For most Americans, the war in Iraq might as well be taking place on another planet.
Public disengagement from politics, the willingness of many to give the Bush administration a blank check in the post 9/11 age — and most importantly, the lack of a draft — have combined to foster an abiding out-of-sight, out-of-mind outlook. There are times, though, as with the April 2 death of Marine Corps Corporal Brian St. Germain of West Warwick, who was killed in a single-vehicle accident in Al Anbar Providence, Iraq, when the impact of the faraway war becomes local and therefore very tangible.
While St. Germain’s death will deliver a burst of attention, two other events seek to focus more public interest on the American involvement in Iraq.
On Saturday, April 8, anti-war activists plan to protest US Senator Hillary Clinton’s 5:30 pm appearance at Brown University’s Meehan Auditorium. While Clinton, a leading contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, will speak as part of the Doherty-Granoff Forum on Women Leaders, critics contend her leadership has been wanting, since she hasn’t really wavered since voting in support of the war. Jacque Amoureux, a Providence resident active in Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org), raps Clinton for criticizing the Bush administration without offering any real alternatives on Iraq. “Real leadership means working today to bring the troops home now,” says Amoureux, who says her brother, an Idaho resident, served with the Marine Reserves in Iraq.
Amoureux believes the New York senator has been unwilling to advocate an immediate US withdrawal because of how the ceaseless stream of bad news related to the war poses a political liability for Republi¬cans. And while a pullout will have unpredictable consequences, she says, “We think [US] troops being there with guns is fuel on the fire that is Iraq.”
Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) is presenting “Voices in Wartime,” a series exploring “how authors, scholars, poets, journalists, and artists respond to the experience of war.”
The series begins Sunday, April 9 at 3 pm at the Carriage House Stage, 7 Duncan Avenue, Providence, with a reading and discussion featuring Brian Turner. Turner, a poet and the award-winning author of Here, Bullet, serv¬ed seven years in the US Army, and was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq, beginning in November 2003. According to the New Yorker, Turner “wrote his poems secretly . . . He didn’t want his underlings to think he was writing about ‘flowers and stuff like that.’ ”
Other highlights of “Voices in Wartime” (full details can be found on RICH’s Web site,www.rihumanities.org) include: panel discussions at the Newport Public Library (Thursday, April 13 at 7 pm) and First Unitarian Church, 1 Benevolent Street, Providence (Friday, April 14 at 7:30 pm); and a talk with NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden (First Unitarian Church, Thursday, April 27 at 7 pm). Also, on Friday, April 14, Trinity Repertory Company will debut the original play Boots On the Ground, and starting Friday, April 7, the Cable Car Cinema will screen Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, Why We Fight.
