September 24, 2003
The Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
Generational Casualties
By STAN GOFF
My grandson was born last December at Womack Army Medical Center, one of
the finest medical facilties in the country now. The labor and delivery
room was nicer than many hotel rooms. The care and attention was
nonpareil. Military medical care -- now under idiotic pressure to
privatize -- is proof that profit is often antithetical to the provision
of quality services.
My grandson was born there because his father -- my son -- was entitled
to this quality care as a member of the Army. My son is now languishing
in a former palace along the Euphrates River, surrounded by millions of
people who don't want him there, waiting for mail that takes four to
five weeks to arrive, keeping an ear attuned for incoming mortars, and
gazing at pictures of his son -- our grandson -- who will not know him
when he returns.
My grandson is perfect, and I don't just say that because I have become
a grandparent cliche -- which I have, with my office and home both
converted into shrines full of baby photos. He is perfect in that he has
all his assigned parts, they function in coordination with one another,
and his growth and development are proceeding, as the medical folk say,
normally. He was born with great lungs and the grip of a longshoreman,
he never seems to get sick, and he seems very interested in all people,
in all music, in squirrels, and in passing automobiles. He seems to go
into a trance when a breeze blows on his face, and he chatters and blows
raspberries when he is excited.
I am crazy in love with this child, spoill him shamelessly, have already
dedicated a book to him, and I look forward to more grandchildren,
having three more kids who are well into their reproductive years.
At a recent Congressional briefing organized by Congresswoman Maxine
Waters, ten military family members, myself included, testified about
our opposition to Bushfeld's War. Afterwards, during dinner together,
one of the young military spouses told me that she and her husband, now
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128638/counterpunchmaga>
stationed in Iraq, had made a decision not to have children. Since then,
those if us involved with the Bring Them Home Now campaign are hearing
this more and more from military couples. They are worried about
depleted uranium.
My grandson is learning to walk, and he is immensely curious, which
makes for a lot of vigilance and work. But he didn't require massive
surgery to survive to his ninth month, nor does he require a battery of
experts and specialists like he would if he were born without a thyroid
gland, or if he required a drain inserted into his cranial vault, or if
his digestive tract were disconnected.
This happens a lot more than it should to Iraqi children, and it may
happen to American children born to parents now serving in Iraq. That's
why many couples in the military are now deciding that they will not
have children. Here is an excert from a letter on the Bring Them Home
Now web site: "My husband and I have decided not to have children. We
are afraid that something that we've been exposed to in Iraq may cause
birth defects. This whole war has turned my life upside down and is even
affecting my life years into the future."
For those who are not feint-hearted,
<http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html> you can visit
this site where there are some very disturbing images of "extreme birth
defects" in Iraq, that are occurring at alarming rates, lest anyone
think this is an irrational fear being expressed by these military
couples.
I am a big fan of these kinds of images, because the sense of decorum of
our so-called press that excludes "offensive" images is a form of
complicity. War is offensive. If we are to understand war, we need to
see the bodies. People who support it should have to see it. Likewise,
if you want to understand the reality of what is going on in the bodies
of the troops, you need to see these terribly deformed children. We need
to broadcast images of dead people, maimed people, deformed children,
including our own dead and maimed and deformed, and we need to do it
often. Anything else is denial.
The only people who seem to be denying that depleted uranium may
actually be a significant causative agent in these hideous deformities
are the governments of the United States and Great Britain, who use DU
munitions in Iraq. What a surprise!
But Ross B. Mirkarimi, of the Arms Control Research Centre said, "Unborn
children of the region [are] being asked to pay the highest price, the
integrity of their DNA." This was a report published in 1992 and largely
applied (or so people thought) to Iraqis, so it didn't seem to matter
here, even in many cases to those in the West who were studying DU.
Let's face it, the slow murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis,
disproportionaly children, by sanctions not only did not arouse American
outrage, the US Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, said -- when
confronted publicly with the numbers -- that it was worth it. (It
remains utterly amazing to me that we still talk very little here about
how racism underwrites American foreign and domestic policy. But the
reality is, people often have to themselves come under attack before
they wake up to reality and begin to recognize their shared humanity.)
The military knows damn well that depleted uranium,
insecticide-impregnated uniforms, insect repellents, toxic smoke, and
the questionable cocktail of inadequately tested immunizations they have
given may be dangerous, alone or in combination. They are playing the
odds that they can squeeze the necessary three, six, or twenty years out
of a troop before all the biomedical chickens come home to roost, then
-- with the able assistance of the entire US government -- deny that
they are responsible.
No one I know of ever signed an enlistment contract that said "I herein
surrender the integrity of my DNA." But more and more, it seems, that
may be exactly what they've done. What shall I tell my son if he wants
to become the father of a second child?
Show up in DC on October 25th, and show up mean and angry. Goddamn
decorum! And mail the images from that website to
president@whitehouse.gov.
Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous
<http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart.100.exe/store/goff/hideous_dr
eam.html?L+scstore+jssh4901+1060182363> Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the
US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of the upcoming book
"Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member of the
BRING THEM HOME NOW! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> coordinating
committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of
an active duty soldier. Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org.
Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff09242003.html
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)
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