We hear a good deal about how much the war is costing. We talk a lot on this site--probably because we actually support the troops--about the human costs of the war, both American and Iraqi.
What I think is understated here, however, is the cost to the local communities--both financial and otherwise--that this war is causing.
And I think that this cost is perfectly illustrated by the case of Janet Grass--a 52-year-old grandmother who has just been deployed to the Middle East.
More below
Janet Grass, who has spent 19 years in the Navy Reserve,
is not the only member of her family to serve in Iraq--she is preceded by her son, who was on active duty in 2003.
Janet, before she was sent half a world away to be a minor cog in a military machine failing miserably at occupying another country half a world away, was a special education teacher in Cascade, a town in Eastern Iowa--and she was 10 months away from retiring, until she was called up.
The fact that this reservist is now serving active duty raises a host of questions that need to be addressed. First of all, is our military really so desperate for warm bodies that the recall of a grandmother such as Janet Grass is a vital necessity to the security of our country? Keep in mind that I am not questioning the skill or competence of Janet Grass. I'm sure she is a perfectly capable teacher, and will be a perfectly capable soldier in whatever capacity she serves. But have we really stooped so low now that we must resort to deploying grandmothers?
But the second problem is the cost to her small town in Iowa--and it's a problem that the brief article I linked to above concerning her deployment doesn't even begin to address:
what are her students going to do in the meantime?
What is the greater value to our society? That Janet Grass serve half a world away to serve in the creation of Democracy™ in Iraq, or that she continue to educate her special ed students back in her community in Iowa? What will help America more? What will help those children more? What will keep those children safer?
And just as importantly, will the administration that initiated the war in the first place, do anything to compensate the local community for the loss? Will the feds send another teacher to this community in Iowa to compensate for the one that they lost? If they don't--which we all know they won't, because that's not their policy--will they at least compensate the community in Iowa for the cost and the time it will take to find a new teacher for these special education students?
I don't think they'll do that either.
The story of Janet Grass is a perfect example of how this administration continues to hollow out and erode local communities to serve the good of the administration--and all their friends.
We've seen this on environmental issues. We've seen this on tax policy. We've seen it on education policy. But the same thing applies to stop-loss. It applies to call-ups of reservists.
It applies to this war as well.
And now this is the major point: how do we stress to these local communities that this administration is costing them in real terms?