War protestors mobilize
January 22, 2007 at 10:04 am by Web Editor in News
Birgitt Eysselinck’s husband returned from Iraq after trying to dismantle part of Saddam Hussein’s bomb collection. A defense contractor who worked for the RONCO Consulting Corporation, Tim Eysselinck wanted to come home for his 40th birthday and to see his wife and daughter.
He came home.
Two months later he shot and killed himself.
"He was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder," says Birgitt Eysselinck, a native of Namibia who said she met her American-born, U.S. Army reservist husband when he worked in Africa de-mining the Ethiopia-Eritrea border in the late 1990s. He went to Iraq in August of 2003 and stayed more than a year. On his return to America, "He was never debriefed," Eysselinck said. "Defense contractors don’t get debriefed."
She calls Tim Eysselinck one of the uncounted victims of this war.
A member of Cobb for Peace, Birgit Eysselinck and other Iraq war protestors on Friday kicked off a weeklong series of statewide protests and vigils coordinated by the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition. The peace action comes at a time when the Bush administration finds itself increasingly isolated on the war question. Resistant to bipartisan calls for a diplomatic and political solution to the crisis, President George W. Bush last week announced his decision to commit an additional 20,000-plus troops in Iraq.
The small band of Cobb protestors say it’s another bone-headed move by Bush, and an outright contradiction of the will of the people.
Referring to the results of elections last year in which American voters turned out the Republicans in favor of a Democratically controlled U.S. Congress, head organizer Tim Franzin says, "The elections are over but the war isn’t. There’s a political mandate to de-escalate the conflict in Iraq. The sentiment is it’s time to de-escalate and the administration is doing the exact opposite."
Cobb for Peace has been gathering in downtown Marietta for four years.
"We started this before the invasion, when Bush came to Harrison High School" says Beverley Sitherwood of Cobb for Peace. "He should have never gone in there in the first place."
Says Franzin, "I got tired of talking about my discontent with the administration. The main reason I come out here now is so I can sleep at night."
Standing on a street corner in downtown Marietta, clutching the sign she made that shows her daughter sitting on the lap of her late husband, Eysselinck encountered a pedestrian whose eyes drifted skeptically across the row of lofted signs and protestors.
"If we pull people out right now," Rob Schnatmeir told her, "it’s going to go into further civil war."
He was met with the question: Did you support the war initially?
"I did," Schnatmeir said. "They had a terrible plan, it’s true, but now that we’re there we can’t pull out. I just hope and pray the Iraqi government can stabilize itself or it will go into chaos."
"The whole thing is about oil," Eysselinck told him.
"That’s not true," said Schnatmeir. "We went in because… well, I really don’t know why. I hope that wasn’t the case. I hope it wasn’t for oil. But people have the right to express their opinions."
The light changed and he stepped into the crosswalk, and left Eysselinck and the other protestors on the curb.
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