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The Washington Post has an excellent article about Vermont and the Iraq
war, the Iraq referendums on over 40 town meeting ballots, and the Vermont
National Guard. It confirms that Vermont has the most deaths per capita and that
Vermont is second only to Hawaii for per capita mobilized in the national guard.
One point omitted from the article is that some of the referenda are carefully
oriented toward reaching out to the soldiers and their families by stating that
we support the soldiers and believe that the best way to support them is to
bring them home now. The soldiers can end this war, and their support is in
contention. We won many soldiers to the peace movement during Vietnam, and we
can do it again.
Jimmy
washingtonpost.com
Iraq War Is Affecting
Small State in a Big Way Vermont Has the Most Deaths Per Capita By Jonathan Finer ESSEX JUNCTION, Vt. -- By now, the choreographed ceremonies are as painfully familiar as the arctic chill that crept across the Green Mountains late last month, when 400 more members of the Vermont National Guard were sent to war. Boxes of tissues and Dunkin' Donuts greeted teary well-wishers packed inside the hangar-size pavilion at the Champlain Valley Exposition and Fairgrounds. Soldiers loaded Ryder trucks with olive-drab duffel bags before taking their places in formation. The state's three-member congressional delegation, which voted unanimously against invading Iraq, saluted the departing troops in speeches, but not the mission they are about to undertake. Since early November, the scene has been repeated seven times in Vermont -- one of the nation's smallest states, but one that is absorbing some of the war's biggest impact. Vermont's National Guard and reserve units have the second-highest mobilization rate per capita, trailing only Hawaii's. And, with seven active-duty service members and four Guard members who have died in Iraq, it has lost more residents as a percentage of its population than any other state. While military service is a source of pride in local communities, the activation of 1,400 troops also has taken a heavy toll on hundreds of families and left small businesses and police barracks understaffed. But even as flags and yellow ribbons adorn homes here, antiwar activists are uniting. A recent petition drive succeeded in placing a resolution opposing the use of Vermont's Guard in Iraq on the agendas of about four dozen town meetings, which take place statewide on March 1. "All of this has certainly had an impact on a broad cross section of the Vermont community, economically, socially and in every other way. With so many deployed so far away from such a small state, the war touches the lives of every one of us," said Peter Clavelle (D), the seven-term mayor of Burlington, the state's largest city. Vermont has a population smaller than the city of Baltimore, with about 619,000 residents, according to census estimates. The 400 soldiers from the 172nd Infantry Regiment (Mountain) and other units who deployed in January are bound for Iraq after a training stop in Mississippi. About 200 National Guard soldiers who spent the past year in Iraq left this week for home. About 600 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion of the 172nd Armored Regiment are serving in Kuwait. Other Vermont units have been sent to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia on tours that generally last 18 months, according to the Vermont National Guard. "As for which units get called up, it tends to come down to specialties," said John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association in Washington, an advocate for Guard members. "Vermont has some unique specialties, like its mountain warfare unit. Other states haven't been hit as hard. But [military authorities] make an effort to ensure there are enough left behind for emergencies and that [they] distribute deployments equitably across states." Currently just under 50 percent of Vermont's Guard force is mobilized. But to Paul Adamczak, manager of Blue Seal Feeds and Needs, a factory that blends raw materials into meals for pets and livestock, it sometimes seems as if half of the state is overseas. There are nine yellow ribbons in the seventh-floor windows of his plant in Richford -- a town snug against the Canadian border with a population of about 2,300 -- one for every employee called up by the Guard in the past three months. An electric candle in the vestibule shines on a list of their names. His son, Greg, who ran the plant's dairy feed operation, deployed last month. A receptionist, Stella Paquette, has seen two of her brothers, Serge and Mike, who also work at Blue Seal, called up. "We've been hit hard. Some of these are highly specialized jobs, so it is very hard to find people who can step in and replace them. And no one wants to come from another company when they know that these guys will come back in a year and a half," Adamczak said. "But we will do whatever it takes, because we appreciate what they are doing." Air National Guard Lt. Col. Lloyd Goodrow of the Vermont Employers Support Group of the Guard and Reserve told departing soldiers in a recent pre-deployment briefing that "99.9 percent of the civilian employers in this state are supportive and recognize their obligations under federal law." But he acknowledged the hardships employers face. "Remember, this is not easy on your bosses," he said. Eugene Duplissis, a state police trooper and a sergeant in the Guard, said that many of the misdemeanor cases he and nine other troopers who have been called up were working on would be dropped. "It is just too much of a pain for the state's attorney to try to coordinate with all of us," he said. "We lost two out of 14 troopers in one barracks," said Maj. James Baker, field force commander for the Vermont State Police. "When you are trying to fill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, it becomes a challenge." Vermont's lone military college, Norwich University, has also seen its ranks shrink as the Guard units deployed. In the past six months, the school, with 1,800 students, has sent 30 cadets in the middle of their undergraduate studies and one staff member overseas. "We recently had our first graduate killed in action in 10 or 12 years," said Gen. Mike Kelly, Norwich's commandant and vice president of student affairs. "This has become very personal and touched every aspect of university life." Despite Vermont's liberal reputation, the state's politics were long dominated by a conservative agrarian community, and the state had never elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate until Patrick J. Leahy took office in 1974. But politics here have been inexorably altered by an influx in the 1960s and 1970s of more liberal residents from East Coast cities such as New York and Boston. This split personality was on display last summer when a dispute arose over how to memorialize Army Pfc. Kyle C. Gilbert of Brattleboro, who was killed in Iraq in August 2003. Town officials rejected the initial design for a bridge over a local river, when some residents argued that the slogans picked to mark the structure -- such as "Freedom Isn't Free" -- were too jingoistic. As the fatalities have mounted, opposition has grown. "Considering how unpopular the war is here, it is certainly ironic" that so many Vermonters are serving there, said Sister Miriam Ward, a Roman Catholic nun who is one of several local activists who have kept a nightly antiwar vigil on a shopping street in Burlington since Sept. 13, 2001. On the eve of the soldiers' send-off in January, her sign read "Bring Back Our Guard." Petitions circulated in recent weeks by a group called the Vermont Network on Iraq Resolutions are aimed at accomplishing that. "The Constitution says the Guard is meant to be used only to repel insurrection or invasion or defend the laws of the nation. This doesn't qualify," said Ellen Kaye, a grass-roots organizer. To get their resolution on the March 1 town-meeting agendas, the network said members collected signatures from at least 5 percent of voters in about four dozen Vermont towns. The resolution calls for the legislature to study the effect on Vermont of numerous deployments and asks Vermont's congressional delegation "to work to restore a proper balance between the powers of the states and that of the federal government over state National Guard units." It also asks the president and the Congress to withdraw the U.S. military from Iraq. Other New England towns, including Arlington, Mass., are mounting similar efforts aimed at trying to stop Guard deployments through town meetings. "I think that a lot of Americans, and that a lot of Vermonters in particular, don't support the war," said Nancy Brown, a teacher in Rochester, Vt., who helped circulate petitions in neighboring communities. Her son, Spec. Ryan Maloney of the Army National Guard, has been based in Iraq for a year. "Town meeting is a great place to have some dialogue around what we can do about this," she said. The debate about the war is one that Sandy Hill of Lyndonville said he had engaged in almost nightly with his son, Kristopher, who deployed with the Guard last month. "We have had some healthy discussions, that is for sure," the father said at the send-off here. "I feel like we don't have any business being over there, but he sees it as his duty." His wife, Kim, interrupted. "The truth is," she said, "at this point, we just want him to come back safe."
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