Eastern Iowans ponder the troop commitment

Patrick Hoyt, who served as an Army medic in Kandahar from February 2004 to June 2005, compares Afghanistan to the war no one wants to hear it compared to.

“In my opinion, we're kind of in another Vietnam,” said Hoyt, who lives in Springville and works as a Cedar Rapids firefighter. “We're not changing anybody. We're not changing their view. There're people that dislike us being there. No matter what we do, they're still going to dislike us.”

Hoyt said his unit helped guard building projects like schools and hospitals around Kandahar. Often, he said, a school would be burned two weeks after it was completed. Nobody would turn over the guilty party.

Hoyt said he supports the American soldiers in Afghanistan but sees no justification for “taking more people away from their families.”

Nathan Cox, 32, of Davenport, died in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan after his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in September 2008. He was a staff sergeant in the Army. His mother, Jane Cox, of Walcott, said he would be glad to see the United States commit more soldiers to Afghanistan. That nation respects force, she said, and is still important in the war on terrorism.

“To have your son die there, and then say, ‘Oh well, forget it, I guess it was a mistake,' that makes it feel like he died for nothing,” said Cox, a high school teacher. “He wouldn't have wanted that. He really felt like we should try.”

Drew Hjelm, a University of Iowa student who served in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008, is president of the University of Iowa Veterans Association. He served as an army sergeant at Kushamond Forward Operating Base, not far from the Pakistan border.

He says his organization takes no stance on whether the United States should be fighting in Afghanistan, but he asks people to remember that veterans of the war are changed forever and badly need support.

“We just need to remember that wars create veterans,” he said. “There're a lot of men and women who come back from overseas who are kind of broken down. That's one thing that people don't often think about when talking about ‘Should we go over there, or should we not go over there.'”

John McGlothlen of The Gazette contributed to this report.