Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 29, 1992 TAG: 9202290091
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CALM AFTER THE STORM LEAVES SOME SCARED
Tommy Crowder vividly recalls what the Persian Gulf War was like."It was a heart-thumping time," says Crowder, 33, who works at a Hardee's restaurant in Salem. "It kept me worried and scared."
He watched the war regularly on TV. But since it ended quickly and, for the Allied troops, relatively painlessly, he hasn't given it much thought. Since then, the media have moved on to other things - like a presidential primary race and a recession.
That disturbs Polly Branch, outgoing co-director of the Plowshare Peace Center in Roanoke. Sure, she says, the Allies escaped with few casualties. But the estimated 100,000 Iraqi dead was worse than she anticipated; what also bothers her is that the results have been so well accepted.
"The war scared me terrifically," she says. "The calm, however, scares me even more."
Like Branch, Faye Hall of Salem still thinks about the war - specifically, about what will happen to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who was not toppled from power despite the damage inflicted on his country's citizens, infrastructure and troops.
Her daughter, Debbie Hall, 27, says she thinks and talks about the war in her history classes at Virginia Western Community College. Only occasionally does the subject come up among her friends.
"We don't dwell on it," she says.
One way that Plowshare sought to keep the spotlight on the war was through its "Collateral Damage" photographic display that concluded last week at Roanoke's Grandin Theatre. The exhibit depicted scenes of America's domestic problems, from health care to pollution, as well as shots from Iraq during and after the war and other pictures of people in the United States who protested the war.
The aim was not to let people forget the trauma of the war by putting the painful experience behind them.
At Plowshare, the buildup in the Persian Gulf and the war that followed it led to an increase of callers concerned about the conflict. The peace center held public forums that not only allowed people to share their fears, but also to examine the horrors that weren't being covered by the media.
One of the discussion groups continues even now, though with a different agenda. It focuses on such domestic problems as poverty and on the seeming inability of ordinary people to influence their solutions.
Branch hopes Plowshare can compile a comprehensive story of the Gulf War, using the thoughts of people who opposed it, as well as those who suffered from it. "What's already being written for our history books is that it was such a quick, surgical strike," she says. She expects official versions to "accentuate the productiveness rather than the horror of it."