Military mom calls out Sheehan, media ("interfere w our military’s operation")-1540 AM, Philadelphia

“DENISE THE MILITARY MOM” ON “THE ADAM TAXIN SHOW.” SEPTEMBER 11, 2007, 1-2 PM. WNWR 1540 AM PHILADELPHIA WNWR.com

If anyone wants to hear the audio version of the interview, they should tune into “The Adam Taxin Show” at approximately 1:30 PM today, Tuesday, September 11 on 1540 WNWR in the Philadelphia area, or broadcast on the internet at wnwr.com. If people want to hear the whole show, it’s from 1-2.

And if anyone wants a fairly large MP3 of the segment or the entire transcript, just e-mail me at adamtaxin@gmail.com .

Adam Taxin: You’re listening to The Adam Taxin Show on WNWR 1540 AM Philadelphia, and on the web at wnwr.com. We’re being sponsored today by the Law Firm of Allen L. Rothenberg, 800-LAW-KING and injurylawyer.com.

“Denise the Military Mom” has been with me in the studio today. She is a retired Philadelphia-area pediatrician with a son in Special Forces somewhere, which is why I’m leaving out her last name, one son-in-law in Iraq, where he, I believe, is involved in the cleanup efforts over there, and another son-in-law is in the Coast Guard. Her husband’s family also has an extensive military history.

AT: And thank you, by extension, for the sacrifices that so many members of your family have made.

AT: Well, we’re talking about 9/11 today, and I have a lot of questions – I don’t know where exactly this discussion is going to go or end up – but it’s important that we give a voice to someone whose family has made the sacrifices that your family is making. And let me just start out by asking where exactly the members of your family – your son and son-in-laws – are based?

DtMM: Well, my son-in-law is currently serving in the Army in Iraq, and he’s in the middle of a fifteen-month deployment. He’ll come back in the summer. My son is leaving soon for his third six-month deployment to Iraq over the past three years. He’s actually been there, I think, five times

AT: You’re from suburban Philadelphia, as I am, and it’s unusual to find a family that has so many members in the military. Why do you think it is that so many members of your family have gone on to serve the country in the way they have?

DtMM: Well, I find it interesting too. Certainly our family learned from myself and my husband that we really like the idea of having careers of service. My husband’s a retired surgeon. The kids … Well, I can speak for my son, I think that some people are born warriors. It’s interesting when I look back at some of their drawings that they did when they were three and four and five years old. His are men coming down out of helicopters on ropes, and little guys sticking their heads up out of tanks with a big smile on their face.

DtMM: And when I used to take him to church, there was a picture of the church on the church bulletin, and he would always carry it in with him, and by the time we left there would be a total assault on the church every Sunday.

DtMM: I truly believe that we are all born with special gifts, and I think that many of the people who serve in the military have special gifts as well.

AT: You said something to me off the air about bullying and a response to bullying and … I know your kids didn’t get bullied because they were all pretty big…

DtMM: … They were the defenders, and I guess they still are. Maybe that’s where they learned it.

AT: I believe both your sons were pretty good football players, your daughters were pretty good athletes and your sons-in-law were football players as well. Do you think there’s a connection there actually?

DtMM: Yes I do. I always thought that football was a good outlet for my son’s aggression. He didn’t pick on his little brother as much, who’s now his big brother.

DtMM: Yes, yes. He didn’t pick on his brother as much after he was playing football. And I think boys, as a pediatrician, I think there’s something to be said for testosterone; I don’t know if it’s a good or bad, but it certainly adds to people’s aggression, and I think that’s just part of the differences between men and women.

AT: Do you feel that your family, and the military in general, are by and large supported by Americans? Certainly there are plenty of Americans who are antiwar … or at least call themselves “antiwar”?

DtMM: Correct. I think that, I would say that most people are supportive of our individual sacrifices. I think that people in general are naïve or they just don’t want to realize how serious some of the world events are right now, and I do think that some of the antiwar discussions and attitudes really do interfere with our military’s operation and also embolden the terrorists, because they don’t understand freedom. They don’t understand that we can have different points of view, and I think that, when they hear the antiwar sentiment that comes from a lot of our media and also a lot of our Congress, that that emboldens them, and they figure that we will lose a lot of our resolve.

AT: How, specifically, does your son, or your sons-in-law, or your daughters, how do they react to that?

DtMM: Well, I think they believe that we all have the right to believe what we want to believe. I mean, this is the United States, and, as many people say, there’s not too many people trying to get out. There’s an awful lot of people trying to get in, because we do have such great freedoms. And I think they respect the fact that people can disagree with the war, but I know that they do believe that a lot of the negative press and negative discussions around the combat in Iraq particularly, is detrimental to our success there.

AT: So, if I’m reading into what you’re saying, you’re saying that the media is playing a detrimental role here?

DtMM: I think very much so. I’ve gotten to the point where I can only watch certain news media. I don’t even bother turning on to see what certain channels say. I think it’s very biased. There’s an interesting group of articles in the New York Post, just in the last ten days, by Ralph Peters, who has visited Iraq twice, about six months ago, last winter, and just this summer, in August, and he says we can win this thing, and things have really changed there. So I think if I could put a plug in for him, because I have a hard time finding what I consider is accurate information. I would encourage people to look at the newyorkpost.com opinion pages and read his articles.

AT: You know, my mother, I told her you were coming on. She actually had a question or two she wanted me to ask you, and she’s my mom, so I have to give her a little priority here … she wanted me to ask, “what do you feel are the greatest discrepancies between the realities of the current situation in Iraq and the picture portrayed by the media?”

DtMM: I think that life is improving for the Iraqis. I think that there is a gratitude now for the work that the American soldiers are doing there, and the Special Forces. I think there’s real cooperation between the Iraqi forces and the American forces. I think they are learning that they can trust us. That’s taken a long time, and I think particularly our negative media has a lot to do with that.

DtMM: No. I think they’re all equally bad. About the only one I’ll watch is Fox News, occasionally MSNBC, but that’s it.

AT: What angers you, beyond the media, most about the way our efforts are being portrayed by, I guess, politicians, even presidential candidates? (I won’t mention one party or the other of course.)

DtMM: Sure… I think that people, when they try to portray us or the current Administration as aggressors, they are making a big mistake. I think, we’re talking about 9/11 today and remembering that huge atrocity that was unleashed on our country with no provocation, so they started it, we didn’t. I think your last guest talked about the “big, mean military machine” – he didn’t put it that way, but something like that – and I was, when the Twin Towers happened, I remembered that one of my thoughts that crossed my mind was, just as the bombing of Pearl Harbor mobilized this country in World War II when we finally entered that war, and it was still very unpopular in the United States, by the way, that we did enter at that time, that the people – I lost my train of thought …

DtMM: Oh yes, that one of the – and this is probably from the movie – but I know that this is a historical fact, that one of the leaders that was listening to the report said, “I think that we have unleashed a sleeping giant.” And I think that that’s true. I mean 9/11 didn’t happen in isolation, and for the past 20 or 25 years, there have been escalating acts of terrorism by various islamic terror groups, and the less we did, the bolder they got.

AT: Let me ask you a question, in terms of “awakening a sleeping giant,” some will say that Americans today are too soft to fight a war, your family maybe being an exception – they’re a little tougher than most – but they’re comparing it to the latter stages of the Roman Empire, and they’re saying American males aren’t as tough as they used to be, and this is islamic propaganda, that’s what they say about us. Is there any truth to that?

DtMM: I think there is. I am very concerned about where our society is going and where our culture’s going. And I think that there are things in our culture that other people could look at, particularly if you look at what’s broadcasted on television to the rest of the world, to think that life is pretty disgusting in the United States, whereas many people do not espouse or act like the people that are portrayed on television. I think that we are a selfish nation. I think that we would rather not think about these big threats to us, and I think we’re very complacent. I think we don’t want to think about the terror that faces us, but two days ago, they nearly attacked German airports and Ramstein Air Force Base, and …

DtMM: … and that was foiled. And what about the ten airlines, airplanes that were supposed to be blown up simultaneously over the Atlantic coming from Europe, about six or eight months ago, and that was foiled.

AT: It’s disturbing to me how people just want to be distracted. They want to be convinced that this doesn’t exist. When I turn on, for example – I don’t watch a lot of MTV, I think I’m well out of their age range now – but people who are the same age as the people fighting over there, I can’t imagine people would be so oblivious during World War II, to the sacrifices… I mean, you hear about rationing, you hear about how it was a daily part of people’s lives …

DtMM: Yes, and right now people are complaining because the cost of bullets has gone up twice as much. I think that a lot of the lack of resolve in this country is just our unwillingness to get involved, but I don’t think that we have a choice at this point. I think that the terrorists have made, if Iraq was not the center of the issues before, the terrorists have certainly made it a central part of the War on Terror, and we can’t afford to lose that. What will happen if we do? Do we expect that if we just withdraw, that they’re just gonna let us go on our merry way? No. Their goal, the stated goal of the radical islamists is world domination. They want us to be an islamic society. I don’t think very many people in the United States would tolerate being part of an islamic society.

DtMM: Exactly. I think that if we withdraw now, I think there’s plenty of evidence that we are having some success. I think we need to be patient, and I think that, if withdraw now, we totally lose face with the rest of the world, and we’re just going to have to fight a bigger situation and a tougher situation on a broader scale in the future.

AT: Some will say, on the other hand, that the Iraqis are not really showing that much gratitude for what the U.S. and especially people like members of your family are doing over there. How do you respond to such critics of the war, who I think have some merits in what they say?

DtMM: Right. I think that the Iraqi people, you have to understand that they have lived under a dictator for 25 or 30 years -- I don’t know the details but – who just totally oppressed them, terrible atrocities and whenever they tried to stand up against him, they were killed, or their families were mutilated, or their women were raped, or whatever. And we come in there and things change, and they see an opportunity, I mean how many Iraqis voted in their election? Over 90%. How many people vote in the United States? To me, that says something. It says that the majority of the people there want their independence. War is murky. It just doesn’t go smoothly. And I think we do have to have patience. I think Ralph Peters pointed out, and I’ve heard it first-hand from my kids, but also Ralph Peters pointed out that the man on the street in Iraq wants us to stay. And they are beginning to show their gratitude, and the sheiks are beginning to show their gratitude.

AT: It seems like you’re drawing a distinction between radical islam and what ordinary islamic people are capable of. You seem to be suggesting that they can have a functioning democratic society in parts of the Middle East.

One critic of this, I heard him recently say “What evidence is there to believe that there could be a society civilized enough to do what we’re trying to do?” It certainly is unprecedented in history.

DtMM: I’m not a military historian, but it seems to me that, if I remember …

DtMM: … that there really were secular societies in the Middle East. There was in Iran, and there was particularly in Lebanon, and it was a multicultural society. Another book that I really found fascinating, and I think important because of the information that’s in it, is “Because They Hate” by Brigitte Gabriel, who was a Lebanese woman who was ten years old at the time of the first invasion of Lebanon. And what happened to her country, as she said, Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East. So many lived side-by-side. I think there is evidence that the people could live in freedom. I think that they are very afraid to stand up against the government, and I think they’re afraid to align themselves with us, although that is changing now for sure, because they fear that if we do pull out, as many of our critics would want us to, that they will be slaughtered or tortured or worse.

AT: The precedent is certainly there. Let me ask you one more question about Iraq before bringing it back to your family. We were talking about the media before, and you said they don’t show all the good things that are being done over there. If you were to tell the audience now, what are some of the examples of progress that are going on there that the mainstream, so-called mainstream, media just isn’t showing people?

DtMM: OK, particularly with the surge in the past few months over the summer , I think that there the people in Iraq are aligning themselves with our military and the Iraqi military, and weeding out the terrorists, getting them out of their neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are safer. The neighborhoods are open. The markets are open. The kids are playing soccer in the street. The kids love our G.I.s, always have. My son, well, my son said, after his first trip to Iraq, that they were a bunch of wonderful children surrounded by a lot of bad adults. So, I’ll probably get in trouble for saying that, but that was his point of view.

AT: Let me ask one other family before I bring it back to my family. Cindy Sheehan…

AT: … she’s probably gotten more coverage than probably the rest of all of you combined…

DtMM: Yes, I do. One thing that I would just say to people, to think about the fact that there are many military moms who’ve lost their sons or their children in Iraq. She’s one of the few that is so vocal anti-war. So she certainly doesn’t … many of, most of us military moms are very proud of our kids and proud of what they do, and obviously the biggest tragedy in the world would be to lose them, but we feel that it’s for a greater cause. My son-in-law told my daughter before he left, that if anything happened to him, that she had to promise that she would never do what Cindy Sheehan did. So I think that tells you where my family stands on that particular issue.

AT: It’s a challenge that most families don’t have to go through, something like that. But what are, are there any other challenges that members of your family have to deal with?

DtMM: You know, I think that anyone who’s attached to the military, particularly with these long deployments, for your husband or wife to be away for fifteen months is amazing, and to happen perhaps again and again… I have a niece and nephew who are married who are both in the Army as well, and both of them could be deployed, and there’s even the potential that they could be deployed at the same time. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened so far, but families make huge sacrifices, and the people who … the wives and the children who stay behind are making huge sacrifices, just like the men. But just to be separated from your loved one for as long as they are, and also to live in fear and anxiety for all that time. I think it’s always hardest at the beginning, and it gets sort of hard again at the end of a deployment, as you worry about your loved one. But we somehow get through it.

DtMM: My greatest fear right now is … my greatest fear obviously would be to lose one of the people I love. But my second-greatest fear and my broader fear, my global fear, is that we will pull out now, because I think we will waste what we have done so far, and I dread … we are making progress. I think we need to stay the course. Are you listening, Congress? And we need to keep making improvements and changes as the military sees fit to improve the situation over there.

DtMM: My greatest hope is that Iraq will become a democratic country. It doesn’t have to be a democracy like the United States, but where a number of people can live in freedom, and that we lose this idea that there has to be an islamic domination of the world.

AT: Finally, we’re practically out of time. Let me put on my Oprah hat and ask: “how do you cope day-to-day with your family over there, risking their lives?”

DtMM: It’s very hard. As I said, at the beginning of a deployment, at the end of a deployment, there’s a lot of tension and anxiety in my heart and my mind. My family’s been very good for my prayer life. I pray a lot because I know the situation is totally out of our hands, and I just pray that G-d will protect my children and that he will help us to come to a good resolution of this, so that we can again experience a time of peace.

AT: Denise the Military Mom, thanks for being with me for this interview and also in the studio throughout the course of this show. Again, if you just came in in the middle of that, DENISE the Military Mom, whose last name I’m leaving out because one of her sons is in Special Forces, she’s a Philadelphia-area pediatrician with a son in Special Forces, another son-in-law in Iraq, and another son-in-law in the Coast Guard, and she’s been great about coming in and sharing her personal reaction to 9/11 and especially the [response] to 9/11, which is what the war is.

AT: You’ve been listening to “The Adam Taxin Show” on WNWR 1540 AM in Philadelphia and on the web at wnwr.com, and we are being sponsored today by the law firm of Allen L. Rothenberg, 800-LAW-KING and on the web at injurylawyer.com . - - - - - - - - -

And if anyone wants a fairly large MP3 of the segment or the entire transcript, just e-mail me at adamtaxin@gmail.com .

BIG TIME BUMP!

This 9/11, I remember, and heartily salute all who are serving, and have served, in uniform on behalf of these United States.

It’s been my privilege to know this woman since 1980, when she became our family pediatrician. You couldn’t meet a finer person, a finer doctor or a finer family. Her opinions about the war are as sharply informed as her clinical opinions.

And I think that there are things in our culture that other people could look at, particularly if you look at what’s broadcasted on television to the rest of the world, to think that life is pretty disgusting in the United States, whereas many people do not espouse or act like the people that are portrayed on television.

When i was in egypt in the early 80’s people there thought shows like “Dallas” were actual portrayals of life here, they also thought that “westerns” were actually how people were living in the western U.S. ,still riding horses, gunfights, etc. I,m sure nothing’s changed.

For any of you who really care about our troops, look at this: http://www.kpvi.com/Global/story.asp?S=7043955

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