Candidate bracelets symbolize the debate over Iraq war
Another piece from the Houston Chronicle.
Candidate bracelets symbolize the debate over Iraq war
By HANS NICHOLS
The bomb's blast threw Army Spec. Matthew Stanley from his gunner's
turret, leaving his body lifeless on a dusty road in Iraq's Sunni
Triangle. When his commander arrived minutes later, the slumping
soldier looked asleep, resting in his full body armor.
Nine months after his December 2006 death, Stanley's name was given a
new life in the U.S. presidential campaign, etched into a black
bracelet his mother gave to Sen. John McCain.
"I asked him to wear Matthew's bracelet not just for Matthew but all of
the other soldiers," said Lynn Savage, his mother. "I think we need to
finish what we started." The death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq
reached 4,000 on March 23.
Like Stanley, Sgt. Ryan Jopek of the National Guard was hurled
posthumously into the debate about how long U.S. forces should remain
in Iraq. His mother asked Sen. Barack Obama to accept her son's
bracelet at a Green Bay, Wis., rally in February, 18 months after
Jopek's death, also from a roadside bomb. "All gave some ? He gave
all," reads the bracelet Obama wears on his right wrist.
Both senators say they wear the anodized aluminum bands to honor fallen
soldiers. They also use the names to help frame their competing
positions on the war.
McCain, 71, an Arizona Republican, invokes Stanley's name to show the
United States is capable of sacrifice and that he is prepared to call
for more. Obama, 46, an Illinois Democrat, channels Jopek's mother to
inveigh against a war he never supported.
On the stump, after recounting how Lynn Savage implored him to "make
sure my son's death was not in vain," McCain pledges to stay in Iraq to
achieve victory.
Obama also reprises his meeting with a grieving mother to launch into a
discussion of Iraq. "It has cost us thousands of precious lives," he
said last week in Pennsylvania. "Like the life of this young man, whose
mother gave me this bracelet, commemorating her 20-year-old."
During the Vietnam War, Savage had worn a silver wristband to signal
support for prisoners of war, like McCain. When she attended a town
hall meeting last August and heard McCain discussing his support for
President Bush's plan to dispatch more troops, the parallels
overwhelmed her. She approached the senator and told him about her son.
Then she handed him her bracelet with Matthew's name, his visage and
the date of his death, cut by laser into the curved bracelet.
Both Stanley and Jopek left for basic training shortly after high
school, ambivalent about what they wanted from the military, say their
families and friends.
The two believed in their mission, yet it was a commitment to their
comrades that sustained them.
Jopek's father, Brian, is leaning toward McCain and said his ex-wife
"would like to see the troops come home a little sooner than I woul