Anti-war woman's trip to see son serving in Iraq has surprises for both

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | April 3, 2004 | Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

[Cincinatus' Wife]

'Hey, Nick. Your mom's here.' Anti-war Alameda woman's trip to see son serving in Iraq has surprises for both

........Galleymore was more political as a young mother, taking her young children on protest marches during the Iran-Contra controversy of the mid- 1980s. Her children hung out with the progressive thinkers she met while working for a food policy organization. But Galleymore's activism faded as her children entered adolescence, her time eaten up by the demands of single motherhood.

And somewhere along the line, her children didn't absorb her political perspective.

After Nick finished his third year at San Francisco State University and had been accepted for transfer to UC Berkeley, he announced that he had joined the Army.

"It was a total surprise," Galleymore said. "It wasn't like he needed money for college. He was already three years in, so that doesn't hold water."

She dismissed Nick's volunteering as a phase; it wasn't. Her son not only wanted to be in the Army, he wanted to be in an elite unit. He passed up completing his college degree and left for boot camp on Independence Day weekend, 1999.

Galleymore still doesn't know exactly why. They could never fully discuss it.

In January 2003, Nick was shipped to Afghanistan. He had become an Army Ranger, a jump master for paratroopers and a sniper. He was in the thick of the action. Last Dec. 19, his 26th birthday, Nick called to say he was headed to Iraq. At that point, with U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians being killed almost daily, Galleymore began to panic. She couldn't sleep at night, "because I was thinking, 'My kid is going to get killed for something I don't believe in, and I don't think he knows what he's getting into.' "

She began talking with other military mothers, hoping to get their perspectives on how to cope. But many knew little about what was going on in Iraq. Frustrating her effort to learn more about Nick was that she felt the news reporting from the front lines was giving an overly rosy picture of the U. S. occupation.

At wit's end, she decided that the only way to calm her fears was to go to Iraq. She got in touch with Code Pink, which has led about a dozen parents to Iraq over the past few months. After holding a fund-raiser, which netted half of the trip's $2,200 cost, she left for Iraq on Jan. 24. ................

[CyberAnt]

If you can, please ping those of us on this thread to his opinion. I already think I know what he will say .. but I'd like to know if I'm right!

[skinkinthegrass]

In all honesty, she sounds like she is mentally ill.

Agree

IMHO...Liberalism, is a Mental Illness. :|

[EllaMinnow]

He posted while I was away - he's right up there at #159.

Now, do I have a right to be proud of him or what? LoL!

[pragmatic_asian]

"Her 10-year-old daughter, unwounded, played dead as a female soldier took her earrings and left her lying in the street, Jeward claimed."

If she was playing dead, how the heck did she know it was a female soldier that took her earing? Considering how the people of Fallouja treat the dead, I would bet that it was an Iraqi who robbed the dead if there was a 'dead' girl to be robbed. If civilians were killed, at worst it was accidental because the insurgents used them for cover but much more likely it was the work of Iraqi terrorists themselves.

[mississippi red-neck]

In one essay, Galleymore asked for others to appreciate that the soldiers are in a dilemma, "caught in a military culture that encourages the numbing of most emotions but anger. Whip up enough anger in young men emotionally isolated, denied friends, family, lovers, even civilians clothes, physically exhaust them, nourish them inadequately, expose them to extreme temperatures and violent behavior, confine them to base and portray everyone else as murderous and you create impossible stress." Nick told his mother that wasn't his experience.

This woman's mind is a closed door. She does not live in the world as we know it. She lives in a little world of her own creation. She does not see or hear anything are anybody that does not agree with or support her preconceived version of reality. Even to the point of taking the word of an Iraqi woman over that of her own son. The situation she seen in Iraq is exactly what she needed it to be. A bunch of mean U.S. trigger happy children killing a bunch of innocent Iraqi children and if our children would just take their marbles and run home then everything would be fine and everyone would be happy.

The blinders she has been wearing since her early years has cost her the chance of having any kind of lasting and meaningful relationship with anyone including her son, her daughter,and apparently her children's father.

[sakic]

Give it a rest. Why someone would respond to such an asinine question, I'll never know.

Yo. Bright guy. You responded.

[PresbyRev]

'My kid is going to get killed for something I don't believe in, and I don't think he knows what he's getting into.' "

Aging Hippie-Boomer Alert

[BurbankKarl]

Okay, I have never met the woman....but really, does she speak Arabic too? Why couldnt she just go visit her son, and not try to inflict the shame over her South African upbringing onto everything. Just like Teresa Heinz.


>>>Galleymore was devastated by the story she was told by an Iraqi mother: The woman, pregnant at the time, had been riding in a car with her family when, she says, U.S. soldiers shot and killed three of her four children and her husband.

[stands2reason]

C'mon, you know the typical 10-year old Iraqi girl's jewelry is so valuable to an American soldier that it's worth desecrating a corpse to get, don't you?

(/sarcasm of the highest order)

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

What is missing? The mother sought ought purported, even improbable, victims of American atrocities, eagerly provided, with no proof by the way, by politically motivated groups she agrees with. But there is no mention of, and therefore complete indifference to, those murdered and tortured by Saddam who number at least in the hundreds of thousands and those killed and maimed by Jihadist bombs and other untold ways since the overthrow of Saddam.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Ain't it the truth. She is a LIBERAL activist who feels no one's pain.

Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means. Source

And to bring about her beautiful people's paradise, the U.S. must lose it's superpower status. She is a fool.

[Mr. Silverback]

When I first started reading this, I was coming up with all sorts of responses to it. For example, I was going to comment on how she wants credit for being anti-Apartheid from way back, but she fled the country at first opportunity and left the Blacks to find freedom on their own.

But you know what? All that needs to be said here is this:

Nick is a hero proved in liberating strife.

Nick's mother is not just a useful idiot, but just a plain garden variety idiot as well.

[Mr. Silverback]

Call me an optimist, but I figure a 26 year old, an Army Ranger, a jump master/sniper might know a thing or two about what he's getting into.

Exactly my reaction.

Mama should realize that her little boy is now a man, a man's man.

I've been reading a lot of this "Military family member" crap lately. There's a lot of this same vibe where the moms are anti-war mainly because they haven't figured out that the umbilical cord has been cut. Fathers, wives and other assorted relatives often have the same thing, only with their own twist: "Just because I married a Ranger doesn't mean he should be away from me in a war", etc., etc.

[Soylent Democrats]

Hey lady, the umbilical cord has already been cut!

[Mr. Silverback]

That poor soldier. Thank God he turned out better than his mother.

Poor little rich girl has kids who don't share her limousine liberal values, what a pity. Actually, I just insulted limousine liberals. If limousine liberals were like her, they would help the poor and downtrodden by moving to Jamaica, the way she helped all those poor apratheid victims by running to Israel.

[weegee]

I was thinking, 'My kid is going to get killed for something I don't believe in,

But he DOES believe in it. She is being selfish because he is putting American safety ahead of his own life (and America is safer since Qadaffi saw the writing on the wall with regards to WMD). There may still be terrorists in Iraq but they are no longer sponsored by the "state".

Having Iraq neutralized as a potential combatant (and safe harbor for fleeing officials/terrorists) makes it easier to deal with other Middle Eastern nations.

[weegee]

I just hope that he doesn't hear his mother's nagging voice in his head at a critical time for decision. His moment's hesitation could cost him his life and the lives of those around him.

[zip]

ping

[CSM]

"The need for cultural understanding was awakened during Galleymore's early childhood in apartheid-era South Africa. Her white, middle-class family owned a 30-unit hotel there, and with her parents busy running the 24-hour business, she and her siblings were raised by black nannies. She saw apartheid's inhumanity daily through their eyes, and she was repulsed by seeing work crews of black men shackled at the ankles along the roadside."

Yep, that's why it would be so much better if SH was still in charge!

[CSM]

"If you want to hate her for her politics, fine, but claiming as some here have, that they don't love each other is insane."

I will openly state that I don't think she loves him. She doesn't even know what love is. Love is accepting the other person regardless of their "flaws". She can't figure out what his "flaw" is that led him to the choice to go in the Army and she publicly states negatives about those choices. No where in the article does she support her son, or state that she wishes the best for him. Instead, she says things like, "don't do anything you'll be ashamed of" and she talks only of the negatives of the Army.

If she loved her son, she would keep her mouth shut. She only loves herself. If that were my mother I would cut her off from my life!