Imagine. Sitting by the side of the road winding a tourniquet around your best friend's leg -- or what's left of it. Imagine rumbling past a sobbing mother, holding her child's lifeless body, lifeless because of your unit's ordered bombardment. Just imagine -- all you did was sign up for occasional weekends away from home with the hope of a college education. And now, even though you're just 18, you feel older then your parents and can't remember why in the world a college education mattered.
Fortunately, for us, it's just a fantasy. But for thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, it's real. They are actually fighting in a war that I, like many of them, have been opposed to from the start. After attending the recent "Iraq Veterans Speak Out" event, however, I realized that simply being against the war is not enough.
The soldiers in Iraq are just like us; they are our peers. They are young adults and their lives are being lost in a war they do not believe in. For them, protesting the war could lead to dishonorable discharge, loss of a college education and even jail. That responsibility falls on us, people lucky enough to be able to afford a college education without enlisting.
Many of the young people serving in Iraq were not so lucky. They were looking for a way to pay for college when the Army Reserves or the National Guard, came knocking. It is a very enticing package. Commit to one weekend a month and the government will pay for your education. That was enough to convince Kimberly Dougherty, the main speaker at the event, to join the Colorado National Guard.
She told us how she was shocked when she learned that her unit was being reassigned to Kuwait. None of the National Guard recruiters mentioned anything about a war, let alone going overseas to fight it. "Stay home and serve your country" was their motto. These 18- and 19-year-olds were deceived, plain and simple.
Dougherty told stories of escorting Halliburton fuel trucks into Iraq. Her unit's main job was to protect broken down fuel trucks from looting by Iraqis, Iraqis who are regularly forced to wait for hours to get gas for their cars. Often, she would receive instructions to destroy the unused fuel and leave.
There were many more stories, but eventually, Joseph Ramsey, a graduate student who runs the Tufts Coalition to Oppose War in Iraq (TCOWI), took the podium and spoke. He was passionate in his opposition to the war and what we could do to stop it. He was so incredibly heartfelt in his plea, that I felt guilty for not doing more.
Our parents enacted great change through civil protest. Huge rallies spurred on the civil rights movement, and constant protests to the Vietnam War put great pressure on the government and, eventually, helped bring the troops home. Could the Iraq War be our generation's Vietnam? Maybe, maybe not. True, so far, it pales in comparison to the death toll of that decade-long engagement -- but that does not mean that today's war is insignificant. The troops in Iraq may not have been drafted, but they are not professional soldiers either; they are people like us, just out of high school, looking for a brighter future. These are our peers who are dying each and every day, and the responsibility falls on us to be their voice, to bring them home.
I know it is hard to think of these things. It is much easier to just go on with our lives as safely sheltered students at a great college -- to be against the war in our minds, but not in our actions. Oftentimes I will forget that we are even at war; I get so caught up in the daily happenings of my own life. It takes a rude awakening, such as a friend whose brother was just killed in action, or an eyewitness account from a Kimberly Dougherty, to remind us that we are at war. But I encourage any of you who can to join TCOWI, to attend the upcoming anti-war rally in Boston on Saturday, March 19, to do something. The great movements of this nation's history did not arise out of thin air. They had to start somewhere. What better place than here? What better time than now?
James Gerber is a freshman who has not yet declared a major
