"All of us will be paying for this war for decades to come," Iraq War veteran Andy Sapp told students and faculty last night at an "Iraq War Community Forum" that was co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Studies program and the Tufts Democrats.
Approximately 90 students and 20 faculty members gathered in Braker Hall to hear the guests speak out against the war in Iraq: army-jacket clad Sapp, his wife Anne Sapp, Iraqi-American Rana Abdul-aziz (LA '03) and U.S. Rep. and Democrat Ed Markey, who represents Massachusetts' 7th district.
The first portion of the forum featured speeches by the Sapps and Abdul-aziz and focused on the situation in Iraq for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
It was sponsored by the Peace and Justice Studies program.
The Tufts Democrats sponsored the second half of the program, during which Markey rallied for students to help Democrats take back the House on Nov. 7 by campaigning for Tufts alum and Democrat Joe Courtney (A '75).
Courtney is locked in a dead heat with incumbent Rob Simmons in Connecticut's second district.
Paul Joseph, director of the Peace and Justice Studies program at Tufts, introduced the first several speakers and set the tone for the event, calling the war a "disaster in every single paradigm."
"We know this," he said. "All we're really missing is the political will to have the courage to reverse direction."
Joseph introduced Andy Sapp, a National Guard member who was mobilized on Mar. 1, 2004, and shipped out to Kuwait in October of that year. He served for a year in the city of Baiji, about 45 miles north of Tikrit, monitoring watch towers at a military base there. Sapp said the day that sticks out in his memory is Aug. 4, 2005.
"I started my shift, and at 11 at night, I was talking to one of the sergeants," Sapp said. "There was a flash on the horizon and a huge explosion. Fifteen minutes later the artillery started. Shortly after, the helicopter gun ships and jets left, so we knew it was big."
The units had been deployed because a high-value insurgency target was suspected to be in the town, but the loud explosion Sapp heard was caused by an IED, or improvised explosive device.
Only one of the five American soldiers riding in the humvee hit by the IED survived.
"The other four were quite literally blown apart," Sapp said. "We were picking their bodies out of the trees the next day."
Although Sapp did not know the men personally, he says he was "so filled with hatred, with the desire to kill people, that all I kept wishing was to carpet bomb the whole town of Baiji."
Upon his return home, Sapp came to terms with the fact that he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
He is now a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, and he says that speaking at events like tonight's is a part of his therapy.
Anne Sapp spoke of the hardships caused by her husband's service to her and her children, 18-year-old Lydia and 8-year-old Mary, who attended the event.
She said that her older daughter's greatest fear aside from her father's death was that he would come back "damaged," and that she knew those fears had come true when she read her husband's e-mail saying he wanted to kill other people.
The little things made life the most difficult, said Mrs. Sapp, who is active in "Military Families Speak Out."
"When I saw roadkill, I didn't see a dead raccoon. I saw my husband, or his comrades or Iraqi civilians."
Abdul-aziz's family is currently in Baghdad, and she provided an insider's view into the daily violence of Iraq. Baghdad hospitals are so overwhelmed that her grandfather could not find space when he took ill, she said. He died a few days later of pneumonia. The morgues, in turn, were so crowded that his body was kept on ice for several days, preventing the family from burying the corpse in accordance with Muslim beliefs. "You do not try to be safe in Iraq," said Abdul-aziz, who returned once for six weeks last winter. "That's asking too much. You simply want to stay alive."
Markey, who headlined the second half of the program, harkened to his time as a Boston University student, when he joined Eugene McCarthy's anti-war campaign against Lyndon B. Johnson.
Following one of the night's main themes, he channeled the ghosts of Vietnam throughout his speech.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme," Markey said, quoting Mark Twain. "Well, Iraq's not Vietnam, but it rhymes."
Markey drew parallels between a 19-year-old Malden resident who died serving in Iraq two weeks ago and a childhood friend of his who died on Friday. The friend was a Vietnam veteran who died of Agent Orange-related diseases.
Markey concluded by rallying the sixty or so remaining Tufts students to the Democratic cause, saying that electing Democrats will help end the war sooner.
"You have to have some proof you did something [about the war]. Not talked about it. Not analyzed it. Did something."
That something, Markey said, should be packing into buses to head down to eastern Connecticut to campaign for Courtney this Saturday. Members of the Tufts Democrats later confirmed that the Markey-funded buses would leave on Sunday instead, due to forecasted rain on Saturday.
After the event, Markey told the Daily that most Democrats in Congress sponsored HJ-73, the plan endorsed by U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) to redeploy troops out of Iraq and place them throughout the region in a position to respond to trouble spots.
Asked if activism on campuses like Tufts was as alive as during his college days, Markey responded, "We'll know at 8:30 on [Sunday] morning, when we see how many people are on those buses."
Before the event, Tufts Democrats Vice President Mickey Leibner said that the event was intended as an exchange of views, not a policy stance or a political endorsement.
