Groups swap taunts over Iraq war

TACOMA — Dave Zink and Sam Bell, born within a few years of each other, both proudly wore patches on their clothes from their time in the armed service.

But on Saturday, it took a police officer to keep the peace as they faced off outside a Tacoma Army recruiting office during a tense but nonviolent Iraq war protest.

"We need to make sure the guys in Iraq know we're backing them," yelled Bell, a 51-year-old former Marine in a black leather jacket bestudded with patches.

"You want to back them up? Bring them home," yelled Zink, 56, wearing his old camouflage Army jacket.

"You're being used!" yelled Bell.

"You're being used!" yelled Zink.

That exchange, moments into the two-hour protest, set the stage for a bitter exchange between a group of about 40 anti-war protesters and a slightly larger group gathered to denounce them. Between the two groups stood about 40 Tacoma police officers, many of them in riot gear.

The protest, organized as part of a nationwide wave of demonstrations to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, was intended to shut down the Army recruiting station by the Tacoma Mall for a day.

But thanks to Bell and dozens of other Vietnam and Iraq war veterans and their supporters — who got there first — the recruiting office stayed open. A recruiter said he'd had two appointments during the protest, and one person was likely to enlist.

Across the police line, the anti-war protesters — most of them a generation younger than the support-the-troops crowd — clustered around 81 pairs of boots and 200 pairs of shoes laid out on the sidewalk near the recruiting station.

The significance: Eighty-one service members from Washington have died in the Iraq war, and, for every one of those deaths, 200 Iraqi civilians have perished, according to The World Can't Wait, the group that organized the protest.

In all, nearly 4,000 U.S. service members have died. The estimated number of Iraqi civilian casualties varies widely, between about 30,000, as counted by the Bush administration, to more than 650,000, as counted by a 2007 survey of Iraqi medical providers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost between $1.2 trillion and $1.7 trillion by 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office; the 12-year Vietnam War cost $670 billion, in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars. Other economists estimate the Iraq war alone could eventually cost up to $2.7 trillion, if veterans benefits are included.

As Nathan Bowling, a Tacoma middle-school teacher leading the anti-war protest, began reading off the list of deceased soldiers, he was pelted with catcalls from George Bentley and others.

"You will not defile their names," yelled Bentley, a 45-year-old Navy veteran. "Defilers!"

Bowling turned his megaphone toward Bentley. "If this list [of war dead] does not bother you, nothing will," Bowling said.

For most of the protest, the two groups traded insults: "Where are all the protesters? Did the bus run out of gas at Evergreen State?" yelled one middle-aged woman.

Amid the taunts, Emma Kaplan, a 23-year-old anti-war organizer, tried in vain to sway Vince Wagner, a 48-year-old carrying a red, white and blue cellphone.

"This is a war based on imperialism," Kaplan yelled. "If you side with imperialism, you end up strengthening Islamic fundamentalism."

"Don't you understand?: They want you dead," Wagner yelled back. "They don't care about this monkey show. You hate freedom, you hate liberty, you hate justice." Then a police officer stepped in.

"The reality is, this is a war based on lies," Kaplan said after they were separated. "There were no links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We now have 4,000 [U.S. service members] dead because of a lie."

Former Army Sgt. Deondrai Ramsey, who served two tours in Iraq before being medically discharged, watched the fracas from behind the support-the-troops crowd. He said he wouldn't begrudge the anti-war protesters if they had served in Iraq, but he suggested at the very least they should spend a month in a third-world country, to appreciate U.S.-style freedoms.

"You know what, that's what we fight for," Ramsey said, pointing to the anti-war crowd. "I just ask that they respect me."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com