News » October 4, 2004

The Home Front

By Hans Johnson

Sue Niederer grieves over a memorial called Eyes Wide Open, created by the American Friends Service committee, which includes a pair of boots for every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.

On September 17, it came to pass in New Jersey that party faithful applauding a chipper talk about the war by Laura Bush shouted down a mother in their midst and made sure she was arrested. She had come from a nearby town to ask a simple question: Why was her only son, Seth Dvorin, 24, sent to Iraq like a sitting duck? And how many more families will be forced to make a needless sacrifice like hers?

“When they reacted to the question I shouted by surrounding me and shouting me down, it felt like ignorance,” says Sue Niederer. “People have a right to speak. They could hear my question. Maybe they could learn something if it ever got answered.”

Anyone seeking evidence of the Iraq war’s lasting impact on small-town America need look no further than this mom from western New Jersey. Niederer has become a vocal critic of the war and the Bush administration after losing her son to a bomb he was disarming south of Baghdad while on patrol with his division.

“I can’t go back to how I was,” says Niederer. “Now I see what this war is. I can’t accept it. I have to be a forceful voice for what we need to do as a country. Supporting our troops means getting them home before more are killed or maimed.”

The explosion that killed Dvorin in early February came just days after his return to the occupied nation from a two-week stateside visit with his family.

During that break, Niederer overheard her formerly mild-mannered son telephoning his commanding officer to beg for additional resources. He needed better tracking systems to summon specially trained troops who could disarm the bombs that his unit detected. She recalls his rising voice as he had to repeat himself, as if not being heard. “‘I need computers and GPS systems. My men need these or they’re going to be dead!’”

It was not the first stonewall he had encountered. Dvorin entered the Army two years ago after finishing his degree from Rutgers in a financial hole. He saw enlistment as a chance to pursue intelligence-related work later on, a hope that his recruiter inflated with vague pledges. Niederer urged him to get these job-placement pledges down in black and white. He tried and got ridicule instead, according to a conversation Niederer recounted in an interview with Counterpunch. “Your mother wears your pants for you?” the recruiting agent asked.

After her son’s death, Niederer ran into more stonewalls. She tried to meet her son’s coffin, which the Army flew back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Her request was refused, but her protests helped break down barriers to other families’ requests to gather their loved ones’ remains.

Niederer has become a leader in Military Families Speak Out (www.mfso.org), which now encompasses more than 1,900 households. In their continuing quest for answers, she and several other relatives of the dead and the deployed kept vigil outside the Republican convention in New York. Her own husband, once loyal to Bush, has had a marked change of heart.

After her arrest in New Jersey, Niederer saw the charges against her dropped. Still, the GOP issued some parting shots: A Republican member of the state assembly sniped that she should “find something better to do with her time.” And on September 22, five days after her arrest, the Secret Service honed in on Niederer’s Counterpunch interview in which she vented anger against Bush, saying she “wanted to rip his head off.” Niederer insists she meant no harm by the comments. She was only thinking of her son.

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• Reader Comments

  If shouting down and arresting the mother of a small town American kid who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country is how the Republicans react to her grief then Bush has already lost the election.  If rank and file troops have to beg their commanding officers for resources just to fight the war much less win it then the war is already lost.  Election day can’t get here soon enough.

  Posted by theloneous on Oct 4, 2004 at 10:33 AM

  That we should spend even *more* on defense?

  Does anyone care or know how many Iraqis’ would have died from the sanctions if they had not been lifted?

  Would a mother’s grief be any less if the cause was indisputedly (which it *never* is) just?

  While this article “tugs on heartstrings”, does it really convey anything of interest?

  At least her son died for a good reason - imagine what might have happened if some Iraqi children had been the victims of the crazies who plant these bombs!

  Posted by IsThePoint on Oct 4, 2004 at 12:56 PM

  Niederer has my support.  Bush does not, nor do the Republicans who are meanspirited.  Imagine saying something like that to a person who lost their son to the war. Doesn’t surprise me these people have no compassion, empathy or brains.

  Posted by lilizthelizard on Oct 4, 2004 at 1:59 PM

  isthepoint sums up the whole republican problem....i can smell your soul rotting from here....i can’t believe you could think this woman’s son has died for a just cause....you are truely heartless, cruel and brainless…

  Posted by danoaudio on Oct 4, 2004 at 6:21 PM

  IsThePoint wrote:  Does anyone care or know how many Iraqis’ would have died from the sanctions if they had not been lifted?

  You mean the same sanctions imposed upon these children by King George Bush the 1st, right?
  Here’s an idea: lift the sanctions without killing these same people you’re, in a long stretch of the imagination, supposed to be helping.
  You’re not exactly Mr. Current Affairs, then:
  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents detonated three car bombs near a U.S. military convoy in Baghdad Thursday, killing 41 people, 34 of them children, and wounding scores...

  Nice job, dumbass Bush.

  You also wrote: While this article “tugs on heartstrings”, does it really convey anything of interest?

  At least her son died for a good reason - imagine what might have happened if some Iraqi children had been the victims of the crazies who plant these bombs!
  

  For a good reason? FOR A GOOD REASON??!!!! This illegal invasion was NOT a good reason.

  This guy was unable to find work because Bush has so miserably screwed up the economy that this happens:
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc. (PEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world’s No. 2 soft drink company, on Thursday said quarterly profit rose due to tax benefits and strong performances from its key Frito-Lay snack and North American beverage businesses and raised its full-year profit forecast.

  The company also said it was closing four plants at Frito-Lay, resulting in 780 job cuts at those locations. About 250 of those jobs will be moved to other Frito-Lay operations.
  

  Nice job with giving all those tax break to corporations so they can “jump-start” the economy. They’re using them so well.
  I don’t know about you, but everyone I know is barely making ends meet. Medicine, health care, food is all on the rise. Yet you feel “it was for a good cause.” You think Iraq was a threat to America? Hardly.

  Do you subscribe to this screwed up notion that Republican are righteous and Democrats are bad? Because that is what Bush wants you to believe--that he’s doing God’s work.
  According to my bible, lying, stealing, cheating, and greed, not to mention murder, are all sins--the very ones committed by that mentally defunct piece of trash that calls himself our president.

  Posted by Neil on Oct 4, 2004 at 7:34 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 38 posts.

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