By ED COHEN
The woman was in the front seat of the car -- and half out the window. The vehicle slowed as it passed the small group of people on the corner. She drew in a deep breath, rearing back like a pitcher going into a windup, and then yelled at the top of her lungs: "My son is over there fighting to protect the freedom of you jerks." (The actual word she used was not "jerks" but a part of the posterior.)
This happened a couple of Saturdays ago at the intersection of Grape and Cleveland roads, near University Park mall. There were five people on the corner. They had an American flag on a pole that was strapped to the big steel utility pole. In their hands they clutched large signs, most of which carried messages critical of President Bush and the Iraq war. I was one of the five. We were all members of a group called the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition.
If you work in downtown South Bend and drive home on South Main Street you've probably seen this group -- in larger numbers -- outside the federal building at Main and Jefferson Boulevard. They've been assembling there every Monday night, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., since the invasion of Afghanistan.
The demonstrations at Grape and Cleveland, every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., have been going on only since early last December. The two-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion is coming up this weekend, and we hope to have a sizable turnout at our little corner Saturday.
When the woman in the car shouted at us a couple of weeks ago, I was holding a sign that read: "No WMDs + no apologies + no regrets = no moral authority." The young woman to my right held a much larger sign that read, "We (heart) our troops." When she heard what the woman in the car had shouted, she turned to me with a puzzled expression on her face.
"I didn't think anyone could object to this message," she said.
Neither did I.
As the car drove away I tried motioning for it to come back, but it was gone. I wanted to talk with the woman because there's something I can't figure out: Why do people say the troops are in Iraq fighting to protect our freedom?
Fighting to protect the freedom of the Iraqis, I could see. They did call it Operation Iraqi Freedom, and our troops did an admirable job helping secure polling places during the Iraqi elections at the end of January.
But how are they fighting to protect my freedom? Is our nation under attack from Iraq? Has it ever been? Are we repelling wave after wave of Iraqi soldiers wading ashore along the Outer Banks of North Carolina? Before the U.S. invasion, did Saddam Hussein swear to conquer the United States and burn the Bill of Rights live on Al Jazeera?
U.S. troops are doing many things in Iraq -- guarding polling places and oil pipelines, training Iraqis to serve in the police and military, trying to capture and kill insurgents and helping rebuild things destroyed by other U.S. troops.
But none of this involves countering a threat to my right to seek publication of this op-ed, practice my religion or enjoy any of the other freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights.
So why do people keep saying they are there fighting to protect our freedom?
I think the most likely reason is that some people confuse symbols of our nation -- men in uniform, the American flag -- with the actual freedoms we enjoy. If you don't salute the flag, you don't support the nation. And if you don't endorse a mission being undertaken by the military, it's like saying the troops themselves are doing something bad. In this case, sadly, they are. But it's not their fault.
President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war bestows upon countries the right to attack any country they suspect means them harm. This is the opposite of the "don't fire until fired upon" philosophy that historically guided our country's foreign relations and those of all other civilized nations. Pre-emptive war is not only un-American and immoral, it's a recipe for global mayhem.
But it wasn't our troops who dreamed up this notion or gave the order to try it out on Iraq.
If she's reading this, I want the woman in that car to understand something: Our purpose in holding up signs on street corners is not to denigrate people in uniform or compound the misery of their circumstances. What we are trying to do is keep the facts of this terrible precedent, this tragic failure of leadership, before a public growing numb to the daily tally of killed and maimed.
A favorite bumper sticker of war enthusiasts declares "Freedom isn't free." I agree. If we want to hold onto our freedoms, if we want a government that lives up to our nation's highest ideals, then we have to pay something: attention. Every one of us has the responsibility to keep careful watch over the actions our government takes in our names.
It probably would surprise the woman in that car to know that one of the other people standing on the corner that afternoon, and most Monday evenings, is the mother of a soldier fighting in Iraq. She understands that he isn't there fighting to protect our freedom. He's there trying to clean up a mess.
We're here to remind people of who's responsible for it.
Ed Cohen lives in Granger.