousand others with similar feelings.

The run up to this moment had, of course, begun in earnest on Sept. 11, 2001, when our country was attacked by a group comprised largely of Saudis.

We nearly froze that day out there on the Mall, but were warmed by our conviction that this war was wrong and had to be stopped.

As winter turned to spring, we continued to express, to no avail, our opposition to the Iraq War. Wednesday afternoons from 5 to 6 you’d find us on Market Square in Fayetteville.

Fayetteville was a tough place to be anti-war. While our protests were intended to prevent the unnecessary loss of military lives, we still received much derision from passing motorists; we were sworn at and saluted with middle fingers.

My sister, Anne, a member of the Fayetteville City Council at that time, probably took more abuse than the rest of us. I heard her sworn at and called a traitor. It was hard to take, but we stood there each week because of our conviction that this war was wrong.

Our convictions were right.

After more than 100,000 dead Iraqis and 4,802 coalition deaths, and many thousands more maimed, the last U.S. troops slipped out of Iraq under the cover of darkness on Sunday.

No “shock and awe,” no grand pronouncements of “mission accomplished.” No, we just left a place we should never have been.

The Associated Press quoted a departing soldier, Warrant Officer John Jewell, who said, “My heart goes out to the Iraqis. The innocent always pay the bill.”

So now we leave Iraq to its own devices, and even now the country is slipping into chaos, paying the bill for the mess we made.

This feels a whole lot like the end of the Vietnam War when we ignominiously departed Saigon. Only then there was a strong central government, the North Vietnamese, ready to restore order to the chaos we left.

So with all the rhetoric about honoring our returning veterans, both alive and dead, when are we going to really show our military the respect they deserve and only send them into harm’s way when it’s really necessary?

I keep thinking of the line from an old Allman Brothers song that says, “And all the war freaks die off, leavin’ us alone.”

I’m sorry to say the “war freaks” will never leave us in peace, and future generations will feel the pain of saying the war is over, again. And again. …

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