[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 25, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E566-E567]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          INNOCENTS IN UNIFORM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 25, 2003

  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw to the attention of my 
colleagues an article written by my friend Princeton Economist Uwe 
Reinhardt. Dr. Reinhardt is well known to many of us in Congress 
because of his expertise in health care policy. He's an advisor I rely 
on for his keen insights, knowledge, and his wit--not a characteristic 
identified in many health economists.
  What many of my colleagues may not know is that Dr. Reinhardt and his 
wife, May, have a son who is serving in the U.S. Marines on the front 
lines in Iraq.
  Dr. Reinhardt grew up in Germany and saw the horrors of war as a 
young boy there. His words deserve our attention. He's right. Our 
thoughts and prayers should extend to all involved in war and against 
any loss of human life--civilian, military, American or Iraqi.
  I commend Dr. Reinhardt's article for your attention. His sentiments 
are ones I share completely and I thank him for being able to so 
eloquently say what many of us feel. I hope others will take his words 
to heart.

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 22, 2003]

                          Innocents in Uniform

                         (By Uwe E. Reinhardt)

       Princeton, NJ.--CNN recently showed a Marine chaplain 
     admonishing the platoon assembled before him: Pray not only 
     for yourself, he told them, but for your enemies as well. 
     After all, they are just soldiers, like you, doing what they 
     are ordered to do.
       What a refreshing departure these words were from what I've 
     been hearing from the civilian sector, where the talk is 
     mainly of minimizing coalition casualties or, in more 
     generous moments, innocent Iraqi civilian casualties as well. 
     I wince every time I hear that kind of talk, especially the 
     reference to innocence. Should not the proper minimum in any 
     war be loss of human life, period--which in this case 
     includes Iraqi soldiers, too?
       My earliest childhood memories were forged by war--real 
     war. My family lived near one of the most ferocious battle 
     grounds of the European war theater--the notorious Hurtgen 
     forest, where American and German soldiers fought one another 
     in hand-to-hand combat for more than four months in the fall 
     of 1944. A plaque at one of the military cemeteries in the 
     area notes that more American soldiers died there than in 
     Vietnam, and surely as many or more German soldiers were 
     killed there too.
       My family lived opposite a convent that had been converted 
     into a field hospital for the nearby front. I was a small boy 
     then, and watching the ambulances come and go (sometimes 
     peeking curiously into them), I could not help but become 
     witness daily to the horrors of war. Millions of Europeans of 
     my generation, whom many Americans now disparage so 
     contemptuously as pacifists, had a similar experience.
       Because we lived so near the Battle of the Bulge and the 
     advancing, allied forces, our village was strafed and bombed 
     routinely. One such attack came as my friends and I were 
     playing outside. We ran as the planes approached, taking 
     shelter in the cavernous basement of the convent. There we 
     spied a row of stretchers. On each was a body covered 
     entirely by a blanket. Possibly to overcome our own terror, 
     we dared one another to pull back a blanket on one of the 
     stretchers, to see what a dead man looked like. Someone did. 
     We fell silent instantly as we beheld the serene, waxen face 
     of a very young soldier who could not have been older than 16 
     or 17.
       More than 50 years later, I can still see his face clearly. 
     The shock of it recurs whenever I hear the chirpy anchors on 
     the morning programs (not to mention the hawkish talking 
     heads) prattle on about innocent civilians, as if the number 
     of fallen enemy soldiers did not count. What does 
     ``innocent'' mean in the context of war?
       I am almost certain that the young German soldier my 
     friends and I saw so many years ago in that convent basement 
     was as innocent as those of us who weren't in uniform. For 
     all we know, he had grown up on a farm somewhere and, while 
     fighting in the trenches, dreamed of his girlfriend and of 
     life as an adult in peaceful times. For all we know, he would 
     have happily quit fighting and joined the allies. (He didn't 
     have much of a choice: some German generals strung up on 
     trees the bodies of young soldiers who had deserted, a 
     powerful warning to their peers.)
       Perhaps many of the Iraqi soldiers, too, find themselves 
     where they are because they have no other choice. After all, 
     is not Saddam Hussein a ruthless dictator, and are not some 
     of his generals likely to be as cruel as their Wehrmacht 
     counterparts?
       My hope is that Americans can muster the proper decorum 
     that an enterprise as horrible as war demands. There is 
     nothing neat about maiming and killing people with precision 
     bombs from the air or gunfire on the ground--even if they're 
     wearing enemy uniforms. Young lives are snuffed out; parents, 
     siblings and lovers weep, and so should we. We want our 
     troops to win a quick victory, to be sure. As the father of a 
     young Marine officer on the front lines in Iraq, I certainly 
     do. But let us heed that Marine chaplain

[[Page E567]]

     who, like anyone who has ever witnessed war, knows whereof he 
     speaks. Let us hope and pray for a minimum loss of human 
     life--period.

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