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December 10, 2005
Support Our Troops, Question The War
An Interview With Diane Benson
by Karen Button, insurgent49
photo by Pamela Thompson

     Thirteen days into his Stop Loss deployment—thirteen days after he was supposed to be honorably released from the military—Diane’s son was critically injured, losing limb and clinging to life as a result of a remotely detonated IED (improvised explosive device). He is listed by the military as “VSI” (very seriously injured).  Family remains by his side in the States, where he was flown once stabilized. -KB

     Diane Benson lives at the end of the road, amongst the birch and spruce of Alaska’s Southcentral forests. She’s a T’lingit community leader who is known in the state for her speeches, poetry, performance and for not being shy about speaking her truth. Her piercing gaze can be fierce, but always softens when she speaks about her son, who is in the US Army and serving in Iraq. Due to get out at the end of October, he is instead back in Iraq as part of the military’s “Stop Loss” program, which involuntarily and indefinitely extends a soldier’s tour of duty.

     Diane wears a metal bracelet, given to her by her son’s fiancé, that is engraved with her son’s name and his deployment and return dates, and that she is constantly touching, rotating it slowly around her wrist.

     We sit at her dining room table in a room that’s filled with the feeling of family, connection and community. There are framed photographs of her son, his friends and wife—married just before his second deployment—and of other family members scattered throughout.

     When did your son enlist in the Army?

     Right after 9/11. He and his friends were talking about it and I was scared to death. I think it’s intuition; I knew he was going to join. Have you ever been on a river and up ahead are rapids that you didn’t expect? Well, what are you going to do about it at that point, except try to ride it?

     I felt like that because I tried to talk him out of it, and he said flat-out, “Mom, you’re not going to talk me out of it. I have to do this.” I was hating myself for not coming up with the words—how could I be a person who knows words and not have the words to stop him. His T’lingit name—the name I gave him—means “strong.” I just don’t want him to be there.

     He joined just after 9/11. Why?

     Who wasn’t affected that day? I got calls that day that the towers came tumbling down from family and even from a woman in Norway. My business name at this time was Northern Stars and she was looking for Northern something. She was trying to find her sister; she was very scared. She ended up talking to me and there was so much compassion in this woman’s voice. Here we are from two different countries from two different places talking about what happened and that whole feeling of wanting peace and just wanting peace in the world.

     How old was your son when he joined?

     Twenty.

     When was his first deployment?

     Well, let’s see … (laughing, she turns the bracelet around). March 2 [2003]. I didn’t even get to know he was gone. They wouldn’t tell us. He was at Fort Campbell.

     So, when your son was deployed you really had no idea where he was deployed to?

     No. I mean, I suspected. It was that mother’s intuition thing again. I already saw in my mind’s eye that he was going to be in the service, that he was going to go to war, and I kept hoping that none of it was true. I somehow knew in my gut that as much as we might wish to make it logical, we have an administration that’s not logical. So anything can happen, and “anything” is happening.

     That’s what we’re facing. Because Stop Loss isn’t logical, really. I know how it appears logical from the administration’s point of view and how that might play out for those that are wealthy, that they conveniently don’t serve if they don’t want to.

     As an activist, I can look at the world and it has a different picture. As a mom whose son is gone to war, it’s not theoretical anymore ... it’s not political. It’s as personal as it gets. And, he’s my life. He’s my only child.
 
     When was he scheduled to get out of the military?

     His four-year commitment was up the end of October [2005].

     Instead, Stop Loss was instituted…when?

     Well, the thing about Stop Loss is that it’s been off and on since this war began. We are literally abusing our military.

     Alaska has a lot of Alaska Native National Guardsmen, who are now serving as Army soldiers in Iraq. They didn’t sign up for that. So, those who say “they signed up for this,” no, I disagree, these guys didn’t sign up for this. My son didn’t sign up for more than four years. He didn’t sign up for two deployments. He did his time. He served as this administration requested. He completed his commitment. So, somebody is lying to him. I don’t know what’s honorable in this country anymore when we can do that.

     At what point did you realize Stop Loss was going to be affecting your son?

     This past February. We knew that they were really utilizing it. We thought maybe, maybe, it wouldn’t affect him. We could only hope. But, it did.
 
     How did your son feel about going back?

     He really didn’t want to go back. Absolutely, flat, did not want to go back!

     How did he feel about what he saw there the first time?

     He wouldn’t talk about it. He never talked about it. 

     You’re a member of Military Families Speak Out. When did you become involved with them?

     Pretty early on. It was after the threat that we would go to war, that war was imminent. That was in the fall of 2002 when I was scrambling to get him out. I was really scared. We investigated whether an only child could get out and they said they didn’t use that.

     I was reading that for a period it applied during Viet Nam and then it was another sort of thing that could cause a deferment. I was reading that Dick Cheney had five deferments; he managed to keep being deferred for all these different reasons. Cheney got married as soon as that became the way to be out. Then, when it was limited to only men who were fathers, nine months later he had a daughter—which was curious—but that was the way they could be deferred.

     The situation now, the only ones who are serving and being taken advantage of are the ones who volunteered.  Many of them that volunteered—this is what I discovered in Georgia [Ft. Benning, where her son graduated from boot camp] and this is what got me involved. I looked around at the different families who were there and what were they? Hispanic and Black and poor Whites and Native Americans. And I thought, “what the heck?” It was so glaring to me. It wasn’t that they were mostly people of color, but there was a definite, definite sense these were not well-to-do families here.

     You started speaking out against the war at that time?

     Yeah, I started speaking out…I think the first peace rally was at that time.

     As time has gone on, I don’t see myself as just being an anti-war protester. I see myself as a person, as an American citizen who has an obligation to a group of people who are in an untenable situation, so much so that they cannot speak to the issue, they cannot ask the questions that we, as citizens, have to ask.

     It’s totally legitimate to ask questions about what we’re doing, about where’s the evidence that we needed to do this. It’s important to look at where are we now, but it’s still legitimate to keep that in our minds that when we went in to Iraq, this administration lied to us. That’s important.

     I know people that say, “Well, what do we do now? How do we support our troops now?” Well, we ask questions. We don’t just ask questions, we tell Congress, “you do the right thing,” whether it’s with the money put up for this war, whether it’s about the way we handle veterans when they come back, whether it’s about the gear that they wear.

     If we aren’t properly outfitting these people to do something that we’ve asked them to do…it’s on us. It’s fully on us.  And that’s why I got involved [with MFSO] because I read Operation Truth and Military Families Speak Out and it was fascinating to me to see military families stand up and they were making more sense.

     What do you think will work?

     I think what’s happening now with military families bringing awareness to the legitimacy of asking questions, to holding our Congress and our presidency accountable. In other words, if they’re lying, we need to talk about it and we need to hold them accountable.

     And in the process, it makes it more personal and active for the community and if the community becomes involved on that level then they know they’ve got to become more involved in why this is happening in the first place.

     Once you become more involved in the real people of it, instead of the romanticism, the romanticism of war ... but the reality of doing it and why, why they were killed, why the equipment they have is inadequate and that we have 15,000 soldiers or more that have lost limbs ... [then] we’re going to absorb this reality as a community.

     You’ve got to know what Stop Loss is and if you’re really behind the war, you’ll have someone in your family signing up today.

     What do you find is the support here in Alaska for Military Families Speak Out? Do you hear that, if you say anything bad about the war, that you’re not supporting the troops?
 
     When I talk to [those who say] we can’t question the president because we’re not supporting our troops ... what is that? It means that we don’t want the troops to feel bad or to feel that they’re not supported. Well, the troops feel not supported when we don’t ask questions on their behalf. Because these questions are on their behalf.

     As a mom, I can say this, for sure. I have a personal interest in the questions being answered on my son’s behalf, so he can live. And so that if he is out there in harm’s way, it’s for a damn good reason. And I, as a military family member, need that reassurance. And I think that’s what military families are trying to say.

     When Cindy Sheehan asks a question and you’ve got a Viet Nam veteran sitting in front of the TV saying, “these damn protesters,” what he’s saying is he’s back in the 60s and the 70s and, “they had no respect for us and they hated us and they called us baby-killers.” For the most part people didn’t do that, but they had no welcome when they came home. They didn’t know where to go when they got off the plane. They weren’t able to decompress properly. And many of them went off to commit suicide. Well, this is what hurts [the soldiers] so much today, because they know, they’re keenly aware of what’s happened to their buddies.

     What would you say to George Bush if you had an audience with him?

     That’s funny you ask because I’ve thought about that. Because watching Cindy Sheehan I’ve thought, “what would you say?” And I pray to God that I don’t have to have that experience of somebody showing up at my door. But if I was in Cindy’s shoes…number one question: why utilize stop loss? If this is such an important war, if you really believe in what you’re doing, then why wouldn’t there be a more equitable approach?

     Why wouldn’t the military have—and I’m not talking about military research for some nuclear explosive or a better jet or something—why wouldn’t the grunts on the ground be properly outfitted?

     Why would you have them be in a country serving when they often don’t know what the mission is…so what is the mission, George? And why, if it’s so critical, aren’t any Congressmen’s or women’s children serving?

     I need to know why rich people don’t have a lot of their kids serving. I need to know that, if this is so important, why don’t we stay the course with your grandchildren or your children? And when I understand that, then I’ll be ok…as I can be. But right now, it’s two different messages for me, and for the soldiers.

     (After a long pause, she says quietly) But, I don’t think they can answer that.



For more information about Military Families Speak Out go to: www.mfso.org.





Karen Button is a freelance journalist and peace activist. She can be reached at kbutton@insurgent49.com
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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.