Reflecting on five years of war in Iraq

More than $500 billion spent.

At least 3,990 U.S. soldiers killed.

Five years.

Those are some of the numbers that are pertinent today - the five-year mark in a military campaign that does not yet have an end in sight.

On March 19, 2003, the Bush administration launched 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraq. U.S. troops entered into the country soon after. The invasion was swift. Securing the peace has been painfully slow.

There were only a scattering of remembrances planned for today. At Canandaigua Academy, students and faculty will spend the day reading the names of all military personnel who died in the war and their ranks and ages.

Diane Stanley, one of the advisors for People for Peace, the program's sponsor, said the name-reading doesn't signify protest or support of the war. Instead, it is to honor those who fought, she said.

That's a distinction often played for politics but local veteran Jim Peterson is among those who notes that, despite differing political views, Americans support the troops. Perhaps no one supports them more than those who have an idea what they're facing: Veterans.

Jack Turner is a World War II veteran who lives in Gorham. Turner enlisted in the Army in 1942 and served in the 82nd Airborne Division. He took part in the D-Day invasion of Western Europe and helped liberate the Dachau death camp in Germany. Turner, 88, said that, five years ago, he thought the United States did the right thing by toppling the regime of Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein.

"I felt the enemy was Saddam Hussein," he said.

But after the overthrow, the United States should have withdrawn, he said.

"We didn't prove weapons of mass destruction," Turner said.

It was wrong to stay on to police Iraq and send our military forces - many of them reservists - to die there, he said.

In other wars, such as World War II, he said, "we knew who our enemy was and we could fight him on land and air and sea."

But this is different, he said. Troops are dying from roadside bombs and reservists are being sent to fight multiple tours.

"They go one, two times, and the third time they get killed," said Turner. "It keeps going on and on, with no end in sight."

While they fought in different conflicts, Army veteran Jim Peterson shares Turner's perspective on the enemy.

In Vietnam, "at least we knew who our enemy was," Peterson said, noting that in Iraq, the enemy strikes anonymously, with improvised explosives.

"I would rather walk the jungles of Vietnam than the streets of Bagdad," said Peterson, who served as an airborne ranger.

Like most people - veterans or not - Peterson said he had no idea of the types of dangers the soldiers in Iraq would have to contend with.

The 54-year-old Canandaigua resident said he believes - as he did five years ago - that the United States shouldn't have withdrawn so quickly after the Gulf War in 1991.

"We stopped short, we should have followed through," he said.

That decision set the stage for later troubles in Iraq, he said.

As for the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, Peterson said he is thankful that Americans are welcoming soldiers home from this war and giving them the support they deserve. Despite differing political views, Americans are supporting the troops, he said. That is a change from 30 years ago, said Peterson.

"There were no yellow ribbons around with Vietnam," he recalled.

Yellow ribbons are, of course, back. So are Blue Stars.

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, members of the American Legion Post 120 in Palmyra wanted to do something for local families who had loved ones in the military. They decided to resurrect a nationwide program that originated during World War I by handing out Blue Star banners to those families.

The banners are small white flags, bordered in red, with a blue star in the center to symbolize the family member serving in the armed forces. Recipients hang the banner in a window or other visible spot at their home.

When the war started in 2003, the Legion stepped up its efforts and called on the Palmyra Village Board to adopt a resolution in support of local soldiers. The board adopted a resolution in March 2003, careful not to take a stance, though, on the war itself.

Five years later, Ann Guest of Palmyra says the Legion is keeping the home fires burning with the banners.

"We'll do it as long as there is a man or woman in service," said Guest, secretary of the Post. "As long as this Post exists, we will continue to do it."

Guest has not kept count of how many have been handed out, though she knows there have been several dozen. Each time a new banner is donated, the Legion takes a photograph of the recipient family. The photo, in turn, is posted on a board in the Legion on Cuyler Street; the board now contains about 40 photos, Guest said.

Guest, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War but did not go oversees, said back in 2003 that the banners were aimed at comforting the families of servicemen and women, as well as countering some of the anti-war protests in the United States and abroad. The post is not taking a stand for or against the war in Iraq, she said, but rather, a "pro-troops" stance.

"I support them," Guest said of the troops, "but I want them home."

Letters, plus

Riley Willey of Victor wants the troops home, too - one in particular. But until then, she's got the next best thing.

Willey is able to have face-to-face conversations with boyfriend Martin Galbraith most every morning even though he's in Iraq. Using Web cameras installed in their computers, the two catch up several times a week on the latest goings on in their lives. She can not only hear Galbraith's voice but also get a close-up look at him. In between, they talk on the phone - he has access to a pay-phone where he is stationed - and they write letters. On Valentine's Day, he e-mailed her a photo of himself standing in front of a cement wall in the desert on which he spray-painted "Happy Valentines Day Riley: Iraq '07-'08"

Thanks to advances in technology, the young couple are able to keep in touch with much more ease than couples caught up in past wars. But that doesn't mean it has been easy. Nothing compares, after all, to being able to hold your loved one. And there is constant worry.

Galbraith had a close call on an earlier tour in Iraq. Then 19 and a lance corporal, he was injured in May 2006 when the truck he was driving at the end of a convoy struck an IED - improvised explosive device - buried in the sand. He was rushed to a hospital in Fallujah where he spent four days recuperating.

Galbraith returned to Iraq for another tour last spring, after spending three weeks in Victor with family and friends. His mother, Roxann Ammerman, says she copes with having her only child at war by taking things "one day at a time" and by not watching the news. She finds support from Willey, who moved in with her in December.

"You have your ups and your downs," Ammerman said. "It's hard when you don't hear from them for a few days."

The two women say they feel closer to Galbraith when they are together. Like Willey, Ammerman talks to her son with the Web camera. She also keeps in touch with him with the Internet site Myspace, where they both have personal pages. A post on his page says "Can't wait to be home!!!!!"

For Galbraith, the end is in sight. He is due to finish this tour at the end of April and return home May 3.

"He's very much antsy," said Ammerman, who spoke to her son Tuesday morning. "He's ready to come home, that's for sure."

What will Willey do when she first sees Galbraith step off the plane at Rochester International Airport?

"Oh my gosh," she said, "I hope I don't faint!"

"I'm probably going to cry," Willey added. "It will just be such a relief. I'm getting butterflies just thinking about it."

The long vigil

The war has not been without its critics. One person who has opposed the war is Hobart and William Smith Colleges political-science Prof. Kevin Dunn. Five years ago, Dunn shouted his protest of the new war into a microphone during a rally in front of the Scandling Center at the Geneva campus.

He said he helped organize the rally, attended by about 100 staffers and students, out of frustration "at seeing at that time the Bush administration ignoring global protest," as well as "seeing the nation go down the wrong path."

Reached by phone this week, he said, "Unfortunately, all my concerns have come true."

"We knew that there would be a quick victory in the short term - but that would mean long occupations that would increase our insecurity around the world," he said. "We're not winning the war on terror, we're not winning the war in Iraq."

When Dunn's photograph - shouting and pointing a finger - appeared in the Messenger, he said, "most students knew where I stood."

In the classroom nowadays, Dunn said he shares his stance on the war, when appropriate, though he's careful to keep it an environment open for debate. He says fewer students are taking up the challenge of debate nowadays.

He thinks the best-case scenario is "rapid U.S. military withdrawal from the country, because the occupation feeds the insurgency."

In Honeoye, a group calling itself Concerned Citizens for Peace has been gathering for an hour every Saturday morning on a street corner since just two weeks after the war started. Some members of the group carry signs protesting the war; some keep silent vigil for the many American and Iraqi lives lost; some pray.

The group ranges in size from two to about 20 participants, and more than 30 have shown up some Saturdays. However many, there has been at least a pair of Concerned Citizens every week for 258 Saturdays - so far.

"It's a respectful vigil," said Judi Salsburg Taylor of Honeoye, who has attended the gatherings since they began. "We're getting together every week and holding in our hearts the lives lost and the suffering that has happened over the week. Once a week, for an hour, it's not business as usual when you drive down Main Street in Honeoye; once a week, we're reminded of what's going on (in Iraq) right now."

"What's appalling is the number of lives that are being lost and destroyed in vain and the families that are being torn apart," Taylor continued. "We're inching toward 4,000 combat deaths; there are more if you count non-combat. It's hard to get a true number of the wounded."

She said that, to her knowledge, the number of Iraqi casualties is so poorly counted that estimates range from 85,000 to 1.2 million. The vagueness of that tally, said Taylor, implies to a degree that "those deaths don't count."

Concerned Citizens for Peace did not plan a vigil today but will be back on Saturday morning; on March 29, the witness group will commemorate five years since its first gathering. Members of the public are welcome to join the peaceful gatherings, which take place from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., Saturdays, on Main Street in Honeoye.

Honeoye is not the only locale to host war-related rallies.

To show their protest of the war, Bruce Pease and his wife, Sandra Fessler, started gathering with a few others at the corner of East Main and William streets in the village of Palmyra about a year ago. They hold signs that say: "Honk for peace."

Pease and Fessler had been involved in other protests and marches, including in Washington.

"We decided to take it here," said Pease, a teacher at Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES. "It has gotten more positive over time. We get a lot of honks."

Sometimes, someone will walk up and a healthy debate over the war will ensue, said Pease. Sometimes a passerby will give the protesters "the old finger salute," or yell out, "Get a job!"

Once a man almost fell off his motorcycle "screaming at us," Pease said.

To mark the anniversary of the start of the war, the group will gather as they always do, from about 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. today.

"We will hopefully have a very large crowd and a lot of signs," said Pease.

The ongoing war may be motivating people to paint signs, but it's not encouraging much else to be painted locally.

Judi Cermak has not seen any "war pieces" on exhibit at All Things Art, the Ontario County Arts Council's gallery in downtown Canandaigua. As president of the council, she has not seen anything submitted that treated the war as subject matter.

Rather, the war has made "people more aware of their own surroundings," said Cermak. "The war has made us more interested in who we are personally."

The war's influence on the art community - in this county, at least - has been at an ideological, rather than a material level. Cermak describes it as waking some people up to the urgency of free expression.

"When the issue of the war came up," she said, "people started asking what would happen if we lost our freedom, if we lost our freedom of expression."

The clergy and the Capitol

The Rev. Alan Schrader, a pastor at New Hope Fellowship in East Bloomfield, said the church's reaction to the war has not been to take political positions but to simply pray for the troops, their families and the president.

The Rev. Don Muller, a pastor at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Canandaigua, agreed, saying that "the mission of the church is not to politicize but to make disciples."

Muller said that although he hasn't focused on the war in his sermons, the congregation has offered its spiritual support to one family whose son had been called to domestic military service, to replace domestic soldiers who had been sent to Iraq. The congregation prays once a month for all members of the military, police and emergency services.

Some churches, like Crosswinds Wesleyan in Canandaigua, have organized specific ministries to help support the troops. For several years, Wesleyan congregants have written and sent letters to servicemen and women with ties through friends or family to the church.

But the ongoing battle has been a political hot potato over the years. Local Republican congressmen James Walsh and Randy Kuhl both faced strong opposition in for reelection 2006 with their support of the war among the major issues. Both won, but by slender margins in districts where registered Republican far outweigh Democrats.

Walsh, whose district includes Wayne County and Webster in Monroe County, has distanced himself from the president's policies in conducting the war. Five years ago he was in favor of going into Iraq. At the time it seemed justified, he said, with fears that Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction on his people and was threatening to use them on his neighbors.

"I don't think anyone envisioned we'd be there five years later," he said. Walsh said he thinks that now, five years later, the United States has made military progress. "But it is still a dangerous and volatile situation," he said. Walsh said he believes the best course is a gradual reduction of troops.

Walsh has announced he won't seek reelection this year.

Kuhl, a supporter of the war, will be seeking his third term.

"Representative Kuhl was not in Congress when the votes were cast to go to war with Iraq," points out Kuhl spokeswoman Meghan Tisinger in an e-mailed response. "He wishes the war was over yesterday but will continue to support our brave men and women in uniform in every way he can."

Kuhl's challenger, Democrat Eric Massa, said the increased spending in Iraq has gutted important social service programs back home, including Medicare and, ironically, veterans' health care.

"I know dozens of families who have sons and daughters who come back from Iraq in desperate need of medical care and the cost is horrific," he said. "We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding the economy in Baghdad, and we're ignoring the economy in (the 29th District)."

Indeed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cumulative cost for each American in funding a military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is about $1,600. If the spending on the wars continues at its current pace, the cost per person is supposed to grow by five times, to $8,000 by 2017, according to the Budget Office.

The Budget Office estimates that by 2017, the cost could be between $1.2 trillion and $1.7 trillion for the two wars, while other reports have estimated the cost to run as high as $3 trillion.

Messenger Post reporters Philip Anselmo, Stephanie Bergeron, Kevin Frisch, Jessica Pierce, Bryan Roth, Julie Sherwood and Hilary Smith contributed to this story.