Duty, Country, Politics

Shortly before former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama of "dithering" on the war in Afghanistan, Sonya Powell had already gotten her orders.

With less than a week left before she has to report to an Army base in Georgia, Sonya was trying to pack. But as quickly as she put clothing into her bag, three-year-old Julian pulled them right back out. It became a war of wills, almost as if the toddler suspected that something worrisome was amiss.

The remaining days before she has to report for duty will be frantic; Sonya must move Julian more than 800 miles away from the only home he's known to live with his grandmother in another state; and Sonya will have all of one day to personally check out daycare centers where Julian will stay while his grandmother works.

Finally, she will have to say goodbye.

Sonya is a divorced, single mother who has been in the Army for 18 years; in two more she can retire with full benefits. A chemical officer, this will be her second tour into a war zone, having been deployed to Iraq in 2004.

Sonya is also my first cousin, and one of the people I've looked up to for much of my life. Her father died when we were kids, and we lived under the same roof for a time; I saw her as more of a big sister than my cousin. (I am not disclosing the location in Afghanistan where she will be stationed for the next 400 days due to security reasons.)

While the political debate rages between the White House and its detractors about the justness of the war and how to manage it, inside the minds of soldiers and officers are quandaries and emotional struggles that are hardly ever talked about.

My cousin always knew it was possible that she'd be called up again, but secretly she wished that it had not happened. Five years ago, it was just her, now she has a child to consider. It is also harder because she and other members of the military don't have a clear understanding of their mission.

"Our focus has shifted," she says. "Originally we were there to get Osama bin Laden, but we don't even hear his name mentioned any more. Some say we're now there because of 9-11, some say we want to defeat the Taliban, some say it's because of the poppy seeds. Nobody knows."

Just this week a former Marine Corps captain resigned over the Afghan war for the same reason. Mathew Hoh, who joined the Foreign Service earlier this year said: "I have lost the understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," The Washington Post reported. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Soldiers not only fight for each other but for the cause, said Nancy Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University who specializes in military ethics. "They want to know that the cause is just," she says. "It's hard to fight when soldiers don't know what they're fighting for. They also need to know that the cause is worth their sacrifice."

Adding to the pressures my cousin faces is the fact that she is being cross-leveled. It's now an all too common practice in which military personnel are being plucked from their home units and placed in more depleted units. For many service members home units become their families, even more so than parents and siblings.

It's bad enough that this is happening to officers like Sonya, but it is even more devastating for combat personnel, she says. Sherman echoes this sentiment. "There is unit cohesion for a reason," Sherman says. "Being part of the same unit is purposely used to get (service members) to feel attached to each other so that they can feel responsible for taking care of each other, and be ready to cover each others' backs.

"They did this in Vietnam when a unit would get depleted they would put in single replacements," adds Sherman. "There's no sense of family. Morale is strongest when soldiers go to war with their unit and hope to come home with their unit."

Sherman is the author of The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers, which explores the psychological and moral burdens borne by soldiers. It will be released in March.

A majority of Americans, -- 57 percent -- oppose the war in Afghanistan and "think it's turning into another Vietnam, "the most divisive and painful defeat in modern American history," a CNN poll shows.

Lethal bombings helped make October the icasualties.org, an independent web site that tracks casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More troubling: Attacks in Iraq are once again becoming deadly as the U.S. gets closer to its planned exit date. Sixty members of the Iraqi security forces were arrested this week in connection with a double suicide bombing that killed 155 people on Oct. 25.

The costs of war are carried, disproportionately, by those like my cousin. Their lives are substantially disrupted: there is the expense of closing up a house; relocating a child to another state; missing more than a year from that child's life; going into unfamiliar territory, and thanks to cross-leveling, deploying with unfamiliar people. Then there is always the chance that she will come home injured, or not at all.

My cousin supports her commander in chief, but she also understands Cheney's criticisms. "I think the politics need to come out of it," she says.

After all, she is being asked to choose between her love of country and the love she has for family, especially her son. It's the same kind of heart-wrenching choice others in the military are being asked to make every day, outside of public view.

For now most Americans appear to support the cautious consideration of Obama's war policy as they know all too well what happens when presidents rush to judgment.

Besides, we will know more about the way Obama makes decisions a year from now. If significant levels of U.S. combat troops are still in Iraq come 2011, despite the president's promises to the contrary, then Cheney will have been right.

Tracie Powell is a former American Political Science Association congressional fellow and writes regularly on politics and policy.