Faces of America

Two women, two West Virginia towns - one war

By The Rev. STEPHEN D. EDINGTON

The Nashua Telegraph

Published: Sunday, May. 16, 2004

I was fortunate enough to obtain both a college diploma and a graduate degree that allowed me to have a life beyond that town.

For some of my friends and high school classmates, joining the military was another route out of town. Some of them joined up. Some went to Vietnam. Some came home alive; some didn’t.

A couple of other small West Virginia towns have been in the news in recent days and months - towns called Palestine and Fort Ashby.

I’ve never been in either one, but I’ve seen plenty like them. If you’re a young person coming of age in such a town, the place you likely want to be is called Somewhere Else.

You may have a loving family, as I did. You may even like the security and coziness of a small town, as I also did. But you still figure there has to be something somewhere else for you.

I did. So did Pfc. Jessica Lynch. So did Pfc. Lynndie England. I don’t know either of these young women, but I know something about where they’re from.

I was visiting my mother in Charleston, W.Va., last summer when Lynch came home to Palestine to a heroine’s welcome.

There were pictures in the local paper of her waving from the back seat of a convertible. Lynch had recovered from the war wounds she received in Iraq to the point that she could finally come home, where she was joyously received back into the love and care of her family and community.

She was injured in an ambush and later rescued. Her story has been made into a book. The movie deal is still being worked out.

To Lynch’s credit, she insisted on telling the truth about her ordeal in Iraq, foregoing the embellishments others wanted to add.

Whatever rewards she reaps from her experience, I don’t begrudge her any of them. She now has, if she chooses, a life beyond her small West Virginia town.

Fort Ashby is the hometown of Pfc. Lynndie England. Her picture has been in the paper in recent days.

She’s not waving from a convertible. She’s the one holding the leash that’s around the neck of the Iraqi prisoner who’s naked on the floor of the Abu Ghraib jail.

Our president has said that her actions, and those of her fellow soldier/guards, were “disgusting” and have “made us all sick to our stomachs.” I struggle with what to make of this.

Part of me agrees with President Bush. Another part of me can only wonder how it is that one little, rural West Virginia town gives us a heroine upon whom we heap all the accolades - as well as our projections - about what makes a true, great and brave American soldier, while another small West Virginia town gives us another female soldier who does things that make us “sick to our stomachs,” and prompts our leaders to quickly state that she is not what America is really all about.

How does one young woman from one economically strapped Appalachian community become a saint, and another young woman from another economically strapped Appalachian community become a “disgusting” sinner?

I believe in personal accountability. I’ve tried to teach it to my own son. And just as Pfc. Lynch should enjoy the fruits of her rewards, so must Pfc. England bear the consequences of her actions.

But simply stating that does not get at the bigger issues here. Those pictures of England are not just about her. They represent one of the outcomes of our being taken into a war we did not need to wage.

They represent the outcome of our sons and daughters being placed in a setting where they never should have been and where they were completely unprepared to be.

Yes, they are responsible for their actions, as we all ultimately are. But where is there any assumption of responsibility anywhere up the chain of command by those who were supposed to be directing the actions of those at the bottom of that chain?

If we hold accountable only those who actually perpetuated the prisoner abuse and go no further than that, we’ll be left with the absolving of responsibility of not only their immediate superiors, but ultimately of those who are responsible for this horribly misguided and arrogant enterprise on our part altogether.

More than one commentator this past week has gone to some lengths to point out that the behavior of our soldiers in this setting is not nearly as bad as what Saddam Hussein’s henchmen were doing in the very same prison. That is true, I’m sure.

But since when did the abuse and torture tactics sanctioned and commanded by Saddam Hussein become the benchmark against which we judge the behavior of Americans in uniform?

We were the ones, after all, who went into Iraq brimming over with moral - and presumably God-ordained - righteousness. And now we’re going to use the devil, so to speak, that we overthrew to mitigate, or rationalize, our own behavior?

Jessica and Lynndie: Those who would take us into war should look closely at the lives of these two young women who each probably wanted nothing more than a way out of Palestine and Fort Ashby, respectively.

Those who would cite high-minded goals for waging war, and who would cite the noble mission that such a war will presumably accomplish, should also heed this: To accomplish any “noble mission” we’re going to have to ask thousands of young men and women to put themselves in life-risking and eath-inducing situations like they have never seen before in their young lives.

We’re going to place some of them in settings that will bring out the very best in them as soldiers and as human beings; and we may well place others of them in settings that could bring out some of the basest levels to which a human being can go.

That is what war does. It cuts both ways.

Those who would take a nation, any nation, into war, and then lionize the actions of some and demonize the actions of others among those who answer their call, should, at the very least, be honest enough with themselves, and with the citizens of the nation they purport to lead, to acknowledge that they are creating the circumstances that hold the potential for giving us both our Jessica Lynches and our Lynndie Englands.

War does that. It cuts both ways.

Under different circumstances, the fates, and now the futures, of these two young West Virginia women could well have been reversed.

More than 130 years ago, Julia Ward Howe, who earlier in her life had authored “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” issued a proclamation to the women and mothers of America and the world, calling on them to be advocates for global peace.

In it she said, “Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.”

I cannot look at the horrifying pictures coming to us from the Abu Ghraib prison without hearing Howe’s words. They show that precisely what she spoke out against in 1870 has now, once again, befallen some of our sons . . . and our daughters.

Rev. Edington is the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua.