Winter Soldiers Ignored

How is the mainstream media dealing with the inconvenient tragedies brought to light by Iraq war veterans who gathered over four days last weekend in Maryland? They are ignoring them. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, and nearly 4000 dead American soldiers later, many brave individuals have brought their poignant testimony to an event that deserves more exposure.

War is hell - always. At rare and tragic times in human history war is surely necessary. But ignoring its tragic reality creates a climate in which war is entered into far too easily.

We honor the dead soldiers as we should. The financial cost of war gets a fair amount of attention. But the tragic results of war are far more numerous than those two awful tally sheets.

Winter Soldier II, sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), mirrors an earlier event from 1971 at which John Kerry famously testified. War hawks love to mock these events as "far left" gatherings, and consider the testimony of these veterans as treasonous and "un-American". The dozens of veterans who have chosen to speak understand how they will be unjustly vilified because of that choice, and yet their conscience demands no less of them. We can be sure that they are only the tip of the iceberg, among returnees whose humanity has been challenged in ways that it never should.

The "Rules of Engagement" for the Iraq war have been exposed as an ever shifting standard, and the extent to which they have been followed is often in flux, and largely depending on the mindset of the military leaders of individual operations. Soldiers who returned for many tours of duty related the generally declining standards as time wore on, as soldiers and leaders became hardened by their experiences. The nature of the battle, where the enemy was often difficult to identify, made tragic deaths and maiming of innocents more and more commonplace with time.

Democracy Now has been airing this testimony this week, and will continue that tomorrow. IVAW has live blogged the event. I challenge you to listen or read and tell me that these soldiers are lying, or that their experiences do not challenge notions of decency in how this war is being waged.

One sample piece of testimony came from Corporal Washburn of the Marines:

Something else we were actually encouraged to do, almost with a wink and a nudge, was to carry drop weapons or, by my third tour, drop shovels. What that basically is, is we would carry these weapons or shovels with us, because in case we accidentally did shoot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body and make them look like they were an insurgent. Or, you know, like my friend here were saying, we were told by my third tour that if they were carrying a shovel or—you know, and a heavy bag, if they were digging anywhere, especially near roads, that we could shoot them. And so, we actually carried these tools and weapons in our vehicles in case we accidentally shot an innocent civilian, and we could just toss it on them and be like, “Well, he was digging. I was within the rules of engagement.” And this was commonly encouraged, but only behind closed doors. It wasn’t obviously a public announcement that they would make. But, yeah, it was pretty common.

This is nowhere close to the most shocking testimony I've seen, but it is indicative of the layers of disconnect between the reality and the official, and between the official and the "ideal". No one expects that war will not be accompanied by horror, but when the horrible becomes sanctioned to one degree or another by a White House Counsel, or a military directive, or a commander's prerogative, we guarantee that the horror will become pervasive.

It is not easy to pay attention to this tragedy. The mainstream media knows that it is easier to simply ignore Winter Soldier II, and the questions which it raises. They have an election to cover and celebrities' misdeeds to watch. Meanwhile innocent citizens continue to be killed and maimed, our reputation continues to be dragged to greater depths, and soldiers return home with injuries both physical and psychological which will impact them for life, and a training in violence that in many cases will haunt us once again.

We cannot learn if we will not look.

Mission Rejected

Since my previous post about Lt Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now has been featuring soldiers' stories and the resistance to serve by those in the military who oppose this war.

She interviewed Peter Laufer, whose new book, Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq covers the subject broadly. I've long intended to do a bit of research on the topic of military war resisters, but found that information hard to find. Peter Laufer explained in the interview that hard numbers are really hard to come by, since most soldiers who refuse deployment or redeployment are keeping a low profile, and the military is not interested in highlighting the issue.

Those cases we do hear about, many of which are listed here, are really subjecting themselves to harsh scrutiny for the cause which they believe in. Many others simply go AWOL, but whether their reasons constitute a resistance to the Iraq war for cause is not clear.

One early resister was staff sergeant Camilo Mejia, who served in Iraq, and then applied for conscientious objector status after discovering first hand what the war was really about. Those who casually dismiss such examples as simply cowardly are unlikely to have read the words of some of these heroes or to have thought through the issues very thoroughly.

Camilo Mejia, from his statement upon receiving the "Courageous Resister Award", August 2004:

I am only a regular person that got tired of being afraid to follow his own conscience. For far too long I allowed others to direct my actions even when I knew that they were wrong....To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

Other resources:

Kevin Benderman defense committee

Psychoanalysts against the war

Sir, No Sir a film

Local Vigil

My family was able to attend our island's vigil tonight on behalf of Cindy Sheehan and others who have lost loved ones in this war.



Nearly a hundred folks showed up by the time the 30 minute silent candlelight vigil began. Some of them gathered for a group photo just before I arrived:



Passing motorists who responded to our presence were overwhelmingly supportive.

Camp Casey Grows

Diarist Ilona at Daily Kos has gathered an impressive array of news clippings from around the country about supporters who are flocking to Crawford, Texas to join or support Cindy Sheehan in her vigil.

Here is Cindy's latest update.

Cindy's Own Words

There is a lot of misapprehension out there on both the left and the right about what Cindy Sheehan is all about. Like Rosa Parks, Cindy did not just happen into this role on the national stage, but entered it quite willingly and intentionally. The awful circumstance of the death of her son gave her access to prominence in the same way that the awful circumstance of government sanctioned racial humiliation gave Parks access to prominence. But these activists both took bold and courageous action to leverage their access to awaken the nation's conscience. People in America are celebrated for making the best of a bad situation in turning a negative circumstance into a great personal success story. How much more noble it is to turn one's own tragedy into a wake up call to the nation to avert further tragedy!

Previous words of Cindy Sheehan's have been taken out of context to suggest that she was grateful to the President for having met with her some weeks after her son's death, and that her current activism represents some 180 degree shift from her previous stance. She was respectfully acknowledging that Bush at least did meet with her and her family, while not making an immediate stink about his aloof and disrespectful attitude during that meeting. But she was always against this war, and her son's insistence on going, when she tried to dissuade him, she attributes to his desire to stick by his buddies, not a belief that the war was a just cause. As Cindy recently wrote:

The VERY LAST THING I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS IS: Why do the right wing media so assiduously scrutinize the words of a grief filled mother and ignore the words of a lying president?

Here are links to more of Cindy's own words:

Letter to Rumsfeld, Jan 2005 & speech to Riverside Church
Letter to Bush, Nov 2004 (scroll down)
On Being Public
Preparing to Go
Speech to Veterans for Peace in Dallas
Day 1 Diary
Day 3 Diary
Day 4 Diary

Even more links and info

I may not agree with everything that Cindy writes, but hers is a personal tragedy which she by force of will is transforming into a national news story, and I absolutely salute her for her courage.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bohemian Mama for reminding me to include the following links:
To help Cindy, go here.

To support all the Gold Star Families for Peace, go here.

Front Line Comes to Crawford, Texas

Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Sadr City over a year ago, is not content to fume at home at Bush's insistence that Americans killed in combat died in a noble cause. Here is her own description of how she, along with Gold Star Families for Peace, the group she co-founded, and others have brought the front line against the war to the outskirts of Bush's ranch while he vacations in Crawford, Texas. I'm not going to excerpt it because I really think it deserves to be read in full.

Contrast that with CNN's report on the vigil. In fairness, CNN is one of the first big media outlets in the U.S. to report on the matter, and the totality of their report has been fair to Ms. Sheehan. I could not help but notice though, that the first quote which they chose to use, "I want to ask the president, why did he kill my son?" wasn't quite accurate, and would likely cause supporters of our policy in Iraq to quit reading, and dismiss this woman incorrectly as simply an angry mother who oversimplifies cause and effect. If you listen to the entire interview (via Crooks and Liars) which she did with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, you can see that she is indeed angry, and does hold Bush accountable for her son's death, both with good reason, but there is far more depth there than those few words betray. The more eloquent quote would have been "I don't want [the President] to use my noble, honorable son to justify his murderous policies in Iraq."

More telling to the general public though, was her description of her earlier meeting with Bush, and his behavior in that meeting, described briefly in CNN's report and more fully in the video. Sheehan clearly describes his inability to grasp the gravity of what it means to lose a child in any conflict, much less one which one doesn't support. Those of us who cannot abide this President are awed that his extreme selfishness is not readily apparent to any casual observer. Where did the myth that he's the sort of fellow that regular guys would like to hang out with come from?

You can support Cindy and others supporting her such as Sharon with positive encouragement via their diaries on Daily Kos.

Conscience is not a Choice

Thanks to Kos, for pointing me to this article, which I highly recommend you read, about Sergeant Kevin Benderman whose courage and resolve may earn him seven years in prison.

"If I have to go to prison because I don't want to kill anybody, so be it."

Benderman applied for conscientious objector status when his unit was called up to go back to Iraq while he was still haunted by "the image of a young Iraqi girl, no more than eight or nine, one arm severely burnt and blistered, and the sound of her screams." Where does this notion come from that conscientious objection isn't real unless it pre-exists? Well we know that it practically comes from impossibility of waging a war of any length if a precedent is established that one can declare CO status after enlistment. That doesn't make the legitimacy of many such claims invalid, however.

I also noticed an article the other day about the new 15-month enlistments being offered. Why would anybody believe the military would honor a still shorter term, when it hasn't been honoring longer terms with its abhorrent and immoral stop loss policy? They're desperate and have no honor, yet expect their soldiers to have endless honor even after reality awakens a conscience to the horror of what they may be asked to do.

Permitting Myself to State the Obvious

As I embark on this project of publicly sharing my views, let it be known that I frequently expect to be sharing observations that are pretty obvious. It seems to me that many, in their desire to be erudite, shy away from the obvious in favor of subtle distinctions. Subtle distinctions can be important, but sometimes they are used to obfuscate the more obvious truth. For instance:

                War is hell

In order to justify the organized slaughter of our fellow human beings, there needs to be an extraordinarily compelling necessity. War has become such a regular part of human history, that we become inured to the idea of it, in spite of recognizing its horror. I will not shy away from identifying myself as a pacifist, in spite of my intellectual recognition of the practical need for nations to organize militaries for their defense. Yes there have been cases where taking up arms has been a necessity for one side in a conflict, but far more often its necessity on both sides has been argued by those who stand to gain by the bloodshed of others, and the end result is a tragic waste. Even in those rare cases where the totality of human suffering endured is arguably less as a result of a war than it would have been without it, it does not necessarily follow that the war was the only means to the improved end. If we cannot dream of a future without war, what good are dreams.