Morning Coffee

Body bags wrapped in flags have started the long trip home. The only Doctor in an Illinois town is called to service in the Army Reserve. He will be gone for a year. His nephew with the 4th Armored Division has just left Texas for another dusty desert halfway around the world. Saturday the Chamber of Commerce flew flags from every downtown lamppost. On Monday the flags were down. I don't know why they took them down, I just know that Monday morning they were gone.

A mother whose son is a marine has wrapped our telephone poles with yellow ribbons. The mother of another marine writes me that he is safe; he is in supply and not on the battle front. I don’t have the heart to tell her that the kids who were captured and paraded on TV were, like her son, part of the army’s logistical tail.

War is starting to be less exciting, less remote and more personal. The man on the street here is Republican, conservative and often a veteran of one or more of our previous wars. Inevitably the talk around the morning coffee table at Hardees is of the war. How close is the 7th Cavalry to Baghdad? Then the ex-Sheriff, a Vietnam era Marine veteran, reminds them that it was the 7th Cavalry that rode into an ambush at the Sioux village on the Little Big Horn.

Saddam is no hero in this company. No Arab is. They don’t see any reason to try to change what they believe is 5000 years of one tyrant following another in that part of the world. Democracy won’t work there, they say. They understand what this war is about and that is oil. The pump price at Super Pantry across the street reads $1.79 for Mobil regular. The retired banker in the group points to it and says that when it reaches $2.00 the Whitehouse will declare victory, declare South Iraq and the Ramallah oil fields independent leaving the rest of the country to Saddam, the Kurds and the Turks.

The farmer in the group says that game isn’t in the cards. That would leave Baghdad in control of the most important resource in Iraq – the water of the Tigris and Euphrates. The Banker says it doesn’t matter. With the money from oil we can pipe all the water we need from Lake Michigan.

Someone else reminds the Banker that they are voting on the tax cut soon. The Grocer, a county vice-chairman of the Republican Party says he figures that he will save about $4.50 a week - about the price of a Hardees lunch. The Sheriff asks if anyone has heard how many we have lost today. The Banker says he doesn’t watch the news; that it is too depressing.

Illinois lost Saturday so no one is interested in the NCAA tourney. There is a lull in the conversation. A minute or two pass and the Sheriff announces he has to go. One by one they shrug, carry their trays to the trash bin and go their separate ways. Its is just another day in the Second Iraqi War.

I watched them leave, climb in their cars and drive off then turned to the crossword puzzle and commenced to work it - in ink.