Midwest Towns Sour on War as Their Tolls Mount

[kskiska]

Source: WP

Saturday, July 14, 2007; A01

TIPTON, Iowa -- This farming town in Cedar County buried Army Spec. Aaron Sissel during the Iraq war's ninth month. It buried Army Spec. David W. Behrle during the 51st. Along the way, as a peaceable community's heart sank, its attitude toward President Bush and his Iraq strategy turned more personal and more negative.

Sissel and Behrle were popular young sons of Tipton, a community of 3,100 where anonymity is an impossibility. Sissel bagged groceries at the supermarket and often bowled at Cedar Lanes. Behrle served, just two years ago, as Tipton High's senior class president and commencement speaker.

The town, by all accounts, once gave Bush the benefit of the doubt for a war he said would make America safer and a mission he said was accomplished four years before Behrle died. But funeral by funeral, faith in the president and his project to remake Iraq is ebbing away.

Deep into a battle with no visible end, many Republican and Democratic voters here say the cause is no longer clear, the war no longer seems winnable and the costs are too high. After mourning Behrle, 20, and Sissel, 22, Tipton lost its heart for the fight and the president who is vowing to press on.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071302017.html?hpid=topnews

[rodeodance]

1. yes, it is small rural towns that feel it the most

[thecrow]

4. especially when the war's body count exceeds the population

of your town by over 500

[IndianaGreen]

15. Proportionally, small town America has paid a heavier price for Bush's war

and in small communities, where everyone knows everyone, the loss of a servicemember affects the entire community.

[babylonsister]

2. This will change the course of this illegal occupation, people questioning

what's going on. I hope.

[calimary]

3. So sad that it takes this kind of event to change people's minds,

and to force them to see the light. They've lost two of their beloved sons. Was it worth it? I think part of the gloom settling over that community is the agonizing realization (for those brave enough to face it) that their loss was NOT worth it. Those beautiful boys died in vain. For a lie. For a selfish, lazy, arrogant, greedy power-mongering bastard who doesn't care what they think or how badly they hurt.

THAT'S your fucking LEGACY right there, george. Deal with it. Deal with it now, or you'll be forced to face it in front of St. Peter some day. And for you who always expected and preferred to take the easy way out, you'll probably find that it would have been a LOT easier to deal with it now.

[StClone]

26. My family in Small town Iowa

Have changed little and are disturbing recalcitrant to admit wrong thinking. Except that they now believe Saddam was probably an stabilizing factor that had to be be lived with rather than eliminated!

[mzmolly]

5. Yeah, wasn't the war only supposed to take a few months according to the Bushies?

What were they right about? Anything?

[tblue37]

23. Yeah--and it was only supposed to kill some brown people over there---

not American kids from their communities.

I am sorry for their loss, and I have a nephew, a cousin, and some friends over there, but I am still very angry at those who supported this war in part because they thought it would be a quickie, and that only Iraqis would end up paying the ultimate price.

[Decruiter]

6. I really hate to say this but I have to. We all knew this day would finally come.

The pain had to get deep enough, long reaching enough before anything would even start to change.

Middle America had to really feel it first, and then ..............

For heavens sake everyone, Cindy Sheehan was in a ditch almost 2 years ago, 2 YEARS AGO!!!

We don't like "We told you so", but this time what are we supposed to do now?

We, the unpatriotic ones, we tried to stop this, we tried to warn everyone, we said this war is wrong. The whole world made history on February 15, 2003. There were millions on the street marching for peace, begging, pleading, saying no to war on Iraq.

Here we are now. July 14, 2007. And Middle American is now disturbed.

[arewenotdemo]

9. Of course. If Americans could empathize AT ALL with the plight of Iraqis

it wouldn't have had to come to this.

I know the MediaWhores were/are complicit, so that it was One Glorious War on Terror for the brainwashed.

But even now, most opposition to the war by our political representatives has nothing to say about what this country has done to Iraq and its people. In fact, just yesterday one of our esteemed Congressmen stated that we can leave now as we had "fulfilled our moral obligation to the Iraqis".

If there was a God, She should have struck him dead, on the spot.

[Hissyspit]

11. Before the invasion, an NPR report talked about how it would likely take time, death toll, money

and failure of progress for public support to turn against the war - like Vietnam. The public could have seen the anti-war demonstrations (or listened to the report) and figured it and out and marched on the White House and Congress and stopped this, but apparently, well, had to do the time, death toll, money, failure of progress to figure it all out.

[Decruiter]

12. Hiss, I can't sleep lots of nights. This shit is making me crazy. I'm supposed

to be doing something and I don't know what to do. How do we stop this insanity? How do we end this madness?

We did not have to do this again. We just did not!

[truedelphi]

7. I live in such an area Lake County California

What is sad is that the young service people re-up because they feel that only with their year or two or more ofexperience can the comrades they left behind have a chance.

They are very selfless about it.

They could care less about Bush - it comes down to wanting to be there for their friends.

[progressoid]

8. There are a lot of Tiptons in Iowa. And all over the country.

It's unfortunate it took so long and at such a high price for them to see how they were mislead. There is a lot of disillusionment, loss of spirit and just plain anger out here.

[Cobalt-60]

10. I wonder if their local

preacher Repbulicon Fearleader will call for more blood this sunday.

[Wapsie B]

17. That would be Dan Boddicker.

One of the point men in Iowa for the rwing gop.

http://www.iowagop.org/FlexPage.aspx?area=Cedar

[wake.up.america]

13. Seems as if we are talking about two different things.

The invasion was never justified - period.

Tragic that the two young men died in such a war; this does not make the war even more unjustified.


I truly hope the Tiptonians think twice about buying into such a farce again.

[lostnfound]

14. It is so frustrating how Americans keep buying the snake oil, isn't it.

I don't know if it's a failure of compassion (they refuse to acknowledge Iraqis as equally human) or a failure of imagination (they can't believe that any president is so corrupt as to start a war of deceit for profit). But generation after generation yells "go team!" as America drops bombs on more countries than any other country ever has.

[gratuitous]

24. Snake oil? It's our national religion

Unremitting, unquestioning faith in the power of violence to repair, retrieve, and redeem any situation. It's such an ingrained part of our culture, that we barely question it. Crime a problem? Build more prisons. Get more guns into the hands of law-abiding citizens. Tougher sentences. Someone overseas annoys us? Send out an aircraft carrier or a battleship to menace their coastline. If they don't have a coastline, do a few military maneuvers in a nearby country so they can see what's in store for them.

I certainly don't wish our nation any ill, but the direct experience of so many other nations with war on their own soil has given them a perspective that we don't have at all. For us, war is a neat, abstract concept with no real consequence. It happens somewhere else, far away, and all those bombed-out buildings, people running in the streets and mangled bodies are someone else's, not ours, and surely not our responsibility. Or if it is our responsibility, those people deserved what we did to them.

[theHandpuppet]

16. How BushCO sees regular American folks and their children:

Cannon Fodder.

Nothing more.

[Wapsie B]

18. It's just like I predicted it to be.

They can block the TV coverage of the caskets coming home full of fallen soldiers. But each one of these are eventually brought to little towns like this all across the country. There's no satellite up-link trucks parked near the cemetery. There's no cadre of over-paid, blow-dried TV newsreaders. But the news hits home all the same. There's no way they can stop the news from hitting home.

[eringer]

19. Buyer's Remorse

I hoped they saved the receipt. Perhaps they can get their vote back from the candidate they elected.

[calimary]

25. Welcome to DU!

Unfortunately, we all know that receipt will not be honored. It'll have "expired" or some other excuse. Nobody'll even hear from their reps til they want something from their constituents - like campaign contributions and another lease extension.

Glad you're here. We need you.

[mwb970]

20. These people should not have voted for Bush in the first place.

When word reached Tipton in May that Behrle was dead, Allen, the salesman, remembers thinking, "Out of the whole state of Iowa, why us?"

Mr. Allen, this is why:

Retired electrician Bob Peck voted twice for Bush.

If the rural people had been more responsible with their vote instead of voting for Bush in a pre-programmed, unthinking fashion, your town's kids, and those of many other towns, would still be alive.

Bush killed them.

[UpInArms]

21. or a mother who "didn't focus on the war"

Like so many Tipton residents who saw the war delivered like an unwelcome package when the cortege passed, Pelzer realized that it took her son's death for her to focus on the war.

[pretzel4gore]

22. bush's hatred for these people

for these 'bush voters' or 'republicans' or whatever they call themselves is probably his only redeeming virtue: i hate them too, but bush's hatred is truly awesome! 1/2 of Cedar Country voted for bush over President Gore in '00, and that half cares not one whit that bush was going to win even if every single one of them voted against junyer and for Gore, and they ho hum that fact, until dead youths are shipped back to them, youths who died in an illegal occupation of a defenseless country. It wasn't the bush criminals drove me mad, it was these goddam sukkholes who let murdering thieves sneak around in the dark generation after generation w/out suspecting anything....

[sampsonblk]

27. I sure hope this ends the RIGHT way...

GW Bush took advantage of these people's ignorance, apathy and patriotism. Without people like these, he never could have pulled it off in the first place.

Do you guys remember the days? Trying to talk to these people was downright dangerous. GW Bush was a saint, and if he said we had to go and 'finish the job,' well then they were all for it. Anyone who complained was anti-American.

I hope the end result of this is that these people realize that they have a responsilibity to ask questions. They have a responsibility to be skeptical of any politician who asks for blind faith on a matter of such importance.

I sincerely hope our Dem nominee will bring this point home. GW Bush should have had to prove to us why he needed to borrow our military for his crusade. And the first time he blew smoke up our asses, we should have pulled the plug.

Sadly, there weren't any profiles of couratge on either side to stand up to him when the time came. So now...this.