Bring them home? Stay to the finish?

Americans wrestle with war in Iraqas casualties climb

Two thousand Americans dead.

Nearly half as many as were killed during the eight years of the American Revolution. Twice as many as were killed in nearly a century of Indian wars.

As the price Americans pay in Iraq climbs – and it probably will top 2,000 either later this month or early the next – the questions become more haunting, more daunting: Do we remain? Should we pull out? What are the costs if we do? If we don’t?

Nearly two-thirds of Americans, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted just over two weeks ago, want a full or partial withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

“Their position is wrong,” President Bush told the pollsters. “Withdrawing our troops would make the world more dangerous.”

What to do?

Tom Trewyn understands the agony.

“We can’t affect them politically without affecting them religiously, and there is no way in the world they will ever let us do that,” said the Carl Junction teacher who was deployed to the Persian Gulf for a year in 2003.

Yet, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the president before the invasion that The Pottery Barn rule applies to countries, too: You break it, you bought it.

Herewith are voices:

Soldiers such as Trewyn; Ryan Qualls, of Baxter Springs, Kan., whose tour was cut short by a bomb; and Jeremiah Johnson, of Columbus, Kan., who took part in the effort to get Jessica Lynch out of Iraqi hands.

Two Carthage men who saw their share of war more than a half-century ago. They argue that it’s time to bring the troops home.

Civilians such as Almon Guinn, of Carthage, who doesn’t believe the sacrifice is worth it, or Brent Brassfield, of Miami, Okla., who wants to erect a monument to a friend of his who bears a sorrowful distinction: She was one of the few American civilians to die in Iraq.

They may disagree on much, but they share one thing: Americans could be in Iraq for a long time. Decades, maybe. Generations even.

Outside forces

Lost amid the statistics on Americans dying in Iraq is another: Nearly 8,000 American troops have been wounded in Iraq, soldiers such as Ryan Qualls, who now has physical therapy three times a week at Freeman Health System in Joplin.

The 37-year-old staff sergeant with the Kansas Army National Guard based in Pittsburg was with his unit in Iraq on April 18 when a bomb inside a culvert on which he was standing exploded, blasting pieces of concrete, gravel and shrapnel into the right side of his body. A big piece of debris struck his shoulder, teeth were knocked out, and he sustained hearing loss.

Qualls said he was doing the job for which he signed up, and he continues to support the U.S. mission in Iraq.

“We’re all volunteers, even the people who gave their lives,” Qualls said. “A lot of people like to overlook that fact.”

He called Saddam Hussein a monster and said progress is being made in Iraq, though insurgents are present in the large cities.

“Out in the countryside, everybody’s just so glad we’re there,” Qualls said. “They would bring us tea to drink.”

He said he didn’t know how long the U.S. military would need to occupy the country, but he noted that it took several years after the end of World War II before Germany was stabilized.

“The people want it,” Qualls said. “It’s just the outside forces that keep them from having their freedom.”

‘Not worth it’

In the 71 years that Almon Guinn has lived in America, he has seen his country go to war at least five times: World War II was followed by Korea and then Vietnam, Desert Storm and now the war on terrorism. For nearly a third of his life, Americans have been at war, and in Guinn’s lifetime, nearly 400,000 Americans have died in battles from Pearl Harbor to Operation River Gate, last week’s push to take towns along the Euphrates River from al-Qaida insurgents. Thousands more have died serving their countries in wartime or were civilian casualties.

“It’s not worth it,” said Guinn, “spending all the money and all those lives.”

He has opposed the Iraqi war from the beginning, and more than two years ago he joined a local protest that was part of an international peace vigil.

“I am so much against the war,” he said at that time. “We got Saddam over there. He can’t do anything. He doesn’t have weapons. Why kill people? Why spend all that money to keep our soldiers over there for two years?”

That was March 2003. Since then, Americans have captured Saddam, but Guinn’s opposition to the war hasn’t wavered.

He said his position doesn’t stem from any strong religious conviction or any previous military experience. He called his opposition to the war “common sense” and said he doesn’t see any honorable way out now. “The only way is to tuck our tails and run now unless we stay there years and years and have more kids killed,” he said.

What has changed, Guinn thinks, is the emergence of opposition to the war, more questioning of the sacrifice, more doubt and reluctance to support the president.

“I hear from a lot of people I know,” he said. “Everybody I talk to at the Y and everyplace, they say it’s a waste of lives and money.”

‘No doubt …’

Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, of Columbus, was a U.S. Army Ranger in Iraq for three months at the start of the war. He participated in the mission to whisk Pfc. Jessica Lynch out of Iraq, and he has no reservations about what America is doing. He does, however, think it may take time.

“I totally think it was justified, and I think it’s heading in the right direction – no doubt in my mind,” Johnson said.

Johnson, 28, believes the war is valid because Saddam was evil and his sons were even more evil than their father. He said the U.S presence in Iraq may not end in his lifetime or even in his children’s lifetimes. Still, he said, it’s worth it.

“If you’re going to start something, you’ve got to finish it,” Johnson said. “I’m very disappointed in the way the American public perceives things, because they don’t know.”

Johnson said joining the Army was the best thing to ever happen to him, but he didn’t re-enlist.

“I was overseas three times in four years, and I knew it wasn’t going to end anytime soon,” he said. “I knew it was only a matter of time until my luck ran out.”

Remembering Fern

Years ago, Brent Brassfield was running a sporting goods store when he met a “bright” and “dedicated” young woman named Fern Holland who dated one of his co-workers.

By March 2004, Brassfield was mayor of Miami. Holland by then had gone on to become an attorney, a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and a human-rights activist whose work took her all over the world. It took her to Iraq, too, where she was gunned down in an ambush on March 9, 2004, at the age of 33.

Seen from what Brassfield called a “jaded perspective,” it might seem that Holland’s death and the deaths of the thousands of others in Iraq would be in vain if America pulled out and the country reverted to civil war or succumbed to another dictator.

Brassfield doesn’t see it that way. He said Holland died fighting for the rights of others, and that is how should she should be remembered. He proposed a memorial to her in Miami.

“Fern’s humanistic endeavors were way beyond what she did in Iraq,” he said. “She had a calling. It wasn’t just an Iraqi experience for Fern. It would be most appropriate to do something in her honor. We just haven’t finalized what we are going to do. We feel that whatever we do should do her justice.”

Brassfield is among those who want to bring U.S. troops home, “or at least formulate a plan about when we might be getting out of Iraq.”

He said he recently had lunch with Dan Boren, Oklahoma’s 2nd District congressman, who told him that the war is costing Americans a billion dollars a day.

“I feel that in the beginning it was wrong,” he said of the war. “Our focus should have been toward al-Qaida.”

‘Hyped-up deal’

Two Carthage veterans who did their duty for God and country believe it’s time to bring this generation of Americans home.

Robert Simmons, an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, said he initially supported the U.S. action, but he now believes U.S. troops should be withdrawn. J.D. Kirk, an Army veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, also wants to see U.S. troops come home.

“I don’t think we should have gone in the first place,” Kirk said.

Simmons said he initially backed the administration’s stance because he believed there were weapons of mass destruction that could be a threat to others.

“I was swayed by the propaganda and thought the invasion was justifiable,” he said. “Now, we know it’s a hyped-up deal.”

He called the current situation in Iraq “dismal” and added: “It doesn’t look like much can improve it. We want to see democracy prevail, but it seems like they don’t want it.”

“I always felt it would be just like Vietnam, a waste of time, money and lives,” said Kirk, who served with Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army during World War II. “The sooner we can pull out gracefully, the better.”

Stuck there

Trewyn, the Carl Junction teacher who is a member of the National Guard, said people frequently ask him about Iraq, about whether the United States can win and whether it should withdraw.

He said he wants the troops home just like a lot of other people, but he thinks the United States should remain until the country gains some measure of security. Leaving Iraq now would create a power vacuum and perhaps plunge the country into deeper chaos, he said.

“I firmly believe we have a certain responsibility to stay there until (the Iraqi people) have security,” Trewyn said. “We have a situation we have created, and we can’t just bail out.”

Yet, he said the prospects for a U.S.-orchestrated democracy are remote because of a yawning cultural divide.

In the United States, the Constitution erects a wall between church and state. In Iraq, religion and politics are inextricably bound. Not just that, but the country is predominantly Muslim, while the United States is predominantly Christian. The prevailing sentiment among Iraqis is that a Christian country is trying to change their religious system, Trewyn said.

He thinks the United States would have to win the “hearts and minds of the (Iraqi) people, virtually all of them,” and that would not take years but likely decades.

Trewyn said that while he was in Kuwait, the adults there remembered the help the United States extended during the Iraqi invasion 15 years ago. But their children, who are teenagers, did not see the Americans as allies but rather as a foreign, Christian army. These youths are prey for terrorist recruiters from Iraq, Iran and Syria, Trewyn said.

There are no easy solutions for Iraq, Trewyn said.

“It’s a shame, but I think we’re stuck there,” he said.