Cherokee Sage Woman

A Moment of Silence Is Not Enough

Monday 20 March 2006
On March 18th Sara Rich, mother of an AWOL US soldier, gave this address at an anti-war rally in Eugene, Oregon.
Hello - I came to you in September praying for peace as I was bound by the fear of my daughter's impending redeployment to Iraq.
WHO SAYS LIGHTNING DOESN'T STRIKE TWICE? We got the date for her redeployment 9 months before her entitled 18 months decompression time. Her commanding officer forced her to sign a waiver of her rights to decompression time between deployments and gave her a date 11 months after she returned from Iraq the first time. Then, a few weeks later, she got her readiness papers - that 6 months after she hopefully returned from Iraq the second time, she was scheduled to go over for yet another year. Making it three deployments to Iraq in less that four years.
All of our hearts were heavy. Three days before her actual redeployment, she was packed and ready to go, she had her car keys in her hand, and she turned to me and said, "I don't think I can do this." I was shocked but knew any type of coercion on my part would not help, so I said, "Are you serious?" She replied, "I just can't do it, Mom." She could not go back there to the misery. She told me that being separated from her family and living and breathing Army for a year at a time in a war zone was a constant source of distress for her. Where nobody cares whether you live or die as long as you do what you are told and they look good afterwards. Nor could she handle another deployment, dealing with the daily hour-to-hour sexual harassment that she endured from 99% of her male officers and fellow soldiers. The isolation and fear of being attacked, harassed, molested and raped was a huge part of her life in Iraq. She was always full of anxiety and stress just keeping herself safe when her commanding officers would show up banging on her door in the middle of the night, intoxicated and wanting to have sex with her. The intimidation and sexual harassment that our female soldiers are enduring is leading to massive stress and in some cases even death for our military women in Iraq. They are not supported but shamed when they bring these to the attention of their superiors.
I TOOK A DEEP BREATH and I told her either way she is my hero and I will support her decision. She decided that she was going to go AWOL and to leave the Army.
That the US is in Iraq for something that is pointless was a common feeling for many of the soldiers she was stationed with. The US is not the world police. Why can't we focus on the multiple crises we have in our own country? The hurricanes that took thousands of lives. Or why not go to Afghanistan, where there are actually terrorists? It is abominable that we are sending our troops over there and paying them a pittance - the average soldier that is married and has a family to support gets about $2,000 a month, and at the same time we are sending contractors from Blackwater over to do the same security jobs and paying them $15,000 a month to be there and risk their lives. This makes no sense, especially to our soldiers.
She kept asking, and now I'm asking you, WHAT IS THE PURPOSE? This is an outrage and is just adding to the growing evidence that we are losing thousands of lives and causing permanent injuries to our soldiers, for what? Oil? Money? Why are we not trying to educate the Iraqis, if liberating them is so important.