The Fayetteville Observer January 10, 2007
Iraq death toll weighs on service members
By Kevin Maurer
Every death in Iraq takes its toll on Earl Richmond.
“It is stressful. We bleed a little bit every time we read someone got killed,” Richmond said, nursing a Coke on Tuesday at the Retired Military Association lounge on Elizabethtown Road.
Richmond, a Vietnam veteran, is tired of thrSee years of constant casualty reports. He wants to see progress.
“We lost 3,000 to get to one. I don’t think I like the odds,” Richmond said.
President Bush is expected to unveil a new Iraq strategy today. The plan will include political, military and economic measures, including 20,000 additional troops.
The 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team will lead the surge into Iraq, defense officials said Tuesday.
The brigade deployed to Kuwait earlier this month. The remaining soldiers will move in gradually behind the paratroopers, officials said.
It is the proposed surge that worries veterans, soldiers and military experts. Most say they believe a troop surge is the wrong strategy.
“This can’t be solved militarily. It has to be solved politically,” Larry Korb, senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Center for American Progress, said in a conference call Tuesday.
Korb was an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
“A surge is basically going to postpone the day of reckoning. This is no longer an insurgency we’re fighting. This is a civil war,” he said.
The new strategy comes in the wake of major changes in the administration’s Defense team.
Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense in December. Last week, Bush said he was nominating Adm. William Fallon, commander of American forces in the Pacific, to replace Gen. John Abizaid as commander in the Middle East.
Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion and headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces, will replace Gen. George Casey as commander in Iraq.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington defense policy think tank, said the surge is an experiment.
“They’ve surged in the past. This one is different,” Pike said.
When the Golden Mosque in Samarra was bombed in February, the war changed, Pike said. It went from a Sunni-based insurgency to a civil war.
“You have a new insurgency that is Sunni and Shi’a revenge killings. That is what this surge would suppress,” Pike said.
Soldiers going to lunch around Fayetteville on Tuesday had no comment about the proposed surge. Most said they would go wherever they were ordered.
One 82nd paratrooper joked that he was headed to Iraq with his unit anyway, so he didn’t care about a surge in troops.
Spc. Delany Jordan, 30, of New Orleans, an Iraq veteran assigned to Fort Bragg, said that more soldiers won’t make a difference in the conflict.
“They’ve been fighting for centuries. Why should we go help them start a democracy when they don’t want us over there?” Jordan asked.
Army Spc. James McNair, also an Iraq veteran, questioned the human cost.
“Once we leave, they’re going to do their own thing. It doesn’t make any difference how many people you send, how many countries you send, Iraq (is) going to be Iraq,” said McNair, 27, of Henderson.
Veterans interviewed Tuesday say they are starting to see Vietnam all over again.
“This is a politician’s war. They wouldn’t let us do what we needed to do and get out,” said Korean veteran Dale Graves. “All they do is send our people over there to get killed — and for what?”
Sitting at a table at VFW Post 6018 on Chance Street, Graves said he believes Bush should just pull the troops out.
“Get our boys home where they belong. If they were fighting in our land, it would be a different story,” he said.
Richmond said he thinks the U.S. should have given Iraq back to Saddam Hussein. At least he was able to keep all of the sectarian tensions under control.
“My God, it is a disaster now,” Richmond said. “We got him for killing some people. Good grief, look what we’ve got now.”
© Copyright 2007, The Fayetteville Observer
