Wartorn

By TAD BARTIMUS

Last night I was chatting with a man who said America's economy should improve "after the war starts." For him, it was a throwaway line, such as "after the holidays" or "after the first frost."

For me, the comment was a thunderbolt, the casual delivery stunning. Wow, I thought, President Bush's determined effort to lead the United States into a ground war in the Middle East may actually succeed. Subtly, without my realizing it, America has been turning from the war on terrorism to just ... war.

Wait a minute. We're talking about unilaterally committing American men and women to combat on foreign soil in a pre-emptive strike, perhaps for years. Has anybody asked me if I want to do this? Has Congress voted on this? No. Has Iraq agreed to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors? Yes. Why, then, given these developments, is it still assumed that going to war is a done deal?

Because of spin and sound bites. A great public relations campaign is massaging the American people into believing there is a national consensus to commit yet another generation to war, even if we have to go it alone without any of our traditional allies save, perhaps, Great Britain.

I was too young to remember passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but I came of age witnessing its result. I saw it firsthand as a journalist in Vietnam during America's longest undeclared war. That's why the political machinations that could drag us into a ground war in Iraq now hold my complete attention.

War is not flags and parades down Main Street: It is orphaned children, maimed grandmothers, dying soldiers, overwhelmed field commanders, heartbroken nurses, arrogant generals, corrupt allies, anguished mothers.

My view of combat is from the ground, not the Pentagon or the White House. When I picked a war orphan off of a Saigon street one night and took him home to live with me, the child had a name and a face. Accompanying a war widow to the cemetery, the tears I saw her shed on her dead husband's tombstone were not abstract. A missing leg is not an anecdote about a stranger when you've pinned up a veteran's empty pant cuff because his maimed hand couldn't do it. I know that young people who go into war full of promise and optimism come out disillusioned by what happens to them when the bombs fall and the bullets fly.

What happens if we win? Our country has a bad track record in fighting wars from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Fifty years after our first "police action," we still have ground troops in Korea. The prime minister of Afghanistan most likely would be dead by now if we weren't surrounding him with armed American soldiers.

If we rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, whom will we prop up in power? Our government is also bad at picking leaders of other nations. Remember the Shah of Iran? Remember Gen. Manuel Noriega? In 1948, we shoved aside a young man with a wispy beard who asked President Harry Truman for help. Instead, we supported dictators Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu in Vietnam. If Truman had listened to Ho Chi Minh, would 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese have died?

The American people, not oilmen-turned-politicians, should decide if we are going to plunge into another quagmire.

President Bush is known to have edited his speeches to excise words and phrases he worried might make him appear arrogant. Yet isn't that how the United States is now perceived abroad, even by some of our historically staunch allies? By going it alone, "High Noon" style, aren't we saying to the world, "We don't need you or anyone else to support us"?

War is failure. We haven't yet worked hard enough to declare that all possible diplomatic, moral or economic solutions have failed.

Powerful, combat-tested generals agree that the United Sates has not exhausted all its options to head off war with Iraq. Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, former NATO military commander, and Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former chief of the U.S. Central Command, think a unilateral U.S. attack on Hussein could undermine America's long-term diplomatic and economic interests around the globe.

When hawks become doves, we should pay attention.

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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