Happy 5th Anniversary, Take Two

Where were you 5 years ago today? Most of us were probably keeping a close eye on the news, knowing that President Bush's 48 hour deadline for Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq would soon be coming to an end.

We lived in Norfolk, Virginia at the time, a few miles down Hampton Boulevard from Naval Station Norfolk. My husband's XO tour had him serving on a destroyer in the USS HARRY S. TRUMAN (CVN 76) Carrier Strike Group. Our boys were 5 and 2, then, and on March 19, 2003, they were very much missing their dad, and I was worried about what was to come.

My husband's ship was in the Red Sea, having been among the first ships that transited the Suez Canal about a week earlier after the Turkish government turned down our request (and sizable sum of money) to use their land and air space to attack Iraq from the North. Communications being what they were then, my husband and I were able to send and receive emails back and forth daily. In addition to keeping a set of journals with news clippings from the war (starting with his deployment in early December, 2002 and culminating with his return - on my birthday of all days), for Christmas in 2003, I gave him a journal of our email correspondence during his deployment. Here's our back and forth on March 19-20, 2003 (I have, of course, edited out any information deemed "classified" by me - but left in all the spelling mistakes):

From me to him:
XXXX - I'M WATCHING TV NOW, IT'S ALMOST 10:00PM OUR TIME ON WEDS 3/19 AND IT LOOKS LIKE THE WAR IS BEGINING...PRESIDENT BUSH TO SPEAK TO THE NATION AT 10:15PM TONIGHT...WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM THINKING OF YOU AND THAT GREAT CREW AND WISHING ALL OF YOU THE BEST. I KNOW THAT YOU WILL DO THE JOB YOU WERE SENT TO DO AND I KNOW THAT YOU WILL DO THE BEST JOB POSSIBLE...YOU ARE A GREAT MAN AND A TRUE PATRIOT...PLEASE STAY SAFE AND KNOW THAT MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU...I KNOW IT WILL NOT BE AN EASY FEW DAYS BUT MY SPIRITS WILL BE HIGH KNOWING THAT YOU ARE PROTECTING ALL OF US BACK HERE...I FEEL SAFER KNOWING THE USS XXXXXXXX AND HER CREW ARE OUT THERE DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE... TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF XXXX ...NEVER FORGET FOR A MOMENT HOW TRULY LOVED YOU ARE BACK HERE IN THE STATES....
SENDING YOU LOTS AND LOTS OF LOVE
C

And his response:

Hey there,

All is well with us. We're staying busy and keeping up with events. Don't worry about us. We're ready and we know what to do! And we're gonna do it!

Remind those who call not to discuss where we are and what we may/may not be doing over the phone. just let them knwo we're doing great and very proud to be doing our duty for everyone back home. We have not forgotten.....all the way back to 1979 we're owed a payback. Now it is time to get one. Remind people of some forgotten fallen: Desert One, 1980, 8 dead; Beruit, 1983, 283 dead; USS STARK, 1986, 37 dead; First Gulf War, 1991, 165 dead; Khobar Towers, 1996, 19 dead; East Africa, 1998, 6 dead; USS COLE, 2000, 18 dead; Pentagon, 2001, 197 dead. WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN OUR FALLEN COMRADES. Now, we will get our due.

I love you.
Me

[As a personal aside, when I read that, I wonder how in the world anyone could classify either me or my husband "anti-American", but that's more a reflection of the people who utter such nonsense than anything else.]

Reading that, I think it's amazing how much can change in 5 years. My view on the war has certainly evolved, as I'm sure it has for many people who read about what has happened there over the past 5 years. It's sometimes hard for me to grapple with the fact that my husband's actions firing missiles at regime targets may have killed innocent Iraqis. It's been difficult for me not to feel as if I were used - that my support of my husband and his shipmates was used to create an Iraq that has fallen very short of the goals set out in 2003. I look at Iraq today - a government run by theocratic Shia muslims with close ties to Iran, and I think, is that really what I sent my husband off to fight for? Is that what nearly 4,000 American servicemen and women have died for, and what 30,0000 Americans have been wounded for? Is that really worth $1.5 billion dollars per week?

I wonder what Iraq will look like 5 years from now. I do not think the government will be friendly to the United States and Israel, something that the Iraq war planners told us was the goal. I do not think the government will be respectful of women's rights, something also sold to us as a reason for the war. I think Iraq will look much like it does today. I think we will still be having arguments about the number of troops serving there. I think there will still be several hundred (at least) killed there every year, and many more wounded. I think the country will be more fundamentalist, if that's even possible.

I'm not optimistic about the outcome there, and that's a shame, because as the emails I posted show, my husband and I were completely supportive of the war effort and the grand goals the United States had for Iraq. I suspect we are probably more representative of what Americans really think about the war than George Bush and his most ardent followers, who believe as strongly in the Iraq War today as they did on March 19, 2003.