Every time the wound begins to heal at Ray and Diane Maida's house, something comes along to rub salt into it.
First came news that their son, Mark Maida, a 22-year-old Army sergeant, was killed in Iraq by a roadside bomb on May 26. Then, a week after his death, the Army gave only hours' notice that the body would be arriving at Gen. Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, forcing the grieving family into a frantic scramble to retrieve it for a funeral two days later.
Letters and packages to Mark from home arrived for a time almost daily, marked "Return to sender." Then a slow trickle of possessions arrived from Iraq and his unit's base at Fort Irwin, Calif. To top it off, despite repeated efforts, Army officials failed to provide details of Mark's death. More than two months later, the Maidas finally got the details of his death, not from the Army, but from the Washington Post.
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For the Maidas, pain from the loss of their son has been compounded by countless snafus. Ray said an Army official even admitted, unofficially, that the Army lacked a proper protocol for dealing with the families of dead soldiers.
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"They can take a $1 million missile and put it up some Iraqi's ass and they can't tell me what time my son's coming in?" Ray fumed. "This is why my son's dead, this total incompetence."
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Mark and his fellow soldiers patrolled trouble spots, often looking for insurgents planting roadside bombs. Although Mark was trained as a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle, the soldiers typically traveled in Humvees, which insurgents have been remarkably successful in blowing up.
"He's in Iraq and he's serving and he's getting frustrated, frustrated at the incompetence of leadership," Ray said. "He didn't feel he was accomplishing what America was saying was being accomplished."
But he had a sense of obligation to his fellow soldiers that outweighed his aversion to the military.
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If there's one thing that galls the Maidas, it's the endless parade of bumper sticker ribbons.
"Do you know what my government's not doing to support the troops?" Ray said. "I want people to know the lack of respect and the folly of 'We Support Our Troops.'"
Can't really add to much to this. The Maida's have legitimate questions as do Cindy Sheehan and others whose sacrifice has been answered only with slander, innuendo and outright lies from Beloved Leader on down to the chickehawks who sit around and blather endlessly fueled by beer and pork rinds in their ribbon-festooned cars and trucks.
Mark Maida was the kind of military guy I respected a lot, and there are lots and lots of them out there, men and women who don't necessarily love the military, but do truly support each other and their mission, however stupid and misguided it may be.
Even in peacetime, it was always a sort of wrenching experience to leave your unit, knowing that someone else would be picking up the sorties you would have flown, or the deployments you would not be making. It's just like that...unless of course you're an overprivileged son-of-a-bitch who can't be bothered to carry your share of the load...ever.
RIP, Mark Maida.
posted by Jo Fish on 08.25.05 at 09:18 PM
Comments:
RIP, Mark Maida, and to your grieving parents and family, friends and brothers and sisters-in-arms, go my honour, respect and gratitude. Not for what the 1600 Crew told you this war was about, but for your bravery, your knowing that if the SOBs who sent you there wouldn't do the job of protecting you, you would do it, you and your buddies. You fought against all odds, the worst being your own commander-in-chief who will never know what it is to do something heroic for someone else. He lives and will die as a coward.
posted by: Nina on 08.26.05 at 10:34 AM [permalink]
Jo,
This makes me absolutely sick, but thanks for posting it.
Not a day goes by in this wobegone war that I'm not grateful to have no part of it.
But remember, if you so much as ask a question about what we're doing in Iraq or how we're doing it, you're "unpatriotic" and guilty of "Bush hatred." Really.
posted by: Lex on 08.26.05 at 11:05 AM [permalink]
I have lots of respect for loads and loads of military guys like Maida, and I regret their loss, though certainly not as Mark Maida's parent's do. If the civilian leaders of the military had the same respect and the same sense of loss then there would have been fewer casualties and better planning, but we're being run by incompetent amateurs who think they're really good at it because they were in government before and screwed it up without getting arrested. This crowd has to go. We need a government run by people who can make realistic assessments of the circumstances and are capable of doing things rationally, not just "staying the course" because it's a bumper-sticker slogan that people like to hear.
