[1565] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Election 2004
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Shayna H. Hirshfield)
Tue Oct 19 11:21:16 2004
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:04:59 -0400
From: "Shayna H. Hirshfield" <shaynahh@UMICH.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <1098192972.4175184cc34f7@web.mail.umich.edu>
You might find the following article from the New York Times interesting. The
first thought that comes to my mind after reading the article you sent is of my
grandparents and many other older folks with whom I've talked in the last year
from across the board - people who were alive and politically aware during WWII
- who consistently say that what they see in the current US administration
reminds them of the Nazi buildup prior to WWII, and is consequently one of the
scariest regimes they have ever seen. Yes, steadfastness is important. So is
freedom. Denying freedom and liberty has never worked to make a populace safer
- witness Japanese internment camps and COINTELPRO - yet that is exactly has
been done, in the most insidious of ways, through the Patriot Act.
The author of the article you sent refers to a "nation that tamed a frontier;"
surely that person is talking about the "conquest" of this continent, when
genocide was committed flagrantly against scores of nations who had been living
here for centuries. What a thing to glorify! Doing "great things" and bringing
democracy to the Middle East... surely we've tried this before, in Iran, in
Latin America... we don't exactly have a good track record with that, and
we're not building one now. On the contrary, we are creating even more chaos
for people who were already suffering. (I am not so myopic as to say that
Saddam was a good leader, but come on, was it our duty to oust him on such a
thin justification?) 1,082 American soldiers have already died in Iraq last I
checked, and we're only marginally - dubiously - closer to peace than we were
when the "official" war ended over a year ago. Does this speak to our being on
the right path? Hardly. Cheney himself, under the first President Bush, said
that we would be stupid to attack Iraq for a number of reasons. Every
justification that has been offered by this administration - retaliation, WMDs,
etc - has been shot down. The vast majority of scholars of the Middle East said
at the outset of this war that we should not do it, that it was a doomed
venture, that we had no idea what we were getting into. Yet we went ahead,
like the shoot-from-the-hip cowboy does, not thinking of consequences or
"right", and now we are in a huge mess. And the death tolls continue to rise.
-Shayna
The article below from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by shaynahh@umich.edu.
Soldiers Saw Refusing Order as Their Last Stand
October 18, 2004
By NEELA BANERJEE and ARIEL HART
JACKSON, Miss., Oct. 17 - What does it take for a man like
Staff Sgt. Michael Butler, a 24-year veteran of the Army
and the Reserve who was a soldier in the first Persian Gulf
war and a reserve called up to fight in the current war in
Iraq, to risk everything by disobeying a direct order in
wartime?
On the morning of Oct. 13, the military says, Sergeant
Butler and most of his platoon, some 18 men and women from
the 343rd Quartermaster Company, refused to deliver a
shipment of fuel from the Tallil Air Base near Nasiriya,
Iraq, to another base much farther north.
The Army has begun an inquiry, and the soldiers could face
disciplinary measures, including possible courts-martial.
But Jackie Butler, Sergeant Butler's wife, and her family
in Jackson say he would not have jeopardized his career and
his freedom for something impulsive or unimportant.
The soldiers, many of whom have called home this weekend,
said their trucks were unsafe and lacked a proper armed
escort, problems that have plagued them since they went to
Iraq nine months ago, their relatives said. The time had
come for them, for her husband, to act, Ms. Butler said.
"I'm proud that he said 'no,' " Ms. Butler said. "They had
complained and complained for months to the chain of
command about the equipment and trucks. But nothing was
done, so I think he felt he had to take a stand."
Other soldiers completed the mission the platoon turned
down, the military kept functioning, and the Army has cast
the incident as isolated.
But as the soldiers involved in the refusal in Tallil and
others begin to speak out, it is growing more apparent that
the military has yet to solve the lack of training, parts
and equipment that has riddled the military operation in
Iraq from the outset, especially among National Guard and
Reserve units.
Brig. Gen. James E. Chambers, commander of the 13th Corps
Support Command, which the 343rd reports to, said at a news
conference in Baghdad on Sunday that he had ordered two
investigations into the incident and the concerns expressed
by the 18 soldiers "regarding maintenance and safety.''
General Chambers said preliminary findings showed that the
unit's trucks were not yet armored and were among the last
in his command to get such protection, because they usually
functioned in less dangerous parts of Iraq. None of the
trucks in his command were armored when they arrived in
Iraq, General Chambers said. He told reporters that he had
ordered a safety and maintenance review of all trucks in
the 343rd.
"Based on results of this investigation other actions may
be necessary,'' the general said, but he added, "It's too
early in the investigation to speculate on charges or other
disciplinary actions.''
General Chambers described the episode as "a single event
that is confined to a small group of individuals.''
A number of Army officers contacted in recent days said
such an apparent act of insubordination was very unusual,
particularly among such a large number of soldiers in a
single unit and especially since the military is all
volunteer.
The incident has prompted widespread interest among
military families who have complained in months past of
inadequate equipment and protection for their soldiers.
Nancy Lessin, a leader of Military Families Speak Out,
which opposes the war, said she had been flooded with calls
and e-mail from families with a simple message: What had
happened to the reservists echoed the conditions their own
soldiers experienced in Iraq: a shortage of armored
vehicles, especially for part-time soldiers' units; convoy
missions through dangerous stretches without adequate
firepower; and constant breakdowns among old vehicles
owned, especially, by National Guard and reservist units.
"This is absolutely striking a nerve," Ms. Lessin said.
"People are saying, 'This is the same thing that happened
to my son,' and if the Army tries to spin this as 'just a
few bad apples,' people need to know that these are common
problems and what these soldiers did required a tremendous
amount of courage."
Nothing seems to separate the men and women who defied
their command in Tallil from the tens of thousands of
others now in Iraq, their families say. The 343rd was drawn
mainly from Southern states like the Carolinas, Alabama and
Mississippi, and the military said Friday that the 343rd
had performed honorably during its tour in Iraq.
The soldiers in the platoon are described as devoted to the
military and unabashedly patriotic. A wall of Sergeant
Butler's living room is covered with certificates and
citations from the Army. Another member of the 343rd,
Specialist Joe Dobbs, 19, of Vandiver, Ala., had his
bedroom painted the dark blue of the American flag. And
another soldier in the unit, Sgt. Justin Rogers of
Louisville, Ky., liked to walk around town in his uniform
when he was home on leave, said Chris Helm, a 14-year-old
high school student and his first cousin.
When Sergeant Rogers went home for a two-week leave in
July, his brother Derrick asked whether the war and all the
deaths were worth it. "His answer was simple," Derrick
Rogers said. "He said, 'If I didn't feel like it was worth
it, I wouldn't be there.' ''
Ms. Butler did not want to speak for her husband on his
feelings about the war. Better he should do that when he is
finally home, she said, which is scheduled to be sometime
next year. But Sergeant Butler knew he would be called up,
once the war against Iraq was begun in March 2003. Late
last year, he reported to Rock Hill, and quickly, his
confidence was shaken, his wife said. He saw that the
equipment to be shipped with his unit was "not very good,"
Ms. Butler said.
Once the unit arrived in Iraq, the inadequacy of the
platoon's equipment and preparedness was thrown into sharp
relief against the dangers the country posed. Although the
unit is based near Nasiriya in the Shiite-controlled south,
which is not as volatile as Sunni-dominated areas, the
whole country has been convulsed by battles and uprisings
during most of the 343rd's tour of duty. "This is not the
first time that there has been a problem with these charges
and stuff, with them not having armor, not having radios,"
said Beverly Dobbs, mother of Specialist Dobbs. "My son
told me two months ago - he called me, he said, 'Mom I got
the scare of my life.'
"'I said what's wrong?'" Ms. Dobbs said. "He said, 'They
sent us out, we come under fire, our own people was
shooting and we didn't even have radios to let them know.'
They're sending them out without the equipment they need. I
don't care what the Army says."
Families that spoke to the soldiers this weekend received
slightly differing accounts of what happened the morning of
Oct. 13. They all said, however, that fuel the soldiers had
to deliver was unusable because it had been contaminated
with a second liquid. They all said the soldiers were under
armed guard. General Chambers denied both assertions.
Relatives say that Sergeant Butler, Sgt. Larry McCook of
Jackson and Specialist Scott Shealey of Graysville, Ala.,
have been identified as three of five "ringleaders" of the
incident and reassigned to other units on the air base.
Specialist Shealey's parents said their son said in a
telephone call that he was going to be discharged.
"He'll be home in three to four weeks, that's what he's
being told," said Ricky Shealey, Specialist Shealey's
father, a retired Postal Service supervisor and former
sergeant in the Army. "He's depressed," Mr. Shealey said.
"He just can't believe it's happening."
Ms. Butler said her husband did not know what he might be
facing and had heard nothing about a discharge. Other
families said the military had yet to contact them to
explain the situation. The families have not hired lawyers
yet, in large part because they are uncertain what charges
might be brought against their relatives.
Some families are reaching out to one another through
e-mail and phone calls, offering help and discussing
strategy. They have contacted their members of Congressmen.
Others, like Ms. Dobbs and her family, are glued to
television news, awaiting some clarification of the
incident.
Ms. Butler has her big family to lean on, and on this
Sunday, the day after the phone call from her husband, they
went to church and turned to their neighbors, friends and
faith. Ms. Butler went to the altar rail of Zion Travelers
Missionary Baptist Church and told the congregation: "My
husband has been in the Army more than 20 years, but
refused to take those men in that convoy. He said it would
be suicidal.''
"So, I'm going to ask you to pray for me," she said,
"because he is not going to take no other men's children
into the land of death."
She bowed her head, and so did everyone else. "Lord, Sister
Butler needs you," the Rev. Daniel Watkins said, shutting
his eyes tight. "Her husband, he needs you. All the
soldiers in Iraq, they need you."
Monica Davey contributed reporting from Chicago for this
article, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Dexter Filkins from
Baghdad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/18/national/18guard.html?ex=1099119430&ei=1&en=fb7420e92175d12a
---------------------------------
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shayna H. Hirshfield
Master of Public Policy Candidate, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Master of Social Work Candidate, School of Social Work
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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