One day last May, I assigned the election to John Kerry. I said it early, and often. As I looked more, I saw that it shouldn't even be close. I said that in this space more than once. Now I am so sure that I am not even going to bother to watch the results tonight. I am going to bed early, for I must rise in the darkness and pursue immediately an exciting, overdue project.
Besides, if I was up, so many people, upon seeing every word I said of this election coming true on television in front of them, would be kissing my hands and embarrassing me with outlandish praise. So I go to bed with total confidence. I will get up and stroll to other meadows. I invented this column form. I now leave, but will return here for cameo appearances. And I leave today as the only one in America who from the start was sure John Kerry would win by a wide margin. Let me tell you why.
This began when I noted that it was obvious, but overlooked that George Bush had lost the last election by 500,000 votes. He was close enough in Florida for it to be stolen in court.
The reason he was close was that Ralph Nader had 125,000 votes in Florida, most of whom would have voted for Gore.
Anybody who had voted for Gore four years ago would never vote for Bush.
So Bush started this campaign behind 500,000 votes.
Nor is there Nader. He has reduced himself to being the village idiot.
When I figured in the people shocked by the dead bodies of young Americans in Iraq, and brutalized here by unemployment, there was no way to make the election seem close. I said this in this newspaper several times.
Each time as I was typing, the words of the late great Harry (Champ) Segal kept shouting in my ear:
"Go naked on this one!"
When published reports showed a million new voter registrations in Florida and about 800,000 in Ohio, I made the election a lock. They were not rushing out for George Bush. And these poll takers were ignoring them. Any part of a million votes in Florida, most of them of color, would sweep the state.
The reporters said the nation was divided. They were afraid to say anything that might upset this view. You've been had by the news industry. Not once, even after the first debate when Kerry scored a technical knockout, did they take a step and call it as it happened. "War of Words" was the closest they could come.
Finally, one thing kept clawing at you. Cell phones. Long I have wondered how many there were. Everybody I know, smart people, politicians, news directors, thought that there were, oh, 40 million or so. I call the cell phone institute in Washington last Sept. 12. They told me that there were 165 million cell phones in use in the United States, That is 165,000,000. One month later, I asked again. It was up to 170 million -- 170,000,000. Yes, a great number also had land lines. But of this 170 million cell phone users there were 40 million between the ages of 18 and 29, and these people usually have no other phones.
That had to be Kerry.
Not one cell phone in the United States had been reached by a political poll. These old-line poll takers don't know who cell phone users were or where they lived.
So you were getting CBS/New York Times polls proclaimed as most important and real. One hundred seventy million cell phones and you don't poll one of them. The polls they are pushing at you in the news magazines, on the networks, in the big papers, are such cheap, meaningless blatant lies, that some of these television stations should have their licenses challenged.
They have a poll number for every one of the "battleground states." I'm awaiting the casualty list from Gettysburg.
Then a night or so ago, somebody finally tried a poll of cell phone users between the ages of 18 and 29. John Zogby conducted the survey in conjunction with Rock the Vote and the results showed Kerry at 55 percent and Bush at 40.
Then the Kerry people ran their own poll, which took a lot of work. It was the first time they had reached any cell phone users. The result was Kerry 59 and Bush 39.
Then I saw on television yesterday, and I hate to single him out, but he singled himself out, this fellow Bill Schneider on CNN and he is their election expert and he said that cell phones didn't mean anything. He's right. They didn't mean anything in 1950.
Oh, but these young people never vote, the tales read. They will this time, and because of a one-word issue.
Draft.
Every time Bush, or one of these generals he has, stands up and says there will be no military draft, everybody young figures this means there probably will be one by January, which will put them in the real battlegrounds. They rush to register, and then today they go to the polls to vote.
Seth Harp, an economics junior at the University, was deployed to Iraq in December 2003.
By Seth Harp
Published 10/19/2004
This is the first in an occasional series of letters The Daily Texan will publish from UT economics junior Seth Harp. He is currently stationed in Iraq and has agreed to share some of his letters he sent home to friends and family with the UT community.
DAY 291
Lying on the shoulder of a rutted dirt road winding through an Iraqi village in the dead of the night, aiming an assault rifle at the windshield of an approaching farmer's truck, smelling the muck from the Tigris River under the stars on the opposite side of the planet from my home, it's hard not to wonder, between thoughts calculating the various angles and potential trajectories of bullets, just how the hell I ended up here.
I was trained as an engineer, but tonight I'm the point man - when the convoy pulls to a stop, I'm the guy who jumps down from the truck and secures the 100 meters of road ahead of the convoy, with help from two other soldiers. I use a tiny blue-lens keychain flashlight to search the sides of the road for land mines, improvised bombs, artillery shells, stray unexploded mortars or hidden attackers. I hold the light out to one side of my body - the night is inky black, no moon, and the blue light is tempting bait for snipers. I don't see anything, so I descend the embankment on one side of the road and conceal myself as best I can in a thorny patch of shrubs. The earth is cool in the desert night, and the wet smell of livestock, manure, warm river water and dog lingers in the air. I change the rear sight aperture on my M-16 to the large setting for shooting in the darkness and switch on my night-vision goggles. Everything goes green. The muzzle of my rifle protrudes from the bushes, trained on the bend in the road just ahead of us.
On the opposite side of the road, another soldier is doing the same. He's lying in the grass on his stomach behind a low sand dune. A sergeant from the equipment platoon crouches on one knee in the middle of the road. We wait in silence.
It's three in the morning. The only sounds are barking dogs in the distance and the faint howling of desert wolves in reply. Two types are on the road tonight - early rising farmers and Iraqi insurgents. Perhaps three miles away we can see reflected against the night sky the lights from an oncoming vehicle. I switch off my night vision to avoid being blinded. When the vehicle rounds the bend, the sergeant rises to his feet with his weapon pointed not directly at the oncoming vehicle, but close enough to show he means business. With his free hand he flashes a light at the car.
There is a large convoy of U.S. Army vehicles stopped in the road, a platoon of soldiers and several vehicle-mounted weapons, but all the Iraqi driver sees is one blinking flashlight. And he doesn't see me. I'm on the right side of the road, and when the driver of the little jalopy slows to a stop, his face is in my crosshairs.
He sees the sergeant with the light, who signals for him to cut his headlights and stay where he is parked. I'm waiting for a certain movement - an arm reaching behind the seat, movement of the tarp over the truck bed, a sudden revving of the engine - to fire. The soldier who stops the vehicle is courteous - it's impolite to point a loaded weapon at a civilian who has committed no crime - but my finger is resting lightly on the trigger, and I'm waiting very patiently, blinking dust out of my eyes.
Finally the convoy mounts up. I stand, emerging from the bushes beside the farmer's truck. He turns and glares at me. I notice for the first time that he has a small child resting her head on his lap. The other two soldiers take three steps backwards, then turn and climb into the lead vehicle, leaving me alone standing beside the truck.
It must be obvious to the farmer what my role in this little encounter is (Howdy, my name is Seth; I'm just a college student from Austin, I don't really even like guns, I can't even bring myself to shoot a deer, but tonight I absolutely guarantee that I will kill you in front of your daughter if you make one false move), but his face betrays no emotion. Doubtless this is routine for him. After all, it's been 18 months of war for these people.
A pair of headlights flicks on behind me and the first Humvee starts rolling. Then, one-by-one, more headlights switch on, illuminating the road, and the rest of the convoy moves out. The third vehicle slows almost to a stop beside me, and I grasp the door frame and swing myself up into the seat. I slam the door, heavy with homemade steel plates bolted on for protection against machine-gun fire and roadside bombs. I aim my rifle out the window and begin scanning the Iraqi countryside as we bump and rattle down the dirt road alongside the river.
This goes on for hours. The roads are bad and our speed is limited to 30 mph. At intervals the road is stained black and sulfurous yellow from explosions. Hulks of bullet-torn, burnt-out vehicles - Iraqi and American - litter the fields on either side. Over a dozen times the convoy stops, and over a dozen times I dismount and sweep the road ahead of the convoy. The other two soldiers and I find ourselves in many tight spots - literally.
At one point the road is bordered on both sides by high earthen walls scrawled with graffiti, with no cover or concealment available to us at all. I quickly move up another 50 meters to a gap in the wall. There are spent shells littering the road, and they make a metallic tinkling when I accidently scatter them with my boot. I swing my rifle around the corner, sweep the courtyard and take a position behind the doorway where I can cover the road. But now I'm alone with my back exposed to at least five darkened windows that I can't see into, even with night vision. I move back into the road and get down on one knee, totally exposed.
Waiting in the darkness, I know I should be concentrating on staying alive and protecting the convoy, but for the 10-thousandth time my mind drifts to thoughts of going home. I have three months left on a 12-month tour in Iraq, and Austin is the only thing I think about these days. I don't think about my old friends anymore - the life I left behind is gone now - but I dream about my parents' house in the Hill Country, and winter, and how a thin gloss of ice will be on the cedar trees in the woods in the morning, and the little creeks will be frozen ...
My thoughts are interrupted by the lights from a pair of approaching vehicles. My shoulder is pressed against the brick wall as the light from the first vehicle's headlights hits me. The faintest click is heard from the safety switching off on my rifle, and I pray that if we are to be attacked tonight it just not be here, not in this place.
On another occasion my boot slips, and I slide into a culvert, sinking to my knees in reeking stagnant water and farm runoff. I curse myself for making so much noise. By 4 a.m. lights are beginning to illuminate big windows covered by sheets in some of the mud and stucco homes. Behind the drapes I can discern the forms of men in their robes rising to go out to the fields. By this time, little spots of blood are beginning to blot through the knees of my trousers, and I'm wishing I'd bought a pair of kneepads back home. But again, I never dreamed I'd be doing this job.
It's nearly dawn now, and we're in the center of the village, where two roads cross beneath the darkened dome of the local mosque, faintly visible against the night sky, a faded teal crown rising above the palms, topped by a large wrought-iron silver crescent, a dull gleaming surrogate for the absent moon. This is the last stop before we head back to camp. The sergeant whispers that it's Friday, the Muslim Sabbath. I already realize this, and I'm watching my wristwatch, waiting for 5:30 a.m., when the calls to prayer will be sung from the mosque loudspeakers - low, monotone, eerie in the early morning darkness.
5:30 a.m. comes and goes. No sounds at all. This makes me nervous and apprehensive. Ritual prayers are sung from the mosques five times a day, and Iraqis also use the loudspeakers as a kind of public address system, delivering news and messages to the community. The lack of prayers this morning could be due to an impending ambush. American citizens are told by politicians and FOX News that attacks against us are carried out by "foreign fighters," but it's a myth, based on a few cases among thousands.
Iraqis always know when an attack is about to occur because they are warned by their fellow villagers planning the attack to stay out of the way. Signs that bullets are about to start flying include a sudden absence of traffic, no lights on in a city, no children in the streets, no animals roaming around or a general sense of unexpected calm. No call to prayer at 5:30 a.m. on a Friday seems to fit the profile. I'm bracing myself, breathing evenly, slowly scanning each window, each wall, each rooftop for the slightest movement. Nothing. Finally, we leave.
Moving fast now - blood-red and orange streaks are visible low on the eastern horizon - we head back to camp and relative safety. We've been on the road for six hours. No one says anything, but an uneventful convoy is always an enormous relief. We pull up to the razor wire and concrete blast walls of the front gates, unload our weapons and unstrap our heavy gear. After I drop my Kevlar and ceramic-plate body armor vest and ammunition, I'm about 60 pounds lighter. Before we started yesterday evening, my weapon was surgically clean. Now, as I release the magazine and eject an unused round from the chamber, it's caked with dirt, a thin layer of the powdery gray dust unique to central Iraq - moondust, we call it. Our convoy commander, a lieutenant, checks us in with the shotgun-wielding gate personnel, and we roll in.
Freed from the burden of wondering if I'll live through the day - if only temporarily - I inevitably begin to mull deeper questions. The sun is up now, and I can smell smoke from the village fires drifting over the base. Our Humvee is rolling slowly down the main avenue of camp, and I'm dead tired, sprawled out in the back seat. I close my eyes, and I see the faces of all the frightened but defiant drivers I'd watched through the sights of my rifle. I imagine what we must look like to them - armored, gun-toting, begoggled, androidish storm troopers, I'm sure. I remember how the first farmer we'd stopped had his daughter's sleeping head in his lap, and I remember how he'd rested his large calloused brown hand on her forehead, shielding her eyes so that if she awakened she would not see a creature such as myself rising from the bushes in the night.
I don't think Iraqis know what this war is about any more than we do. Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for." True. But I don't even know for certain who I am fighting against, or why, much less for what, or whom, I am fighting for. To me, this is all cold, professional, mercenary. Soldiers like me go to Iraq because we have no choice. It's our job. Once we're here we kill Iraqis to avoid being killed ourselves. There is no righteous anger compelling me to risk my life and kill others, as there would be in a just war. There is not that sense of reluctant duty that allows a soldier to overcome hardship, loneliness and fear like none ever felt before. There is only a moral emptiness that shrouds this graveyard of a desert like a moonless night.
Harp is an economics junior currently serving in the Army Reserves.
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