Update: Magna Cum MoJo
News: Five years ago we profiled a single father laid off and worried about his teenage daughter. Then a generous reader contributed $8,000 toward her education. Here's what happened next.
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in the november/december 2003 issue, Mother Jones ran an article I wrote about the impact of President Bush's domestic policies on a small town in North Carolina. The piece told the story of Sam Jefferson, a single father laid off after 30 years at a local textile factory; the company had gone into bankruptcy in part because of trade agreements negotiated to facilitate the Iraq War. With local jobs drying up, and federal student aid frozen thanks to a Bush administration budget cut, Jefferson was worried that his teenage daughter wouldn't be able to go to college. But after the story ran, an anonymous reader sent the family, by way of Mother Jones, $8,000 to help cover Tiffany's college tuition. We're thrilled to report that on May 3, Tiffany graduated cum laude from Elizabeth City State University with a bachelor's in social work, and she's been accepted for graduate school at the University of South Carolina. "I really appreciate the help" from the donor, says Tiffany, who paid for the rest of her education with scholarships and loans. "It did a lot for me and my family." Her father, meanwhile, works two jobs—as a mail carrier, and at the deli at Wal-Mart, 30 miles away.
Congrats to Tiffany! A real American who's not afraid of a challenge and completes her dreams when given a chance!
Date: August 4, 2008 12:03:08 PM PDT
To:
Subject: law-students: 3,500 Oregon National Guard Soldiers to be Deployed to Iraq
Reply-To: "Amy Seely"
Below you will find an email encouraging Oregonians to write letters to our Senators concerning the recent decision to deploy 3,500 National Guardsman to Iraq in the coming year. The email is written by Dain Jensen, a close friend of mine who is not a UO Law student, so if you would like to contact him directly with questions or comments, please email me for his information. Dain, as part of the National Guard Reserves, spent 12 months in Iraq following 6 months of pre-deployment training out-of-state. He, and other soldiers he deployed with have had a really hard time getting the treatment and counseling they need to return to their "civilian" lives. Following his email is an article published on Sunday in The Oregonian by a journalist that was embedded with Dain's unit while he was there. It provides more details about this new deployment plan, and what that means to Oregonians.
This is not intended in any way to start a flame war, so please respond to me directly if you have concerns about my email. If anyone chooses to write letters, I will happily pay your postage and even mail them for you-that is how much this means to me.
Thank you,
Amy Seely
A Request from Dainon Jensen:
I know that not everybody in this list is an Oregonian. I also know that there are very differing opinions on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That said, the Oregon National Guard has pulled WAY more than its share of man-days in direct harm's way, regardless of whether you think that the Pentagon's use of the NG is justified (it isn't). Not only does this have horrible consequences, both immediately and delayed, on our state's families. It will have huge costs on our state's communities, as we are taking these men (and some women) out of employable status, making them essentially unfit for civilian society, and then WE will be the ones stuck paying the bill, as the Army and VA medical systems have no effective plan for reintegrating them back into our society. How employable is a man who is gone one of every three years, when the first sixth months are spent retraining for his job, and he never fully re-acclimates to civilian society (it takes at least two years, IF you are ready to start right away, and most aren't). And guess what, we are the ones (Oregonians) who end up paying the bill, in terms of extended unemployment, judicial proceedings, substance abuse, etc. The fact is, no amount of hollering any of our parts will stop this deployment, but we might be able to cause a change towards taking care of them when they come home.
As an anecdote, my family, close friends and I have been the only ones who have borne the responsibility of my reintegration, and it has been a slow and, at times, painful process. Most of the members of the NG do not have the means available to me. What of those people? I don't have an answer to propose, but I am asking that everybody on this list, who is an Oregonian, take 30 minutes sometime in the next year (preferably this week) and write both of our Senators letting them know that there needs to be a ROCK SOLID plan for bringing them back home. Please.
Dainon Jensen
Date: August 4, 2008 12:03:08 PM PDT
To:
Subject: law-students: 3,500 Oregon National Guard Soldiers to be Deployed to Iraq
Smith, Gordon H. - (R - OR)
Class II
404 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-3753
Web Form: gsmith.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
Wyden, Ron - (D - OR)
Class III
230 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5244
Web Form: wyden.senate.gov/contact/
DEPLOYMENT OF OREGON SOLDIERS
The plan to deploy 3,500 Oregon National Guard to provide
security for convoys in Iraq next year should have Oregonians asking
questions
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Oregonian
O n the record, the men and women of the Oregon National Guard salute and say
they are ready to do their duty when the 41st Brigade Combat Team is summoned to
Iraq next year. They are soldiers, they understand the chain of command and they
know the "Big Army" doesn't care much what they think anyway.
But here's what they can't say, at least publicly:
This is a mission from hell.
This mission, to provide security for convoys carrying fuel, food, medical
supplies and other items from base to base, means that the soldiers of the 41st
Brigade are scheduled to spend a year scattered around a shooting gallery, with
no ability to control events by participating in neighborhood meetings, training
police or raiding houses -- all things that Oregon soldiers have done in
previous deployments.
They will be, one officer said, "IED magnets."
As such, they are less likely to fire their weapons than to be fired at. And
when they see one of their colleagues killed by an improvised explosive device,
they will inevitably ask themselves if it was worth the life of a friend to
escort a load of lettuce, diesel fuel and toilet paper from one military base to
another.
Oregonians generally don't realize the implications of next year's
deployment, which will be the largest from Oregon in 60 years. It will gather
about 3,500 soldiers -- people from every community in the state -- and send
them in the middle of summer to Iraq, where they will endure 10 or so months of
duty escorting people and goods from one military base to another. Meanwhile,
the Guard's strength in Oregon will be cut almost in half, raising questions
about the state's ability to respond quickly and effectively to disasters like
the Vernonia floods or widespread forest fires.
Of course, a lot can change between now and next May, when the brigade is
scheduled to mobilize, first for 60 days of training in Georgia, then for 10
months of duty in Iraq. For one thing, the new U.S. president may decide not to
send the brigade overseas at all. Or he may elect instead to send it to
Afghanistan, or give it a different mission in Iraq or elsewhere. There are no
guarantees at this stage about how the mission will play out.
But brigade commanders and soldiers must operate on the best information they
have today, which is that the Oregon brigade will be broken down into smaller
units, scattered around southern and western Iraq, and be given jobs that most
soldiers would prefer not to do.
"I think it's a very dangerous mission," Gov. Ted Kulongoski said in a
telephone interview. "There are things the active-duty Army doesn't want to do,
and I'm very offended by it."
Kulongoski sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on July 10
expressing disappointment in the role the Pentagon is asking the 41st Brigade to
play.
"Using (the National Guard brigades) in ad hoc organizations structured
specifically for the mission is seen by our soldiers as making them 'fillers'
rather than trained, cohesive units," Kulongoski wrote. "It sends the signal to
them that they are second-rate soldiers and units."
Col. Daniel Hokanson, who commands the 41st Brigade, is preparing as if the
brigade will be given the mission that the Defense Department described to it
this winter. But he hopes to find a way to at least hold the brigade together in
a single chain of command, rather than breaking it into 26 separate security
companies that are attached to active-army units. He is talking with the
commander of the Arkansas brigade who has the job now, and with the commander of
the Texas brigade that will replace it, in an effort to reconfigure the
command-and-control aspect of the deployment. But that effort relies on the
willingness of active-duty commanders and others higher in the military
hierarchy.
"Ideally, the brigade will have the opportunity to shape that," Hokanson
said. "It's not the ideal mission. It's not what the brigade has trained to do.
But the brigade is the best thing the Army has" to provide force security in
Baghdad and south and west of the city.
The mission is going to startle some of the soldiers, predicted one.
"It's going to be much harder on the young guys who have no idea what they'll
be going into," said a noncommissioned officer who has deployed previously.
"They're not going to be doing anything they were trained to do. They'll be
sitting in their vehicles feeling like 'I'm being wasted. I'm not facing the
enemy.' "
Nobody has done a precise count yet, but Hokanson thinks about half of the
soldiers of the 41st have deployed once already, with the largest chunk going to
Afghanistan at a time when that country was relatively peaceful. About 30
percent of the previously deployed have gone twice, estimates Maj. Arnold
Strong, the brigade's public affairs officer.
This suggests the challenges associated with the other end of the mission:
when the soldiers return home. Already, the state is grappling with a wave of
post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses, traumatic brain injuries, divorces and
even some suicides. Families in every corner of the state have been touched by
the war. Employers are struggling to abide by the law that requires them to hold
jobs open for deployed soldiers, despite the difficulties it poses for them. How
much more of this will wash over Oregon in the months and years after the
brigade comes home in 2010?
"We will see a continued rising number of marriage and family casualties of
the war," said Dr. Jim Sardo, program manager for the PTSD clinical team and
substance program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Portland. Further,
he noted, this deployment will dramatically increase the number of veterans who
have deployed more than once. And that, he said, "increases the likelihood of
long-term mental-health consequences."
For the roughly half of the brigade that has never deployed, the planned
mission in Iraq will come like a blast from a furnace. They will fly from
Georgia to a desert where temperatures routinely top 120 degrees, they will be
saddled with heavy armored vests and told to ride down roads where other
soldiers have been killed, and not to fire their weapons unless they determine
they are in imminent danger of attack.
They won't be in the fight unless fired upon. They won't interact deeply with
Iraqi civilians. But they will be targets for anybody who aims to disrupt
military operations -- and plenty of such people remain in Iraq.
Attacks and casualties are indeed down sharply in Iraq -- a benefit from the
adoption of Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency tactics, as well as by the
quiescence of the Sadrists, the shifting attitudes of the Sunni Arabs and the
routing of many elements of al-Qaida in Iraq. Yet U.S. soldiers are still being
killed by explosions in the country. In July, at this writing, the Pentagon has
announced the deaths by hostile action of two Marines and three or possibly four
soldiers in Iraq -- including at least three who were killed when their vehicles
were attacked.
It's highly likely that some members of the 41st Brigade won't come home
alive. That should cause Oregonians to think deeply about what their fellow
citizens are being asked to do.
"I think everybody is worried about the continual deployment of the Guard,"
said Kulongoski. "I think sometimes we're asking too much of these kids and
their families."
Associate editor Mike Francis has covered military issues since first
embedding with Oregon National Guard troops in Iraq in 2004. Read his Oregon at
War blog at http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonatwar . He can be reached at
503-412-7014 or mikefrancis@news.oregonian.com .
--
Amy E. Seely
Candidate for Juris Doctor, 2009
University of Oregon School of Law
And according to staticstics from the N.S.C. more people die in car accidents in the U.S. alone, than die from ALL of international terrorism combined.
We need to stop falling for these neo-con scare tactics.
On the topic of the reader who sent $8,000.00 to someone they didn't even know..well, if there were more people like you, we wouldn't be living in such a messed up world. Bless your heart. And to the graduate--good choice of a career where you can pay back this kindness in your work. We do need more stories like these. Unfortunately, these are extraordinary people..especially the donor.