While walking down the South Oval to my normal morning classes, I usually try to focus on the homework I have finished, the day’s upcoming events or the weekend plans I am wanting to make. Normally, I can easily block my family’s struggles from my mind. Not today.
Walking past the combat boot exhibit Monday and Tuesday not only brought many unpleasant thoughts to mind but after stopping and reading the posters and speaking to the people running the exhibit, I became extremely angry and upset.
The exhibit is trying to explain the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to promote peace while pretentiously symbolizing the loss of soldiers overseas. However, the people I spoke with sang a completely different song. After my stop by the exhibit, it became extremely clear that they view the people who are constantly risking their lives are doing nothing but wasting their time. Maybe if they stepped down from their high horses for just one second they would quickly understand that they have no idea what is going on.
Yes, the war costs money. However, if, and this is hypothetically speaking, President Barack Obama turned into an evil dictator and started killing thousands of Americans in unbelievably cruel ways, and a country came to my rescue, I would be grateful. If the country which then saved my life then tried to help and rebuild the country, I would be groveling at its feet. Sure, it’s expensive. I’d much rather our country’s debt be that much higher than innocent people paying the ultimate price somewhere else.
What we are doing overseas is not only extremely honorable, but completely necessary. It is this belief that makes me proud that my father has served overseas for the past four years.
My father has worked in Iraq in Afghanistan for the State Department in efforts to rebuild the country. I am exceedingly proud of him and stand firmly behind his belief that he should serve his country.
This is why I am beyond infuriated at the exhibit in the South Oval. The exhibit and the people presenting it stand for the idea that my fathers’ sacrifice is completely meaningless. The exhibit doesn’t take into account the Christmas I had to spend without my father, the concerts and award ceremonies he’s missed and the months at a time I have to go without seeing him. The exhibit presents all this as meaningless.
The lack of support of their fellow citizens fighting for something we should all believe in is not only completely inappropriate, but infuriating and downright ridiculous. Support your country, support your fellow citizens who are doing something greater than themselves and support their families. If you can’t support them, then just keep your opinions to yourself.
Anna DeShurley is a University College freshman.
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soonersforever 2 years ago
"Sure, it’s expensive. I’d much rather our country’s debt be that much higher than innocent people paying the ultimate price somewhere else."
Yeah but when we want to go into debt helping our own citizens it's socialism. Riiight.
anonymous 2 years ago
DeShurley, your father's sacrifice is not in vain, they are for hazard pay. The people of Iraq were better served under the Hussein, basic needs such as electricity and waste management were present. No Al Quieda were present when he was in control. @irish2213, you want to know how Iraqi's great Americans? They're called IED's.
mustafa 2 years ago
They say it all tghe time and have been saying it since the sixties.
The Left wants to show the returning coffins, not to celebrate heroism, but for its ability to undermine morale. That is the same purpose of this exhibit.
Do you think the USA, in it's present form, deserves to exist? Or do you favor a new constitution?
radiant_enigma 2 years ago
Why can't it be somewhere in the middle? The war was unjust. We went there under false pretenses, and it's pretty obvious that if it was truly to save a nation from an evil dictator (as we now claim), then no, we probably shouldn't have been supporting him (even giving him chemical warfare capabilities to use against Iran) for so long; and yes, there are many, many other nations that are as bad, if not worse. Almost all scholars who have examined the issue agree on those points. But. The country IS in very bad shape right now. Yes, much of that is because of us, but doesn't that simply increase our moral obligation to try to make it right? Certainly, it would be wrong to just pull out and leave now, abandoning the Iraqis to the mess that we created.
So no, Ms. DeShurley, America is not the glorious hero riding in to save Iraq. The story is a lot uglier - and more complicated - than that. And the idea that those who do not support the war should not be allowed to talk is not only ridiculous, but it's against the very ideals that your own father is fighting to uphold. And yes, he is a hero, because he is making enormous sacrifices to uphold ideals that he believes him. I am deeply against the war, but I still have great respect for you, your family, and your father. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult his time serving has been for all of you; so even though I will not, as you demand, "keep my opinions to myself," I will continue to be praying that your father, and all the other men and women overseas, make it safely home.
mythman 2 years ago
At least they didn't have 30-ft posters of dead fetuses in the middle of campus.
brandeis 2 years ago
irish2213, Saddam Hussein also had better first hand knowledge than Americans did about his torture and he denied it, so I guess I am supposed to accept that right? It is not like her father might pretend and make believe his job is doing good things to make himself feel better right?
You might read up on confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance to understand the psychological phenomenon that explains why her father is saying things that are demonstrably false about the success if his actions.
dio 2 years ago
@irish2213
The truth hurts apparently. Are you finished crying?
brandeis 2 years ago
I hate to break it to you, but your dad is wasting his time, wasting our money, and making America less safe. I know you seem to think that there is this fantasy world out there where the US is being greeted kindly for its disinterested efforts in just liberating people and rebuilding their country after they have utterly demolished it. However, these weak foreigners who apparently should be groveling for our intervention in their sovereign country have a little bit more of a sophisticated outlook on the manner. The U.S.'s past century of utter disrespect for other nations (toppling government after government after government), arming death squads across the world, utilizing torture despite international agreements not to, and generally acting in a way to further our own economic well-being at the expense of the well-being of other nations in the world has not won us any friends.
You can keep pretending that going over there in some sort of American exceptionalist vacuum achieves anything. But, the premiere scholars in the area are screaming at you that the opposite is true. Waving the red, white, and blue and saying we are great and that your daddy is doing so much good in the world might convince you, your family, and some simpletons around you, but it would not convince anyone looking at the situation with a clear unbiased mind.
Please stop ruining our country. Thank you.
Flips88 2 years ago
Oh, hey college freshman, George Bush called, he wants his rhetoric back. I enjoy your support for completely unwarranted invasions and nation building. If, as you say, Iraq was a just war because it overthrew a tyrant that was oppressing and killing his people (though we were fine with this in the 80s when we were funding them to fight Iran. See the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam), then we ought to overthrow the regimes of a host of countries around the world. Your idea opens up the door for crusades. The supermajority of scholars agree that the Iraq war was unjust and wrongfully started on false pretenses. Read a book.
Moreover, you think that the exhibit belittles what you have gone through as your dad was deployed oversees. Those combat boots represent a life that was taken for an unjust cause. They represent 19 and 20-year olds that won't have a chance to ever have a Christmas again with their family. More importantly, the exhibit serves to make the loss that our nation has suffered readily apparent to our generation, which quite frankly is apathetic and incubated from the war effort. When's the last time you saw Iraq discussed frequently on a news station?
Honoring the memory of those who have died in war by ensuring that they haven't been merely forgotten to history is not "infuriating" or "downright ridiculous." Rather, it is necessary in an age where the public is detached from the war effort unlike in Vietnam where you, or your brother or your classmate or best friend could be drafted at any moment.
irish2213 2 years ago
brandeis that was cold and uncalled for, so I guess you personally know how the Iraqis react to American troops better the American troop himself, her father. I am so glad we have the freedom of speach in the country or else I would be in total support of your public punishment for demeaning the troops and country that gave you the right to run your poupous a**hole mouth in the first place
mustafa 2 years ago
Excellent opinion. The point of the exhibit is that "they died in vein."
It reflects the feeling of people like braindis and flip88 - America is an evil country that does not deserve to exist, let alone be defended.
The same warped thinking that now inhabits the oval office.
irish2213 2 years ago
Also, Anna, I am thankful that you and your family has given up so much time together so that my family can safely live in America. Your Dad is a true hero and dont let idiots on this website make you feel any differently. I will pray for your Dad and wish him a safe return.
ston9794 2 years ago
"freedom of speach" lol
joeshmoe 2 years ago
This is directed towards Flips88: (A note for your own sake: whenever you debate or argue, ad- hominem attacks do nothing but detract from your argument and make you look a like a self-righteous prick. For example, I just called you a prick, and you probably won't read the rest of my response. So go easy on the "read a book" comments my friend). On one hand, I'm not willing to concede that Iraq was a just war. On the other hand, your logic as to what constitutes a just/unjust war is pretty spotty. For beginners, you say it was unjust to wage war against Iraq because we had opportunities to do it in the past, and with a host of other countries too? Is this really what you want to judge justice on? If you take that to its logical extremes, we would be bound by any past inaction. We would be bound to repeat past mistakes simply because we "shook hands with someone." Well, if you concede for the sake of argument that WWII was a just war, it seems odd. We would be held to inaction because we "shook hands"(i.e., sending athletes to compete in the Olympics) with Hitler at some point. Do you really think that the ability to choose between right/wrong should be hamstrung by past mistakes? In the end, both frameworks are unworkable. You are correct, flips88, that fighting every battle opens the door to Crusades. But surely you would concede that some wars are just. In the final analysis, what actually happens is some quack political science professor or some economist will come up with a list of factors, throw it against a wall like Jackson Pollock, and say a war is just/unjust. Then they advise the President. You say a "supermajority of scholars" agrees that Iraq was started on unjust premises? OK, great. Even accepting what a "super-majority" of scholars (I would love to see the empirical data you have on that. Seriously.) says about how a war started, that has nothing to do with the U.S.'s responsibility after we smash a country back to Stone-Age. The rebuilding, education, humanitarian, infrastructure, and police-work of soldiers over there was absolutely necessary for that country. What is unjust about rebuilding what you have destroyed (whether it be a just/unjust destruction)? You say their lives were taken for an unjust cause? Not a chance, bud.
joeshmoe 2 years ago
also @flips88:
"Pointing out that Rumsfeld has a picture shaking hands with Saddam Hussein was merely a rhetorical tool to show that sometimes dictators are our friends, and then a couple decades they are our enemies."
Well, so what? See, e.g.: http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/images/fascism/FDR_WC_JS.jpg
Its not as if enemies appear out of thin-air like in Hollywood. The great players of the world inevitably interact with each other. There is a moral theory known as "Double-Effect." Double Effect holds that (in very grave situations), an action with bad consequences can be taken if the good effects outweigh the bad. Its not perfect, but its realistic.
OUSooners 2 years ago
irish and mustafa,
It's not really up for debate and no one said "America is evil and does not deserve to exist"
The fact of the matter is we invaded Iraq for no legitimate reason and the war in Afghanistan is a failure. We are destroying government and infrastructure and killing way more civilians and children than Taliban. It's a lot easier to recruit terrorists to bomb America if we killed your entire family, which was collateral damage. We are wasting a lot of money and failing.
terri 2 years ago
Even if what we're doing over there is right and good, is it not appropriate to stop and consider the cost to human life to do it? I found the exhibit extremely moving; those boots represent lives lost, patriots who believe in the highest and the best for our country. It is so like the people who are jingo gung-ho my daddy makes a living over there doing that who fail to see that others are contributing the ultimate....their fathers and mothers, their sons and daughters, their husbands and wives, their brothers and sisters, their lives, for God's sake.
To be offended by the exhibit suggests that you really ARE out of touch with what doing the right things costs...and what if this is NOT the right thing? Both sides seems so sure it is or is isn't; how about the notion that education makes you aware of how uncertain outcomes can be, how unpredictable predictions are, and aware of how much of the choices we make are gambles. I personally believe we should have been in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, not 8 years later...we should have been where Bin Laden was, not where George W (who indeed DOES want his rhetoric back) Bush wanted us to be. When the primary motivation behind war and aggression is personal ambition, then people DO die in vain.
dargus 2 years ago
You don't need a new Constitution to fix things, Mustafa, just leaders who won't lie the nation into war.
Flips88 2 years ago
Also @JoeShmoe
As to our responsibilities to rebuild the nation, I totally concur. It’s the so-called Pottery Barn Rule: you break it, you buy it. In JWT, there are considered three phases to a war: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. The first is whether it was just to engage in warfare in the first place. The U.S. failed the test of a just cause by all accounts. Jus in bello entails how you prosecute the war. Here the U.S. fails again. The use of torture, for instance, is strictly prohibited, and yet was made widely used. Lastly, there’s the post bellum, which entails the responsibilities of the victor. Some believe this can be judged entirely separate from the war, while others believe that a bad war necessarily makes a bad peace. I would say a good position is somewhere between those two. The fact that the war was started unjustly does affect its eventual outcome and no matter what we do, it will always be an unjust war. However, reconstructing Iraq is our responsibility and if we do it in a just fashion, then we can help lessen the injustice of our war. It doesn’t help, then, that the first thing we did was protect the oil infrastructure of the nation instead of setting up refugee safe havens for civilians.
And I still hold that soldiers in Iraq have died for an unjust cause. The unjust nature of the initiation of war inherently taints all actions thereafter. Justice was not on our side. Their deaths are tragedies and even more so because they did not need to be there. The blame for their loss lies at the feet of the political leadership that placed them in harm’s way for an unjust cause.
Flips88 2 years ago
@JoeShmoe “We would be held to inaction because we ‘shook hands’ (i.e., sending athletes to compete in the Olympics) with Hitler at some point” I fail to see where sending athletes to the Olympics is equivalent to sending Iraq military funding to fight Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. Pointing out that Rumsfeld has a picture shaking hands with Saddam Hussein was merely a rhetorical tool to show that sometimes dictators are our friends, and then a couple decades they are our enemies.
Just War scholarship holds that war is only permissible for a minimal number of reasons. They include self-defense against aggression of oneself or one’s ally (which we were not a victim of any attack by Iraq and neither were our allies) and more recently, a push has been made for allowing it for humanitarian intervention. Moreover, Just War scholars are hesitant to countenance wars of preemption, though the war in Iraq was more a war of prevention, which Just War Theory specifically does not allow. Some scholars do believe that the U.S. could have been justified in deposing Saddam in the first Gulf War but that was then and by 2003, the immediacy of his threats had diminished and our claims that he was stockpiling WMDs were false. And here, I might reiterate: read a book. You will find no reputable Just War theorists arguing that Iraq was a just war. Or here: http://tinyurl.com/3x6cssj
joeshmoe 2 years ago
@flips88 Those who would, post-hoc, from an Ivory Tower cast about mighty terms like Just War and Unjust War forget two basic tenets of historical analysis 1) A mistake is to be determined in light of information reasonably available at the time before the decision, and 2) ALL history is revisionist. Recent history probably more so.
"Salus Populi Suprema Lex." The safety of the people is the highest law. Without delving too much into what Bush knew/should have known, it seems awfully "preemptive" to immediately discard self-defense as a justification for the Iraq war. I'm not saying it was, but what I am saying is that anyone who immediately discards a justification of self-defense is sticking their head into the sand. The sad truth is that we just don't know. We won't know, and later historians will have a better idea of whether or not it was justified. I think the term self-defense gets tossed around a bit haphazardly. The doctrine of Self-Defense does not hold that you may only strike back whenever you are hit; i.e., you don't have to wait till the horse has left the barn. It means you reasonably think that you are about to be harmed, and you respond proportionally. Maybe the U.S. didn't respond proportionally. I don't know. How do you respond proportionally to a danger posed by a military dictator with a demonstrated contempt for human life? Reasonable minds could differ on this. Even conceding that there was no self-defense justification on those grounds, some people (and I would argue most leaders) are probably disciples of the Realist camp rather than a Just-War camp. From a realist perspective, war is justified whenever your national interests say they are, the global consequences be damned. But a debate on the merits (or lack thereof) of nationalism can probably wait. In the end, does it really matter whether the war was started on just or unjust grounds? Do you really accomplish anything by throwing stones and saying that U.S. soldiers died in each other's arms for unjust causes? Do you really think that they are "tainted" by a mistake made by a bunch of old white men in big White House on Pennsylvania Avenue? I don't think so. I suppose I think Bush is to blame. Unfortunately, we appear to have another President who holds non-American life to an equally low standard: the predator drone attacks are gross violations of ANY theory war or international law. It is murder, and the blood is on Obama's hands. He just wears gloves a bit more than Bush: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/08/opinion/main6377556.shtml Maybe we agree on this more than it appears.
cacremin 2 years ago
There's nothing offensive about the exhibit. Their premise is that the war should not have happened. I, and most people who've been paying attention, agree with that. Therefore, those soldiers did not need to die. That's all the exhibit is saying. You're trying to twist it into something personal, but that is to ignore the history of the American Friend's Service Committee. They've spent the entire 20th century fighting against unjust wars and they know the most effective way is to show the cost. That's not disparaging the troops, and to say that it is makes you sound completely ridiculous.