The Nation: Iraq: "Worst Day Since Vietnam" for Hawaii

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BLOG | Posted 08/25/2007 @ 01:51am
Iraq: "Worst Day Since Vietnam" for Hawaii
Jon Wiener


The death of 14 army soldiers in a helicopter crash in northern Iraq on August 23 included ten stationed in Hawaii, making that Hawaii's "worst day . . . since the Vietnam War" – that's what the Honolulu Advertiser declared in a page one banner headline and story.

Like much of America, I'm on vacation in late August. For me, it's Hanalei on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where my plan was to snorkel a different North Shore beach every day, stop for a shave ice afterwards, eat local fish, and stay far away from the news. But the Iraq war is inescapable, even in this idyllic escape. At the Big Save in Hanalei, past the taro fields, there's a big display of Spam and another of cheap flip-flops, but the newspaper headline about the "Worst Day" was hard to miss.

The Vietnam-Iraq parallel is a familiar one in debates among pundits and politicians over the war's rationale and future, but the explicit comparison of daily battlefield deaths in Iraq and Vietnam in a local newspaper appears to be something new.

The ten killed near Kirkuk had been part of a 7,000 soldier unit from the army's Schofield Barracks, north of Pearl Harbor, deployed in Tikrit and Mosul. Their mission, originally scheduled for one year, has been extended to 15 months. The Thursday deaths bring the total to 39 soldiers from the Hawaiian unit killed on this deployment, plus an additional 13 killed on a 2004 deployment.

Despite the millions of tourists who come to Hawaii annually, the islands in many ways are a like a series of small towns, and the death of fourteen soldiers on one day left the state "stunned," according to the Advertiser. The paper devoted two full inside pages to the news, in addition to most of the front page and editorial page. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15