BY NORM DIXON
One of the first US soldiers killed in the invasion of Iraq was marine Kendall Waters-Bey. In his working-class Baltimore neighbourhood, there is anger, pain and sorrow.
His four sisters have been openly critical of US President George Bush and the war, reported the April 3 Workers World US socialist newspaper. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Michelle Waters, Kendall's oldest sister, proclaimed: "It's all for nothing, that war could have been prevented. Now we're out of a brother. Bush is not out of a brother. We are."
Nakia Waters told the newspaper, "This war is all about oil and money. It's about greed. [Bush] ought to send his daughters over there to fight."
This sentiment is echoed everywhere in Baltimore's working-class and poor communities, volunteers for the anti-war organisation Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) told Workers World.
Renee Washington is a mother of five children, one of whom is presently in the armed services. She is also related to Kendall Waters-Bey's mother. She fought to hold back her anger as she told Workers World, "We have had to endure cutbacks in our schools, racism in the street, and now our youth will be forced to die for the oil companies." Washington has distributed flyers for anti-war rallies organised by ANSWER.
Waters-Bey's relatives are not the first to buck the "support our troops" pressure that is being imposed by US politicians and their mass media toadies. Radical writer William Rivers Pitt reported on March 21 on the Truthout web site that, during a CBS News broadcast, the father of a US soldier killed in Iraq held up a photo of son and shouted, "Take a look, Bush. You killed my only son".
As of April 6, 114 US or British troops have been killed or are missing in Iraq.
Meanwhile, according to a report in the April 1 British Guardian, the first US "conscientious deserter" of the Iraq war has given himself up at a marine base in California. Stephen Eagle Funk said he believed the attack on Iraq was "immoral because of the deception involved by our leaders".
Funk, a 20-year-old marine reserve, was due to be sent to Iraq for combat duty, but went on "unauthorised absence" from his unit. He faces a possible court martial and jail for his action.
"I know I have to be punished for going UA", Funk told the Guardian before surrendering, "but I would rather take my punishment now than live with what I would have to do [in Iraq] for the rest of my life. I would be going in knowing that it was wrong and that would be hypocritical."
Accompanied by his lawyer and conscientious objectors from previous wars, Funk gave himself up at his home base in San Jose.
From Green Left Weekly, April 9, 2003.
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