Home Fires Burning

The war in Iraq has become, perhaps inevitably, a war of platitudes. Its proponents and protesters, at least on the national level, have settled into a morass of political opinion, bluster and backbiting that, in a curious but wholly regrettable

way, overlooks the very people both sides invoke as the standard-bearers of the war’s democratic principles: the soldiers.

Despite admonitions by the war’s proponents to “support our troops” and its protesters’ cautionary warnings “not to forget our fighting men and women,” a creeping lassitude has overtaken the American public ever since legal proceedings against Lynndie England, Charles Graner and the other soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal began. The troops may not exactly be out of sight, but they seem strangely out of mind.

Even in St. Louis, most news stories about local soldiers who have served in Iraq (or in Afghanistan, a military conflict that threatens to become “the forgotten war” just as Korea was overridden by Vietnam) are largely limited to reports of death, injury and maiming. In special cases, a returning soldier is profiled, his or her service to country is briefly celebrated, and he or she is then unceremoniously forgotten as we return to the more pressing issues of the day: relief for the displaced residents of New Orleans, Supreme Court nominations, the high price of gasoline and the Cardinals’ almost-glorious 2005 season.

A telling example of this phenomenon came on June 24, 2005, when the public grief over Lance Cpl. Eric Helt—a Hermann, Mo., native and Purple Heart recipient whose memorial service was attended by Gov. Matt Blunt—gave way to that day’s most notable event: the fire and explosions that ripped through Praxair Technology’s distribution facility. What made the Praxair explosion, dramatic as it was, more significant than the fact that one of St. Louis’ own, in the patriotic

language that always describes a combat death, had given his life for his country?

That question burned, making me wonder about the families of St. Louisans serving in Iraq. Beyond the allegations of mismanagement made against the Bush administration since the end of initial combat and the claims by Defense Secretary

Donald Rumsfeld that only four of Iraq’s provinces are hotbeds of insurgency, I wanted to know how local military families react to events in Iraq.

Kathleen Christ (rhymes with “fist”), who runs the St. Louis Aquatic Healing Center, understands this burden all too well. Her elder son, Joe, 40, fought as a Marine in the initial 2003 assault on Baghdad. “In my family, the tension is always

there,” she says. “I feel as if I’m always editing myself.”

Christ prefaces her remarks by saying, “We’ve been a military family for 41 years,” referring to her ex-husband, who served as an Air Force pilot in Vietnam. Although Christ disagreed with that conflict’s purpose as hotly as she disagrees with the Iraq war’s necessity, she does not hold America’s armed forces in contempt. “Joe helped design the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch,” she notes, the pride in her voice unmistakable. She says she honors the hard work, determination

and commitment that her son has given to his country.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t agree with why we’re in Iraq,” she adds, noting that her family is “split right down the middle about it.” Her daughter, Diana, joins Joe in supporting the Iraq war; Christ and her younger sons, Jim and John, question it. She enumerates a list of reasons that the war, in her view, is immoral (false allegations about weapons of mass destruction, the failure of the Defense Department to anticipate the insurgency, the difficulties of reconstructing an entire nation, mounting American and Iraqi fatalities), but it brings her no pleasure.

She e-mails Joe, who took a job with security contractor Blackwater USA in October 2004, as often as she can. Their attitudes about the war, however, are different enough to keep the tension high. Like many soldiers, Joe avoided directly

criticizing his commanding officers or his commander in chief because his task, as he saw it, was not to debate but, rather, to enact the policies chosen by civilian leaders in Washington, D.C. “Joe’s attitude, while he was fighting, was, ‘I execute orders. If you don’t like the orders, change the people who give them,’” Christ says.

She sends her son care packages and tells story after story about how generous and funny he is. But she froze with fear—and frustration—when, despite the inherent dangers, Joe returned to Iraq in February 2005 as a Blackwater contractor to provide security for State Department and other American officials.

Christ had ample reason to worry: The bodies of four Blackwater employees were mutilated, burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah on March 31, 2004, precipitating a sustained and deadly American counterattack. But Joe’s reasons for going back were as practical as they are patriotic. “Joe wants to make a lot of money,” his mother says with a sigh. “He spent 22 years in the military making almost nothing, but now he can earn $550 a day. He even received a $3,500 bonus for working on Thanksgiving.”

Although he will return to the United States in February 2006, Joe will continue working for Blackwater for at least four more years. Presuming that he survives his current assignment in Iraq, Joe wants, according to his mother, “to buy a $1

million home and become a community-college professor of math and computer science.” The wistfulness in her voice when she describes Joe’s dreams hints at the difficulty she has reconciling her pride in her son’s service with the physical risk he endures to earn a living. It is, her tone implies, difficult to begrudge a man who has given most of his life to the Marines for the opportunity to secure his financial future.

Michael T. McPhearson, executive director of Veterans for Peace—whose national office is located on Meramec in Clayton— understands Christ’s dilemma. He served in the first Gulf War, under the command of Gen. Barry McCaffrey, in the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), known today as the Third Infantry Division. He fought in Iraq from August 1990 to February 1991 and left the Army for good after completing his duty. McPhearson is nobody’s fool, and, despite

his soft-spoken manner, he bristles “when people say that because I don’t support the current Iraq war, I’m unpatriotic.” He’s heard this charge more than once—but it still rankles. “It’s ridiculous,” he exclaims. “I’ve been there. I know what our soldiers face every day. And one thing I know for certain: When you’re deployed, all you want to do is get home.”

McPhearson’s connection to the current Iraq war goes deeper than questioning its origins, motives and potential for success. His son, who turns 21 this month, joined the Army at the beginning of 2004 and is now in Iraq. “He has a deep love of country and respect for the military,” McPhearson says. “It’s also a career choice for him.” To protect his son’s privacy, McPhearson declines to give the young man’s name.

“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” McPhearson confesses suddenly. “I think he loves his country and has a sense of duty. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with such a young person. But he does see it as a career and a way to take care of his

family—he is married and has a son—so I try to stay apolitical, because he’s doing what he perceives to be his job.”

McPhearson’s hesitation in this regard, his unwillingness to share his objections to the war with his son, illustrates how complicated the issue of patriotism has become. One of the most common refrains heard in the six months before

the war began in March 2003—a refrain that continues to the present day—was the idea that all Americans, regardless of political disposition, must support the troops. McPhearson, however, refuses to equate the troops with the entire war effort, seeing clear differences between the Gulf War and the current conflict.

Back in 1991, McPhearson believed that President George H.W. Bush should order American ground troops into Baghdad and “take Saddam out. In the Gulf War, we had a specific mission to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. And we had the support of the world, including Arab countries such as Syria, Saudia Arabia and, of course, Kuwait.

“That was then,” he says grimly. “Today, I know that war did not solve that problem. The current situation in Iraq is much more complicated. And all the reasons for this war are half truths or lies. It’s a completely different situation, obviously wrong.”

McPhearson calls himself a peace activist, not an antiwar activist, because war, especially in the event of an unprovoked attack, is sometimes necessary. But in the case of Iraq, he says, “We shouldn’t use war as a means of solving conflict. War wasn’t inevitable or necessary in this case.”

When McPhearson discusses the troops, you immediately sense his passion and commitment to their safety. “As a citizen, my responsibility is to them because they’re protecting me,” he says, distinguishing battlefield soldiers from the policymakers who commit them to combat. “If the government is treating the troops irresponsibly, my duty is to support the soldiers.”

McPhearson doesn’t say this directly, but his concern for his son’s well-being is part of what he sees as his responsibility to speak out about the war. The soldiers fighting in Iraq are not simply abstractions to him, mere television images that quickly disappear, replaced by advertisements for cars, clothes and kids’ toys. Each solider, for McPhearson, is a person who deserves a full measure of consideration and respect, transcending, he says, “platitudes, easy rhetoric and clichés.”

The power of democracy and the love of freedom, in other words, may sound good in stump speeches, but they have little to do with the daily duties of the men and women who fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Combat soldiers are also more than abstractions to Dr. James Scheu (rhymes with “boy”). A plastic surgeon who runs Metropolitan Plastic Surgery, Scheu speaks warmly and eagerly about his daughter Erin Scheu, a West Point graduate who is serving her second tour of duty in Iraq. “Erin’s in the Army field artillery,” Scheu says. “She knows how to operate MLRS, the multiple-launch–rocket system whose missiles weigh about 90 pounds.” Erin was stationed in

Kuwait with the Third Infantry Division of the Army for four or five months before the Iraqi invasion.

“She got stuck in Baghdad after the invasion,” Scheu says. “Women aren’t allowed in frontline combat, but Erin was in a chemical suit for days because, if you’ll remember, we all thought that Saddam would gas our troops.” An articulate and self-assured man, Scheu falters as he recalls those nerve-wracking days. “I’m proud of my daughter, but it’s a war,” he says. “Her mother and I sat for two solid weeks waiting and watching CNN. Then Erin got hold of a satellite

phone at the Baghdad airport. When she called, she just said, ‘Guess where I am, Dad?’” She e-mailed him a photo, and what he saw gave him a jolt: His daughter was standing in front of a disabled Iraqi airliner with her M-16 and sidearm.

Erin returned to the United States after major combat operations ended, but she was recalled to Iraq in February 2005. “She’s now working 12- to 18-hour shifts as a battle captain for the Apache helicopter, calling in air strikes upon insurgents,” Scheu says.

His daughter’s job, he knows, is one of tremendous responsibility. “Erin can handle it,” he says. “When she was with the Third Army during the initial assault on Baghdad, Erin was the only woman in a group of 700 men. She doesn’t wilt under pressure.”

Unlike Christ and McPhearson, Scheu supports the war’s principles and goals. He does not, however, offer this opinion in the blathering in-your-face manner of cable-television commentators such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Scheu’s view is far more nuanced. “This is a bittersweet proposition,” he says. “It has to be done. We’re performing a heroic service for another people, and that’s a commitment that can’t be easily dismissed.”

When asked about Cindy Sheehan, the woman who staged a protest near President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch for most of the president’s five-week summer retreat, Scheu refuses to attack Sheehan as some of the war’s supporters have. “My heart goes out to her,” Scheu says. “She lost her son, and that’s a tremendous sacrifice. But I can’t let that change my opinion. We need to honor our troops for doing their duty, for their service to our country and for all the good things that they’re doing for the Iraqi people.”

I imagine that if Scheu, Kathleen Christ and Michael McPhearson met, they would happily, even easily, converse about their children. Their political differences would become less important than the fear, anxiety and pride that unite them.

My own connection to the Iraq war has recently become more personal than I would prefer. Earlier this summer, I learned that a former student of mine, Nickolai Detert, would be deployed to Iraq before the end of 2005. Five years ago, Nickolai attended a Washington University English-composition course that I taught. He was not only one of my best students but also an Army ROTC scholarship winner who wrote an excellent the limitations of precision-guided munitions

(PGMs, the weapons more commonly known as smart bombs and smart missiles). Nickolai concluded that not even weaponry as advanced as the PGM can fully eliminate a combat soldier’s duties, because PGMs would be useless against an intelligent and adaptable guerrilla force whose members willingly risk their lives to resist America’s military might. On-the-ground soldiering, Nickolai argued, was crucial to all future American military ventures.

I am intrigued by the fact that Nickolai, at 18 and over the course of a four-month research project, could come to this conclusion when the Defense Department couldn’t (or wouldn’t) during its planning for the Iraqi invasion. Six feet tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, Nickolai is an enthusiastic and independent young man. On the day after the 2000 presidential election, when the country was just beginning a lengthy wait to learn the identity of its new president, Nickolai was the only one in a class of 12 to display a “W” button. During the political discussion that followed, he was also the only defender of the Republican Party. He mounted this defense with humor and grace, never descending into polemic or

invective. Nickolai accepted criticism, made cogent points and treated his classmates, some of whom strongly disagreed with him, with the respect one would expect of a future military officer.

Today Nickolai, a Washington, Mo., native who graduated from Lutheran High School, is a battalion chemical officer at Fort Bragg, N.C. He advises the commander of his artillery unit about chemical, nuclear and biological weapons. “I would help the commander if any nuke/bio/chem weapons are used against us,” Nickolai wrote to me during an e-mail correspondence that began this summer. “Because there is no real chem/bio/nuke threat right now, what I really do is random office work: writing reports, investigating complaints, etc. I am kind of the odd man out here because I am not an artillery officer.”

Nickolai expects this lull in activity to change once he arrives in Iraq. His feelings about deployment are ambivalent: He supports the American mission there but acknowledges its dangers. “I still believe that we’re doing the right thing,” he writes. “Our methods obviously have to evolve as the situation and the enemy change and evolve, but we are doing the right thing.”

Nickolai’s paternal grandfather was a Green Beret; he can trace other relatives back to their service in the Civil War. Even with this impressive genealogy, his initial reaction to his Iraq deployment is telling: “The only word that expresses how I feel is ‘ugh.’”

He is quick to qualify this comment. “I’m mainly referring to the time (12 to 14 months) that I have to be over there, away from my wife and family,” he writes. “As far as actually going, it sends a shiver down your back to learn that you are going to this place you see on TV, but after talking to military people who are coming back, you learn how inaccurate the media is and how much progress is going on. Good news is no news.”

Nickolai’s words contain all the ambivalence and ambiguity of Iraq. “I still have not fully sorted out just how I feel about going,” he writes. “Excitement, dread, eagerness, resignation ... all are not quite accurate.” He thinks that the American

public’s changing reaction to the war risks missing the “big picture.” “Watching television, it seems we will lose this war any day,” Nickolai wrote in his last email. “Yet progress keeps happening, and Iraqis still want a democratic government. Also, the media does not emphasize how sophisticated and dedicated the enemy is and often ignores the fact that many of these people are not Iraqi.”

I’m not sure I agree, given the hundreds of analysts from across the political continuum who argue that the insurgency is intelligent, lethal and tremendously adaptable—and that the war may be past winning. But writing back and forth to Nickolai has forced me to realize not only how vital our troops are to democracy but also how easy it is to overlook their contribution.

I don’t typically talk about the war with actual soldiers; instead, I discuss it with friends, colleagues and family members. The troops, for me, go distressingly out of mind when the realities of daily life—schedules, meetings, work, play and rest—intrude.

Making an effort to remember is the least I can do. Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist whose reporting exposed both the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, recently noted that, unlike the days of the Vietnam War, the United States isn’t blaming its soldiers for the errors in judgment of their civilian commanders. We can be thankful that Hersh is correct—but it’s not because the troops are perfect. They are living, breathing people. They are not symbols to be lionized; they are human beings.

I suspect that the true story of the Iraq war cannot be told until these soldiers speak openly about their experiences, memories and feelings. They will not all agree, but every soldier’s story should instruct the rest of us in the consequences of committing our fellow citizens to an untidy war, whether that war is regarded as an effort to free a subject people, a failure of diplomacy, a necessary defensive measure or a mixture of all three. Our troops’ perspectives weigh far more than our own.

Nickolai Detert, Erin Scheu, Joe Christ and Michael McPhearson’s son may return from Iraq unharmed, but none, I suspect, will return unaffected. I’m certain that all of them would downplay the importance of their individual contributions because, as Nickolai reminded me, they are just doing their jobs.

I have a problem with the “just.” Humility is a trait common to many soldiers I’ve met, and, refreshing as it may be in a nation that seems ever more devoted to the cult of celebrity and the expansion of ego, our troops cannot be allowed to minimize their choice to walk into danger on our behalf. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are in prolonged urban combat, surrounded by diffuse hostility and explosive violence.

Going to work every morning is just doing one’s job.

Going to war is something else entirely.