Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?

By STAN GOFF

These milestones come along, reminding us and the wrath struggles to break free again. The anger is never really absent, just dormant like a sleeping volcano.

Back when the pack of professional liars in Washington DC and their slavish corporate press still had Americans brainwashed that Iraq was a threat to the United States, General Tommy Franks–then the chief military planner of the catastrophe in Iraq–said, “We don’t do body counts.”

He didn’t want anyone to know what might be behind the numbers.

I could say the same thing now, as we arrive almost simultaneously at 1,000 US military fatalities in Iraq and the third anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

So I’m saying it. This is not a body count. This is not about the number of dead GIs. This is not about almost 7,000 wounded. It’s not about 14,000 dead Iraqis, or any of the considerable inventory of macabre enumerations we might clinically extract from the orgy of cruelty that is now Iraq.

We won’t do body counts. War is more than a number. This war is an expanding ocean of unanswered pain, and it cannot be reduced to a number.

One thousand times now, people have arrived home or looked out the front door only to see a military sedan, with two troops in their dress uniforms.

Dear Friends,

Minnesota peace activists gathered yesterday to commemorate their esteemed companion, John Maus, who died last week after a brief bout with cancer. John traveled to Iraq with a Minnesota Voices delegation in 2001. To his wife, Joanne, and to all of his colleagues in the peace movement, we extend our
sincere condolences. May the courage, wisdom and love which he embodied abide with all of our efforts to build a better world.