Rene — Naomi Klein — The grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down
Topic(s): Iraq | Comments Off on Rene — Naomi Klein — The grieving parents who might yet bring Bush downThe grieving parents who might yet bring Bush down
The families of dead American soldiers have overcome censorship and fear
Naomi Klein
Saturday July 10, 2004
The Guardian
There is a remarkable scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 when Lila Lipscomb
talks with an anti-war activist outside the White House about the
death of her 26-year-old son, Michael, in Iraq. A pro-war passerby
doesn’t like what sheoverhears and announces: “This is all staged!” Ms
Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with rage, and says:
“My son is not a stage. He was killed in Karbala, April 2. It is not a
stage. My son is dead.” Then she walks away and cries:”I need my son.”
Watching Ms Lipscomb doubled over in pain on the White House lawn, I
was reminded of other mothers who have taken the loss of their
children to the seat of power and changed the fate of wars. During
Argentina’s dirty war, a group of women whose children had been
“disappeared” by the military regime gathered every Thursday in front
of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. At a time when all public
protest was banned, they would walk silently in circles, wearing white
headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing children. The
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo revolutionised human rights activism by
transforming maternal grief from a cause for pity into an unstoppable
political force. The generals could not attack the mothers openly, so
they launched fierce covert operations against their organisation. But
the mothers kept walking, playing a significant role in the eventual
collapse of the dictatorship.
Unlike the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who march together every week
to this day, in Fahrenheit 9/11 Lila Lipscomb stands alone, hurling
her fury at the White House. But Lila Lipscomb is not alone. Other
American and British parents whose children have died in Iraq are also
coming forward to condemn their governments, and their moral outrage
could help to end the military conflict still raging in Iraq.
Last week, Nadia McCaffrey, a California resident, defied the Bush
administration by inviting news cameras to photograph the arrival of
her son’s casket from Iraq. The White House has banned photography of
flag-draped coffins arriving at air force bases, but because Patrick
McCaffrey’s remains were flown into the Sacramento International
airport, his mother was able to invite the photographers inside. “I
don’t care what [President Bush] wants,” Ms McCaffrey declared,
telling her local newspaper: “Enough war.” Just as Patrick McCaffrey’s
body was coming home to California, another soldier was killed in
Iraq: 19-year-old Gordon Gentle, from Glasgow. Upon hearing the news,
his mother,Rose Gentle, immediately blamed the government of Tony
Blair, saying: “My son was just a bit of meat to them, just a
number…This is not our war, my son has died in their war over oil.”
And just as Rose Gentle was saying those words, Michael Berg happened
to be visiting London to speak at an anti-war rally. Since the
beheading of his 26-year-old son, Nicholas, who had been working in
Iraq asa contractor, Michael Berg has insisted that “Nicholas Berg
died for the sinsof George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld”. Asked by an
Australian journalist whether such bold statements were “making the
war seem fruitless”, Mr Berg responded: “The only fruit of war is
death and grief and sorrow. There is no other fruit.”
It is as if these parents have lost more than their children – as if
they have also lost their fear, allowing them to speak with great
clarity and power. This represents a dangerous challenge to the Bush
administration, which likes to claim a monopoly on “moral
clarity”. Victims of war and their families aren’t supposed to
interpret their losses for themselves, they are supposed to leave that
to the flags, ribbons, medals and three-gun salutes. Parents and
spouses are supposed to accept their tremendous losses with stoic
patriotism, never asking whether a death could have been avoided,
never questioning how their loved ones are used to justify more
killing. At Patrick McCaffrey’s military funeral last week, Paul
Harris, the chaplain of the 579th Engineer Battalion, informed the
mourners: “What Patrick was doing was good and right and noble…There
are thousands, no, millions, of Iraqis who are grateful for his
sacrifice.”
But Nadia McCaffrey knows better and is insisting on carrying her
son’s own feelings of deep disappointment from beyond the grave. “He
was so ashamed by the prisoner abuse scandal,” Ms McCaffrey told the
Independent. “He said we hadno business in Iraq and should not be
there.” Freed from the military censors who prevent soldiers from
speaking their minds when alive, Lila Lipscomb has also shared her
son’s doubts about his work in Iraq. In Fahrenheit 9/11, she reads
from a letter Michael mailed home. “What in the world is wrong with
George, trying to be like his dad, Bush. He got us out here for
nothing whatsoever. I’m so furious right now, Mama.” Fury is an
entirely appropriate response to a system that sends young people to
kill other young people in a war that never should have been
waged. Yet the American right is forever trying to pathologise anger
as something menacing and abnormal, dismissing war opponents as
hateful and, in the latest slur, “wild-eyed”. This is much harder to
do when victims of wars begin to speak for themselves: no one
questions the wildness in the eyes of a mother or father who has just
lost a son or daughter, or the furyof a soldier who knows that he is
being asked to kill, and to die, needlessly. Many Iraqis who have
lost loved ones to foreign aggression have responded by resisting the
occupation. Now victims are starting to organise themselves inside the
countries that are waging the war. First it was the September 11
Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, which speaks out against any attempt
by the Bush administration to use the deaths of their family members
in the World TradeCentre to justify further killings of civilians.
Military Families Speak Out has sent delegations of veterans and
parents of soldiers to Iraq, while Nadia McCaffrey is planning to form
an organisation of mothers who have lost children in Iraq. American
elections always seem to swing on some parental demographic or other;
last time it was soccer moms, this time it is supposed to be Nascar
[stock-car racing] dads. On Sunday, Nascar champion Dale Earnhardt
Junior said that he had taken his buddies to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and
that “it’s a good thingas an American to go see”. It seems as if there
may be another demographic that swings this election: not soccer moms
or Nascar dads but the parents of victims of the war. They don’t have
the numbers to change the outcome in swing states, but they might just
change something more powerful: the hearts and minds of Americans. ·
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows www.nologo.org