Iraq Veterans, Activists for Peace
“American Veterans are a bridge to the heartland,” says Garett Reppenhagen, a former Army sniper who is now chairman of the board of directors of Iraq Veterans Against the War. “Veterans give the anti-war movement credibility in the eyes of middle-America. People in the United States are disconnected from the war. For the men and women who fought in the Iraq War, speaking against the war is not just a hobby. They have a personal interest in ending it.”
Soldiers do not easily fit our image of experts. It is often difficult to listen to their stories. Many are in pain; many have experienced trauma. The frankness of their perspective is almost entirely absent in the Iraq War debate. When we hear so few critical military voices, we lose a powerful tool for understanding the Iraq War and, more broadly, the consequences of U.S. military action abroad.
Part of understanding the reality of war is understanding how the stress and demands of battle lead otherwise good people to engage in inhumane behavior. When veterans and active-duty members of the military share their personal experiences, they provide us with vivid pictures of combat, raising our awareness of how war can emotionally devastate our soldiers. That awareness might also help us learn how to help this new generation of veterans heal the wounds of this war—veterans like Clifton Hicks, an Army tank driver who grew up near Savannah, Georgia.
“What struck me most was just how callous we had become,” says Hicks, who was discharged from the Army as a conscientious objector. His point is not that soldiers inherently lack compassion, but that dehumanizing the enemy is a reality of war, a reality that most Americans don’t typically consider. If the U.S. public is unprepared to deal compassionately with these realities, perhaps, Hicks argues, we should reconsider sending soldiers to war except in dire circumstances.
“Sure, some Iraqi kid had been killed,” Hicks says. “It’s like seeing a dead dog on the side of the road. We hated them and were happy to have killed one. That’s how those kids on the news were able to rape the 14-year old girl, shoot her in the face, and kill her whole family. They just didn’t care, they still don’t care, they couldn’t make themselves care if they tried. Every soldier on the front lines is capable of that or worse.”
With GIs serving more and longer tours of duty, such callous thinking and behavior can be expected to increase rather than decrease.
“Active duty soldiers are immediately thrown back into training for the next deployment without time to physically or mentally heal,” says Army Sergeant Linsay Burnett, who spent a year in Iraq with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101 Airborne Division. “You’re seeing soldiers now facing their third deployment, almost at the breaking point, yet we are sending those soldiers into a foreign country with loaded weapons.”
Burnett is now stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where her unit is preparing to redeploy sometime this year or next. “I think there might be more instances like we’ve seen with the soldiers shooting the detainees. It will get worse if we don’t treat soldiers returning from Iraq.” Burnett says soldiers are increasingly opposed to the continuation of the Iraq War because they see first hand the paradox of claiming to support the troops while thrusting them back into harm’s way.
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| In March 2006, Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War joined survivors of Hurricane Katrina for a 7-day march from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans. Their intent was to draw attention to the similarities between the devastation inflicted upon both Baghdad and New Orleans, and to protest the diversion of state and federal emergency resources toward the war in Iraq and away from Katrina reconstruction. Photo by Craig Morse. www.flickr.com/photos/culturesubculture | |
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Bringing the War Home
From our safe homes and offices here in the United States, we often overlook the perspective of veterans like Hicks and Burnett. Soldiers know that this war is dehumanizing not just Iraqi civilians, but also American military personnel and ultimately all of us who allow it to continue by paying for it.
What do we miss when we fail to hear this perspective? We miss the reality of war—the horror, the pain, and the anguish. Without voices like Hicks and Burnett, it is possible to have the entire debate around this conflict take place among those who have not fought in Iraq. Thus, the debate is sanitized and reflects nothing of the “ground truth” soldiers are able to share.
The soldiers most often heard in the media say some variation of: “We’ve got a job to do, and I am here to do it.” But an increasing number of veterans disagree with U.S. military involvement in Iraq. “The real issue I want to raise is why are we there in the first place,” says former Marine Captain Anuradha Bhagwati. “Why is it so easy to get Americans to believe that military use of force is the only way to feel satisfied, secure, or whole?”
The stories soldiers tell us can also challenge our own culture, assumptions, and societal beliefs.
“I am ashamed and embarrassed, because I joined the Marines to prove myself,” says Bhagwati. “This is a very American thing: be all you can be. I wanted to do something where I was better than others. That’s my personal growth, but at whose expense? At the expense of people in villages around the world. It’s not the way I hope humans can become fulfilled.”
Most Americans will never serve in Iraq, but if we choose to hear the stories told by veterans, the war may finally penetrate the American consciousness. When that happens, veterans of this war can help us to collectively end it.
Sarah Olson is an independent journalist and radio producer based in Oakland, California. She was subpoenaed in the 1st Lt. Watada court-martial and objected based on press freedom concerns. She can be reached at solson75@yahoo.com.
© 2007 Yes Magazine
America needs to debrief its veterans. Politicians and the media have a vested interest in not telling the truth about war. By listening to and talking with its veterans the country can partake in some of the wisdom gained by surviving a war. What you learn will make it harder to go to war again. That would be a great thing for America.
Hoa binh
If anyone wants to participate in a conversation about peace you can do so at http://www.peaceisactive.com
We need more conversation about peace and about the realities of war.
Monopoly media has failed us. It is up to us to have our own systems of conversation and information sharing.
A vet was speaking about his PTSD from his Vietnam days. It had subsided then we had Gulf I then our current war and occupation.
I wish we could bring all the troops home tomorrow, help them heal and have them cycle through the Gulf region to help our fellow Americans rebuild and heal. And throughout the country, including the inner cities and economically left behind rural areas from where many of our troops come from. And yes, I’ve been working on this.
The quality of people I’ve met who are resisting is outstanding. They love this country, refuse to surrender their humanity and have shown extraordinary courage to say no to this war.
Strange isn’t it, that there are all these members of Congress who have done nothing or little to stop the steady stream of lies and killing, despite their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Luckily, we have resisters who don’t just follow orders and thereby uphold their oath “against enemies-foreign and domestic.”
Ike said the money going to the military was theft. If he didn’t know the military, who does? Let’s stop the thieves NOW!
Let’s get the troops back here out of George and Dick’s hellhole for oil and empire.
And as for the Bush Administration or let me say, gang, to quote Jack Lord, “Book ‘Em Dano!”
Great work, Sarah!
Wage Peace!
PEACE IS UNAMERICAN!
Where are the reporters who want to win awards and get respect for their work interviewing and reporting about soldiers?
Is the msm money that good?
All these letters including Sarah Olson’s as truthful,insightful and sincere as they are still verbally-dancing nimbly ,ever so cautiously and politically-correctly around the D-word,desertion .
We may see the equivalent of a 1917 Russian Army of deserters walking home if private-citizen Americans found the boldness to go beyond hand-wringing and blaming to publicly supporting desertion and paying for deserters’legal fees,lodging,tuition…
From your own history,the Montgomery Bus Boycott worked because ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS SHARED THE HARDSHIPS.
WHY DO THEY HATE US SO MUCH?? (the all-time most audacious question asked by supremacist xenophobic Yanks and their Fascist allies)
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Read that question w/ some whining noise added to it for fun!!!
This is a response from a world citizen to the all-time most naive question I have heard/read so much from the so-called analysts, writers, politicians, and hands of IMPERIALISM in your dishonest media.
In your undying, never-ending hatred for Iran and drowned in an ocean of narcissism, you simply have forgotten, or yet better, chosen to forget, the crimes, inhumane policies, arrogant attitudes, and pain inflicted by you “patriotic” psychos on many a nation, including Persians.
Well, the Northern Christian hypocrisy and self-love on one side; its harsh animosity and blood thirst for Iran is something else. It was evident in your clownish, arrogant President’s speeches and now it’s epitomized by the most blatantly hateful, Nazi pieces of propaganda which Goebbels himself would love you for ), there it comes, suck it and swallow it w/ AMERICAN (w/ a thick R the way you like it) pride and xenophobia.
By what I have read from the likes of you in your very “OBJECTIVE” media (no shortage in the ” objective, informed, and bright” nation of yours), you completely epitomize what the monstrous Northern Christian imperialism means to billions of impoverished, victimized, oppressed masses of the world and what it has done for the past several centuries only in order to secure its own filthy interests derived from your selfish, self-indulged, self-centered, egotistic, materialist, and Calvinist lifestyles and worldviews. If and only if you were interested in the truth and facts, you could easily find the answer by reviewing your friends’ list and also crimes’ list for decades or centuries (for those Euro liberals!!). It doesn’t take a genius, does it?
YOU are the epitome of unfairness, injustice, governmental terrorism and bigotry. These are some of the crimes against humanity committed by your patriotic asses all over the planet (the list would be only too long but I mention a few here):
U.S. sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by U.S. installed dictatorships over the course of four decades.
U.S. overthrew the governments of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people.
1973, the U.S. sponsored a coup in Chile against he democratic government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people.
1965 the U.S. sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
U.S. sponsored terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the U.S. government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbours) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the U.S. government used to call them before the term “collateral damage” was invented–”soft targets”).
U.S. war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which
resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 people, or “soft targets”.
U.S. sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began in the 1970’s and resulted in the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000.
U.S. invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 5,000 in an attempt to capture George H. Bush’s CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega.
U.S. sponsored a brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952-1978.
This doesn’t even mention the crimes in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Bay of Pigs and before that the support for and direct involvement w/ Batista’s regime in Cuba, the 8-year war against Iran -including chemical weapons usage- by (the former friend!!) Saddam, death squads in Central America, the 5 decades of Israeli crimes in Palestine and Lebanon (the veto policy), the “missing” in Argentina, and of course the “silent coup” in Algeria in 91 (w/ deceitful cooperation from the French bastards) that stopped the FIS from winning the elections thus plunging the country into a civil war for years…………….
We can never forget your crimes or undying sense of self-love and ego that make the Yankees and their NATO/G7 lovers the most detested nations on this planet, perhaps galaxy.
Now kill as many innocent people as you want. LAUNCH, LAUNCH as a bastard called JAMES WOODS declared on JAY LENO. Brag about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Beirut bombings. Brag about killing of the innocent family members of Kaddafi, all the countries’ leaders and revolutionaries who had the guts to say no to your Fascist Empire.
It matters not. The U.S. (and the British disgusting colonialism) will go where the Romans, German Nazis, Mongols, and the rest of the arrogant sorry excuses for humanity went. Now celebrate killing Moslems, Nationalists, and Leftists (not to mention nuns and priests), etc. in your never-ending fire of hatred, supremacy and ego.
Unlike many other foreigners, I am not simplistic enough to think you are just the minority and the “rest” are simply decent, nice, culture-loving individuals. The fact is it’s filth like you that votes for the criminals you call leaders (Reagan and Bushes, Blair, Merkel, Harper and Howard come to mind immediately). Also I don’t think, despite the popular belief, you are ignorant or just stupid; I think you know enough and simply choose to ignore because you are the most selfish, inhumane, robotic bastards this planet has seen for a long time. Your sense of “SELECTIVE MEMORY and JUDGMENT” is proof enough.
I think legendary Orwell got it right in this passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four, an account of the ultimate supremacist empire:
“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in . . . practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions . . . and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
As a reaction to your actions, our (the South) hatred for you could only be compared to the feelings we have against Serbs, Nazis, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Criminal.
THE NEW ROME WILL FALL…… AND ITS FOLLOWERS, FRIENDS, ALLIES AND APOLOGISTS….. WE’LL MAKE SURE OF THAT. DEATH TO THE U.S. and EU!!!