https://www.recorder.com/My-Turn-Meyer-55982729

MY TURN, Greenfield Recorder, July 12, 2024

By KARL MEYER

The women were there first. That s h o u l d n’t come as a surprise. It’s likely been that way throughout history. Those were the people I found quietly holding signs on the village green on a Saturday some 20 years back. They’d been there for weeks — trying to end the relentless bombing; calling out the grimness of a planned ground invasion of Iraq.

There was a sprinkling of men, but this was a women’s standout at its core. They came with courage and heavy souls to tell us to grow up; remind us men to stop the maiming, the fighting, the slaughter — stop acting like little boys. Simply, be adults.

That was only weeks after our “Shock and Awe” campaign leveled Baghdad in a cheerled, techno-bombing frenzy. Its hell was unleashed via a convenient lie: Saddam Hussein was on the verge of possessing a nuclear weapon. What followed was another lopsided bloodbath, U.S.-fueled with unrelenting brutality in Iraq, then Afghanistan, while the 9/11 hijackers overwhelmingly hailed from Saudi Arabia.

Two decades on what was accomplished is clear: We blew up the Middle East. Much of it remains broken, starved and hopeless today —accomplished on the back of a militarymarketing campaign dubbed “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The BBC reported over 400,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians died in that war’s decades; millions more were maimed. Over 4,000 U.S. troops died in the combat, while injury, sickness and suicide have ultimately claimed many more.

Throughout that incessant barrage, obscene contracts, profits and consultant deals flourished with little or no oversight. Money, hardware and mercenary units flew across the water.

War’s drumbeat became its own justification. Reservists with middle and high school kids got pulled into repeat deployments. Amid the frenzy, grim tactics were joined to the war’s fetid soup: waterboarding, black sites, sleep deprivation, simulated rape. Those revelations gave rise to an ugly parsing of words here. Sidestepping universal rules of military conduct, leaders swore the U.S. did not participate in torture.

And all the while it was the women who stood with courage, bearing witness, saying “Enough!”

And who were the winners in the endless war? The sterile medals for machismo go to the planners, think tanks, technoweaponeers, generals, congressmen and senators; the mercenary contractors. That’s the blood-spattered pool where over $700 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars got dumped. That bigboy slush fund is forever refilled by seemingly soulless men refusing to behave as civilized grown-ups on a planet suffocating under the lethal heat of war.

I’ve been standing among those people of courage for 21 years now. They are exceptional in their dedication, courage and heart. Quite literally the women are standing up for us all, for the kids, the girls, women, boys and men — for the soul of a country.

The village green, the State House lawn, the steps of the Supreme Court is where democracy lives and must be protected. Jan. 6 was an attack on all our First Amendment rights, without which there is no democracy. Keeping those spaces sacred each week literally protects the constitutional rights of every citizen in this country: banning governments from imposing religion, upholding our right to free speech, protecting the free press, safeguarding our right to peaceably assemble and redress government grievances.

I’ve come to know many of the women standing up across these years. Many have occupied these same spaces since before they had the right to choose. They made that freedom happen. Racism, civil rights, Vietnam, marriage and gay rights, they were there. In a country that refused to adopt an Equal Rights Amendment they’ve yet kept faith, even as we’ve failed to address poverty, sexual abuse, homelessness, guns and assault weapons marketed to boys like so much candy.

Jan. 6 was a stark warning. A hate-peddling, bully-tyrant’s attempt to use fear to hijack our democracy. Women have long understood what’s at stake. I am proud of the men willing to show up and stand against the growing drumbeat of tyranny. But so many remain silent while women shoulder a planet’s massive burdens and the madness of our endless wars.

Is it cowardice, sloth, misogyny, that keeps so many silent and indifferent? It’s a kind of desertion, abandonment, of all women, of that mother who carried you, who brought you into the world, of those that nurtured you; made you feel safe.

There is deep wisdom in the age-old warning: “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing.” History’s most murderous dictators have proved to be its loudest, biggest liars, surrounding themselves with bullies attempting to use fear to silence the voices of justice. This is an invitation to men of courage and goodwill to stand up, show up. Our turn is now.

Karl Meyer lives in Greenfield. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Marine Cpl. Edward Chin covers the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein with an American flag before toppling the statue in Baghdad, Iraq, on April 9, 2003.