PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE DAY THE WAR BEGAN: JANUARY 16, 1991 : THE MOTHER

The range of emotions I felt on Jan. 16, 1991, was so intense that it almost seemed I was in one of those body-change science-fiction tales of the Jekyll-and-Hyde variety.

The American jingoist in me was cheering, “Go get em!” as I actually heard the hardware falling on military targets in Baghdad via Cable News Network. But the mother in me was sickened at the thought of the Iraqi soldiers--young men like my own son--who were underneath all that firepower. My rational side and my emotional side seemed almost sheared apart from each other. Sometimes I could actually hear them arguing.

Rational: There is evil in the world. You can’t always turn the other cheek. You’re a child of World War II. You know that. You used to fly the woodpile in the back yard over Tokyo, pretending it was a B-49.

Emotional: Oh come on. Saddam isn’t Hitler. It’s about oil, and two guys playing chicken on a global scale. One has to prove he’s not a wimp and the other has to prove he’s the sword of the prophet. You have a son and a daughter, and you wouldn’t let either one of them die for that. Remember, it’s other people’s kids out there in the desert.

Rational: Maybe Vietnam paralyzed us to the point where we truly didn’t think we had the capacity to win anymore. America is back. And God, doesn’t it feel good? Admit it, even you felt the adrenaline rising when the armada sailed through the skies.

Emotional: But maybe now we’ll be prisoners of success. If we win it clean and quick, maybe the last shreds of our patience will vanish. We’ll be chained to a role we didn’t want, as policeman to the world. How many of our kids will die for that success, in the years to come? We’ll think we can have instant war, like instant coffee.

Rational: There are times when talking doesn’t work, when pleas for peace fall on deaf ears. There was a clear act of aggression. The United Nations voted. We are the good guys.

Emotional: I just keep thinking of that Army ad--the one that says, “We do more before 9 o’clock than most people do all day.” My son was interested in the military, but chose law enforcement instead. We kid him that his career choice was based on the fact that he hates to see the sun before noon, but I shudder to think how close he came to being out there right now, getting ready to fight. But he’s draft age--if there is a draft. And there still could be. Who knows what the next few years will bring? My daughter is worried about her friend Lisa, who went into the Marines after high school. Dammit, it didn’t have to come to this!

Rational: You’re mad at the peaceniks who are blocking traffic and chanting. You wish they would go away. You can’t deny it.

Emotional: Yes, I am. I remember the Vietnam vets who got spit on in the street. I don’t want our troops to feel we aren’t behind them. But mainly I just want the people who argue for peace to be discredited by saying the right thing at the wrong time. Because there is another way. But it takes patience and maturity. Maybe we don’t have much of that.

My head was ringing, after a while. I’m still trying to sort it out. I know I wish the coalition forces a quick victory, with few civilian casualties. But I still have the feeling that it all went too fast, that we were on a breakneck charge to war with too many wrong reasons mixed in with the right ones. For the first time, there was a real gender gap in the numbers of people who opposed going to war, with women ahead of men by some 25%. Maybe it’s because women don’t think “kicking some ass” is all that big a thrill. Because what it really means is having some woman’s son--or daughter--shredded like hamburger by weapons that have become almost too terrible to imagine.

In some odd way, I do fear success--if it comes--even more than failure. Will any President who fails to send in the troops from now on be a wimp? Will we be even more impatient with the difficult and wearing labyrinth of diplomacy? Will the Cold War be replaced by an even thornier Mideast quagmire, in which we will be thoroughly ensnared? In the long run, will the seeds we have sewn in the Middle East turn out to bear vile fruit? Someday, years from now, will I have a grandson or a granddaughter sent out to die because of it?

Will we live to mourn the peace we could not keep? And rue the progeny of the dogs of war?