SCHEIRMAN REMARKS AT THE ANTI-WAR RALLY
March 17, 2007
by Col (ret) Katherine Scheirman, MD, USAF, upon retirement 12/06 was Medical Operations Director, USAF Hospitals in Europe
We need to support ending the Bush administration’s reckless and mismanaged war in Iraq…a war that has now lasted four long years and claimed the lives of 3210 American military and over 500,000 Iraqis, wounded over 23,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, cost over $400 billion, and created at least 2 million Iraqi refugees.
Like other veterans, I am proud of my military service to the country I love. For over 20 years, I served in the United States Air Force as a physician. I retired in October 2006 after serving for the last 2 years at the Headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, where my job was Chief of Medical Operations for all Air Force medical services in the European theater, including an Air Force squadron of medical personnel assigned to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. My personal experiences of the results of this war are the reason that I am speaking out today to end it.
Ramstein Air Base is where all the wounded soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are flown from the theater of operations to be treated at the Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, a few minutes drive from the flightline. After transport, the severely injured are treated at Landstuhl for a few days, then most are flown to Washington DC where they are transferred to Walter Reed or Bethesda. When I first arrived in 2004, a planeload of casualties came in about 3 times a week. By the time I left, the planes full of casualties were arriving nearly every single day.
It would break anyone’s heart, to see the human costs of this war. The 19- and 20-year olds missing arms, legs, and sometimes entire faces. The severe, 70 and 80 percent total body burns. To realize that these brave men and women are real people, not just numbers. They are children, husbands, wives and parents, and their injuries will devastate their lives and those of their families for the rest of their lives.
Because I care so much for the men and women in the US military, it also broke my heart to see the toll this war is taking on those in the military medical services. Every single day, they are working very long hours to provide the very best care they can to these brave, severely injured soldiers and marines. But the hospitals are understaffed and, in my opinion, not provided the resources they need to do the job as they would like. Many of my friends were also deployed to medical facilities in Iraq. From them, I heard that the situation was often much worse there, especially when it came to taking care of injured innocent Iraqi children. Day after day, the carnage tears at the hearts and souls of these brave and caring doctors and nurses.
The administration’s rigid ideology led to this war being waged “on the cheap”, with inadequate planning for the reality of the war as it developed, because they refused to face reality and admit how badly the war was going. Not enough body armor. Not enough up-armored Humvees. Not enough medical support – which led to the horrible conditions we have been hearing about at Walter Reed, where our injured troops were treated so badly. The lack of adequate resourcing was so severe that at the Army hospital at Landstuhl, we had to rely on Red Cross volunteer civilian neurosurgeons who came for a couple of weeks at their own expense from the US to take care of our patients,. Two of them were from Oklahoma, and we were extremely grateful for their help. But it was unconscionable that adequate military neurosurgeons were not provided, when the signature injury of this war is TBI, traumatic brain injury. The excuse was always that “the insurgency is in its last throes” as Vice President Cheney kept saying. So why would we need to move neurosurgeons to Landstuhl? The casualties would stop coming any day now.
If I thought for a minute that this war was worth the horrific price, it would be different. But there is no serious person anywhere who thinks there is a military solution to this complex war…part insurgency, part sectarian civil war, part religious war, and part criminal gang activity.
The accusation that being against President Bush’s war is somehow equivalent to “not supporting the troops” is ridiculous. This rationale for continuing the war implies that the troops are somehow responsible for the decision to continue the course the president has chosen. The president, not the troops, bears the political and moral responsibility for his war and his course. According to a recent poll of over 6000 military personnel, only 35 percent of the military said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. An overwhelming majority of the country no longer supports the way this war is being fought. We need a completely new, smart strategy!
But first we must recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to any new strategy. We are not recommending a retreat from the war against international terrorists. We are not suggesting an incompetent, haphazard withdrawal. But we are demanding an immediate move to a diplomatic solution, one that involves the regional powers, and a policy that removes our soldiers from door-to-door combat on Iraq's city streets. A plan that will allow our combat forces to leave Iraq in months, not years. And a president and a Congress that will listen to the American people.
