Ohio 2005: The Chickenhawk War

The author of that article, Dick Feagler, is still on the job. Thirty-seven years later, he writes for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, now lashing out at the war in Iraq, at those who have "a bland, nitwit allegiance to the blood and death as if the carnage in Iraq were some kind of Olympic sport." As in 1968, so now in the Ohio heartland, where the burden of death once again falls heavy, the war makes ever less sense to those most involved. Concern for the well-being of Americans in uniform goes hand-in-hand with the rising dissent. Like many other Ohioan columnists, Feagler often couples his attacks on the war with prayers for the troops, even telling readers how to send care packages and letters of support.

Underlying the two moments -- May 1968/August 2005 -- is the fact that, once again, our wartime sacrifices fall disproportionately on the working class and, with U.S. deaths approaching 2,000, and thousands more soldiers and Marines horribly wounded, a recent CBS poll found that 57% of Americans now believe the war in Iraq not worth the loss of American lives. Another poll showed that only 34% support Bush's handling of the war, just two points higher than the comparable figure for President Lyndon Johnson after the Tet Offensive.

As in 1968, so in 2005, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has pointed out, "The loudest of the hawks are the least likely to send their sons or daughters off" to war. George Bush continues to call the war a "noble cause" and "the central front in the Global War on Terrorism" even though 60% of Americans have come to believe that it has made them less safe. His five-week-long vacation is only the most obvious symbol of the obscene gulf in safety between the advocates of the war and its victims. That gulf is at the very heart of a growing disaffection in places like Ohio, where earlier this month 20 Marines from the same Reserve unit (3rd Battalion, 25th Marines) were killed in Iraq within 72 hours. That unit is headquartered in Brook Park, Ohio, a working-class suburb adjacent to Parma, and the losses included 14 men from Ohio, bringing the state's total fatalities to more than 90.

Sam Fulwood, another Plain Dealer columnist, responded to these losses by recalling Bush's 2003 "bring ‘em on" taunting of the Iraqi insurgents. "Two years ago, tucked in the comfort and safety of the White House's Roosevelt Room," wrote Fulwood, "the president challenged ‘anybody who wants to harm American troops.' John Wayne couldn't have said it with more cowboy swagger. ‘Bring them on.'" As Fulwood concludes with a stridency rarely seen in Midwestern newspapers until recently, "The chicken hawk got his wish."

Now, for the first time, not just in Ohio but all over the country, media outlets are beginning to raise a previously forbidden question: Should we withdraw? As the Cincinnati Enquirer framed it on Aug. 7, in response to the local casualties, "Do we seek revenge? Do we continue as usual? Or do we leave?" The last question, once asked only in a whisper if at all, is suddenly being voiced loudly and urgently. And when it was raised by an antiwar Iraq War Marine veteran named Paul Hackett, running as a Democrat in a special election for Congress, he came within two percentage points of winning in a district east of Cincinnati that had given George Bush a whopping 64% of its votes in November, 2004, and has elected a Republican to the House of Representatives almost automatically for the past 30 years.

In presidential elections, Ohio is often spoken of as a "bellwether state." It may turn out to play the same role when it comes to America's wars. What we are witnessing in Ohio and elsewhere is a real sea change in public opinion being led by people with the closest personal connections of all to the President's war. Disillusionment has soared not only because of mounting casualties and the obvious lack of progress in quelling the Iraqi insurgency, but also because the military is strained to the limits keeping 130,000 troops in Iraq. Many thousands of Americans are in their second tours of duty with third tours looming on the horizon.

During the Vietnam era, Lyndon Johnson decided to rely almost exclusively on the draft and the active-duty military to fight the war, hoping to keep casualties (and so their impact) largely restricted to young, mostly unmarried, and powerless individuals. The Reserve forces, he understood, tended to be older, married, and more rooted in their communities. Now, the Reserves and the National Guard make up half of U.S. combat forces in Iraq, a figure that has doubled since early 2004. This increasing reliance on the Reserves only serves to accelerate antiwar resistance among military families.

Soldiers, veterans, and their families have, as they did in the early 1970s, once again moved to the forefront of a growing, grass roots struggle to end an unpopular war. Cindy Sheehan's impassioned opposition to the war has not only gained extraordinary media attention but seems to have ignited a genuine outpouring of public support. Many who may have feared that public opposition to the war could be taken as unpatriotic or unsupportive of American troops, have been emboldened by Sheehan's example to demand that her son's death, and all the others, not be used to justify further bloodshed in a war that cannot be convincingly justified by an administration distant from their lives and their suffering.

Christian Appy teaches history at the University of Massachusetts and is the author of Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam and Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, which is now out in paperback.

[Note: The full text of Clark Dougan's account of Memorial Day, 1968 in Parma, Ohio, excerpted from Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, can be read by clicking here and scrolling down.]

Copyright 2005 Christian Appy

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