For those Americans with the greatest stake in the outcome of the war in Iraq – the people fighting it – President Bush’s call Tuesday to stay the course brought nods of agreement.
On the first anniversary of the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, Bush spoke to an audience of 700 soldiers at a gymnasium at Fort Bragg, N.C., and a national TV audience.
Recent polls have shown Americans increasingly dubious about the direction and human cost of the more than 2-year-old war.
Some politicians – even some in Bush’s own Republican Party – have called for a timetable for U.S. troops to return home.
But in Killeen, Texas, near Fort Hood, Sgt. Chuck Crawley, who watched the speech at Boston’s Gourmet Pizza, said America’s job in Iraq is unfinished.
“They ain’t liberated. If they were liberated, we wouldn’t still be there,” said Crawley, 25, of Charlotte, N.C. “They’re not free.”
Crawley, a member of the 1st Cavalry Division, has already spent a year in Iraq, returning to the U.S. in March. He re-enlisted and has been told he’ll be returning there later this summer.
Only when Iraq has a stable police force, Army and government will American troops be able to come home, he said.
“If we leave, there will be a civil war within the country and more people will die that way,” he said. “At least when we are there, we have control over it.”
About 2,500 miles from where Bush spoke to the troops, the president’s photograph hung on a wall at Beachcomber Barbershop in Oceanside, Calif., while Marines from Camp Pendleton got their hair cut and listened to the speech.
Cpl. James Anderson, 22, applauded Bush’s refusal to set a timetable.
“Like any Marine, you do the job until it’s done. You don’t just do it halfway and leave,” said Anderson, a Houston native who said he is scheduled to leave for Iraq soon.
Fellow Houston native Cpl. Chase Krebbs, 22, agreed.
“I’m a Marine. That’s why I joined, to do this stuff, to serve and protect,” Krebbs said.
Even farther west, in Hawaii, the president’s speech came at 2 p.m. on a sunny afternoon.
Lt. j.g. Ben Beebe of Alexandria, La., a Navy pilot and third-generation serviceman, stopped by a Taco Bell in the seaside military town of Kailua with another sailor to grab some snacks.
The town is next to the Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay, which lost 26 Marines in a helicopter crash in Iraq in January and seven in October when a car bomb exploded outside Fallujah.
Beebe said he and other soldiers are simply doing a job.
“You do the mission that we’re trained to do,” said Beebe who just returned from a six- month deployment in the Middle East and Afghanistan. “We never sit back and second-guess what’s going on.”
In Centreville, Ohio – a state among the top five in hometown casualties over the past year – the wife of Air Force Maj. Rick Webster said she hopes the president’s appeal will shore up eroding support for the Iraq mission.
“To have my children have to hear, ‘Oh, well, we shouldn’t be over there,’ I think that’s very degrading” to members of the military, Jennifer Webster said as she played with the couple’s 5-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
In the gymnasium at Fort Bragg, Staff Sgt. Daniel Metzdorf – who lost his right leg to an improvised explosive device while serving in Iraq in 2004 – was inspired by Bush’s words.
Metzdorf, 28, of Altamonte Springs, Fla., has rejoined the 82nd Airborne since losing his leg and said Bush delivered the right message: “We’re doing a great job over there, but the job is not over with.”
