End Game in Iraq:

Families of the Fallen for Change to Close

Good news! The last American combat troops left Iraq on Aug. 18.  Most Americans believe the war has ended.

Well, not quite.

American troops no longer conceive and lead combat missions. However, for another year and four months, some 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq to continue training that country’s security forces and perform intelligence work.  They will accompany Iraqi security forces and, if needed, Special Ops troops will engage in battle.  All 50,000 Americans remain in harm’s way. 

For families sending their loved ones to Iraq now, the Iraq war is not over.  Sleepless nights continue.

Two questions remain for Americans: Have we accomplished anything, and has the cost in blood, treasure, trauma, and our country’s reputation been worth it?  Answers range from one extreme to the other among Americans.  They will range widely among the troops, too.

The Families of the Fallen for Change organization has attempted to remain nonpartisan.  Our members are Democrat, Republican, and Independent. We have simply sought an end to the war.

As founders, our view comes as parents whose only son was killed on August 3, 2005, one of 14 Marines killed in a single explosion in Al-Anbar Province, Iraq.  This remains the largest fatal combat incident in the Iraq War.

Accomplishments

Saddam Hussein is gone, but the military found no weapons of mass destruction and oil is no cheaper.  Iraqis vote, but a government has yet to be formed five months after the March 2010 election.  Insurgents remain, with mortar attacks and frequent suicide bombers. 

The democratic Iraq that coalition forces had hoped for is not evident.  Democracy requires not only open elections with a choice, but the peaceful turnover of power from one party to another over time.

Iraq is certainly more stable.  American taxpayers paid for this, as the United States bought off the Sunni insurgents in Anbar Province responsible for the deaths of those 14 Marines and so many others.

Cost

According to icasualties.org, through August 18, 2010, some 4,415 American military personnel were killed in Iraq.  Our son, Lcpl Edward “Augie” Schroeder, 23 years old, was number 1,824.   Iraq also included 31,882 wounded. 

There are no statistics for the number suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.  But, according to New Jersey.com, more than 2,100 members of the armed forces have taken their own lives since 2001 (through 2009), nearly triple the number of troops who have died in Afghanistan and almost half of all U.S. fatalities in Iraq.

Anecdotal evidence suggests increases in alcohol and drug abuse, spousal abuse, and divorce.

The National Priorities Project gives the cost of the Iraq war at noon on August 19, 2010, as $742,303,770, while that of the war in Afghanistan is $325,386,690.  The total for each rises at a rate of $1,000 per second.   The total for both wars $1.06 trillion.

The Congressional Budget Office, in its August 2010 report, said this year’s federal budget deficit is expected to be $1.3 trillion, slightly more than the total cost of both wars.

A Short, Important History

We see August 2005 as the tipping point in the public’s opposition to the war. Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, became a lightning rod for the opposition by camping out beside then President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch.  She told us it was the death of 14 Marines in one explosion that pushed her to launch that protest. 

Our work in the months that followed confirms for us that the public’s opposition to the war began at that time.

Gold Star families’ views of the war often reflected the views their sons or daughters voiced from the battlefield.  Some of the parents supported the war effort because their loved ones did. 

Ours did not.  In our last conversation with Augie, he said the war “was not worth the cost.  We don’t have enough troops to do this job.”   We frequently declared our opposition to the war, saying coalition forces had to either fight it properly with enough troops to do the job or get out.  We reminded people that the U.S. fielded 550,000 troops for the limited mission of kicking Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991.  Officials in Congress and elsewhere dismissed us – albeit politely -- as just two grieving parents. 

To make a difference, we requested your help through founding Families of the Fallen for Change (FOF) in November 2005. Today the membership stands at 1,700.     

FOF lobbied Congress, submitting testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  We lobbied local governments to send official denunciation of the war.   We spoke at churches, community gatherings, many of the national and international media, and to the military.

While FOF cannot claim credit for the increasing opposition to the Iraq war, we certainly were part it. 

Contrary to some who told us our Marine son would be turning over in his grave, we know he would be proud of our efforts.

End Game

So we are at the end game of the Iraq war.  While it isn’t quite over, we see the beginning of the end.  Meanwhile Afghanistan continues.  We’ll leave that for others to protest.  It is time to close Families of the Fallen for Change.

While we are pleased that the last combat troops have left Iraq, we are heavy of heart.  What do we, as a family of the fallen, take from all this?

First, the Iraq War had no single cause.  Rather, the reasons lie with those wanting to continue what was started in 1991, with oil interests seeking greater access to Iraq’s oil, with the neoconservatives favoring use of America’s hard power to promote democracy, with decision-makers who understood neither what democracy requires nor Iraqi history, and with a President too easily swayed by all these groups. 

Revenge, cheap oil, commercial imperialism, and war mongering was too potent a package for Bush to ignore.

The public today bandies about the term “our commander in chief,” a term only accurate for those in the military. We never accepted that for us.  The President is simply the head of the American government and serves at the will of the majority of those who cast their ballots.  If there is a grievance, small or large, we must state it plainly and with respect.  

The non-military public has an obligation to voice opposition to government policies: We can’t simply whisper opposition as was prevalent in the early days of the war.   We took our lead from Theodore Roosevelt, who said “to announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Finally, we know we were lied to.  A short war, three months, no longer.  Mission accomplished.  That lie cost us our only son.  It cost us peace of mind.  It cost us a fundamental trust in our government.  It also cost us the faith that America would do the right thing. 

This site will be available until October 1.  We thank all our members for their support and collective voice in the effort to end the Iraq War.

This organization leaves the battlefield along with the combat troops.  It’s time now to close up shop. 

Our goal, as always, is peace.

Paul Schroeder and Rosemary Palmer