Families Want Troops Home From Iraq Now

In Iraq, 7,500 miles from Long Beach, U.S. combat deaths have just risen to 2,287.

But in the restaurant, sunlit and filled with Thursday afternoon chatter, the conflict seems as remote as the Punic Wars.

There is, however, an exception; a table where five people talk only about the Iraq war. One is Robert Acosta, Long Beach. Although only 22, he knows more about the Iraq war than most Americans. He has been in it, a fact revealed by his missing right hand.

Spc. Acosta, formerly of the Army's First Armored Division, lost the hand July 13, 2003. He and a buddy were driving near Baghdad International Airport when a grenade landed inside their Humvee.

"Someone just walked up and threw it," he recalls.

Acosta picked up the grenade, dropped it, and picked it up again, intending to throw it from the vehicle. That's when it blew up, taking his hand and shattering his left leg.

Although he does not complain, a friend says Acosta remains "in constant pain."

Still, he continues to e-mail his old combat buddies in Iraq. I ask about their morale. "They're pretty much the way I was," he says. "They look at what they're doing as a 9 to 5 job, a job they have to do."

The former and now unemployed soldier was invited to the lunch by three others at the table. One is DeDe Miller, a Bellflower woman whose Army nephew, Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Miller's sister, Casey's mother, is the well-known anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan.

With Miller and Acosta are Jeff Merrick and Pat Alviso. A husband and wife from Huntington Beach, they have a Marine son serving in Iraq.

The three are members of Military Families Speak Out. Formed by two New Englanders in 2002, the organization consists of about 2,800 U.S. families. As the name suggests, members have two common denominators: they oppose the war and they have or once had loved ones serving in it.

Also, they want the war to end. Now.

No more suffering "If it was wrong to go in there in the first place, how can it be right to remain there another day," says Alviso, one of 35 members in MFSO's Orange County chapter. There are two other California chapters, in Davis and San Francisco.

Says Miller, Sheehan's sister, "I do not want to see another family suffer the way our family has. Other people need to know what it is like to get that knock on the door. It screwed up our family. Big time." Miller and Sheehan have organized Gold Star Families Speak Out, a national MFSO chapter for families with military members killed in the war.

MFSO's philosophical opponents, those in favor of the war, say you cannot support the troops without supporting their mission. MFSO doesn't buy that. "We have families over there," says Alviso. "We want nothing but to support the troops."

Miller echoes that sentiment. "What better way to support them than by bringing them home. It's not a political issue. It's a right-or-wrong issue."

Have the MFSO members become immune to the name-calling "traitors," "anti-American" sometimes hurled their way? "For the most part, I have," says Miller. "But sometimes it can be pretty insulting. Still, they would not be attacking us if they didn't feel threatened by us."

Pro-military Merrick, Alviso's husband, defies the stereotyped anti-war protesters, those seen as dovish and anti-military. "I'm very pro-military," he says.

He spent 20 years in the Air Force and served in Vietnam. He is self-employed, but says he has work ties with a company that provides technical support to the Air Force. A former Republican who has since changed his registration, he says, "Even though I didn't go out and protest right away, like Pat, I still felt (the war in Iraq) was wrong."

He did not feel that way, he says, about the U.S. incursion into Afghanistan. "If this war was just against Afghanistan, I don't think I'd be protesting at all."

Nevertheless, he now has reservations about the conduct of the war in that country. "We pulled too many troops out of there. Now they're having insurgency problems just like in Iraq."

Of the Iraq war, he says, "It's a drain on lives, not just U.S. lives, but everyone concerned. And it's not just the loss of life, it's the time spent being at war."

His voice trails off as his emotions take hold. His eyes fill with tears. He stops speaking.

Bizarre times Their MFSO experiences have been far-reaching. Miller and Alviso, for example, recall protesting in front of the White House last September, following a weekend in which more than 300,000 people rallied in Washington against the war.

Miller, Alviso and Cindy Sheehan were among those arrested. "I was arrestee number 101," Miller recalls. "Cindy was number 102."

Alviso tells of being put on a bus with other arrestees. "They kept us there until 5 or 6 the next morning. Most of the time we were in handcuffs."

The women say their protest permit was insufficient to cover the size of the demonstration, said to be the largest ever conducted in front of the White House.

Miller says she still has not paid her $50 fine. "I'm not going to pay it. If you don't have the freedom to sit in front of our house (the White House) and petition the government with your grievances, this is no longer the United States I once knew."

How do their loved ones in the military feel about their activity? Alviso does not accept the criticism that such actions hurt troop morale. "Just don't use any pictures of me," she laughingly quotes her Marine son as saying.

Acosta, the wounded soldier, tells of morale problems of another kind while he was in Iraq. "For me, body armor was an issue for a while. Also, we were limited on how much water we were given. Guys in my unit had only two bottles a day."

While he still communicates with Army buddies, he now says, "I'm very much against the war."

Truth and Congress Acosta has taken part in Operation Truth, in which Iraq war veterans visit members of Congress. He tells of a visit to Stephen Buyer, R-Ind., who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "As soon as we walked in, Buyer said, 'I don't like that name, Operation Truth. You guys have to change it."'

During the visit, Acosta told Buyer that he was reduced to using duct tape to hold his hand-replacing prosthesis together. The VA, he explained, could not provide him with the proper screw to keep the artificial limb intact. (Acosta eventually stopped trying to use the device.)

"I don't think he believed me," says Acosta. "He reacted as if I was exaggerating."

Acosta has become an "anti-recruiter." He goes into any high school that will allow him to talk to students. "I show a video and talk to them. I try to tell them that everything the recruiters say is not true, and that there are alternatives to joining the military."

For more information on Military Families Speak Out, visit its Web site: www.mfso.org. Or call (562) 833-8035. Another option is to attend a community forum the organization is holding Friday at Machinist Union Hall, 5402 Bolsa Ave., Huntington Beach (between Bolsa Chica and Springdale streets).

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The program, which will include talks by several Orange County congressional candidates, begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Postscript The day after my interview with the MFSO members, they met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Says Alviso, "It was a real dialogue that gave us what we had been promised: a conversation with the senator that went beyond the scheduled time."

While Alviso says Feinstein is unwilling to support an immediate troop withdrawal, she notes the senator "was open to follow-up discussion and possible meeting in the future."

Alviso also says Feinstein promised to get Acosta help in providing him with a workable prosthesis.

On hearing that, I recalled an incident Acosta had related the day before, an incident that showed him "people just aren't too concerned about what's going on in Iraq."

Soon after leaving the Army, Acosta was at a gas station when another customer asked how he had come to lose his hand.

"In Iraq," the solder replied.

Said the other man, "Oh, is that still going on?"

Sunday, Feb 26, 2006 Long Beach Press Telegram, Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@aol.com