The view from Maine streets

Lexington

Barack Obama’s talk of peace does not convince a city marked by war

Mar 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

AFTER long years of messy combat, America’s mission in Afghanistan is going to have a swift and tidy ending, Barack Obama recently told Congress. This spring American forces will move to a support role behind Afghan allies. By the end of next year the war will be over, the mission completed. After a grinding decade, Mr Obama declared ringingly in his state-of-the-union address that “our brave men and women in uniform” are coming home.

That pledge earned a standing ovation. Beyond Washington, in the sort of American communities that provide the backbone of the armed forces, it prompts a more complicated response. The small city of South Portland in Maine is one of many obscure places to be heavily touched by war since the September 11th 2001 attacks. No state has lost more soldiers in Afghanistan, per person, than Maine—a fertile recruiting ground in every conflict since the civil war and still today home to an unusual number of veterans. And the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns cost South Portland dearer than most places in Maine. A windswept coastal city of 25,000, it lost four local men, three of them young graduates from the same high school.

One town cannot represent American opinion. Yet talking to a cross-section of locals, as well as to state military and government officials, the same observations come up repeatedly. It may be useful to record some of them.

The cheering in Washington feels painfully premature to those whose neighbours and relatives are still in Afghanistan, or waiting for fresh deployments there with regular or part-time units. A Maine national guard unit left the day after Mr Obama’s speech on February 12th, and more will follow this year. South Portland’s police department is still missing an officer, on duty in Afghanistan. At Broadway Variety, a convenience store which has sent hundreds of care packages to South Portlanders serving overseas, collections continue for fresh parcels of cookies, candy and other home comforts.

In South Portland the pre-announced ending of the war feels perilous, not stirring. Worries loom about the safety of the last troops, and angst about signs of hostility from Afghans supposed to be allies. Even the most vocally patriotic doubt that the war will end in a way that brings “closure”. Jake Myrick, an Iraq war veteran and campaigner for ex-soldiers, loyally complains that the media do not show the good works being done by Americans in Afghanistan. But after news reports of Afghan forces killing their American trainers, he still wrote in protest to Maine’s governor demanding the withdrawal of the state’s national guardsmen, fearing the Pentagon had lost sight of its war goals.

The commander of Maine’s national guard, Brigadier-General James Campbell, says that explaining the war’s final stages is “hard”. As troops are drawn down, he questions the war constantly, fearing a moment when a grieving parent or spouse asks why their loved one died, “and I don’t have an answer”.

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