IT’s My Turn

Write to Your President

Don’t tell me to write to my congressmen. They don’t deliver the mail on Sundays. Telegrams have gone out of vogue since email has taken over. Most Congressional and Senatorial offices will tell you that snail mail will get your message to your representative faster, even with the anthrax screening. You see the email while it may give you immediate delivery puts everyone’s message on the same level from associates to enemies so discerning which one to read and which to simply let an auto-reply message to return to becomes a task of software.

My son is doing KP duty at Camp Raider in Tikrit. No my son didn’t swear at his commanding officer. No he wasn’t caught drinking while on duty. He simply was trying to carry out one of his legal rights. He filed for Contentious Objection status in the fourth year of his three-year term serving Uncle Sam. How does that math work out you ask? Well it surprised me when I discovered what a stop loss order was as well.

With the violence peaking this week since the President’s vibrato “Mission Accomplished” nearly a year ago, my son is seeking a way to end his term that should have ended three months ago. President Bush is trying to conceive a way to keep his own term extended for another four years. I know that my term as a parent will only end with a death and I can only hope that it will end with my death in the future, not end when an Army vehicle comes down my driveway to inform my of me son’s untimely demise.

A population that doesn’t know what it wants now surrounds my son. Iraqi’s are sitting on the fence while factions chart out their strategy for gaining power. The violence, we are told is only carried out by the extremists, terrorists and freedom haters, but we see our military staff closing down newspapers and bombing mosques. Shiite and Sunni religious leaders fear that if they don’t make their voices heard now they won’t get a seat at the table come July 1^st.

“Do you suppose the White House has a free speech inbox zone? “

The population that surrounds me isn’t fence sitters, they are more like fence builders. The split within our population seems to be fairly even but much further away from taking action then seems the population of Iraq. Some Americans are thinking that they can take action in November but the chances of that being much more than 50% of those eligible seems up to people who are disengaged from the money politics of the 21^st century. My father would often ask at the election night’s supper table who my mother was going to vote for. My mother would respond that it was a secret ballot and that she need not reveal that before or after her vote. Dad would just respond with, “Well I just wanted to see if you were going to cancel me out.” Perhaps that is why when we do get numbers in the range of 60% of eligible voters voting we call it high.

Civil disobedience doesn’t seem to be a viable vehicle to get my message across because I’m not sure anyone would stop by to take notice even if I did come up with something unique. Free Speech Zones when the President comes to visit my state are only one step away from Repressed Speech Zones. Busses and other large vehicles are often parked to separate our highest leader from where I would likely get to ask my questions. I would have more of a chance having my protest being heard by my dead parents than by any top ranking official that lives in or near the White House.

News stories that are meant to inform me of the situation a half a world away seem sterile and incomplete. Not that I want to see the bloodshed and anarchy, its just that when you know it is happening yet the press doesn’t show it, you begin to wonder if they are trying to convey a message or hide the facts so that they don’t convey a message. The removal of pictures and video from our major news source websites concerning the ex-soldier’s, now mercenary’s body’s desecration, does not assure me that I’m getting the whole story.

So with keystrokes to the keyboard I set out to have my voice magnified by a national publication. In hopes that there are other parents out there who will hear my voice and others who have loved ones as soldiers in harms way witnessing the fence sitters and the active participants in what we call a nation building process. Will the letters to our congressmen and senators be filed or even read? We are not even sure our loved ones that sleep each night with terror outside their barracks will get a chance to read our mail and email.

So I won’t be writing my senators or congressman any time soon. Their email inboxes and anthrax detectors are full of messages like mine. Besides I’ve written to them before and now it’s time for me to move up the chain of command. I need to write to the President. Do you suppose the White House has a free speech inbox zone? He has told the press that he doesn’t read newspapers, that he gets briefed on what’s happening from his staff. Perhaps I need to write to Donald Rumsfeld or better yet someone more intellectual like Dr. Rice. She might even be spending weekend near his family while my son spends his time peeling potatoes and washing dishes in Tikrit, Iraq.

Steve Wagener lives in west central Wisconsin. His son Nicholas started his active duty term in January of 2001 the same time George W. Bush did. Nicholas has served in Kosovo, Germany and now Iraq. His expected discharge date is May of 2005.