4 December 2004

For all the mothers out there — this piece breaks my heart:

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San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, November 21, 2004

Mother’s view of the war
Battle fatigue on the home front

By  Teri Wills Allison

I am not a pacifist. I am a mother. By nature, the two are incompatible,
for even a cottontail rabbit will fight to protect her young.

Violent action may be necessary in defense of one’s family or home, and
that definition of home can easily be extended to community and beyond,
but violence, no matter how warranted, always takes a heavy toll.

Violence taken to the extreme — war — exacts the most extreme costs.
There may be a just war, but there is no such thing as a good war. And
the burdens of an unjust war are insufferable.

I know something about the costs of an unjust war, for my son, Nick, an
Army infantryman, is fighting one in Iraq. I don’t speak for him. I
couldn’t even if I wanted to, for all I hear through the mom filter is
"I’m fine, Mom, don’t worry. I’m fine. Everything is fine, fine, fine.
We’re fine, just fine. ” But I can tell you what some of the costs are
as I live and breathe them.

First, the minor stuff: my constant feelings of dread and despair, the
sweeping rage that alternates with petrifying fear, the torrents of
tears that accompany a maddening sense of helplessness and vulnerability.

My son is involved in a deadly situation that should never have been. I
feel like a mother lion in a cage, my grown cub in danger, and all I can
do is throw myself furiously against the bars, impotent to protect him.
My tolerance for b.s. is zero, and I’ve snapped off more heads in the
last several months than in all the rest of my 48 years combined.

For the first time in my life and with great amazement and sorrow, I
feel what can only be described as hatred. It took me a long time to
admit it, but there it is. I loathe the hubris, the callousness, and the
lies of those in the Bush administration who led us into this war.

Truth be told, I even loathe the fallible and very human purveyors of
those lies. I feel no satisfaction in this admission, only sadness and
recognition. I hope that, given time, I can do better. I never wanted to
hate anyone.

Xanax helps a bit. At least it holds the debilitating panic attacks
somewhat at bay, so I can fake it through one more day. A friend in the
same situation relies on a six-pack of beer every night. Another has
drifted into a la-la land of denial. Nice.

Then there is the wedge that has been driven between part of my extended
family and me. They don’t see this war as one based on lies. They’ve
become evangelical believers in a false faith, swallowing Bush’s
fearmongering, his chicken-hawk posturing and strutting. They cheer his
"bring ’em on" attitude as a sign of strength and resoluteness.

Perhaps life is just easier that way. These are the same people who have
known my son since he was a baby; who have held him, loved him and
played with him; who have bought him birthday presents and taken him
fishing. I don’t know them anymore.

But enough of my whining. My son is alive and in one piece, unlike the
1, 215 dead and more than 8,000 severely wounded American soldiers,
which equal 9, 215 blood-soaked uniforms. That doesn’t even count the
estimated 20,000 troops, not publicly reported by the Department of
Defense, taken out of Iraq for "noncombat-related injuries."

Every death, every injury burns like a knife in my gut, for these are
all America’s sons and daughters. And I know I’m not immune to that
knock on my door either.

Yes, my son is alive and, as far as I know, well. I wish I could say the
same for some of his friends.

One young man who was involved in heavy fighting during the invasion is
now so debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder that he routinely
has flashbacks in which he smells burning flesh. He can’t close his eyes
without seeing people’s heads squashed like frogs in the middle of the
road, or dead and dying women and children, burned, bleeding and
dismembered.

Sometimes he hears the sounds of battle raging around him, and he has
been hospitalized twice for suicidal tendencies. When he was home on
leave, this 27- year-old man would crawl into his mother’s room at night
and sob in her lap for hours.

Instead of getting treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, he has
just received a "less than honorable" discharge from the Army. The rest
of his unit redeploys to Iraq in February.

Another friend of Nick’s was horrifically wounded when his humvee
stopped on a bomb. He didn’t even have time to instinctively raise his
arm and protect his face. Shrapnel ripped through his right eye,
obliterating it to gooey shreds, and penetrated his brain. He has been
in a coma since March.

His mother spends every day with him in the hospital. His wife is
devastated, and their 1 1/2-year-old daughter doesn’t know her daddy.
But my son’s friend is a fighter and so is making steady, incremental
progress toward consciousness.

He has a long hard struggle ahead of him, one that he shouldn’t have to
face, and his family has had to fight every step of the way to get him
the treatment he needs. So much for supporting the troops.

I visit him every week. It breaks my heart to see the burned faces, the
missing limbs, the limps and the vacant stares one encounters in an
acute-care military hospital.

In front of the hospital there is a cannon, and every afternoon they
blast that sucker off. You should see all those poor guys hit the pavement.

Although many requests have been made to discontinue the practice for
the sake of the returning wounded, the general in charge refuses. Boom.

When Nick left for Iraq, I granted myself permission to be stark raving
mad for the length of his deployment. I’ve done a good job of it,
without apology or excuse.

And I dare say there are at least 139,999 other moms who have done the
same, although considering troop rotations needed to maintain that
magical number of 140,000 in the sand could put the number of crazed
military moms as high as 300,000, maybe more. You might want to be
careful about cutting in line in front of a middle-aged woman.

I know there are military moms who view the war in Iraq through
different ideological lenses than mine. Sometimes I envy them. How much
easier it must be to believe one’s son or daughter is fighting for a
just and noble cause.

But no matter how hard I scrutinize the invasion and occupation of Iraq,
all I see are lies, corruption, and greed fueled by a powerful addiction
to oil. Real soldiers get blown to tatters in their Hummers so that
well-heeled American suburbanites can play in theirs.

For my family and me, the costs of this war are real and not abstract.
By day, I fight my demons of dreaded possibility, beat them back into
the shadows, into the dark recesses of my mind. Every night they hiss
and whisper a vile prognosis of gloom and desolation. I order the voices
into silence, but too often they laugh at and mock my commands.

I wonder if George Bush ever hears these voices.

I wonder, too, just how much we are willing to pay for a gallon of gas.

Teri Wills Allison, a massage therapist and a member of Military
Families Speak Out, lives near Austin, Texas, with her husband. She is
the mother of two adult children, the older of whom is a soldier
deployed to Iraq. A ve
rsion of this piece ran on tomdispatch.com.