War? What wars?

Scene from "The Telling Project"

During all the pre-election hype and continuing through the post-election analysis Tuesday night, I don't recall more than a single reference to Afghanistan -- and none to Iraq.

Which is a shame. Because all the pundits and politicians would have you believe that the mid-term elections were solely about the economy and the deficit. Those are obvious issues, of course, but it's distressing to me that our foreign entanglements -- which are equally important to our fiscal health -- didn't register as a major concern with voters.

As if to make my point, a writer for the alternative weekly, Willamette Week, had this to say in a blurb about a forthcoming play about the forgotten wars:

"You probably don’t spend much time, on a day-to-day basis, thinking about war. I don’t. The country has been embroiled in violent overseas conflict since my last year of high school, leaving 5,787 men and women of my generation dead and tens of thousands more wounded, but most days I worry more about how all the damn ants are getting into my living room than I do Afghanistan and Iraq. I don’t think I am much different from most Americans, in that respect. We have placed our wars, and our soldiers, in the same mental box as the national debt and the eventual possibility of colon cancer." 

Give the writer some points for honesty. And if you're in the Portland area, consider attending a performance of "The Telling Project." It's a performance piece featuring six veterans who discuss their experiences at war -- and whose status as amateur actors makes their words and emotions all the more meaningful. I attended a show last year and it was a real epiphany for me. (Read my review: "Ordinary heroes")

As someone who's become a military dad, owing to our youngest son's enlistment in the Army, I've naturally taken more of an interest in the politics and military strategies associated with our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the U.S. electorate and scads of political analysts can't be bothered to acknowledge the wars, at least I can tip my hat to these brave soldiers, sailors and Marines who've served and are willing to let us in to their world.

Photo by  Patrick Weishampel, Willamette Week

Welcome home, troops

When I went to the front porch this morning to pick up The Oregonian, my eyes went to a photo of U.S. flags and cheering people (below) and the headline, "Oregon embraces returning soldiers." I was struck by two things -- not just the sense of pride I felt as an Oregonian to see residents lining the streets to welcome home the first wave of National Guardsmen who'd served in Iraq during the past year but my own warm feelings.

There was a time in the late '60s and '70s, when soldiers returning from Vietnam -- and that hellhole of a losing endeavor -- were routinely vilified as "baby-killers" and made out to be the villains of that colossal misadventure in U.S. foreign policy.

With the passage of time, we now recognize that was shameful behavior on the part of anti-war activists, who misdirected their anger at the grunts instead of the generals.

Forty years later, it's a whole different scene. Whether people support U.S. policy in the Middle East or not, I think they are better able to separate the roles of the men and women who volunteer for military service -- whether as regular service members or as part of the Guard -- from the civilian and military higher-ups who make the decisions that put them in harm's way as part of our geopolitical commitments.

In this case, 2,700 Oregonians in the National Guard were assigned to serve in various support roles in Iraq in the state's largest-ever deployment of Guard troops.

My colleagues at The Oregonian -- reporter Julie Sullivan and photographers Jamie Francis and Torsten Kjellstrand -- teamed up to present a terrific story, photos and video documenting the soldiers' journey from Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Wash., to their families and communities in such places as Bend, Mill City, Detroit and Imnaha.

It was a story about their return to families that have endured their 10-month absence. In some cases, fathers have missed the birth of a son or daughter.

Coincidentally, we spoke with Jordan yesterday just to get an update. He was back home in El Paso, at Fort Bliss, after a couple weeks of training in New Mexico, and enjoying a chill weekend. It's encouraging to hear him speak of future goals, including using the G.I. Bill to get his college degree and possibly becoming an ROTC recruiting officer or attending Officer Candidate School.

We're still not eager to see him deployed but at least the date, for him, has been pushed back to 2012. We understand, though, that he does want that experience and that his military contract calls for him to do so. If he has to re-enlist to go overseas, he'll do it. If and when that happens, he'll know we support him.

Photos by Jamie Francis, The Oregonian. Above: Maj. Micah Goettl greets his daughters for the first time in months after serving in Iraq. Below: Hundreds of people lined the streets in Bend to greet National Guard troops returning home from Iraq.

Julie Sullivan's story: "Oregon embraces returning soldiers"

Losing Jenna

Driving back from Orcas Island two weekends ago, totally relaxed and appreciative of the wonderful week we'd spent at our cabin, we were roughly 30 miles from home when Lori's cell phone rang. We pulled off the freeway and there, on the darkened asphalt slab of a drive-thru espresso stand, we heard news that jolted us to our core.

Jenna Wilcox, a 27-year-old U.S. Air Force captain, and the wife of fellow USAF officer Scott Wilcox, the son of our good friends in Portland, had been critically injured. Our first thought: that she had been wounded in battle in Afghanistan, where she and Scott had been stationed for the past year. But, no, she hadn't. In one of life's cruel ironies, the young couple had completed their service in Afghanistan a few days earlier, been reunited at their home near Cambridge, England, and were enjoying a well-deserved vacation in Scotland when tragedy struck.

They had stopped their sports car to change a tire and because there was no room in the luggage compartment for it, they had placed the bad tire on Jenna's lap and resumed driving. The tire exploded and Jenna took the full force of the blast and sustained massive internal injuries. Scott, miraculously, wasn't seriously hurt.

All this we heard through sobs from Scott's mother, Sue.

How could this be? We'd seen Scott grow up in the neighborhood, two streets away, as our families grew closer by the year. We'd met Jenna and her parents when they came out from Buffalo, N.Y., to Portland shortly after she'd married Scott. An impressive young woman, she was smart, genial and athletic, a former gymnast who went to graduate from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Their careers had taken them to Korea, England and, most recently, Afghanistan. They had been separated for most of their four-year marriage by their differing responsibilities but now were looking forward to time off -- together. (Jenna had even escaped injury during a roadside bomb attack during her tour of duty.)


Jenna succumbed to her injuries on April 1, five days after being rushed to the hospital. Poor Scott had to confront end-of-life decisions at the too-young age of 27. Jenna, however, had specified her wishes in an advance directive and Scott's dad, Eric, was there for support, having immediately flown to Scotland to be with his oldest son.

How could this be? No parent ever expects to bury a child. No parent of a service member expects their child to lose their life from non-combat injuries. No one who follows news of the violence in Iraq and Afghanistan could have imagined death would come from an exploding tire on a friggin' vacation.

How unfair, how random, how non-sensical life can be. To have such an outstanding young woman taken away so young is a loss to all of us.

On Saturday, Britain's Daily Mail published a news story about Jenna, which has gotten wide readership on that side of the pond. The piece ended with a quote from Jenna's March 21 entry on the blog she maintained while abroad: "This will be my last entry. Both Scott and I are home, safe and sound and I no longer have a reason to continue with this blog."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1263095/U-S-Air-Force-captain-Jenna-Wilcox-holiday-Scotland-dies-freak-accident-sports-car-tyre-explodes-lap.html#ixzz0kOWS5MGg

To view Jenna's blog: http://jennawilcox.blogspot.com/

May she rest in peace.

Quick Takes

It's the end of another month -- my fourth as a blogger -- and time for another round of Quick Takes.

1. After much anticipation, I get to see Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller tonight in concert at Oaks Park. They're touring as Three Girls and Their Buddy. I saw Emmylou long, long ago at the Lane County Fairgrounds in Eugene. I've been waiting forever to see Patty.

2. After much anticipation of a different sort, I was gratified to read the news that we're finally beginning to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Obviously, whether Jordan winds up serving in Afghanistan or Iraq or is something that weighs heavily on my mind as we prepare to fly out to Ft. Benning tomorrow morning.

As The Washington Post's Marie Cocco points out:

But there is a reason the Bush administration was unable to get out of Iraq quickly, and it is found in the regional, ethnic and sectarian divides that persist: "The problem with Iraq is that there really is no state. Iraqis can reach agreement but they can't make it stick," [a Middle East expert, Joost Hiltermann] says. "There are all these fractures. The Americans will have to provide that glue, still.

3. I finally -- finally! -- got around to reading The New York Times Magazine article, "The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton." It's an excellent piece by Peter Baker, in which he writes that Clinton, 62, and now out of the White House longer than he served in it, can now cede the spotlight, doesn't need to shake every hand and, finally, can let go. Here's a snippet from the May 31 article:

Two sides of Clinton's persona have longed warred with each other, sunny optimism versus angry grievance. Clinton succeeded in politics largely because he projected the former; his worst moments usually came when he gave in to the latter. Both sides are genuine reflections of who he is.

Twelve years after his last campaign for office, he found it harder to control his resentments when he returned to the trail on his wife's behalf. In his view, the news media and the political world held her to a different standard, while practically anointing Obama. And when he says her, he also means, in the back of his mind, himself.

Two things I didn't realize about Clinton: He wears a hearing aid. He doesn't use a computer.

The man who ushered in the Internet age still does not use a computer, much less a BlackBerry, but keeps up with blogs and sites like The Huffington Post through clips printed out by aides.

Photo of Clinton by Ruven Afanador for The New York Times