I decided to post this here because it is a haven to post whatever we want to post, and some may not be able to stomach what they are about to read. This weighed very heavy on my heart. May God bless and keep our troops safe over there


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 version of this
piece ran on tomdispatch.com.