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12/22/2004:
"Fighting On Is the Only Option, Americans Say"
DENVER, Dec. 21 - Americans across the country expressed anguish about the devastating attack on a United States military base in Iraq on Tuesday. But it was the question of where the nation should go from here that produced the biggest sigh from Dallas Spear, an oil and gas industry worker from Denver."I would never have gone there from the beginning, but that's beside the point now," Mr. Spear said, his jaw clenched. "We upset the apple cart and now there's pretty much no choice. We have to proceed."
Mr. Spear's sentiment was echoed in interviews in shopping malls, offices, sidewalks and homes on a day when the news from Iraq was bleak. With 14 American service members killed and dozens injured, it was apparently the worst one-day death toll for American forces since United States forces defeated Saddam Hussein's regime in spring 2003.
Many people said they were dispirited or angry, but many expressed equal unhappiness about seeing a lack of options.
Whether one supported or opposed the invasion has become irrelevant, many said - there is only the road ahead now, with few signs to guide the way.
One soldier who has been to Iraq and is soon to go back said he believes the war itself has changed, and that guerrilla attacks like the one in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Tuesday have constricted the view on the ground about how to proceed.
"When we went to war there was a clear-cut enemy," said Specialist Richard P. Basilio, 27, of Philadelphia, who leaves for Iraq after the holidays for a 12- to 18-month deployment as an Army computer technician. It will be his third tour to the Middle East and his second to Iraq. "Now the rules have totally changed. You don't know what's going on," he added. "You just have no idea who's your friend and who's your enemy."
Mr. Basilio's mother, Janet Bellows of Daytona Beach, Fla., said the bombing in Mosul, combined with the prospect of her son's departure, have left her "absolutely devastated."
"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do," Ms. Bellows said. "You can't reach him."
Polls show that many Americans were deeply concerned about the course of the war even before Tuesday's attack. Out of 1,002 Americans surveyed last Friday and Saturday by the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 47 percent said, when asked how the United States had handled Iraq during the past year, that things had gotten worse. Twenty percent said the situation had improved and 32 percent said it was about the same.
Some people said that polls themselves were part of the problem.
Charlie Eubanks, a cotton farmer and lawyer from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, said he supported President Bush but had been lukewarm about going to war. Now, he said there was no choice but to fight on, and that reports on opinion polls were only "aiding and abetting" the enemy by making opponents think the American will is weak.
"We've got to hang in there and get it done," Mr. Eubanks said.
Some people said that part of what they struggle with is how to square the ongoing violence with their beliefs about human nature and decency.
Full Article: nytimes.com
Gee. How about NOT 'hanging in there" and NOT "getting it done"?
