By Sarah Phelan
My son leaving Oakland Airport on his way to Iraq
Six years ago, when the first planes hit the World Trade Center, I never imagined that my son would end up being deployed to Iraq as part of Bush’s 2007 troop surge. I also never imagined that there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. That’s because there wasn’t one, even though Bush kept trying to make one, and can now claim that Al Qaeda is in Iraq–even though he won’t explain his own role in creating a vacuum in Iraq, which Al Qaeda and other faith-based militias have since filled. But enough about Bush.
My son was 14 years old in 2001 and already showing interest in all things military, despite or perhaps because of, my own peacenik tendencies. But as I watched horrific images of the towers burning and imploding in New York, I had no inkling of the personal price that Bush’s warmongering was going to cost my family on the West Coast, or the losses that the people of this nation and Iraq would start to endure within two years of the 9/11 attacks.
But within weeks of those attacks, I did get my first clue of Bush’s takeover plans for Iraq when I interviewed a former UN ambassador to Iraq, a weapons inspector, and an activist who delivered medicine to Iraqis in defiance of US sanctions during the 1990s.
These three experts on Iraq warned that Bush was serious about invading Iraq, a country they said was broken from years of sanctions and not home to weapons of mass destruction—though Saddam Hussein’s pride would not allow him to admit as much to the US and the rest of the world .
In the ensuing years, I saw the claims of these three experts being proven right, and those of Bush’s experts being proven wrong, over and over again. And yet, once the invasion was in full force, opposition to Bush’s illegal invasion was successfully framed by his spin meisters as “opposition to our troops”.
The “Stop the War” sticker came first, then the “Army Mom” sticker. And then is a yellow ribbon on the side bumper, of my car too. Proving that you can support the troops and oppose the war on Iraq all at the same time
Want to know a secret? Stating the obvious, namely that US military intervention can’t solve Iraq’s civil war. But stating this stark truth won’t endanger our troops, nor will it dishonor them or their families. It will endanger the credibility of all those who peddled the war and have still not taken ownership for misleading the public.