Geoffrey Millard

Voices of the IVAW: The Path to G.I. Resistance

Introduction

Abstract: As in the Vietnam Era, antiwar veterans are playing an increasingly important role in the antiwar movement. Founded in

July 2004, Iraq Veterans Against the War began organizing recent veterans and active-duty service personnel to: immediately end the occupation of Iraq, guarantee adequate support and assistance for returning veterans, and insure reparations be paid to the people of

Iraq. This piece explores the phenomenal lives of antiwar veterans through oral biographies of members of Iraq Veterans Against the

War. These personal narratives capture the members’ transformation from children to soldiers to antiwar activists.

These oral biographies are accompanied with a history of GI

Resistance in the United States. Comparisons are made between the wars in both Vietnam and Iraq, as well as the antiwar movements in operation against them.

Soldiers follow orders. This axiom is the bedrock of how Americans view their military; they are the brave young men and women who volunteer to defend the freedoms the nation holds so dearly, they do so with unquestioning loyalty and a determination that is unmatched. Soldiers surrender themselves to the demands of the government , a government comprised of citizens, acting on behalf of the people as a whole, which is committed to securing liberty, democracy, and equality. This romanticized version of heroic and conscience-deprived soldiers is only applicable to this equally romanticized and illusional fantasy government. In reality, those in positions of governing power are rarely noble conduits from which the will of the people flows.

Positions of power attract those individuals with a lust for power, which is often coupled with greed, traits which do not lend themselves to the aims of securing liberty, democracy, and equality for the body as a whole. These improprieties within the political process greatly

1

diminish the virtue of a soldier without a conscience. In a world where politicians operate in the service of less than admirable motivations, the truly heroic soldier must be willing to break with the perceived historical tradition of obedience and not follow orders.

Like so many other stories throughout the history of the United States; the history of GI resistance has gone largely untold to the American public. People never knew or have forgotten that some of the most ardent opposition to the Vietnam War came from veterans. Just as they are now failing to realize that some of the most passionate and articulate pleas for peace are coming from young men and women who have risked their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and have seen the true horrors of war and occupation in the 21 st

century. The oral biographies contained within this work attempt to give voice to this often-marginalized segment society: the antiwar veteran.

These personal narratives of members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) provide a penetrating look into the lives of soldiers of conscience who vehemently oppose the continued occupation of Iraq. Their narratives depict - in their own words - the path these individuals took to become soldiers, as well as the journey they made to become the antiwar activists they are today.

The stories of people like these often have a difficult road to travel if they wish to make it into the history books. The primary objective of this project is to preserve the stories of these individuals for posterity, to insure that future generations will have a greater ability to avoid being duped into another intractable, immoral, and costly conflict in the future. As a nation, we seem to have largely forgotten the lessons of Vietnam, lessons veteran and civilian antiwar activists worked tirelessly to engrain into the society. Our failure to receive their messages from the past and recognize neocolonial imperialist aggression has led to the present situation in Iraq where thousands of US troops are dead or severely wounded and Iraq is in ruin with incalculable

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levels of death and destruction imposed upon it. Listening to and preserving the messages of these truly courageous individuals who have experienced first hand the disturbing realities on ground and have chosen to serve their conscience, should serve as a focal point of ending and remembering the Iraq War.

The path to this project has been long and arduous with many alterations and adaptations made throughout. In January of 2008 - as I began my last semester at American University - I confidently submitted my detailed capstone proposal to the Honors Department, however this project is a far cry from the proposal I submitted oh-so-many months ago. I had originally proposed and began work on a project which would be a collection of oral biographies of homeless veterans. The high levels of homeless veterans on the streets each night represents a serious problem for America, modest estimates state that approximately twenty-five percent of the homeless population is made up of veterans.

1 This phenomenon of homeless veterans has long fascinated me. The possibility that these very people who are revered as having near saintly qualities for their military service, could in the same society which idolizes them, be forgotten in large numbers and left to die in the streets on a cold winter night, highlight some of the deep institutional and systematic failures of the system itself. Especially since the veterans who end up on the streets are not bad soldiers, quite the opposite, approximately eighty-nine percent of homeless veterans have received an honorable discharge.

2

I was also attracted to the plight of homeless veterans because they are a clear representation of two of societies greatest failures: war and poverty.

Unfortunately, after several months of research and many attempts to establish contacts with people working with homeless veterans, I began to realize finding people to talk with would

1

National Coalition of Homeless Veterans. Retrieved April 15, 2008, from http://www.nchv.org/

2 Ibid.

3

be more of a challenge than I had anticipated. For starters, the possibility of finding good subjects for interview is diminished by the priorities of members of the homeless population, if you are living on the streets just trying to survive each day, you are unlikely to have much interest in helping someone from the academic world with a project. In addition to difficulties finding willing participants, there were also serious problems getting the information out of those willing to be interviewed. These problems were further confirmed after I conducted a couple of interviews with some homeless veterans. I quickly learned that individuals faced with the trauma of combat or of extreme poverty are unlikely to be able to present a clear narrative of their lives, which means it is highly unlikely that someone who has suffered both the horrors of war and of poverty will be able to do so.

These problems are not horribly surprising, considering that seventy-six percent of homeless veterans “experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems.” 3 Many of these problems are related to the presence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is an

“anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event...[a] traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you” 4

It is estimated that approximately thirty percent of people who serve in a combat zone will develop PTSD, however it is difficult to estimate the exact number of those suffering from PTSD because cases will often go unreported, due to certain stigmas associating the disorder in the military.

5

Many of the problems homeless veterans face are symptoms of PTSD; the substance abuse, the inability to find or hold a job, difficulty interacting with people are all symptoms of PTSD. This horrible

3

Ibid.

4

US Department of Veterans Affairs: National Center for PTSD, What is Posttraumatic Stress

Disorder? Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_what_is_ptsd.html

5

Meagher, I. (2007). Moving a Nation to Care Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's

Returning Troops. Brooklyn, N.Y: Ig Pub.

4

disorder causes its sufferers to experience time in a “stand still as the trauma survivor skips back repeatedly to the event through intersuve thoughts, nightmares, and other triggers.” 6 The prevalence of PTSD among homeless veterans was problematic for my work for two reasons.

The first of which is obvious, that people with PTSD will be unable to deliver any kind of coherent -let alone accurate - account of their military service or their lives. Conducting interviews with homeless individuals with severe cases of PTSD would also pose a moral problem for me, because I would run the risk of doing potential damage to the individuals kind enough to allow me to interview them. My questioning could easily trigger some repressed memories and reengage an individual back into their state of trauma and cause further damage to their development. Not being a trained counselor of any kind, I knew I would be unable to risk causing serious damage to these individuals who have clearly suffered enough throughout their lives.

With less than two months until my capstone would be due, I was now faced with the issue of not having a topic. I did know I wanted to keep my methodology roughly the same, due to the passion I have for oral biographies. This fondness for oral biographies had been long standing, but was further cultivated during the fall 2007 semester at American University, when I took Julian Bond’s Oral Histories of the Civil Rights Movement . The main objective of professor Bond’s course was for each student to create an oral biography of an individual who was active during the Civil Rights Movement, upon completion of this task I had developed quite a taste for oral biographies as a method of historical research and preservation. I have always been a little turned off by traditional historical research, largely because it so often is second or third hand information that has been passed down and interpreted several times over. Also, oral

6 Ibid.

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histories tend to have a unique accuracy to them, in that you know upfront what the perspective or bias the person talking is representing, their own. This is not the case with other methods where there are multiple perspectives fighting for dominance on the page and the author is imagining him or herself as some kind of objective bystander. However, while knowing I wished to construct a compilation of oral biographies gave me a methodology, I still lacked a subject or group of people which to create these oral biographies about.

Luckily, I had recently began an internship with Iraq Veterans Against the War. The internship had appeared on an SDS (Students for a Democracy Society) listserv that I subscribe to. I had originally hoped my connections with IVAW would be a valuable asset as I conducted research for my homeless veterans capstone, but once that idea fizzled, I realized members of

IVAW would make perfect candidates for the subjects of oral biographies. Interviewing antiwar veterans appeared to produce much fewer problems than my attempts to interview homeless veterans had. First off, I already had connections to IVAW through my internship and I was already much more familiar with the antiwar community as whole than I am with the homeless community (through my involvement in SDS and other antiwar organizations). The difficulty of finding participants was also greatly diminished by this switch, since members of IVAW are typically very enthusiastic about the prospect of talking with anyone about their thoughts and experiences; speaking about their experiences and commenting on political events is a huge part of their activism. I was also a lot less concerned about inflicting psychological damage on the participants in this situation. While many of the people in IVAW do suffer from PTSD and are faced with serious difficulties when trying to readjust to civilian life (this will be seen in several of the biographies), they are generally going to be much more stable and grounded than veterans

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on the streets. However, more important than these practical matters is the fact that members of

IVAW have powerful and unique stories that deserve to be told and well preserved.

My decision to compile oral biographies of members of Iraq Veterans Against the War was strengthened by the fact it had not been done before and there have only been a few things done that are even similar to what I have produced here. There are only three books that even come close to what I envisioned when I thought up this project, but all three are different from what I wanted to see. Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldier Who Say No To Iraq by Peter Laufer attempts to take the stories of individuals who refused service to Iraq and contextualize them within the largely narrative of what is happening, but ultimately falls short.

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Laufer interjects far too much of his personal interpretation and fails to allow the veterans’ true voices to be heard. I have also heard from veterans (who shall remain nameless) who say they are unhappy with his book and that they know the people from book and have heard them say they are unhappy with their representations in it. In What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the

Soldiers Who Fought It by Trish Wood and Bobby Muller, many compelling narratives are presented and the words of the veterans are dominant throughout.

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However, from a technical basis I disliked the presentation of Wood and Muller’s work, in that they just had straight text of their participants speaking, without inserting the questions they had asked. While it may appear a minor detail, I feel it is off great importance to understand what questions the interviewees are responding to, without it there is not going to be the proper context available to fully understand what they are discussing or why.

7

Laufer, P. (2006). Mission Rejected U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. White River Junction,

Vt: Chelsea Green Pub. Co.

8

Wood, T. (2006). What Was Asked of Us an Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who

Fought It. New York, N.Y: Little, Brown and Co.

7

Elise Forbes Tripp’s Surviving Iraq: Soldiers’ Stories

is an excellent collection of oral biographies from soldiers who served in Iraq.

9 Tripp, like Wood and Muller, still fails to include the question she asked within most of her transcriptions, however she does include them from time to time. However, Tripp did provide some anecdotal evidence that I had selected an appropriate topic for myself. Early in her book, Tripp describes how during the Vietnam Era she had “volunteered to lie under the wheels of a stationary limousine in which Secretary of Defense

Robert McNamara was marooned while mobbed by antiwar demonstrators.” 10 Her story clearly resonated with me, because in 2007 when Karl Rove made an appearance at American

University, I too, was willing to lay in the path of a vehicle as a statement of my convictions and ended up being arrested for it.

Methodology

While the methodology is rather straightforward and has already been partially explained, it is important to clarify a few things and briefly mention why things are the way they are and point out what some of the possible shortcomings of this project might be. The first issue which deserves to be addressed is participant selection, meaning how and why the biographies in this project are of the people they are of. Due largely to time constraints and travel costs, all of the interviews had to be done within the District of Columbia or surrounding areas. This provided some limitations, but they were minor as the DC chapter of IVAW is very active. All of the interviews were conducted within the IVAW House; the IVAW House doubles as an office for the DC chapter and provides housing for several members, it is located in the northern area of the city. The most significant issue which arose as a result of my limited subject selection process was that all of the members interviewed are white males. My final sample is comprised of five

9

Tripp, E. F. (2008). Surviving Iraq soldiers' stories. Northampton, Mass: Olive Branch Press.

10 Ibid.

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white males, ranging in age from twenty-five to twenty-eight years old. This is not representative of IVAW, which has many female members and is a very racially diverse organization. Females and racial minorities have very unique military experiences due to the systematic prevalence of racial and gender discrimination what is well documented in the military. As can be seen from my questioning, I did attempt to partially counteract for this lessthan-representative sample by asking the interviewees questions about race, gender, and class throughout the interviews. While many of the members I interviewed did have unique and informative commentary concerning women and minorities within the military, it is unreasonable to expect the same quality of insight from them that would have been attained from people who actually identify with those groups.

One of the main distinctions that separates this piece from the aforementioned work of

Tripp is that my population is comprised of veterans who are all against the continued occupation of Iraq, whereas Tripp selected her participants and conducted her interviews without having any prior knowledge about how they felt about the war. This is one of the main points of distinction between Tripp and myself; I wanted to present that narratives of veterans who are not just against the war, but who now actively working as activists to end the occupation. This point of difference is clearly seen by examining the questions asked during my interviews. Tripp’s interviews were also much more free flowing than mine, I operated from an outline, however malleable, it was an outline none-the-less.

Upon reading the biographies which follow, it will be apparent that you are reading a document transcribed from an oral interview by the presence of speech patters which I have left intact, as well as words such as ‘like’ or ‘an’ and even the occasional ‘um.’ I did not leave all of these pauses in the transcript, but I did leave them where I felt it would better capture the essence

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of what was being said. If a person stumbled for a word and appeared flustered or confused, I wanted that subtle information to be transferred from their mouth to the page. I occasionally used brackets to insert a word if its absence would distract from the point being made or the emotion being expressed. While this method might make the biographies more challenging to read at times, I feel that on the whole a more genuine interpretation is presented for it. In order to provide a proper context for the interviews I will now present a brief history of GI resistance in the United States combined with an analysis of some of the relevant differences and similarities that can be found between Vietnam and Iraq.

The History of GI Resistance in the United States

GI resistance has maintained a constant presence throughout American history, albeit in different forms. It is worth noting that for the purposes of this document GI resistance is being referred to as synonymous with Draft resistance; one being the resistance of military or exmilitary personnel and the other being the resistance of citizens seeking to avoid military conscription. While technically different for the immediate purposes they will all be referred to largely as GI resistance. Documentation of GI resistance is found sporadically, at best, largely due to the fact that organized GI resistance did not truly appear until the Vietnam Era. Having specific language for classifying GI resistance is a relatively new phenomenon, meaning forms of resistance which occurred prior to the Vietnam Era have been easily overlooked or categorized inappropriately in previous scholarship. Without formal organizational structures in place, as they were in Vietnam, it is nearly impossible to demonstrate the motives behind acts of resistance. Incidences of desertion from duty or lack of enlistment could be symptomatic of any number of cultural phenomena; a booming economy could make service less appetizing, the individuals resisting could be doing so out of some specific religious or cultural belief, it could

10

be a statement against the legality of a specific conflict, or a moral rejection of all war. Only in the Vietnam and the post-Vietnam Era are clear statements of purpose articulated by organizations like Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), Veterans For Peace (VFP), and

Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Pre-Vietnam

One of the first documented cases of Draft resistance dates back to colonial times, when

Richard Keene, of Maryland refused conscription into the local militia. While Mr. Keene’s act of resistance was of little consequence at the time and only resulted in a fine of six pounds and fifteen shillings, it very well might have been the first act of resistance in the New World.

11

This is in addition to the notion that much of America was founded by Europeans who sought to avoid conscription into yet another one of Europe’s bloody wars, fought on behalf of aristocracy for reasons that often made current entanglements seem overwhelmingly justified. Debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalist often raged over the existence of standing armies. In

Dissent of the Pennsylvania Minority from 1787, the Anti-Federalist describe how during the

Constitutional Convention they proposed “that the power of organizing, arming and disciplining the militia…., remain with the individual States, and that Congress shall not have the authority to call or match any of the militia…without the consent of such State.” 12 While the motivations behind the resistance of the Anti-Federalist to the creation of a standing national army is complex, it does represent the passionately held believe that blind obedience to decision-makers in Washington is a potential road to a tyrannical misuse of armies.

11

Laufer, P. (2006). Mission Rejected U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq. White River Junction,

Vt: Chelsea Green Pub. Co.

12

Dolbeare, K. M., & Cummings, M. S. (2004). American Political Thought. Washington, D.C:

CQ Press.

11

The War of 1812 presents a crucial situation wherein the federal government was in shambles and “the regular army [was being] undermined by desertion.” 13 It reached the point where the War Department was pleading with states to “furnish troop-lift…raise them, feed and pay them, to be reimbursed after that war,” which many states were not receptive to.

14

It is difficult to determine the cause of this troop shortage, but the notion that able-bodied men of military age would fail to volunteer for militia duty even when the Union was on the verge of destruction makes an important statement about the nation’s inherent aversion to war. While not an instance of GI resistance, the punditry of the day during the Mexican American war in the form of Henry David Thoreau pleaded that men serving in the military, serve “not as men mainly, but as machine, with their bodies…[with] no free exercise whatever of judgment of moral sense.” 15

The claims of Thoreau are yet another example of popular civilian support for acts of GI resistance.

The 20 th

century prior to Vietnam maintained the same illusive support for GI resistance that had been seen from colonial times. A significant literary example of further popular civilian support came in the form of the classic novel by Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun , which is set in the mind of a deaf, blind, and limbless veteran as he lays in the hospital and retells the story of how he became the shell of man he is now.

16 The vehemently antiwar and anti-military service themed book was much more of a success than would have been imagined and has sold millions of copies and been republished throughout the century and in many different languages.

The novel was first published in 1939 after the conclusion of WWI (which is the setting of the

13

Morison, S. E., Merk, F., & Freidel, F. B. (1970). Dissent in three American wars. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press.

14

Ibid.

15

Dolbeare, K. M., & Cummings, M. S. (2004). American Political Thought. Washington, D.C:

CQ Press.

16 Trumbo, D. (1939). Johnny Got His Gun. New York: J.B. Lippincott.

12

book), which was a bloody conflict that was incredibly unpopular with the American public and on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II. While questioning the sanctity of World

War II is often viewed as unthinkable, it is important to realize that GI resistance was alive in during WWII. During WWII “every sixth man in federal prisons was a” conscientious objector

(CO) and those imprisoned were only “about 15 per cent of the World War II C.O. population.” 17

These sporadic examples of pre-Vietnam Era GI resistance reflect a subtle tone in American political thought that is inherently supportive of GI resistance, even if it is not articulated as such.

Vietnam

The Vietnam Era was the birth of the organized GI resistance movement in the United

States. This movement was largely propelled by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which formed in 1967, almost a decade after the US has became actively involved in the conflict. J.

Edgar Hoover’s FBI launched an almost immediate investigation into the organization, due to suspected affiliation with communist influences, but ultimately determined “the group had only one chief goal: to end the war in Vietnam.” 18

VVAW was spawned largely by two means, underground GI newspapers and coffeehouses near military bases geared towards spreading and sharing antiwar sentiment. The underground soldier authored newspapers were a crucial tool in the initial formation of the movement; it is estimated that by the end of the conflict there had been approximately 250 GI newspapers in circulation.

19

These papers would then often be distributed in the coffeehouses, which would be used to put “GIs in contact with antiwar

17

Wittner, L. S. (1984). Rebels Against War the American Peace Movement, 1933-1983.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

18

Hunt, A. E. (1999). The Turning A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York:

New York University Press.

19

Cortright, D. (2005). Soldiers in Revolt GI Resistance During the Vietnam War. Chicago IL:

Haymarket Books.

13

literature…[while offering] free coffee, live music and political conversation.” 20

Despite being harassed by authorities and suffering tremendous obstacles, both the newspapers and the coffeehouses proved to be successful tools for organizing veterans and establishing connections between GIs and the civilian antiwar movement.

Throughout the Vietnam War VVAW participated in dozens of antiwar actions and activities, two examples of such actions and activities are of particular relevance here, in that they would both be revived by Iraq Veterans Against the War. The first of these was an antiwar action, entitled Operation Rapid American Withdrawal (RAW), which was a “four-day, simulated search-and-destroy mission between Morristown, New Jersey, and Valley Forge,

Pennsylvania.” 21

The second crucial event for VVAW was the 1971 speaking event, which brought together over one hundred veterans to testify as to having witnessed war crimes in

Vietnam. The veterans recalled instances of “beatings, rape, murder, and the destruction of crops and livestock…[they] portrayed the war, not against and enemy, but against a people.” 22

The three days of war crime testimony combined with growing antiwar sentiment across the country led to John Kerry’s speaking on behalf of VVAW before the Congress in 1971.

23

Kerry who had first been exposed to VVAW during Operation RAW, would go on to be the head spokesperson for VVAW, until speculation that he was only using VVAW to further his personal political ambitions would force his resignation.

24

20

Moser, R. R. (1996). The New Winter Soldiers GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam

Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

21



22



23

Ibid.

24



14

It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of the antiwar movement as a whole during the

Vietnam Era, making it even more challenging to determine the effectiveness of one specific aspect of the movement. There is however, evidence to suggest that VVAW did have an impact on things such as enlistment rates by encouraging Draft resistance, organizing COs in the prisons, and assisting people on the run. People fleeing to Canada to avoid military service or prison increased as the war went on, so did desertion rates. At the very least VVAW provided an outlet for fed-up and disaffected soldiers to operate through. The United States was also forced to fight the last years of the Vietnam War mostly through aerial campaigns because of the increasing cases of refusal and outright violent upheaval from troops on the ground.

25

Fragging was one of on of the most aggressive and violent acts a disgruntled and angry soldier could engage in, the term refers to “fragmentation grenades used by rebellious soldiers to attack officers.” 26 In 1969 there were ninety-six confirmed fragging incidents, but eleven months into

1971 there had already been two hundred and fifteen confirmed incidents.

27

This is not to imply that VVAW was encouraging fragging, but to merely illustrate the intense levels of frustration that were being felt among GIs during the war, if anything the presence of VVAW could have reduced the number of fraggings by providing soldiers with strategic non-violent forms of resistance.

Post-Vietnam

It is natural to assume that the level of activity found in the antiwar movement will be a reflection of how much war is being waged and how much it is impacting citizens. This explains

25

Broderick, P. (Producer), & Zeiger, D. (Director). (2005). Sir! No Sir! [Motion picture]. USA:

New Video Group, Inc.

26



27

Cortright, D. (2005). Soldiers in Revolt GI Resistance During the Vietnam War. Chicago IL:

Haymarket Books.

15

why there is very little activity regarding GI resistance or the antiwar movement as a whole between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. VVAW continued to function as an organization, amending its objectives to reflect the times, but still remaining Vietnam Veterans Against the

War, not changing their name to Vietnam Veterans Against War or something similar, but more applicable to all conflicts. In addition to VVAW, 1985 brought a newly formed antiwar veterans organization, dubbed Veterans For Peace.

28

Both organizations would remain active during the time between Vietnam and Iraq, but without the US engaging in any prolonged conflicts that resulted in large amounts of dead Americans, their activities were limited. However, once the

US became fully entangled abroad in Iraq, Veterans For Peace would act as the starting point for what would become Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Iraq…another Vietnam?

In 2004 at the annual Veterans For Peace convention, veterans of the Iraq War formed

Iraq Veterans Against the War. This organization would be open to anyone who had served in the military after September 11 th

, 2001 and would soon move to the forefront of modern antiwar movement. This organization and atmosphere in which it was created is unmistakably similar to

VVAW and the Vietnam Era that had proceeded. While, no one will argue that there are not significant differences between the two conflicts, it would be just as impossible to argue against the striking similarities which are present. The conclusion of this chronology of GI resistance in the United States will focus heavily on examining some of the differences and similarities between what happened in the Vietnam and what is happening today.

28

Veterans For Peace - About VFP. Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.veteransforpeace.org/about_vfp.vp.html

16

In 2004 when IVAW was formed, they laid out three clear objectives for their organization, they sought the:

“* Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;

* Reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and

* Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.” 29

When looking at much of what IVAW has done and is doing it is clear that they have been greatly influenced by the earlier work of VVAW and VFP. These three simple organizational objectives could be interpreted as IVAW learning to focus their message and present a clear unified front. This would be an attempt to avoid what many consider a misstep of

VVAW, which had chapters that “represented all things to all members: a vanguard group for

Maoists; a campaign headquarters for Democrats; a vehicle for activists to plan…demonstrations; a meeting place for rad groups; an information center for war crimes hearings; a…spot for poets; a rehabilitation home for drug addicts.” 30

This big tent approach to activism which is seen in VVAW can be viewed as a problem in that it can cause divisions within the organization and turnoff prospective members or it can be viewed as a positive element which allowed the organization to grow to the numbers it did, by being able to unite on the issues which overlapped, but still attract “a broad segment of the political spectrum, from libertarian to Marxists.”

31

From what the interviews that follow, it appears IVAW wants to have it both ways, or at least individuals represent different opinions on this matter. Due to the

29

Ibid.

30



31 Ibid.

17

simplicity of the IVAW platform they are able to publicly communicate those three guiding principles, but behind the scenes are much more willing to welcome people of differing political affiliation and ideology.

Structurally, technological advances have greatly increased the way IVAW is able to get its message out and recruit new members. While coffeehouses and underground papers are not obsolete, they are typically marginal strategies for recruitment, opposed to being the central recruiting mechanisms they were for VVAW. This development is largely a byproduct of the internet and its ability to connect people around the globe, specifically the ability to gather and disseminate information to and from active duty troops who are currently serving in Iraq. This new technology made it possible for active duty troops deployed all around the world to be able to watch the new Winter Soldier testimony live from their area of deployment and makes access to all of the archival videos and writings of VVAW, VFP, and IVAW readily available.

Operation First Casualty (OFC) was a major event for IVAW and is mentioned frequently by members who have been with the organization long enough to participated in it.

OFC was a series of street theater actions which involved members of IVAW going out on fictional patrols throughout major cities and staging interrogations, arrests, and detainments of their civilian allies, in an attempt to illustrate the realties of the occupation in Iraq. OFC was very similar to VVAW’s Operation Rapid American Withdrawal, but conducted on a smaller scale, first in the District of Columbia in March of 2007, but OFC actions have since been replicated elsewhere.

The lack of a military draft is another crucial difference between what is happening with

Iraq and what happened during the Vietnam Era. The absence of the draft means less people involved and less of an ability to garnish mass opposition to the war. The closest thing to a draft

18

occurring in Iraq, is the act known as stop-loss, which is often referred to as a back-door draft, because it forces active duty troops whose contracts have expired to stay in Iraq long after they should have been discharged. While stop-loss is a serious problem that has affected many military personal, as the following narratives describe, it has failed to stir-up large amounts of support with the general public. However, this trend could be changing, considering that in April of 2008 a major motion picture entitle Stop-loss was released nation wide; the story is of a young

Iraq War veteran who returns home and is issued stop-loss orders in lieu of a discharge. IVAW has made the stop-loss issue a clear focal-point and in March they conducted Operation Stop-

Loss Congress, which through a combination of direct lobbying, civil disobedience, and street theater, IVAW attempted to issue and then enforce stop-loss orders on every member of

Congress. The action was carried out by IVAW and an allied organization Our Spring Break, which aimed to organize students to travel to Washington, DC to participate in anti-war actions over spring break. This involved members of IVAW personally delivering the stop-loss orders to Congressional offices and then having members and civilian allies attempt to prevent the members of Congress from leaving the Capitol building until they brought the troops home from

Iraq.

Operation Stop-Loss Congress was part of the plethora of events which occurred during

March of 2008. March of 2008 marked the fifth anniversary of the initial invasion into Iraq and numerous antiwar actions were coordinated through DC and the nation, in what was probably the peak of the modern antiwar movement. The weekend prior to the exact day of the anniversary and the central day of antiwar direct actions, March 20 th

, IVAW organized Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, which brought together hundreds of veterans for a four day long event in the nations capitol where they recounted their personal horror stories of war and occupation. Once

19

again, the path of IVAW has been partially broken in by VVAW, who also held their own

Winter Soldier hearings in the early 1970s. This progression is not surprising, both wars have produced atrocities, whether it is the My Lai Massacre of Vietnam or the Haditha shootings in

Iraq. However, the testimonies given at both Winter Soldiers are about much more than the extreme events like Haditha and My Lai, they are focused more on the systematic and institutional atrocities that are actively encouraged in times war, like the dehumanization of the other, the failure to respect international law, prejudices within the military, as well as the inappropriate conduct of individuals, both observed and confessed to.

By the numbers, IVAW has approximately 1,000 members, resisting a conflict that has claimed a little over 4,000 American lives and wounded about 30,000 others.

32

VVAW had around 25,000 members,

33

in a conflict that would ultimately claim over 55,000 casualties.

34

These numbers somewhat support the notion that while the antiwar movement might be smaller it is also going up against a relatively smaller or less consequential war. It can also be argued that despite being smaller the movement is now smarter and better equipped having learned from the lessons of past generations. IVAW has already revisited several tactics and revived the

Winter Soldier hearings that were initially carried out by VVAW; they are now seeking to continue this legacy by pushing for their own Congressional hearings.

The major similarity that has been personally highlighted for my while doing my research and preparing, conducting, and editing the interviews which follow, is that both Iraq and

Vietnam were unwinable, not because of miscalculations or poor planning, but because both

32

ICasualties: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Retrieved April, 22, from http://icasualties.org/oif/

33



34

Vietnam War Casualties. Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.vietnamwar.info/casualties/

20

conflicts come down to the flawed belief that you can maintain order and impose imperial will through the barrel of a gun. The stories you are about to read come from the individuals who have held that gun, literally, and have learned this reality all too well. Enjoy the passionate, emotional, and often disturbing stories that follow and sit back in awe of the courage all of these men demonstrated, not on the battlefield, but through their personal choice to recognize and refuse participation in injustice.

This work is dedicated to my parents who have always supported my academic endeavors and to the educators who have helped me along the way. Especially Professor Kane who has demonstrated great wisdom and patience while advising my on this project. Lastly, this work is dedicated to the young people of my generation who are refusing to accept a course of events predetermined by the powers that be and are working to redefine the world as they envision it.

21

Bibliography

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New York: PublicAffairs.

Broderick, P. (Producer), & Zeiger, D. (Director). (2005). Sir! No Sir!

[Motion picture]. USA:

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Campbell, K. J. (2007). A Tale of Two Quagmires Iraq, Vietnam, and the Hard Lessons of War .

Boulder: Paradigm.

Cortright, D. (2005). Soldiers in Revolt GI Resistance During the Vietnam War . Chicago IL:

Haymarket Books.

Dolbeare, K. M., & Cummings, M. S. (2004). American Political Thought . Washington, D.C:

CQ Press.

Gardner, L. C., & Young, M. B. (2007). Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam, or, How Not to Learn from the Past . New York: Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co.

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing Consent the Political Economy of the

Mass Media . New York: Pantheon Books.

Hunt, A. E. (1999). The Turning A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War . New York:


ICasualties: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count . Retrieved April, 22, from http://icasualties.org/oif/

Iraq Veterans Against the War . Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://ivaw.org/

Laufer, P. (2006). Mission Rejected U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq . White River Junction, Vt:

Chelsea Green Pub. Co.

Lembcke, J. (1998). The Spitting Image Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam . New York:


Meagher, I. (2007). Moving a Nation to Care Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's

Returning Troops . Brooklyn, N.Y: Ig Pub.

Morison, S. E., Merk, F., & Freidel, F. B. (1970). Dissent in three American wars . Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Moser, R. R. (1996). The New Winter Soldiers GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era .

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New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

National Coalition of Homeless Veterans . Retrieved April 15, 2008, from http://www.nchv.org/

Perkins, J. (2004). Confessions of an Economic Hit Man . San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler

Publishers.

Stacewicz, R. (1997). Winter Soldiers an Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War .

New York: Twayne Publishers.

Steele, J. (2008). Defeat Why America and Britain Lost Iraq . Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.

Tripp, E. F. (2008). Surviving Iraq soldiers' stories . Northampton, Mass: Olive Branch Press.

Trumbo, D. (1939). Johnny Got His Gun . New York: J.B. Lippincott.

US Department of Veterans Affairs: National Center for PTSD, What is Posttraumatic Stress

Disorder?

Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_what_is_ptsd.html

Veterans For Peace - About VFP . Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.veteransforpeace.org/about_vfp.vp.html

Vietnam War Casualties . Retrieved April 22, 2008, from http://www.vietnamwar.info/casualties/

Wittner, L. S. (1984). Rebels Against War the American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 .

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Wood, T. (2006). What Was Asked of Us an Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who

Fought It . New York, N.Y: Little, Brown and Co.

Zinn, H. (2007). A Power Governments Cannot Suppress . San Francisco: City Lights.

23

Geoffrey Millard

It’s a quiet Tuesday morning when I sit down with Geoffrey Millard at the IVAW House in Washington, DC. Geoffrey is one of the senior most members living in the house, both in terms of his age and his level of experience with the organization. Geoffrey spent nine years in the Army National Guard, was activated in the wake of the September 11 th

attacks to work security mission in New York, and served in Iraq; he is now the Chapter President of IVAW in

Washington, DC. Throughout our discussion Geoffrey describes the path he followed from soldier to anti-war activist.

Where did you grow up?

Until high school I lived in Buffalo, New York and then I moved outside the suburbs to

Lockport, where I went to high school and where I graduated from high school.

Did you have a large family?

No.

What did your parents do for a living?

Well, when I was young my parents had their own business, a small business - a telephone shop. Now, my father passed away years ago; my mother works at Home Depot and has for years.

Was there a history of military service in your family?

My grandfathers both served, but not in my parents. My father was a libertarian and believed that war interfered with markets, and therefore disagreed with war. And my mother is pretty much a hippie.

So, how did those outlooks impact your earliest impressions of the military?

24

The only impressions that I really had of the military were my grandparents - my grandfathers. One grandfather on my father’s side always had his discharge paperwork hanging on the wall and touted a lot…I think he was the highest ranking Coast Guard officer, ever from

Buffalo. So it was kinda a big deal, like his Coast Guard service. Then my other grandfather died when I was young, when I was about five, that had more of an impact on me I would say, because my grandmother on my mother’s side was bedridden, just about my entire life - I have no memory of her ever being able to get out of bed. And so, when he died the soldiers that buried him, it was such a big deal in that respect level, in the fact that they not only came out to do his funeral, then they drove like two miles to give her the flag, when you know, they really don’t have to do that, but it was a level of respect shown that I had not seen before, probably ever.

Was there a history of political activism in your family?

No, not at all.

Did you have any early impressions of activism as a child?

No.

Growing up in your community, did you notice many divisions between ‘haves’ and

‘have-nots ’ - class divisions?

No, it was all pretty much ‘have-nots,’ we didn’t really see to many of the ‘haves.’ I lived in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood on the west side. Buffalo is one of the most segregated cities in the entire country

1 , to the point of…even the Irish live together and the

1

According to a 2002 Census study on segregation the most segregated cities are Milwaukee,

Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Newark, Cincinnati, and Buffalo. However, the study was more focused on black/white segregation than the sub-grouping Geoffrey is referring to.

SEE: http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2002/12/16/story3.html

25

Polish live together, it’s not just black-white division, it’s sub-grouped even beyond that, even in the black neighborhood it’s sub-grouped.

Did you enjoy school as a child?

I don’t know. I was a kid, so, not really.

What’s the highest level of education you have completed?

Completed?

Yes.

I have an Associates in Business Administration.

What were some of the earliest things you aspired to as a child? What did you want to be when you grew up?

For a long time I wanted to teach, I really loved the idea of knowledge and my mother has a degree in teaching, even though she never taught in my lifetime, she had a degree in teaching. Teaching was definitely something that I’ve always had a love for. I also enjoy cooking, a lot. So, for a while I…actually working in a restaurant distilled that, rather quickly.

How old were you when you enlisted in the military?

I was seventeen.

So, this was post-9/11 or pre-9/11?

Pre, it was in the Clinton-years as we say in the military.

That was what year?

Ninety-eight.

And why did you decide to volunteer at that point?

Well, I was getting ready to graduate from high school and I knew that I wasn’t ready to go to college and I also knew that I wasn’t ready to enter the workforce in any meaningful

26

fashion. So, I felt like the military was a really good option for me and I really did want to serve my country, I wanted to…to be part of that greater good. I wanted to join the Marine Corp, and when I told my mother that, she literally begged me in tears just to talk to the National Guard recruiter. You know my, my mom thought that the National Guard doesn’t go to war, so I’d be better off. So I went down to talk to the National Guard recruiter and he gave me one line and I signed up on the spot; he said ‘If you come here you get to blow shit up,’ literally that’s all he had to say to me, I signed up on the spot.

Looking back, do you feel the recruiters gave you an accurate description of military service?

Well I wanted to go in, I didn’t need to be recruited, I walked into the recruiting center, so…. I mean I remember a recruiter once when I was probably a sophomore, or earlier in high school sitting down next to me in a lunch room and talking to me, but like I don’t know how much of an impact that actually had on my joining. Looking back at it, it’s kind of a shock at how much access the recruiters had at my high school

2 , but I don’t know what kind of impact that had on me joining. The fact is, is that I wanted to be in the military.

What was the overall reaction from your family and friends?

I don’t really remember the reaction from my friends; I remember I broke up with my girlfriend over it.

Did she just not want you to go or…?

2

President Bush’s 2002, No Child Left Behind education reform only broadens the access military recruiters have to the nation’s schools. Buried within the bill is a stipulation that requires schools to provide the names, addresses, and phone numbers of students to recruiters on request, students and their parents can opt out of this, but very few are ever notified they have the option or that the information is being given out at all.

SEE: http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2002/11/ma_153_01.html

27

Yeah, I mean I was a kid and she was too. So, it was more of an issue of immaturity, she didn’t want me away for that long sorta thing, really just an immature relationship, we didn’t have like a really, I don’t know, we didn’t have a mature relationship certainly, we were high school kids. But my mom was not happy, nor was my dad…with it. They were very supportive of me in the sense that, like my parents would back me up, I think, if I decided that hell was a good option. But, at the same time, they very much showed that they did not want me to do that.

What do you think you would have likely done if you hadn’t signed up?

I don’t really know that there was another option for me, like to me that was what I wanted to do, I didn’t really…I didn’t give too much thought to much other stuff. I mean I coulda gone to college and, you know, if I worked hard I woulda done well. But, I wanted to be in the military. And so, I don’t really like thinking about the hypothetical ‘what if you didn’t want to?’ Well I did and I wanted it bad, and I went after what I wanted.

What was your plan for after the military, did you want to stay in for a career?

Well I knew eventually I wanted to be…go to college. But I didn’t know, I don’t know, I don’t think I had much of a long range thought – I was seventeen, you know.

And you enlisted with the National Guard?

Army National Guard.

Can you describe what basic training was like?

It’s kinda hard to remember way back when. I actually, I can tell you a little about the letters I wrote home to my mom; I read those a couple of years ago, just before I went to Iraq.

From the letters I was really afraid and don’t really have much of a memory of this, but I would write home…and to me the mental stress was, more than anything, like I was physically in really good shape, before I ever went, so physically it was nothing. But mentally, it was really

28

mentally stressful, I have never been yelled at before like that. Especially without someone enacting a level of physical violence, like I’d been beaten before – not by my parents – but, I’d never had that level of emotional and psychological violence with no accompanying physical violence, it was really discerning for me. Yeah, it’s hard to remember, it was a decade ago that I went through basic. So, it’s a lot longer than some other folks in IVAW, which kinda removes me a little bit from the situation.

What was the general makeup of the people you served with, as far as race, gender, class?

Well in my unit it was interesting, when I got out of basic, at basic I don’t remember at all. But, my unit I was actually stationed with, I was in the unit out in Lockport, in the suburbs and it was like ninety-nine percent white, I think there was a black guy in the unit at each moment of my service, there was one black guy and no Latinos. But if you went to another company in our battalion, which would be in Buffalo, it was almost all Latinos and blacks, and so, it was like, but that’s how the Guard kinda works, is that you work in your neighborhoods.

And Buffalo being so segregated, you drill with the one closest by, so it really reflected the segregation of the neighborhood itself. And I don’t think that’s Army wide, I really doubt it, but

Buffalo is very segregated so it makes sense that…and you would go to the National Guard

Armory that is closest by you, so it would just make sense that you would…the units end up by default being segregated and I don’t wanna blame the Army for that, because I actually think that the Army was the least segregated place I’ve ever seen in American society, even though the racism of American society is certainly present in the military, the segregation doesn’t…it happens on a social level, but not on a work level, I don’t think.

So within the unit, the racial divisions fade away mostly?

29

I think when you’re working, yeah, because when you gotta get something done, you do it in the military. There is not this, ‘oh I can’t work with that person because they’re black, I can’t work with that person because I don’t even like them.’ You know I worked with tons of people I couldn’t stand in the military, but the mission is stressed over anything. So, I think some of those racial divides, some of which…but then when you have social interaction you can definitely see racism, definitely rearing up.

What year were you first deployed to Iraq?

Well I left stateside on…well I arrived in Kuwait on October 27 th

, 2004.

So, Iraq was your first active deployment?

To a combat zone, yes.

What did you know about Iraq prior to going there?

Well, I knew I was against the war, to me it just didn’t make sense. I remember being activated for 9/11, being in the New York Guard we got activated for 9/11. We were down at the

World Trade Center doing security missions and I was trying to keep up with school, cause I was a junior in college at the time. And I called back to my African American Studies professor, who was like the first radical Black Nationalist that I’d had ever met, so he was an interesting guy.

And he asked me if I was okay and I told him ‘yeah, of course, I got four hours of sleep last night, it was a great night’ and he returned with, ‘no no, are you okay, are you okay?’ and…

[Interruption – office phone rings]

You were saying one of your professors called you…

Yeah, and he asked me if I was okay. Now, keep in mind this was the first, like Black

Nationalist that I’d ever met and he asked me how I was doing personally and I asked him if he really wanted know. He said ‘yes,’ and I told him that I really wanted to be off to war. I really

30

felt like I should be killing someone, something by now. Cause we were attacked on 9/11 and that I just couldn’t let that stand, as a solider I just felt like I should be at war, this is why I was a soldier. And he said…his wisdom was beyond his years at the time because he said, ‘I can understand that, I understand as a soldier that you want to go to war, but who do you want to go to war with?’ And the fact that I couldn’t answer that question really messed me up. It really did. And that’s what started me thinking about political change.

So when they started talking about Iraq it just never made sense to me, it just, it didn’t pass the smell test, you know? As a bachelor you grab your laundry and you smell and say ‘ah, I can get another day out of that t-shirt’ you know, you’ve done that before, everybody has, right?

Well, Iraq didn’t pass the smell test and when they were talking about weapons of mass destruction I thought to myself, Saddam is a brutal military dictator. That’s why we put him in power 3 , make no mistake about it, he is a brutal military dictator, who could care less who he killed. And…we accused him of having weapons of mass destruction, and I though to myself,

‘for thirteen years we’ve bombed and sanctioned Iraq, we’ve killed half a million children, we have weakened his power in the area, we’ve weakened his military state, if he was…if he had weapons he would have used them, I mean that’s what brutal military dictators do, they use the weapons they have, they don’t stockpile them, just in case ‘one day I might sell em to a terrorist,’ that’s just not how military dictators operate. Which is why we like military dictators, that’s why we put them in power quite often, is because their brutal.’ And, so the weapons of mass destruction didn’t pass the smell test.

3

For further information on Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and relationship with the United

States in the 1980s SEE: Perkins, J. (2004). An EHM Failure in Iraq. Confessions of an

Economic Hit Man (pp. 182-195). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

31

And then, they started talking about, after weapons of mass destruction; they started talking about bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. Let’s be real, when was the last time

America brought freedom to anybody? Take a look at Central and South America and see who we freed down there, lets see, take a look at Columbia and El Salvador and Nicaragua and all these other places that we’ve been

4

and tell me how free they are because the Americans were there, you know, how free their elections are. I mean…Pinochet 5

is a perfect example of us bringing freedom to a country. So, that didn’t pass the smell test either, so of all the reasons they were giving for war, it just never passed the smell test.

Before we continue with Iraq, when you were going threw this realization process and talking with your professor, it was still before we had went into Afghanistan; so what was your opinion of going into Afghanistan?

When they said we were going into Afghanistan, I actually was really supportive of that.

I was like, ‘alright, we found these mother-fuckers lets go get’ and I still…I thought that, you know, I thought that ‘all right we know who did it, let’s go get these mother-fuckers.’ My beliefs on that have changed a lot too, but at the time I was very supportive of Afghanistan.

Were you willing to go there?

Oh, of course.

How long were you stationed in Iraq?

Thirteen months, all together between Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar.

And this was between what dates?

October of 04 to October of 05.

4

For an overview of US involvement in places like these and others, SEE: Perkins, J. (2004).

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

5

Augusto Pinochet was the US backed military dictator of Chile who ruled the nation from the mid-1970s to 1990 and would later be put on trail for various crimes against humanity.

32

Can you describe what an average day was like in Iraq, I’m sure there is no such thing as an ‘average day,’ but just a…

No, actually my days were extremely repetitive. If I was working on the night shift, I would wake up, I would relieve the daytime…counterpart of mine, which was an operations assistant [inaudible], then I would log into the log, make a radio check, sit around and listen to the radio, watch TV, and then, if there were no incidents going on we’d do radio checks every hour and I’d check my e-mails and stuff. And then wait a few hours and then start to put together the briefing for the general, which happened the next morning; that would take me a few hours to put together, proof and go through. By the time I was done I could do it in twenty minutes, you know like, it just got so easy to do, it all would depend on how many incidents there were. Every time there was an incident I had to plot it on the little mapping system, so that the general could see where it happened and that was pretty much…and then would give the briefing and after the briefing my relief would come in and I would give an out briefing to my relief and then…I would go to sleep. I would work twelve-hour shifts, which turned, usually into about thirteen hour shifts by the time everything was done. So, that was pretty much my days…

So were you ever out at checkpoints or on patrol?

Nope, I never even…I never left my base, never even loaded my weapon. It’s funny, I told this story a thousand times to people, that I’ve never been shot at, I’ve never been bombed in an IED.

6

We got mortared, but that was generally pretty far off. Enough to know you around sometimes, but most of the time, like you wouldn’t even know it, if you didn’t, like you’d just

6

Improvised Explosive Device – is an explosive device that is constructed through typically unconventional low-budget means and is one of the biggest dangers facing US forces in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

33

hear a big boom, that’s basically it, you wouldn’t really feel it. But, every once in a while it’d knock you around a bit, but you know, over the course of a year, we probably were mortared maybe 150 times or so. Again, my tour was really actually pretty simple in comparison, but I looked at the war from a general’s point of view at this point. So, like I was saying, I’ve never…I’ve given, told reporters a thousand times, I’ve never been shot at, I’ve never been bombed, I got mortared. And there’s one report that [inaudible]…they took out the ‘nots’ and just put ‘I was shot at, I was bombed’ and it’s been interesting to see how that’s been used to attack me.

7

People from my unit actually, like ‘you’re lying, this never happened’, and I was like ‘of course it didn’t, but I didn’t say that.’ You know, I get misquoted quite often, but you know, I can’t track down every time I get misquoted and try and correct them. There’s one person out there that says I have a wife and kids, I don’t know where the hell that came from,

I’ve never been married and I certainly don’t have any children.

Do you have any distinct memories from your time in Iraq?

Oh yeah, there’s a lot of things that stick out, I mean in what manner? The stories I generally tell are the – one-day we had a radio transmission come in…it was really, like I said, if there wasn’t something going on, all I would have to do is a radio check each day and log the radio check. But like, every once in a while two people weren’t talking that probably should have and we would just kinda jump over nets, cause we listened to so many different nets

8

, that we would jump freqs

9

and give someone else a SITREP

10

on what was going, a situational report.

7

The issue of credibility is constantly brought up by their pro-war opponents, like Rush

Limbaugh who has refereed to service members who support withdrawal from Iraq as ‘phony soldiers.’ SEE: http://mediamatters.org/items/200709270010

8

Networks

9 Frequencies

34

So one day I am listening to the radios and I’m hearing across the sheriff’s net, which was like the net for people out on the roads that were having difficulties, that there was a unit in contact and they were surrounded by 200 insurgents and that they were in this fierce fight with

200 insurgents. And I’m listening to the air defense freq., and no one is calling out air support.

And I thought that was really weird, so I jumped, and I just wrote down, you know SITREP and I jumped over freqs and just gave them a SITREP and didn’t really think anything of it, to the point where I didn’t even log that, like it was not any big deal. But then, I saw the briefing…and it was briefed that…that air support was called out for this event and then when they looked at the scene afterwards, they found 175 dead bodies and only three AK-47s

11

.

And what it really showed me was like, the choices in Iraq suck. Because, what if I’d done nothing? And like I said, I didn’t do a whole lot, you know I didn’t pull the trigger on that, but I feel really responsible for that, because what if I’d done nothing and it had been 200 armed insurgents and they killed that six vehicle convoy…and they, you know, dragged their bodies through the streets and burned them and shit, you know that woulda been totally on me for not doing anything about it. And yet, having done something about it, those 175 dead civilians are on me just the same…and it’s a really tough thing to try and realize that, you know moving forward that…I worked on a talk, I didn’t ever load my weapon and I killed a lot of people because I participated in this occupation. And that level of participation, you know tons of people say, ‘well, it’s not your fault, you didn’t really have a choice.’ I did, I had a choice long before not to go, and I went…and that’s, you know, eventually when I went AWOL that was a big decision in my head.

10

Situation Report

11

The Kalashnikov-47 is one of the most popular firearms on the planet and is known for it’s simple design, low cost, and availability throughout the world.

35

Then there’s the story I told at, at Winter Soldier, this colonel…we got this briefing one day about a traffic control point shooting, where a young private puts 200 rounds into a vehicle that’s moving really fast at his checkpoint, he thought it was car bomb. I have no doubts, in my mind that that private thought ‘this is a suicide bomber, I have to kill this person or it will kill my, this person will kill my buddies.’ And I have absolutely no issues with the fact that he did that, but he didn’t kill insurgents or car bombs, he killed four civilians…you know, two parents and two kids. And that really wasn’t, it was really fucked up to me. So, what I did, when I saw that briefing, I was really shocked by it and it really like showed, that again no one had a good choice in there. The Iraqis had no clue it was a traffic control point, the private had no clue they were just regular civilians, they weren’t going to kill him. So, to me it was just so glaring of the occupation’s fault…there and I had all these thoughts about it. And this colonel, Colonel

Roshell, turns in his chair to the whole division level staff and says, ‘if these fuckin Hajis 12 learn to drive this shit wouldn’t happen’…I was so shocked, like ‘if these fucking Hajis learn to drive’ and I was like, instead of thinking about what this private is going to go through, instead of thinking about…the fact that we ended a blood line or created more terrorist; there’s a million things you could think of. But he blames racism; dehumanizes these people…that was really fucked up to me.

It seems like the level of awareness you had, even before you left, was pretty high; did you ever consider refusing to go?

Oh, definitely, I was totally against the war, but I didn’t have this context of GI resistance that I have today. I never even thought that GIs had resisted in the past, it never crossed my mind really. The fact that…the first thing that I though of was going to Canada, you know,

12 The term ‘Haji’ has became a popular ethnic slur against Iraqis.

36

that’s what they did in the Sixties, but of course I was thinking draft resisters, not GI resisters.

But, I didn’t know about the War Resisters Support Campaign 13 and I just thought ‘how am I going to live, what am I going…to be an illegal alien in another country?’ That just didn’t sound plausible to me, so it really wasn’t a big thought.

And then I thought, ‘well, I could just refuse and go to jail.’ But, as an African American studies major, who was specializing in Black Power and looking at what the…at the time I was researching a lot into the Soledad brothers, who were murdered in prison for being Black Power activists. And I thought, again, no context of GI resistance, I thought a soldier refusing to fight in a war, during that war, I just felt really confident that they were going to kill me in jail, I just thought that what happened to the Soledad brothers and various other Panthers

14

was bound to happen to me. So, I went with this idea that…that’s what soldiers do, we go to war.

That’s also with the idea that if you look at any social movement in the history of the

United States, very closely, if not at the very forefront there’ll be a veteran. SNCC 15

couldn’t have existed if it weren’t for the Deacons for Defense 16

, the labor movement was filled with

13

The War Resisters Support Campaign is a Canadian organization dedicated to keeping the tradition of Canadian sanctuary for US troops alive and well by help GIs leave the US military and establish themselves in Canada. SEE: http://www.resisters.ca/index_en.html

14 The Black Panther Party was at it’s peek during the 60s when it represented the more aggressive side of the Civil Rights Movement, stressing Black Nationalism, black ownership of businesses, and the ability of blacks to defend themselves (violently if necessary) from the systems of oppression around them.

15

The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee was one of the most influential organizations within the Civil Rights Movement, organizing Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides throughout the 1950s and 60s.

16

The Deacons for Defense were another organization like the Black Panther Party who did not have a problem carrying weapons for self-defense, putting them apart from much of the Civil

Rights Movement. However, while the Panthers were strongest in the west and the north, the

Deacons were primarily a southern organization.

37

veterans…there’s example after example of veterans leading social movements. John Brown 17

, led the abolitionist movement, was a veteran.

Why do you think that is?

I think that when you’re willing to put your life on the line for a cause, it lends you to a greater calling and when you realize what your calling is, and if it’s not, you know, the government, serving the government, then you find out that, but you’re still willing to put your life on the line for it. And I think that veterans have…not necessarily a leg up on civilians, but a greater awareness of the willingness to put our lives on the line. And once we’re willing to do that for one cause, when you care so deeply about another, you’re willing to do it for that cause as well.

So, when you were there did you feel like there was anyway to ‘win’ in Iraq?

Naw, I mean we were, it was pretty clear to me we were occupying a country. Again, I worked for a general who was in charge of supply, so we didn’t really get into the tactical stuff, it was all about supply and it just really hammered home how much of an occupation this is, when you’re looking at food shipments and fuel shipments and clothing shipments and all this other crap that is supply oriented. It’s like, ‘wow, this is seriously a heavy occupation’ and that’s really, everyday just boiled down to this being an occupation.

What about now, how would you like to see the US role in Iraq end, is there…

I think the US should put all the troops in trucks and drive them to the airport and put them on planes and fly them back to the United States.

Now, much of the media debate is attempting to frame the situation as though that is just physically not possible.

17 John Brown used violent struggle as a means of abolishing slavering in the 1800s.

38

Why not? We have boats, we have planes, why is it not possible?

Would that destabilize the region? Would that…

Well that’s the thing…

There’s certain infrastructure that has been in place…

There’s this certain racism that is inherent in your argument, that is really…well, not necessarily your argument, but the argument that you’re putting forth, in that brown people will just slaughter themselves if the great white Americas not around. This is the 21 st century white man’s burden 18

and we need to put aside our racism and understand that brown people were building schools and hospitals, and not slaughtering each other since long before the United

States was a country. And yeah, there could be a lot of violence after we leave, I don’t discount that, but at the end of the day there’ll be an Iraqi solution; Iraqis are resisting the largest military force in the entire world right now, their not gunna let Iran come in, their not gunna let Syria come in, their not going to let anyone else come in and rule Iraq. Iraqis are, a fierce nationalist country and they’re going to be fierce nationalist. And the idea that brown people can’t selfgovern, is ridiculous, and the idea that we have to be there to build schools, hospitals, and keep these savages apart is real racism in the 21 st

century and we need to call that on this racism when people make this argument.

Now, does the Iraqi Nationalism, supersede the sectarian divisions in Iraq?

Well it has in the history of Iraq; it certainly has in the history of Iraq. It’s tough to tell now, given that we’ve kinda Lebanonized Iraq; Lebanon didn’t have sectarian strife until colonial powers put those in place and we did basically the same thing here in Iraq. So, it could

18 The White Man’s Burden

is poem first published in 1899 about how the noble white man has a duty to civilize the savages of the world. This argument has been made in someway or another to justify the intrusive actions of the First World in the Third World ever since.

39

very well be very bloody when we leave, because we’ve created the sectarian power structure that Iraq now has. Do I think that nationalism will out play that? Yes, just like it has in

Lebanon. I mean, yeah, you might go through a pretty bloody civil war, but you’ll come out of it a really unified nationalist country. And that’s what Lebanon is. Having been to Jordan and

Syria during the war between Lebanon and Israel

19

, Lebanon is really, today, a very unified country.

To return to your personal story; were you ever subject to stop-loss orders?

Yes. At the end of my six years, it was before my Iraq deployment, I was looking forward to getting out and I went to my retention NCO and I said, ‘well, what do we gotta do to fill out the paper work for me to get out’ and he said, ‘you’re not getting out, you’ve been stoplossed, so do you want to re-up and get a bonus, cause you’re going to Iraq either way.’ And I was told ‘you can go to Iraq with a $1500 bonus or you can go to Iraq under stop-loss, it’s up to you.’

Did you go for the signing bonus?

Yeah [chuckling], I never got it though cause I went AWOL.

When troop deaths in Iraq hit the 4,000 mark recently, the Vice-President spoke and repeatedly used the words ‘volunteer’ and ‘voluntarily’ when referring to the service of the dead.

20

It would appear that the administration is somehow trying to make the case that because the military is all volunteer, it somehow makes the deaths less tragic or them less responsible; are those valid claims?

19

This Lebanon-Israel conflict occurred during the summer of 2006 between Hezbollah – one of the more radical political parties in Lebanon – and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

20

Comments made during and interview with ABC News on March 24, 2008.

SEE: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/story?id=4513250&page=1

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Certainly not, I mean they try and put that forward, but it certainly doesn’t make any death less tragic. Look, firefighters volunteered to run into those buildings on 9/11 and I think that’s one of the most tragic deaths America has ever seen. I mean, those were some of the bravest human beings that have ever walked this planet that were willing to run into a burning building for someone else and…so, that because they volunteered for that makes that less tragic?

God, no. Because someone joins the military, because they love their country, when they die on the battlefield, that death’s not tragic? When they die in an illegal war, it doesn’t mean that the administration is wrong for sending them? We have a civilian control over our military for a reason; to make sure that our military…we don’t become a military dictatorship. But, when

Congress gives up on its constitutional obligation to weigh…to declare war and gives the president authorization to use military force, we give up that and he just becomes an eternal commander-in-chief. Which he has decided he has done, like he has decided, ‘I am now commander-in-chief and the executive branch is now a unitary executive.’ And that’s really not what our framers had in mind when they wrote, Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gave the power of waging war to the Congress.

And it’s really scary to see our system being warped the way that it is right now and not being used the way that it should be, because with all the things that the framers were fucked up on, like slavery and women’s rights, we’ve come along way since then, but we can’t forget about the guiding principles of civilian control over our military and it’s very important. But it’s also very important to allow our soldiers to make decisions of conscience; you can’t order a soldier into an illegal situation and that’s what we’re doing with Iraq. And you have to hold our leaders accountable, because otherwise soldiers are…and I think it’s really not fair that we ask our soldiers to volunteer and be under civilian control, and then expect them to be the ones to end the

41

war. I personally think we will be the ones to end the war as a military when we no longer support it in mass, but it’s not fair to ask that of us. We’re the ones sacrificing for this war and now you want us to sacrifice to end it? It’s really not right of America to do. And while as a service member I believe that’s the best way strategically to end the war, I think it’s really fucked up of the American public and the American peace movement to expect that. We put our lives on the line and say, ‘we’re going to give up control of our lives for civilian control over the military’ and I think it’s really sad that the civilian leadership is too busy playing political games to actually deal with the realities.

What rank were you when you left the service?

I was a sergeant when I left, I was demoted to a private and then promoted to a specialist, all in my absence, then I was mailed an honorable discharge.

Under what conditions did you leave? You said you went AWOL?

Well, I got some injuries stemming back from my active duty and one of them was a pretty bad back. I was in the hospital, cause my back seized up, and they had me all kinds of doped up, so I tried calling my unit, but I guess my message was not distinguishable to my unit.

So, I went the next month and I had all my paper work and they said, ‘well, you were AWOL last month, what happened?’ And I said, ‘well I as in the hospital, here’s my paper work for the hospital trip’…and they said ‘well, you were AWOL either way’ and I said ‘well, you can’t mark me AWOL it’s technically UA or unexcused absence, like you can’t do that, there’s the paper work that I was in the hospital.’ And my first sergeant said, ‘well, we’ll correct that, but we’re gunna AWOL you out whether you show up or not’ and I didn’t understand how they could do that until I talked to my lawyer, who said that in the Guard there’s technically no AWOL, cause you can’t get leave with one weekend a month, two weeks a year unless you’re on Title 10. So,

42

it’s UA, unexcused absence, and that’s Code U, in the technical paper work of it, it’s a Code U.

Well, you can get coded U in two ways; one is an unexcused absence, one is unsatisfactory performance. So, you can show up and if you don’t do your job correctly, the way they see it, your unsatisfactory performance is the same as being AWOL. So, I stopped showing up after that, I was like ‘if that’s that game you’re going to play, then why bother ever showing up?’

So I went UA and went out to the Vets for Peace Convention in Seattle and the first day of the Veterans for Peace Conference, when Lieutenant Watada 21 got up and made some statements that got him court marshaled, I…was my first day.

What was your transition like from the military back to civilian life; did you feel like the skills you got from the military were helpful? Did you try to get a job or go back to school…?

I started doing this stuff [chuckles]. And yeah it’s helped me. I mean the way that

IVAW is able to organize and work together. Remember what I talked about, in the military when you have a mission to do, you do it and it doesn’t matter if you like people or whatever, it’s mission first, men always, that is kinda, the way that we do things. And I think that within

IVAW we continue that mentality of ‘mission first, men always,’ and even though that’s really a sexist statement [slight chuckle]. But, coming from an engineering rather than an infantry unit that’s how I looked at things. The fact that we can, we know when we have a job to do and we do our job, rather than having…our personal stuff doesn’t get in the way as much, as I think that with other groups it does. Therefore, we work well together. We also do things very tactically, we know what strategy is, we know what tactics are, we know…now, it’s very different applying that to the activist world, but when we do, I think it’s quite effective.

21

Lieutenant Watada was the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq.

SEE: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/6/8/army_lieutenant_becomes_first_commissioned_officer

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Other than that, I mean I was an explosives expert and then in the infantry you’re pretty much a weapons and maneuvering expert. So, I know explosives, weapons, and maneuvering, none of those have really helped me [laughs]. But, the overall skills of disciple and being able to accomplish a mission, help.

So how did you become active in IVAW?

Well when I got back from Iraq, honestly, actually it stems back from before I went to

Iraq. I went to a peace demonstration before I went to Iraq, knowing I was going to end up in

Iraq, I went to this peace march in New York City and all I had was a bus ticket and a cammie jacket. The whole time on the bus on the way down there, everyone else was going to the same march and kept saying, ‘you should march with the vets, you gotta march with the vets.’ So, when we got there I found ‘the vets’ and I didn’t realize at the time that it was Veterans for

Peace, but that was ‘the vets’ and I walked with this Vietnam vet the whole time. I told him about how I was really confused about the war, I didn’t know what to do, I disagreed with the war, but what do you do as a soldier? He said, in his raspy and old voice, he says, ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, but whatever decision you make, make sure it’s your decision’ and then he gave me his card at the end of the march and said ‘call me, when you do make a decision and

I’ll be there for you, whatever you need.’

So, when I got back from Iraq, I was moving into a new apartment and looking through my stuff, and I had already become active in the anti-war movement, locally. And there was his card and I got it out and it said ‘Dave Cline – Vietnam Veteran – Activist’ and if you knew

Dave, that was very much like him, not to push me into anything and let me make my decision.

22

22

David Cline was a member of VVAW, former president of Veterans for Peace, founder of

Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign; he died in September of 2007. SEE: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/David_cline.vp.html

44

So, I called Dave, off his card and I told him, ‘hey, I’m an Iraq veteran and I don’t really know what to do at this point, but I’m giving you a call’ and he hooked me up with this group, called

Vets for Vets

23

, which was a counseling group. And Dave was smart enough to realize that before he even hooked me up with IVAW he got me into counseling. Then when I was down their at this Vets for Vets thing, I met all these IVAW members, I met Garrett Reppenhagen,

Thomas Young, Alex Ryabov, Camilo Mejia, Jeff Key…the people that would become, kinda the core of IVAW and at that time, were just meeting each other for the first time.

24 I came into

IVAW at a really especially time, because up until that moment, IVAW was really, organizationally, a whole bunch of different really good speakers and really eloquent people, but from an organizing standpoint it was Mike, it was Mike, he was carrying the organization on his back. It’s Mike Hoffman 25

I’m talking about, by the way. And Mike was carrying the organization on his back at that time, when we started to come together…a greater number of us, and I just happened to…it was just timing, I just happened to join IVAW at that time. There was nothing special about it, I came in, and then we went from one person carrying the organization on his back, to like thirty of us doing, well probably more like fifteen of us doing actual organizing and a bunch of other really great speakers still. But it was a really a good time to get involved and to know Garrett and Camilo and Thomas, all these others that…we began to carry and expand the organization. Now, I see all these other people getting involved, you know,

Aaron out of Chicago…and Adam, I mean the greatest pleasure I have had in IVAW is mentoring Adam.

26

Something that I missed from being a soldier was mentoring a soldiers and

23

For a more information on this organization SEE: http://www.vets4vets.us/

24

For the biographical information of all of those mentioned SEE: http://ivaw.org/

25

Mike Hoffman’s biographical information is also available via: http://ivaw.org/

26 Adam Kokesh - whose biographical interview can be found later in this collection.

45

giving him a chance to see what I fucked up on. Cause, let’s face it, I fucked up a ton in three years of doing this. I still continue to make mistakes, I just try not to make the same ones twice.

Looking back to the VVAW days, what kind of lessons do you take from looking back at that history?

I think we constantly look back. It’s weird, how much, we haven’t tried to mirror

VVAW, but it’s strange how much we have. Operation RAW: Rapid American Withdrawal, that they did, was a hundred and thirty-five mile mock combat patrol. We ended up doing, Operation

First Casualty, which was a mock combat patrol, we did the first one here in DC, we ended up doing five more. Well that led to Winter Soldier, which was a large speak-out, generally,…we’d been doing speak-outs all along, well so had VVAW and that led to their Winter Solider, well that led to our Winter Soldier. And now, who knows? Now, we’re looking at congressional hearings, which is what Winter Soldier spawned the first time. So, we didn’t try to mirror it, but it’s odd how, you know, you don’t pay attention to history and it just repeats itself, and it did it for the war-makers and it’s doing it for the peace-markers, as well. But, we did look at history, and I’m glad to be a part of that history.

I’m very proud to have worked with Dave, he wasn’t perfect and he’s a guy who was a

Heroin addict who, died of a mix of Agent Orange 27 poisoning, AIDS, and just beating up his body for so many years. People don’t want to talk about Dave’s faults, he’s become this icon. I was just watching CNN before you came over and they were talking about Dr. King being Santa

Claus-ized, you know…and Santa Claus-ation, or whatever [chuckles] they were calling it, of

Dr. King. Which is true, that they make him into this magical figure that…what he should be is a human being. And I see that being done to Dave, no one wants to talk about his AIDS, no one

27

Agent Orange was a chemical used during the Vietnam War to defoliate the country, however it proved highly toxic to both the health of the Vietnamese, as well as the health of US soldiers.

46

wants to talk about his Heroin abuse, and they just want to talk about the great things, and we should, cause Dave had plenty of those. But, let’s be honest about it and real, and I think that we have to be careful that we don’t make iconic figures out of our members, and make sure that our members are just people that did what they did because they felt the drive at the time. So, we are learning and one of the big things is…coming up with these Winter Soldier hearings; I think that

VVAW made a mistake by having Kerry

28

get up and give an overview of Winter Soldier. One of the things that we want to do, is give a chance for anyone who testified at Winter Soldier to get up in front of Congress and testify, and make it…take that next step and get if officially on the record. Make sure that we do it under oath and we do it the right way. So, there definitely is lessons that we learned from VVAW.

How do you feel IVAW interacts with the rest of the anti-war community; are there a lot of tensions?

There’s tensions with IVAW and other groups, definitely. But at the same time, we interact rather well, but there’s always going to be tensions, that’s organizing, there’s always tensions. But, it’s how you deal with those tensions. And I think that the biggest problem that we have is; soldiers and veterans have a lot of misconceptions about peace-activists, but so do peace-activists about soldiers. The toughest thing is getting people to view each other as allies, and as strategic allies. Instead of…I think the peace movement tends to tokenize veterans and it’s like ‘oh, come to this event and lend your credibility to our event, cause we’re credible if we have IVAW there,’ instead of looking at how we end your oppression as well as ours, and let’s work together rather than tokenizing anyone. So, it is definitely a situation that is difficult, but

28

Former US Senator and 2004 Democratic Presidential Nominee John F. Kerry attended the

1971 Winter Soldier Hearings and briefed the US Congress on what had happened there.

47

much more accepting, I think, than general society, I mean the peace movement is a million times more accepting than general society, even with those misconceptions.

What do you think are the most striking similarities and differences between Vietnam and

Iraq, both the wars and the anti-war movements, then and now?

Well I think the biggest difference in the movement, today versus the movement then is that our movement is an anti-war movement , solely, whereas during the Vietnam Era it was rapped up in a whole culture of movement…you were coming off the Civil Rights Movement and you had the blossoming gay rights movement and women’s liberation, and all these movements that were really taking off and it was a huge cultural shift. Whereas today, it’s really just an anti-war movement, so you don’t have it feeding off of other things and then creating this huge buzz. At the same time we’re much bigger, the anti-war movement today is much bigger than the anti-war movement in the Vietnam Era. Inside the military it is by far bigger, if you look at how much smaller the military is. It’s also…we’ve had more marches that have had more than 100,000 people in the first five years of this war, than they had in almost the entirety of the Vietnam War, and…that’s a big thing. People I think look back a little too nostalgically at the Vietnam War. The biggest striking, another differences is there’s no draft, let’s be honest, there’s no draft, and I think that’s a good thing, actually if there’s no draft; I’m in favor of an allvolunteer force. I think that it makes, especially our job strategically, of withdrawing military support for the war much easier, because it definitely cuts off supply to the war machine.

They’re definitely having trouble getting their recruiting numbers, recruiting is down, and it’s going to keep going down, and people are going to keep getting out of the military and that’s going to make it harder and harder for them to fight this war. It’s hurting their war effort right now, that they don’t have the troops to continue.

48

But, I want to say in similarities, you know, the similarities that I see, biggest, is that veterans are leading this anti-war movement, I want to be very clear about that. IVAW is at the leading spear…tip of this movement and now after Winter Soldier, from an organizing standpoint, not just from being there at the events, but actually organizing events, on our own, and I think our respect level has gone up in the movement, because we have shown that we’re not just good speakers, we’re great organizers…we’re good organizers [chuckles], we’re working on being great organizers. So, I think that that similarity, we tend to forget that, in the myth of ‘hippies spitting on veterans,’ now let’s keep in mind that’s a total myth, it’s bullshit completely.

29

But we tend to forget that, that VVAW was leading the anti-war movement. And how much interaction their was, David Dellinger

29

was a huge reason why their was a VVAW and he was a total pacifist, I mean a god amongst men in the peace movement. But, at the same time, he recognized the strategic alliance with veterans, he didn’t see us as tokens, he saw us as strategic allies, which is very different, he put us as his equal. I think that a lot of people in the peace movement do that, but not everybody, and I wish that everybody would.

So, do you think it is a conscious effort by the media to not report on this, because you don’t ever hear much about veterans within the anti-war movement?

I don’t agree with that, I think that everyone has a paranoia about the media that they don’t cover us enough. But, realistically, yeah, they don’t cover the anti-war movement the same as they cover the government side of things, but at the same time to me…I have difficulties with this. Like Winter Soldier, there was this call saying that Winter Solider was a media

29

SEE: Lembcke, J. (1998). The Spitting Image Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.

New York: New York University Press.

29

SEE: http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/27/revolutionary_non_violence_remembering_dave_delli nger

49

blackout, I totally disagree. We got the media that we wanted, we were in Stars and Stripes:

Middle East Edition, 30 we were carried on Al-Jazeera 31 and all the Mid-East networks, we were carried in all the Military Times,

32

so I don’t see where we didn’t accomplish everything we set out to do. The people that make these calls hadn’t seen what our goals were for Winter Soldier, you know, so, I don’t like to complain about media coverage. Because, yeah, corporate media isn’t covering the war well, so obviously they’re not going to cover the anti-war movement well.

But, that’s not an issue of them disliking us our wanting to silence us, it’s the job of corporate media to continue business as usual, and so, you don’t cover dissenting voices if you want business as usual, you don’t cover the realities of war.

33

Look at the New York Times for example, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

34

did this big thing about the New York Times blacking out Winter Soldier, when they freely admitted they had one person in Iraq, one person on book leave, and one person on the Secretary of Defense, they wouldn’t have been able to cover it. Alright, that’s fair, I’m totally cool with that, they chose what their priorities were and they went with it, news organizations always have to do that, you can’t complain about not being covered. But, then you look at who was in Iraq for the New

York Times

, they weren’t doing any journalism about what was happening in the war. They sat around with a room of soldiers, watching them watch the Petraeus report, come on, that’s not fucking reporting. I would love them to be out on the streets reporting on what was happening in

Iraq, you know, and if they made the decision, ‘we’re going to actually go to Iraq and we’re

30 SEE: http://www.stripes.com/webpages.asp?id=86

31

SEE: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/55ABE840-AC30-41D2-BDC9-

06BBE2A36665.htm

32

SEE: http://www.militarytimes.com/

33

For more information on the inner-workings of corporate media, SEE: Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent the Political Economy of the Mass Media. New

York: Pantheon Books, 2002.

34 For more information on this media watch group, SEE: http://www.fair.org/index.php

50

going to figure this out, instead of listening to veteran’s stories’ well, that’s fine. But, don’t sit in a room, while the Petraeus hearings are going on, watching soldiers watch the Petraeus hearings,

35

because then you do the same I talking about when I was on O’Reilly,

36

you’re talking about people who talk about the war. And yeah, you’re talking about soldiers who talk about the war, but let’s report on the actual things that are happening on the ground. Let’s get into this situation Al-Sadr,

37

let’s understand, why is it American’s don’t know the different parties in Iraq, like they can’t tell you what the Dawa Party 38 is, they can’t tell you what the different militias are, they can’t tell you, you know the Sons of Iraq 39

program, let’s get into Sons of Iraq. Let’s figure out what the hell this really means and what we’re doing with it. Let’s get some in-depth deep reporting, instead of this superficial bullshit, of ‘let’s watch soldiers and see that they think of Petraeus.’ Do you think soldiers are going to rat out their general, in front of the New York Times ? God, no! They’re like ‘Ah, damn right, general, good job, harharhar.’

Like, come on, that’s ridiculous to think a soldier is going to be open and honest with a

New

York Times reporter, when their general or commanding general is in front…do you know how much they would get fucked with if they talked shit about their commanding general, come on?

Looking back at your work as an organizer, what has the highpoint been?

35

General David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Cocker had attended several rounds of hearings (individually and together) held by Congress throughout the months of March and April in 2008.

36

Fox New pundit Bill O’Reilly. To view the video of Millard on Bill O’Reilly’s show – The

O’Reilly Factor – SEE: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZGAibec9JsA&feature=related

37

Al-Sadr is an Iraqi theologen and militia leader who strongly opposes the occupation.

SEE: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/28/60minutes/main620246.shtml

38

The Dawa Party is one of the most dominant and militant Shiite parties in Iraq.

SEE: http://www.islamicdawaparty.com/

39

The Sons of Iraq is an organization comprised of Iraqi citizens who support Coalition forces and the newly created Iraq Security Force. For more detailed information

SEE: http://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/sons-iraq-and-awakening-forces

51

Winter Soldier, by far the highest thing I’ve ever done. And it’s funny cause I disagreed with Winter Soldier, I actually tried to block it. At the beginning, I thought it was a bad idea, and it was a misconception, it was a total mistake, like I said I fucked up a lotta stuff, and this was one of them. And I thought, we need to build the mechanisms to be able to do a Winter

Soldier, instead of trying to jump right into it and do it, but Winter Soldier, it was Baptism by fire, it forced us to learn how to do these things and put together teams. And we made mistakes, but we learned how to correct mistakes, too, and I think that was the right decision and I applaud

Aaron and Fernando

40

for forcing me to do this, because it was really good for us as an organization.

So, I think my two highlights of being a member of IVAW and an organizer of IVAW, was Operation First Casualty. Myself and Garrett organized that act, by ourselves, and we really had no help from anybody else. And I remember the night before OFC, or the night before the training. I was like, ‘no one is going to show up to this, we’re not going to have anybody, it’s just going to be me and Garrett and Adam walking the streets, it’s going to be a total failure.’

And then all of a sudden, all these people showed up, and it was like ‘holy fuck.’ And I remember walking with Garrett at one point, when we had our lunch break for OFC and was just like ‘we actually did this, we actually pulled this off’ and it was this ‘wow’ moment. I had that same moment during Winter Soldier, ‘wow, we actually pulled this off’…so, those are my two highpoints of being an IVAW member.

Now, I am at the point where I am trying to step aside and let that next group of people take over the organization, me not doing so much of the organizing, wanting other people to come in and do more organizing. Because, for me, I was lucky that Mike stepped back and he

40 Aaron Hughes and Fernando Braga; biographical information available at: http://ivaw.org/

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did let us take the organization and role with it, and I think that we need to do that. We’re now, when I joined IVAW, it was like, what fifty members or something like that, now there’s a thousand? Over that, it was like 1200-1400 members, it’s growing so fast that I don’t even know the number of members right now, I know it’s over a thousand, that’s all I know. I mean it’s time that some of use older cats step back and let the younger cats take over, but help them to learn from our mistakes. One of the things that I try and instill in people around here is to think strategically. Like, don’t think, ‘okay, this is the action I want to do’ because that’s thinking backwards. You want to think, ‘what is the goal, what’s the end result, alright, now how do I attain that, what are the steps that I need to do?’ And, actually plan from you goal, instead of planning from your action, and that makes things very different. And you’ll still not succeed all the time, you’re not always going to reach your goal, but you can correct that action and by being goal-oriented and seeing where we’re going with it, we can really do, I think a much better job of this.

Has your family been supportive of your actions with IVAW?

Well, my father passed away years ago, but my mom is extremely supportive. I went home to see her, not too long ago, and she was just…seeing the pride in her eyes, it means a lot, it’s definitely a good thing.

You said you are trying to step down from organizing; what are your plans for the future now?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I haven’t figured that out yet. But, it’s not that I want to be out of IVAW, by any means. I just want, I’d like to take an advisory role now, and let people come in and do the stuff that I’ve had a really, really amazing time of doing. My names going to be in the history books, I don’t need to worry about legacy or anything like that, everything

53

that’s gunna be written about me, has been written about me. I want them to have that opportunity to get the highs and the lows that I’ve had. But, I want to be able to give that knowledge to them.

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James Morris

It’s on a Monday afternoon when I sit down with James Morriss in the IVAW House in

Washington, DC. We are conducting the interview in the basement to avoid the noise upstairs, since the rest of the house and office are alive with activity. When James Morriss enlisted in the military, he was joining every other male in his family by continuing a long family history of military service, however after serving in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2006 James would break from tradition and follow his conscience away from Iraq and towards activism.


I grew up, actually a number of different places. I was born in Lawrence, Kansas, I lived there till I was probably four or five and moved out to Chino Valley, Arizona. Then I lived there till I was twelve and moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where I lived till I was twenty-one.

Did you have a large immediate family?

Yes and no.

Brothers and sisters?

One older brother, one older, like half-brother, that I’ve met like once or twice.

What do your parents do for a living?

My mom worked for AlliedSignal, which built the computer components for airplanes.

And, my dad is a welder – slash – fabricator.

Were your parents married throughout your childhood?

Yes.

Why did you guys move around so much?

Cause, my mom’s job, they kept transferring her from place to place.


55

Actually, every male in our family tree has served in the service in one from or the other?

So, your father was in?

Yes, my dad was in the Army during Vietnam.

Did he serve in Vietnam?

Yes.

So, what were your earliest impressions of the military as a child?

It wasn’t really brought up in the whole, like, traditionally, like military family, like my dad never really talked to me and my brother about the military stuff when we were growing up.

Do you have any history of political activism in your family?

No.

In the places you grew up, do you recall seeing any divisions between ‘haves’ and ‘havenots,’ or class divisions?

No.


Yeah.

What’s the highest level of education you have completed?

Twelfth grade graduate.

So, what were some of your earliest ambitions when you were a child; what did you want to be when you grew up?

I guess when I was a little kid – before my teens – I wanted to be like a firefighter or a cop, like every other kid, but growing up I really wasn’t to sure what I wanted to do for a living.


I was twenty-one.

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So, what year was this?

Umm, 2003?

So, post-9/11?

Yeah.

Was September 11 th

a motivating factor for you to sign up?

Not really, the motivating factor was like the college money that they were offering.

So, it was mainly just financial reasons then?

Yes.

How did you sign up? Did you go to a recruiter? Did they call you?

I actually went to a recruiter, I talked to them for probably about two, three weeks, before

I actually went down to MEPS

1

and did my physical and swore in and all that other good stuff that they make you do.

Looking back at when you were talking to the recruiters, do you feel like they gave you an accurate description of what you were signing up for?

Yeah, minus the whole, ‘I’d have time to go to college and further my education.’

So, how did your family and friends react to your enlistment?

Um, my dad was against it, cause the way my dad put it is, it wasn’t my fight to get involved with.

Iraq?

Yes. But, like my friends, they just thought I was crazy for joining the military.

So, when you signed up, did you know if you would be going to Iraq? Had the war already started?

1 Military Entrance Processing Station

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The war was going on, but like I knew signing up for Airborne Infantry that I’d be getting deployed either way.

And do you feel like your father would have been more supportive if you were going to

Afghanistan or somewhere else?

Not really, my dad was against me signing up for the military altogether, because of the stuff that was going on in Iraq.

So, when your father talked about his service in Vietnam, did he look back favorably on the Vietnam War?

Not really, like he wasn’t proud of the things that he had to do over there – he was telling me and my brother – but, he said, they’re things he had to do so he could come back stateside.

What do you think you would have done had you not signed up?

Um, I’m gunna say I have no idea. I’d probably still be in Florida, working the same waterproofing job, still living in my buddy’s house with him.

Did you have plans for after your service? Were going to stay in for a career or were you planning on going to school afterwards?

I was mainly just working at doing the three years and twenty-two weeks that I signed up for, then after that, I wasn’t really too sure if I was gunna get out permanently or transfer to a different branch of the service.

And what branch did you sign up?

The US Army

Why the Army?

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Because my dad was in the Army, my grandpa went Navy, my brother went Navy, so I just thought I’d try to even it out a bit. Plus, I’m really not too keen on being stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean for an extended amount of time with a whole bunch of other people.

Can you describe your basic training and what that was like?

My basic training was at Fort Benning, during the end of summer and through the winter, so we got both extremities of the extreme hot and extreme cold. It was fourteen weeks, like I had a problem when I first went in because I was a little bit overweight, like I got ragged on from the drill sergeants and everybody else, but I dropped between forty-five and sixty pounds in the fourteen weeks. I almost got a perfect PT

2

score towards the end of my basic training, before I got to my airborne school.

Can you describe the makeup of the people you served with – as far as race, gender, class?

People in my company and mostly like my platoon, it was a mix of everyone.

So, where were you first stationed?

I was stationed at For Bragg, North Carolina - the 82 nd

Airborne.

And when were you first deployed?

I was deployed in October of 05 to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

[Telephone interruption]

So, you were first deployed into Afghanistan?

Yes.

How long were you there for?

I was in Afghanistan from October of 05 to December of 06.

2 Physical Training

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How much did you know about Afghanistan before you were deployed there?

Not too much. They really didn’t tell us too much about what we were going to be doing there, stuff like that. They just gave us an overview of what we were going to be doing, house raids, patrols, and lockdown the villages, stuff like that.

How did you feel when you first heard you were going to Afghanistan?

I was nervous like any other young person would be, finding out they’re getting deployed. I was nervous, like I actually went home for a couple of weeks before my deployment. I was talking with my dad and stuff, he told me just to suck it up and do what I had to do to come back home. Which, kinda actually sounds like a military term, ‘suck it up and soldier on.’

At one point had you thought you’d be going to Iraq?

Actually, when I got back from my deployment in January of 07, my platoon sergeant came up and told me an a couple of my buddies that there were rumors we would be deploying to Iraq.

What were your main duties in Afghanistan?

We drove around doing day-to-day patrols; we did a few house raids. We just, we have our own little sector that we had to make sure is secured at all times.

Mostly police work?

Yeah.

How did the Afghans receive you day-to-day?

When we first got there, it seemed like they were happy that we were there. But, as our deployment rolled on, it seemed like they didn’t really want us there anymore.

Were you able to talk to a lot of the people directly?

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Directly? No, because I didn’t know Arabic.

Did you ever feel like you were being asked to sacrifice your personal ethics when you were there?

No.

So, was it at some point during your service in Afghanistan that you realized you were against the Iraq War?

Yeah, we were actually patrolling around one day and we stopped our Humvees, so we all got out and did a perimeter. And there was a little, little – looked like a five or six year old – boy, that was walking across the street and my platoon sergeant gave me - and my buddies – the order to fire upon the kid, because of some…unknown reason, that he never told us. Like I verbally denied and told him ‘no, I’m not going to do it, it’s a little kid and I don’t feel threatened from this little kid, for me to shoot him’ and that went on for a couple of minutes.

Then one of the older guys in our little squad that we had, actually followed through with the orders to shoot the little boy.

Did he kill him?

Yes. And that’s when…after that I finally, I sat down and I was like, ‘maybe the things that are going on over here, aren’t really correct’ and this-and-that. There were a couple of other incidences that went on, but I can’t really talk about those, still.

3

Were there any repercussions after that, because you refused the order?

No.

Now, what rank were you when you left the service?

When I left, I was an E-4, which is a specialist.

3 It is unclear rather he is unable to talk about them for legal reasons or psychological ones.

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So, you were in Afghanistan till December of 2006 – what happened after that?

After we got back, I spent Christmas and New Years in Florida with my family and friends, as normal as one could be after getting back from a deployment. I got back to base, around January 12 th

or 13 th

, a couple days after that, I found out from my platoon sergeant that rumors were going around that we were getting deployed in under a year to Iraq. After witnessing the stuff that I witnessed in my deployment in Afghanistan, I knew that I wasn’t going to be going to Iraq. So, I was talking to a couple of my buddies telling them, you know,

‘I’m not going to be going on this deployment’ and they’re like ‘well, you have to,’ I was like

‘no, my contract’s going to be up pretty soon, there’s no way I’m going to extend my contract to go over there.’ So, on February 18 th

of 07, I went AWOL.

Now, why did you go AWOL if your contract was going to be up soon?

Because the rumors were that my unit was going to be deploying before my contract was up. Therefore, I would have been what they call ‘stop-lossed.’

At that point, was it standard procedure that if you were on a tour for a certain amount of time and your contract ended during that time, you would automatically stay?

Yeah, the way it was told to me was, when my contract came up - if we were in the middle of a deployment – I would stay till the end of the deployment and then after we got back from deployment, I’d be out. just…?

So, what did you do after you went AWOL? Were you on leave, technically, or did you

No, I actually left on a Friday night, I had an ex-girlfriend drive up North Carolina, pick me up and I went back to Florida.

Did you go home to your parent’s house?

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I actually went back to my buddy’s house, who I was living with before I joined the military.

Did the military try to come after you or find out where you went?

Like, my dad called my buddy’s house and my cell phone a couple times, just saying

‘okay, I got a letter in the mail saying you’re AWOL, you know what’s going on?’ And I told him, he was like ‘well, you’re gunna get caught, blah-blah-blah’ and I was like ‘there’s no way they can find out where I’m at.’ He’s like ‘well, that’s true, but if they call me, I’m going to have to tell them, cause I could get in trouble, blah-blah-blah.’ I was like, ‘alright, fine, whatever, just tell them I’m in Saint P., you just won’t know exactly where I am at.’ So, I guess they called him and notified him that I was AWOL and my dad was like, ‘yeah, I know, but he’s in town somewhere, I don’t know exactly where he’s at, at this point and time, but I’ll let him know that you guys called.’

Did the search ever go any further than that?

No.

Are you still at the current status of being AWOL, right now?

No, I was actually in Florida for two months and then I…skipped across the border to

Canada for a year. And then I came back to the States, February 14 th of 08.

How did you get through to Canada?

My ex-girlfriend drove me across the border.

During that whole time you were in Florida, could you work or anything?

When I was in Florida, I was more or less, just living off my savings that I had in the military, from deployment. Just, more-or-less hanging out with my friends, trying to not get arrested for anything stupid, like driving around or whatever.

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Did you have trouble accessing money or just even surviving when you were in Florida?

I actually, pulled out a, quite a bit of money before I actually went AWOL. Just for the simple fact that I didn’t want them going into my, like if they called my bank and asked for my records I didn’t want them knowing.

Did your ex-girlfriend go to Canada with you and stay?

Oh, no, she just drove me up to Canada and then she drove back.

What city in Canada?

Toronto.

Is that where you stayed, Toronto?

Yes.

And what did you do up there?

I filed for the refugee claim, which we have to do, so therefore we’re protected by the

Canadian government, so the US can’t try and send us back to the States. While, I was up there,

I actually did two different jobs. I was a cook at an American-style barbeque restaurant, which is kinda funny and after that I was a bouncer at a gentleman’s club.

Did you talk to a lot of Canadian’s when you were up there about why you were there?

Yes.

Were they receptive to it?

You know, they were actually supportive of people going AWOL and going to Canada, because guys during the Vietnam Era did the same exact thing.

When you were up there did you ever see any other vets or other people who had went

AWOL?

Uh, yes. I actually lived with two of them for my duration up there.

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How did you find them?

There’s actually an organization called the War Resisters Support Campaign 4 that’s based out of Toronto. I actually found them on YouTube, searching different AWOL videos.

So, after a year in Canada you just decided to come back to the States?

Yes.

What made you decide to do that?

Towards the end of me being in Canada my grandfather passed away and I felt bad because I wasn’t in Florida when he passed away. That, and me knowing that I would either be deported back to the US or something with either my dad or my brother would come about and

I’d come back to the States. So, I decided just to come back and get it all taken care of.

What did you do when you got back?

I had a friend from California she flew out to Pittsburgh and then she drove up to Niagara

Falls, where I was at, picked me up and then we drove into the States. I actually went back to see my family and friends for four days before I turned myself in.

Were you never stopped at the border? When they saw your passport, nothing went off?

I actually showed them my military ID when I came back across.

Really and that didn’t send up any red flags?

Nope. They just looked at my military ID and my friend’s passport and told us both to have a nice day.

When you went back for the four days how did your family deal with it?

4

The War Resisters Support Campaign is a Canadian organization dedicated to keeping the tradition of Canadian sanctuary for US troops alive and well by help GIs leave the US military and establish themselves in Canada. SEE: http://www.resisters.ca/index_en.html

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They were glad that I was back in the States, but they were also worried that I’d get caught before I could turn myself in.

What happened when you turned yourself in?

I drove to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and turned myself in. Got put in handcuffs, of course, like any other deserter would do. I was at Fort Sill for two days and then they told me since I was permanent party - already at my duty station, already been deployed - that I’d be going back to

Fort Bragg. They then gave me a plane ticket Oklahoma to North Carolina. I showed up there, got put in handcuffs at the front gate of Fort Bragg, from two MPs

5

that I actually knew fairly well, so they weren’t really too rough on me. They took me to the police station to fill out the paperwork; they then took me to the holding barracks, like the people coming in from being

AWOL and people just getting assigned to Fort Bragg. I was there for a day, then my root attachment commander called me to his office, so I had to show up there, I talked to him, he told me that he didn’t want to deal with my BS, to put it nicely, and that he’d be calling my commander to figure out what he wanted to do with me. I went back into his office the next morning at 6:30 and he told me that my commander says ‘hello’ and that my commander also didn’t want to put up with my BS and that I’d be going to Fort Knox to be out-processed out of the military.

Out-processed under what conditions?

I was actually out-processed on a chapter 10 – other than honorable discharge – in lieu of court marshal.

Why do you think that they went that route, instead of the court marshal?

I honestly have no idea.

5 Military Police

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Were you expecting the court marshal?

Yeah, I was actually expecting the worse, you know, be put in the brig, the whole nine yards, go through the whole long trial, spend time in jail, whatever.

So, is an other than honorable discharge somewhere between a discharge under honorable conditions and a dishonorable, is it in the middle?

Yeah, more-or-less, like it doesn’t go on my criminal record, like a dishonorable discharge would have gone on my record as a felony.

What did you do after you were out-processed?

After I got out-processed, I went back to Florida, was there for a matter of three or four days and then I came up to Washington, DC for Winter Soldier.

How did you hear about Winter Solider?

The person that I got a ride back from Canada with, she’s a reporter and she was telling me about Winter Solider going on and I have Facebook, so I knew it was coming up. I got in contact with Jose

6

and told him that I’d like to come up and testify, he’s like ‘okay.’ When I got up here they asked me what my situation was, I told them, that’s when they said ‘that it would behoove me not to sit on a panel just so that the military…looked at my testimony, like I wouldn’t get court marshaled if they weren’t thinking about doing it.

So, before Winter Solider had you ever heard of Iraq Vets Against the War?

I head about them cause I a couple of the guys in Canada are actually members of IVAW, so like I heard of the name a couple of times here and there.

When you went to Canada did you have an historical concept of things like Veterans for

Peace, VVAW, or even just the concept of GI resistance? Were you aware of that history?

6 Jose Vasquez, SEE: http://ivaw.org/user/54

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I was aware of it a little bit, just from looking online, but like I wasn’t too knowledgeable in that area.

When you were living with the guys in Canada did you ever think about becoming a member then?

I don’t know, I was thinking about it, but it never like, I never really found out the information, like how to become an IVAW member.

Since you’ve became a member have you participated in any anti-war actions or anything that you were glad to be a part of?

On the anniversary - the fifth year anniversary – I went on the march that they did.

7

I did the freeze.

The Union Station thing?

Yes. The Union Station freeze.

8

And you were around for Winter Soldier, but didn’t testify?

Yes. I gave personal testimony to the documentary people that were there.

So, prior to becoming involved with IVAW, what had you thought of the anti-war movement? Did you ever consider them, like un-American or what were your impressions?

You mean, like before I went AWOL?

Yeah, before you went AWOL.

7 On March 19 th , 2008 there were a series of separate direct actions going on throughout

Washington, DC. One large march was avoided and instead a series of small marches, street theater, road-blocks, and other forms of direct action were taken with a number of groups organizing independently, but maintaining a respectful coordination and solidarity with each other. SEE: http://www.5yearstoomany.org/

8

The Union Station Freeze action took place on Mach 18 th

, 2008 and involved a number of people holding perfectly still for five minutes during rush hour at Union Station, to view a video of the action, SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da6HL3j2AHg

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Before my deployment, like I knew that there were anti-war protesters, it’s noticeable when you drive off a base, when you get ready to go to deployment that they’re going to be out there. I never really paid them that much attention, because I just thought, you know, ‘weird people protesting.’ But, like after I got back from deployment, I finally realized that, like ‘wow’ maybe I should have stopped and actually talked to them for a couple minutes to actually realize what’s going on over there.

You said you did have some knowledge of the veterans peace groups from back in

Vietnam; did your father ever talk to you about them, had he ever been a part of VVAW or

Veterans for Peace?

No, I don’t think my dad would have been any part of that. out?

So, has your family been support of you being in IVAW and being active and speaking

I actually got disowned from my dad and my brother for being up here for Winter

Solider.

How did that happen?

I actually talked to my dad on my cell phone when I was up here and like he asked me what I was doing in DC and I told him that I was going to Winter Solider to testify and he’s like

‘no, it’s not your place to talk trash about your unit and the army and the military’ he’s like ‘if you testify, then you’re not my son anymore.’ I was like, ‘well, what do you mean?’ And he was like ‘you shouldn’t talk about the experiences you had over there, to people.’

Your brother said something similar?

Actually, my brother didn’t say anything at all. I’ve tried to call my brother; he won’t even pick up his phone.

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Is he in the service?

He was, he served in the Navy for eight years.

What about your mother?

I haven’t talked to my mom, since a couple of years before I enlisted in the military.

Have your friends from back home been supportive?

Yeah, actually I talk to them a lot more than I talk to anyone else. They’re all supportive; mostly they just want me back in Florida to hang out with them, cause I was gone for so long.

Have you had any contact with guys in your unit about what you’re doing now?

Not really, no. Like I have one buddy in Las Vegas that’s been AWOL longer than I have.

So, what are your plans now for the future?

I don’t know, I guess my plans are just, to more-or-less, just start over and be more active to let people know what’s actually going on, just to make them more aware, and hopefully stop the occupation.

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Adam Kokesh

It’s one of the first sunny days of the year when I meet with Adam Kokesh in his office at the IVAW House in Washington, DC. Adam has managed to squeeze me into an already tight afternoon; there is a local camera crew waiting outside for their interview with Adam for the last twenty minutes of discussion. Once a highly accomplished Marine, Adam is now one of the most well known spokespersons for the anti-war movement.


I grew up in the Bay Area of San Francisco; I was born in the City of San Francisco, grew up…kinda bounced around the peninsula. My parents got a divorce when I was ten, so, when they divorced they both moved to neighboring cities and suburbs, and we’d go back and forth.

Did you have a large family growing up?

Naw, it was just my parents and one brother.


My mom is retired now; my dad still manages his venture capital firm out in Santa Fe and runs and owns the Santa Fe Horse Park, rather owns and manages, he doesn’t really run it, he just goes and hangs out there [laughter].

And your parents divorced when you were how old?

When I was about ten.

And did you live with one or the other…or?

We had joint custody and it was a pain in the ass, one week with one, one week with the other. My brother was eight years old at the time we started doing that and I was ten. So, it was really difficult and about the worse age. To anybody out there listening [chuckles while looking

71

at the recorder], who is considering getting divorced, like do it before you kids are four or after they are fourteen, but anywhere in there is going to fuck’em up, or like make it really difficult for them at least. We were like right in the middle of that.

Were you closer to your brother then, as a result of that?

Yeah, we’ve always been pretty close, not…I don’t know if it was really, I don’t think it was as a result of that, if anything that just sorta made things more confusing and difficult.


Not at all on my mom’s side; she’s Canadian…or was, she just got her citizenship recently a couple of years ago, while I was still in the Marines actually. On my dad’s side, he was in line to be called, and then didn’t go to Vietnam. And his dad, was I think Army

[inaudible] in World War II…I really need to know these stories [laughter], he got like the highest award under the Medal of Honor, at the time.

What were your earliest impressions of military service as a child?

When I was really young, I don’t know, pretty mainstream-typical young boy in America.

But, what changed it for me…when I was fourteen I went to Devil Pups, 1

which was a junior boot camp for Marines, they call it like a citizenship and fitness program, where they send kids to instead of juvie, 2 sometimes. Of course I went voluntarily, everything I did that coulda landed me in juvie, I did afterwards, so who knows how well it succeed as a citizenship program. But, that kinda introduced me to the military, to the Marines. The guy that set it up, was a friend who played polo with my parents, who’d been in the Marines during Vietnam and was big in all the veterans groups and everything, all the non-partisan stuff at least. His nickname was ‘No-

1

SEE: http://www.devilpups.com/

2 Juvenal Hall

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Combat Pat’ cause he was the one that was so like hard core gung-ho and was never in combat in

Vietnam.


No, none, not at all.

What were some of your earliest impressions of political activism and the anti-war movement, when you were younger?

The one walkout I went to, before the war in I think it was February or March of

2003…and I really didn’t like it.

Why didn’t you like it?

We held hands and made a giant human peace sign, and a lot of people there actually expected that that would stop the war. Like, really were diluted about the impact of their activism, I think. It was still like a great empowering event, but in terms of like that brand of activism that was the anti-war movement before the war…screw that, bunch of hippies; ignorance was only surpassed by their lack of hygiene [playful and partially joking tone].

Growing up do you recall any class divisions in your neighborhood?

No, it was pretty upper-middle class, Middle America white neighborhood.


I’ve always enjoyed learning, experiencing new things, I’ve always enjoyed a challenge.

You know, ‘never let your schooling get in the way of your education’

3 ; I wish I’d known that slogan earlier cause it woulda been a great excuse for some of the shit I pulled. I think that kinda sums it up for me, my attitude, like I did alright in school, enough to get into a good college.

What is the highest level of education you have completed?

3 Mark Twain

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I have a Bachelors in Psychology and I’m working on my Masters right now.

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I was considering going to law school, but lawyers are ass-holes [laughter]. I wanted to be a lawyer actually, for a lot of growing up, because one of the things I enjoyed most about school…was debating, not in a structured sense and I don’t want to say arguing, but my teachers would have called it arguing. But, challenging ideas, I really enjoy that part of school, so I enjoyed discussions in the classrooms, enjoyed challenging teachers, not like on their authority, I mean I did that to, but that was kinda separate. But, I really did enjoy arguing, in a debate sense, having legitimate challenges of ideas, so, like all of my elementary teachers were like, ‘you should be a lawyer when you grow up’ and I was like, ‘oh, okay, I’ll be a lawyer then’ [laughs].

I really didn’t think about it, but I really didn’t set myself to it, cause it’s like, ‘alright, if I am already good at this, why do I need to be studying all this other crap for?’


I was seventeen, it was during my junior year of high school actually, I went to the recruiters office for the first time and then as soon as I was eligible to sign up at the end of that year, I went back and signed up for the Delayed Entry Program.

4

And what year was this?

1999, summer of 99.

And what made you decide to volunteer at that time?

Well, it was a very personal thing. It wasn’t…cause the world was going crazy or Global

War on Terror or any external threat or family tradition; it was very personal for me and it was that I was joining out of patriotism, I wanted to be part of the national defense. You know…this

4

This program offers recruits the opportunity to sign up for service a year prior to actually entering the service. SEE: http://www.delayedentryprogram.com/

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was before it was cool [laughter]. Everywhere you go in the Marines, when you’re going through training, someone asks ‘so, why’d you join the Marines?’ They ask when you go to boot camp, processing, MEPS,

5

MOS school,

6

MCT,

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checking into your unit, ‘so, what are you doing here, what did you join the Marines for?’

I remember when I checked into my reserve unit, it was during the week and there was only a couple admin guys at the post, our reserve unit. So, I went in there and so, like off hand, while he’s doing my paper work, this corporal goes, ‘so, why’d you join the Marines, Kokesh?’

And I was like, ‘patriotism’, and he was like, ‘what?’ I was like, ‘patriotism’ I had to explain it to him and he was like, ‘hey, staff sergeant, come here, check this out, check this out. Hey

Kokesh, why’d you join the Marines?’ You know it was like, ‘maaaannn,’ but it was before it was cool and it meant something to me to be a part of the national defense and…something I believed in, it was part of the challenge, the adventure, I wanted to make the world a better place.

I thought, I really thought the Marines had a net-effective peace on the world, if more by our presence than our actions and I think what we’re doing in Iraq right now, we have tipped that balance, but we still have that potential to be a force for peace…to be a presence that way and I think that can be valid. The other thing for me was the challenge, the personal challenge of it for me; I wanted the growth experience, I wanted to face the ultimate test of manhood.

Looking back, do you feel the recruiters gave you an accurate representation of what service would be like?

They didn’t give me any representation, I didn’t need it. I walked in and was like ‘where the fuck do I sign up?’ When I decided for myself, I mean I felt like I knew [inaudible], and I

5

Military Entrance Processing Station

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Military Occupational Specialty

7 Marine Combat Training

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still feel like I did, cause it wasn’t like, if I was going for a specific reason, like college money, I would have done some research, you know, and I might have made some contingency plans

[laughing], in addition to joining the Marines, but I still would have joined the Marines for the reasons I did. And I knew enough about what it meant to be a Marine, I knew what you were facing, what the challenges were, at least the big ones and that was enough. To be honest, most of the other stuff is little, like right now when we do counter-recruiting work or Truth in

Recruiting, 8 most of what we talk about is the little shit. You know, ‘how are the troops treated, how are benefits, how are veterans treated?’ And for me that shit was all irrelevant, cause like I wanted a challenge, I wanted it to be hard. Now, the big stuff we talk about is, ‘you’re going to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and you’re going to die for a lie’ that’s huge. But, for me, like, I understood that, what that meant in 1999 at least I understood what that meant.

How did your family and friends react to your enlistment?

Well, my dad was very supportive. My mom was very reluctant, but gave in. I don’t know, I went to a very small school, I didn’t have a ton of friends, but they were all like…and I was the only white kid at my school, when I joined up I was going to a boarding school called the Native American Prep School in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. And they were all like, ‘oh, I guess that’s what white people do’ some were like, ‘alright, cool, join the Marines, have a good time’ they were, I don’t know…supportive. It was a prep school and everyone was trying to go to college, but I was putting off college for a year to join the Marines, go to the reserves, and it was like, for me they understood that it was part of my education for myself, and everybody appreciated that.

What do you think you would have done if you had not signed up?

8 See: http://ivaw.org/truth

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Oh, I woulda just gone to college. I mean, I was going to college anyways, I just put it back for a year. I mean who knows what would have been different? Shit, if I hadn’t joined the

Marine Corp Reserves enlisted before college, I probably would have joined the Officer Corp after college. To me it was sorta like a box to check, at the very least. And my plan, actually, was to serve in the reserves while I was going through college and if I liked it, no, no, well at least at one point this was the plan [laughs]; do the reserves through college to get the enlisted experience. When you’re a low enough rank to scrub the shitters, only do it one weekend a month, but be able to…so, that when you’re in command of troops, as an officer you at least have an idea of what it’s like to be enlisted and go through enlisted boot camp. You know, the

Marine Corp really values its officers that have served enlisted first and I think I at least had a sense of that before I joined. So that was part of it, my plan was to go active duty, four years after college, at least, and then decided if I wanted to make a career out of it and if I made career it would be as an officer. When I got back from Iraq and got done with that, it was sorta like, actually when I got back from Iraq at some point I came to the conclusion that I was satisfied with my service and that, I would volunteer to go back or I would go back if I was called during my reserve time, but I was done. And it was funny, because I wasn’t, it was before I was like really ‘anti-war,’ I had determined the limit of my commitment, you know, that did it, that was enough.

Can you describe you basic training?

Basic training, thirteen weeks…well, in the Marines, ‘there’s nothing basic about it, son’[in a fake drill sergeant voice]. Because, we call it recruit training or boot camp, there’s no basic, it’s really funny there really is an aversion to the term ‘basic training’, it’s used no where in the official stuff, it’s always recruit training.

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I loved it, if anything it was too easy, like I was the kinda kid that saw Full Metal Jacket

9 and was like ‘cool, it can drive a guy to suicide, well, I’m gunna do it and I’m gunna survive it, goddamn it,’ you know? So, that was…and I loved it and it was very challenging, don’t get me wrong, and I felt like when I came out of boot camp, I was a Marine. I had earned the title, I was a Marine. It wasn’t the glorious ideal that I had envisioned it as, but that’s life, we seek those ideals and then you come up with the closet reality you can find.

What was the general makeup of people you served with, as far as race, gender, class…?

They looked like that [points to a picture of his platoon on his wall], on the far right…you want me to count up how many black people and Hispanics there are?

That’s alright. So, where were you first stationed at?

Well, I thought I was going to be the only virgin in boot camp, but there were like a handful of others willing to come out about it [laughter], and one of them was the toughest guy in our platoon and I was like ‘alright, well cool, if you’re a virgin, then I can be a virgin and it’s alright.’ I don’t know what you expected when you asked the makeup of the platoon, well there was a few open virgins, the rest were lying about it [laugher]. ‘Why did you join the Marines?

Uh, to impress women.’ What was the next question?

Where were you first stationed?

Well, boot camp was MCRD San Diego and we did, during that time, I think it was four weeks toward the end at Camp Pendleton for field training. Then we came back to MCRD San

Diego for like the last week, graduation, all the ceremonies, bullshit, and out-processing. And

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Full Metal Jacket is a classic film by Stanley Kubrick, released in 1987 the film tells the story of the Vietnam War through the eyes of Marines. During one of the boot camp scenes a Marine breaks down, shoots his drill instructor, and then takes his own life.

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then Marine Combat Training was all at Camp Pendleton and then Field Artillery School was at

Fort Sill Oklahoma and then I check into my reserve unit.

And where were you first deployed to?

To Iraq, I’ve only been ‘deployed’ once. I’ve traveled a couple of other places, but only deployed to Iraq.

During what time period were you in Iraq?

February – September 04’, I’ve got all the dates written down somewhere, well I remember the day we got off the bus was September 14 th . It’s funny, boot camp I remember the day we shipped, but I didn’t remember the day we graduated; Iraq, I don’t remember the day we shipped, but I don’t remember the day we got back.

What did you know about Iraq prior to deployment there?

I thought I knew a lot, I knew more than most Marines, because of our job in Civil

Affairs, so I really made an effort to study, at least in the month before we deployed. I learned a little bit of Arabic and studied everything they gave us and read the manuals that they gave us really thoroughly about cultural stuff.

Did those prove to helpful? The manuals accurate?

Um, I don’t know, because I spent a lot of time trying to get a big picture of Iraq. When what would have been more helpful would have been to study local stuff. In that case, in that sense, when we did our turnover I spent all my hours like, off-duty, supposedly off-duty, there’s no real off-duty, studying the information the teams that were there before us gave us. All of their info reports, all of their Civil Affairs work, documents, and that was more helpful, I think, in being effective in my job, but also speaking Arabic was a huge, huge asset. In fact, in my

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[inaudible] citation, it mentions that I used my self taught Arabic skills to run a check point…blah-ba-blah.

What was your opinion of the war before you went?

Well, like I said, I went to the protest, I was against the war before it. And I really, like that was believing in all the mythology that was placed on the American public by weapons of mass destruction and…you know, as dumb as the debate in America has become, like weapons of mass destruction is actually like a half-truth. You know, it’s not the most absurd spin out there, say like, put the line at he was a tyrant and threat to America and all that…I believed all that and I didn’t think the war was going to be worth it. But afterwards, it was like ‘we’re cleaning up our mess or we’re finishing the job’ and I really believed in that. I was really disappointed when they caught Saddam, cause I wanted to be the guy who caught Saddam. You know, we almost found weapons of mass destruction, there had been some CDs that we had, that someone had given to us as Intel, that some Iraqi who was trying to kiss our butts was like,

‘here, check this out, you’ll want to see this.’ And there was photos, there was like video of, I think I still have the CDs here, chemical equipment and military stuff. And it [inaudible] insurgency promotional video, it’s really weird, there’s like this whole underground network of circulated DVDs promoting the insurgency in Iraq, so, I have a little collection of insurgent

DVDs. But, we were looking at these, like [goes into a hushed voice] ‘oh, my god, I think we found weapons of mass destructions, I think we found chemical weapons.’ And it was all like chemical defense stuff from the old Iraqi military, for people to use in case, I think it was like in case we attacked them with chemical weapons, you know, it was like detection stuff.

So, at the point you went, you never would have considered refusing or going AWOL?

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Well, no, cause at the point that I went I believed in it, at the point we went, like I was totally supportive of what we were doing in Iraq, I was like ‘well, it sucks that we went and history will decide, but let’s do the right thing now.’ But for me, the central motivation for me was, ‘I don’t want to miss the party,’ seriously, and this goes to the mentality among Marines, a lot of people in the Army too, about the flip that seems to be switched in boot camp, where it becomes the best way to serve you country is to die for it. You know, not to live long and serve it and make better for Americans or safer for Americas, but to go and die for it as soon as possible. So, when I was volunteering to go back to Iraq, I would tell people that I want to go back to get the Purple Heart. You tell that to any mental health official outside the military and you get committed, inside of the Marines that kind of thinking is encouraged. So, when I got back from Iraq, people would say ‘thank you for your service,’ I’d be like well, ‘I didn’t do shit, this guy came back with a Purple Heart, look at him,’ and the guy with the Purple Heart is like

‘man, I didn’t do shit, the guy standing next to me came home in a box.’ And the guy who’s sitting at Camp Pendleton, never deployed, when people try to say ‘thank you for your service’ when they go out in San Diego, they go ‘ah, man I was just sitting at Camp Pendleton,’ when before the war that would have been great, ‘yeah, I’m enthusiastically serving my country at

Camp Pendleton.’ But, when there’s a war and you don’t go, there’s that, you get that complex about it.

[Interruption- office phone rings]

There is likely nothing like an average day in Iraq, but could you give a description of what an average day was like for you, as far as tasks and objectives?

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Sure…[takes a long thinking pause]. Most typical, I guess would be that we would get up at, well for part of the time there we would PT 10 regularly, so we might get up and run to the gym and lift for thirty minutes, run back, it was about a mile and a half each direction. Thirty minutes for hygiene, go to showers as a, at least the enlisted half of the team together, and then, well the four of us on a team who were enlisted would all do that together. And then, then we’d go back and if we had a mission we might not PT and we’d go do a briefing, we’d prep the vehicles, which was the main thing that I was like, in charge of…. To make sure that, well, they’d all have full gas in them anyways, but double check that all the gear was straight, that it was configured for the mission, maybe do a little PMCS,

11

make sure they start, tighten whatever the fuck around the back, at one point we had sand bags in our Humvees, so we would make sure all that was in place.

Then we’d do a convoy brief, go hook up with whatever unit we were going with, get a convoy brief, get out, drive around, they would do their patrol, talk to people. I was never…the kinds of missions that we would or convoys that we would take along with as Civil Affairs, were never the ones where they were kicking down doors. Those were just like the general neighborhood patrols, so, Marines going and talking to local people, things like that. Then we’d have our stop or a couple of stops on patrol, which we’d stop and go knock on a door and make a

[inaudible] payment or we would visit a worksite and make sure that the contractor was doing his job or we’d pay him right there sometimes. Or we’d meet with a city councilman about a certain project or a local sheik. We’d come home, do all the paper…like if that was the morning, we’d spend the afternoon or the evening doing the paper work on it. You know, PMCS the vehicles,

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Physical Training

11 Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services

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again – preventive maintenance checks and services - make sure that they were all taken care of,

PMCS all of our own gear.

So that was like…my tour was in three phases….

[Interruption]

So there were two other phases of my deployment, the second one was running the checkpoint at the…no, sorry, the second one was the siege of Fallujah 12

and the siege of

Fallujah, you know there’s not, we did get into a bit of a routine. There was kind of a typical, which would be, we would pick a time and get ready with the humanitarian rations and go out to the local village and distribute…around this stupid thing where all the people in the village line up, one at a time they come and get humanitarian rations out of the back of the Humvee, based on how many family members they say they have. So, all of sudden everybody has really big families. You know, we said, ‘one male, head of household was allowed to come and get food.’

So, we do that, we’d go back and we’d hang out with the grunts and we’d study Arabic at night with the translators. But, there wasn’t much of a typical day there. We also did all sorts of random assessments and combat support, and we did a medevac.

13

I actually helped with a couple of checkpoints there, too. I ran a checkpoint, I shouldn’t say I ran, but I manned the checkpoint on the bridge over the Euphrates 14 when we were letting women and children out of the city.

And then we went to run the FLT, the CMOC – Civil Military Opts. Center – and I ran the front checkpoint and that was kinda my baby. We jokingly called it the lemonade stand,

12

The Iraqi city of Fallujah has been a constant hotbed of violence and bloodshed throughout the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

13

The transportation of an individual or a group to a location where they will receive medical treatment.

14 The Euphrates River

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cause it was one of those rare places where Iraqis would just come up, cause it was right on the street or at least on a freeway, and be like ‘hey man, do you have directions, to…the other base?’ or ‘where’s this unit?” Or they’d come with like random notes that people would, that Marines had scrawled out, like, one of them was like, ‘I hit this guys taxi with my Humvee’ signed,

‘Lieutenant Jack-Ass’[laughter]. And the guy would bring it to the post with his taxi and be like,

‘look, you owe me money’ and we’d be like ‘fuck, yeah we do’ and sometimes we were able to take care of it sometimes we weren’t. But there were a lot of, it was weird how notes got passed that way, because it was like, we kind of trusted it. Even if it didn’t have contact information for this Marine, if someone came with a note, scrawled in English, that looked like it was written by a Marine – you know, bad grammar and Marine Corp punctuation, and all that – and signed with a name and a unit, we’d be like, ‘okay’ and kinda take the Iraqis word for it.

You said when you were manning the checkpoint in the siege of Fallujah and you were letting women and children out, was it only women and children that were being allowed out?

[Nods in a affirmation]

So, basically if you were a…

A male fourteen or older, we’d say, ‘if they’re old enough to be in your fighting hole, they’re too old to get out of the city.’

So, were there a lot men who tried to get out of the city?

There were a few, really not that many people came out of the city at all, by then,…it was fucked up.

And was this in preparation of a bombing campaign?

I mean there was a few hundred, I think, I’d have to check my notes, but I think it was about 200. Well, it was just…in between bombings, during a lot of ceasefires.

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When you were in Iraq, did you ever feel like you were in a situation where you had to sacrifice you personal ethics for what you were being told to do?

Ah…I don’t think I thought too much about my personal ethics. I mean, I was really lucky…that I never had to decide even, whether or not to pull the trigger. I mean there were times when I had my, you know, I was sighted-in and was hyper-alert, but I don’t think I ever put my finger on the trigger even. I mean that’s a strict thing in the military, you know about weapons safety, is you never, one of the weapons safety rules is – and there’s only four of them – keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. So, I’d be sighted-in with my finger straight and I never, I don’t think I ever put my finger on the trigger in a combat situation…in Iraq. So, I was lucky that I never had to make that choice and think about it. But, you know, I brought a pistol back from Iraq in violation general order 1-A and I knew it was totally against the rules, but it didn’t violate my ethics at all to say that I’m going to bring this souvenir back.

At what point did you realize...you said, you were against the war before, because it was a bad idea strategically, but at what point did you realize…

Not strategically, I mean it just wasn’t worth it, it didn’t even get down to strategy.

Did anything happen in Iraq that strengthened your opposition to the war?

No, what I got out my experience in Iraq, in terms of what is most relevant in the debate today is that I learned that the idea of patrolling Iraq to bring security is bullshit.

So, when you were there did you feel like the United States could ‘win’ in Iraq, whatever that would mean?

Uh-hu, I thought we were tidying up and we were on our way out. It was still less than a year from the end of the war itself; the end of major combat operations was May 1 st

and I got to

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Iraq in February. So, maybe that’s a long time, but people were talking about comparing to

Japan and Germany, how we’re still in Germany, but that was different obviously.

And you said that when you got back you were trying to return to Iraq; what prevented you from going back?

Cause I got in trouble for bringing a pistol back. They kept me under investigation for a whole year at Camp Pendleton; I was a sergeant, ready willing and able - who spoke Arabic - to go back to Iraq, mowing lawns at Camp Pendleton. What they did was, they investigated me for eleven months, apparently they were distracted by…I think it was the Haditha shooting in mid-

2006

15

it would have been, Haditha or [inaudible], I can’t remember which one was going on at the time. But, all the guys that I was chatting with, that were investigating me, were…like ‘well, your case kinda got put on the backburner,’ and I was like ‘man, I’m a fuckin active duty reservist, I’m trying to go to Iraq here!’ So, they didn’t get to concluding my case or the investigation, until…probably a month before my activation was up.

[Interruption]

So you were saying…

So, they finished the investigation like a month before my activation orders were over and then they kinda scrambled to give me a non-judicial punishment, which is like you go before…it was weird…the unit commander, he was a colonel, and they tell you what they’re going to do and they have limits on what they can do without it being a court martial. So, they busted me down to corporal and I got out the Marines less…. It was funny cause it was the day after I got awarded my Navy accommodation medal, which was two years late, over two years late, cause it had gone up and down so many times…. But, I got busted down to corporal less

15

For more information on the horrific slaughter that left over twenty Iraqi civilians dead,

SEE: http://www.democracynow.org/2006/5/30/haditha_massacre_was_it_an_isolated

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than a month before I got out and I got out with an honorable. It was funny, my last week in the

Marines, they were like ‘oh, you’re still here, oh shit, we have to do all this paper work for you’ and they skipped like half of it and I walked out with half my gear, it was ridiculous.

So, you ended up being knocked down to corporal and received an honorable discharge and that was the conclusion to your service?

[Inaudible] said, ‘you’re not a real Marine until you get busted down at least once or twice.’ And I was a good Marine, you know, I did shit like smuggle weapons back from Iraq, but in terms of getting the job done. Like, my Navy accommodation wasn’t for like a single act of valor, it was for stuff I did continuously over the deployment. There was only one incident, I think, that was mentioned in the citation, which is when I did some evasive driving during combat that might have saved some Marine’s lives, but it was because I was a good Marine.

And I had it, people wanted to promote me and my proficiency and conduct marks were always pretty high, I was always first class PFT.

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What’s your thinking now, how would you like to see the Iraq war end?

Well, we’re not at war anymore, we’re in occupation. There’s two things I’d like to see, because what’s being confused is the occupation of Iraq and the Global War on Terror. And the

Global War on Terror is held up as, I mean, that it’s been called the Global War on Terror is a shameful manipulation of the American public. Terrorism is a problem, but it’s a crime, it’s not a war. You don’t declare…you know, we got a war on drugs and we got more drug use, we got a war on poverty, we got more poverty, we’ve had a war on terrorism, and we got more terrorism.

And that’s because when the government fights wars…bad shit happens, we don’t have to get into that whole philosophical concept of ‘what is government?’ But…that we get a common

16 Physical Fitness Test

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sense approach to the Global War on Terror, which is to approach it as a crime or as a criminal problem, and if there are times when it’s an international problem and we can’t send in an assault team, we have to send in a special forces team, okay, get the military involved, fine. But, in the scope of it being a crime, not a war.

And the second thing is then with the occupation…. And, I’m fine with Iraq being a front in the Global War on Terror and I think, if anything, what we’ve seen in Iraq has shown that generally speaking the Iraqis and the Iraqi government is willing to fight terrorism. They don’t like terrorism, I mean, no government, no stable…or government trying to become stable, nobody in power likes terrorism. The only people who like terrorism are those, when it’s challenging their opponents. Iran loves terrorism in Iraq and Iraq would love terrorism in Iran, but nobody wants it in their own country. And I think that the Iraqi people, would be happy to have American support in their fight against terrorism, locally, and that can be done in a cooperative way. But the occupation of Iraq needs to end, the forceful interference of Iraq, the sovereignty…the imposition of martial law by American forces in Iraq, needs to end immediately.

And in terms of the literal occupation – the forceful interference with Iraqi sovereignty – that can end with the snap of those presidential fingers, with a single order, no combat missions, no patrols, get our CIA out of their intelligence agency, get our diplomats out of their parliament.

We can have a heavy presence as an embassy, but restricted it to…then everything that we do in

Iraq falls under the ambassador and Crocker’s a retard,

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but his approach and what he’s doing is a lot better than what Petraeus

18

is doing, in terms of like actually, trying to do good by the Iraqi people, at least conceptually. I don’t doubt that Crocker is as corrupt and fucked up as the rest of

17

Ryan Crocker was the US Ambassador to Iraq at the time.

18 General David Petraeus was the leading general in charge of Iraq at the time.

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em, but the concepts and the presumptions that he is operating as an ambassador are much more legitimate than the ones we are operating under which is as a military in Iraq. Once you do that, then the presence of 150,000 troops or 170,000 troops and what is it, 190,000 contractors, becomes just and absurd waste of money, which it already is.

So, how and when did you become active in IVAW?

Well, I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, February of 2007, soon after moving to

DC, soon after I got out of the military. And I saw the website, and it was just like ‘Iraq-

Veterans-Against-the-War, well fuck, that’s me’ and I just had to be a part of it. And I was unemployed, I was going to school, and just sort of feel into fulltime activism, and found out that

I could actually make a living, barely, with some occasional public speaking and things like that, so.

What are some of your fondest memories, when looking back at your work with IVAW, as far as successful actions or projects or things you’ve accomplished, what sticks out?

Well, less relevant to IVAW is getting Gonzalez

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to resign, helping out, I mean really, I think I was a significant part of that effort with that board…as a personal accomplishment that’s pretty big. Operation First Casualty, my role in that was pretty big. Just developing my skills as a public speaker and being a voice for that and being able to at an event. September 15 th , 20 was really a crowing achievement for us and for me, especially because I was really the point person organizing that and the speech I give, was…to quote someone else, ‘one for this history books.’

And the line that I came up with that in that speech the one where, ‘when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty,’ someone has said ‘that Kokesh has joined the ranks of Thomas Paine

19

Former Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzalez.

20

This march was called by the ANSWER Coalition and took place on September 15 th

, 2007 in

Washington, DC. SEE: http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage

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and Thomas Jefferson’ and I was like ‘wow, it doesn’t get any fucking better than that.’ But yeah, if I have one quote that makes it in every quote book, till the end of time, that’s huge, that is really huge, and I’d be honored if it really has that place in history and I think it has the potential at least to inspire a lot of people.

Becoming a board member was huge. Putting another nail in David Horowitz’s 21

coffin, although that was not a part…had nothing to do with IVAW. But rather, at least being active with IVAW led me to be active enough to see this and think that I could do something about it. I don’t know if you followed all that, but I think that putting another nail in his coffin politically or pushing him away from relevance, I think that was a significant accomplishment that we had with that action, which I never expected to get off campus, by the way.

So, prior to becoming involved, what were your opinions of the larger anti-war movement or the peace and social justice movement?

That’s the thing, I wasn’t involved. I went to this one rally before the war and that was it, it was my whole impression of the movement. You know, I knew who Cindy Sheehan

22

was, but

I didn’t really think much about here either, it was just part of the landscape. And then, when I joined the movement, it was because of IVAW and it was like after…I became a member of

IVAW, before I would say ‘I’m part of the anti-war movement,’ so my impression at this point is completely from an IVAW perspective.

So, do you ever find hard to navigate, because you say you’re a libertarian, do you ever find it hard to be involved with kind of a leftist…?

21

Horowitz is a conservative thinker and writer; Adam is referring to the campus actions which he helped create, which were meant to oppose Horowitz’s ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.’

22

Cindy Sheehan was pushed to the forefront of the peace movement when her son was killed in

Iraq and she demanded President Bush explain to her personally why her son had to die. For an article asks if Kokesh is ‘the new Cindy Sheehan’

SEE: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/06/01/publiceye/entry2875018.shtml

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No, cause that’s what’s great about IVAW, is that we really stick to our three objectives.

I can put on an IVAW t-shirt and…this is still an on going debate within IVAW, because unlike

Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who we’re modeled after, had a really really broad platform.

And I know for a fact, that no everyone in VVAW endorsed the platform or believed in the entire platform, cause it really was like a litany of leftist, trendy things that were going on during

Vietnam, like…ridiculous. But, IVAW sticks to its three points and I know that when I put an

IVAW t-shirt that there’s not going to be someone in the next state over, going, wearing that

IVAW t-shirt advocating for something else, whether or not I believe in it, I know that the

IVAW t-shirt means that and that’s really cool. So, it’s frustrating sometimes to deal with a movement that’s too much…well, because you have different forces, you have people in the movement who are super liberal, who think that the movement itself is…as if being against the war is progressive and it’s not, it’s fucking common sense at this point. And I’m so conservative that I’m a libertarian and as a libertarian, I’m fully against the war, as a human, as a veteran, I’m fully against the war, but it’s totally in line with that philosophy, you know, real conservatives should be against this war. It’s neo-cons, it’s imperialists, who support this…people who support the war, whether they know it or not are neo-cons and imperialists, or at least they’re indorsing the philosophy of that and you hear that in the talking points that they regurgitate to support the war. So, it’s frustrating, but IVAW, at least respects that and as an organization I really appreciate being a member of IVAW and not being a member of World Can’t Wait, 23

no offense to anybody there, but I’m just more comfortable here. And, I really think the movement could learn a lot from guys like Geoff

24

and I; he refuses to classify himself, but he is very small government progressive, he’s much closer to a libertarian, he’s kind of like an anti-capitalist

23

SEE: http://worldcantwait.org/

24 Geoff Millard’s oral biography is located elsewhere in this collection.

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libertarian almost, which kind of a contradiction. But, there are a lot of people who would be more inclined to be involved in the movement or support anti-war candidates, if there were more conservative anti-war candidates,

25

I think if we grew the movement to include more conservative, we’d be electing Republicans who are anti-war and we’d be able to get the fuck out of there.

You mentioned Vietnam Veterans Against the War; were you familiar with them before you joined IVAW or with the whole concept of GI resistance?

That’s a good question, I might have had a vague idea. I mean I know that in Vietnam people went to Canada, but I was like ‘it’s the draft, it’s war, it sucks, yeah, get the fuck out of here if you don’t want to do it,’ but I was fine, like I didn’t have a problem with that. But, like in terms of modern GI resistance, no, I don’t think so. I don’t know if I would have recognized the name Vietnam Veterans Against the War, to be honest.

What do you think are some of the parallels or differences between…

But, I knew about Forrest Gump , I knew about Born on the Forth of July ,

26

but, I’d seen

Forth of July a long time ago and really didn’t remember the details, but I knew that there were anti-war veterans from Vietnam.

In comparisons of Vietnam to Iraq; what do you think IVAW has gotten from VVAW?

I’ve defiantly learned a lot from VVAW and there are so many similar dynamics in the country and in the war right now that it’s very sturdy and it’s not to say that, people go ‘well, is

Iraq another Vietnam?’ And it’s like, ‘no, it’s Iraq’ but, it’s disturbing that there are so many strong trends that are identical at this point.

25

Adam is an enthusiastic supporter of conservative anti-war candidate Ron Paul.

SEE: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/

26 Both films depict images of anti-war veterans from the Vietnam Era.

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Has your family been supportive of your participation in IVAW?

Yeah, and it’s funny because I cam back from Iraq, September of 2004 and we never really talked about it. And when I came, I would have told people we need to cut the forces by at least seventy-five percent and restrict ourselves to training, logistical support, blah-blah-blah.

And that would have, I never vocalized it that way, but that would have been an end to the occupation. We just didn’t talk about it that much in my family, but then when I cam out and joined IVAW, my dad, when I first told my dad, he was like, he went on this rant about he Bush-

Cheney Oil Regime and I was like, ‘dude, why didn’t you tell me how you felt, when I got back, like what the fuck?’ And I don’t know if my dad, I think my dad went through some of the similar processes I did, in terms of delusionment. I think as a people, as America we are slowly realizing the corruption and the deception and the sad state of our government today, but we’re learning.

What are you planning on doing in the future; you are currently working on your masters, do you have any plans beyond that?

Well, I’ll be here, at least another year, as long as I am most valuable in the movement. I mean, I decided that I’m going to devote my life to public service, to being politically active, and

I will go where I am most effective in bringing about real change in the world. And I think that the next step in that for me is running for office, being the first libertarian elected to Congress.

So, I’m planning on running in the 3 rd

District, in New Mexico in 2010. But, that’s a ways out, I know I’m not ready to run now, I want to move back to New Mexico, I want to be settled, I want to build up the Libertarian Party structure there, I want to bring an overwhelming show of force to this campaign, because that’s what it’s going to take to get a libertarian elected. But, you know, if I gotta put that off, I’m happy to, if I find somewhere that I think I’m more effective.

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Lastly, at the mark of 4,000 troops killed in Iraq, Vice-President Cheney repeatedly made reference to our all volunteer force and really seemed to highlight that fact that it is an all volunteer force, which seems intended to suggest that somehow those deaths are less tragic or the administration is less responsible for them, does that argument carry any credibility in your mind?

Well, no, cause we have an all volunteer force brings up so many other issues, but the reason it’s brought up is to say, ‘well, the troops support the war, they’re volunteering’ and that’s bullshit.

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Nick Morgan

Sundays in the IVAW House are the busiest days of the week, with IVAW activities going on all day and a large number of members coming in to participate. It is on a Sunday afternoon when I sit down with Nick Morgan, we find a tucked away spot in the basement to avoid the crowds upstairs. Nick had served in Iraq and felt the udder hopelessness of the situation and the lack of a clear mission, which inspired him become active with IVAW; Nick currently acts as the

Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator for IVAW. In addition to activism, much of our conversation focuses on the problems many veterans face when trying to readjust to civil life – the problems

Nick has personally faced and continues to face.


Well, I was born in Saint Albans, Vermont and I lived in Vermont until I was four, almost five and my parents moved down to West Virginia; I lived there with my mother until I went to basic training. And then I’ve been kind of all over, right now I live in Annapolis,

Maryland.


Kinda, but it was scattered around. Like I, for the most part, up until middle school it was my mom, my sister, and I, and her boyfriend –she’s married to him now. Then she moved it to my dad’s house where my other two half-sisters live, so they kinda had a big house, but then it was just like me, my mom, and my step-dad for a long time growing up.

Did your parents divorce when you were young?

When we got to West Virginia they divorced, I don’t know exactly when.


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My dad’s a plumber, he’s always had a plumber / electric / heating sub-contractor business. My mother, she’s done a few things, right now, she owns a home medical supply store, she sells home medical supplies, she has a franchise.

Is there a history of military service in your family?

Both my grandfathers both did a little bit of time in the Army.

World War II?

I wanna say post World War II, no history that I know of in conflict. I have a cousin – a second cousin on my mom’s side – that was recently killed in Iraq.

What were your earliest impressions of the military as child? Did you have any contact with it?

Not really. I can remember, I was in the first grade when the first Gulf War kicked off.

And I found out that I had, I think it was my mother’s cousin that was there, I don’t know if he went into Iraq or Kuwait, but I wrote him in Saudi Arabia and he sent me a Saudi Arabian note – it probably wasn’t worth much – but, that was probably my earliest impression. I guess, like any boy, play a little GI Joes and this-and-that.


Oh, no, absolutely not.

What were your earliest impressions of people who were politically active or engaged in protests?

I guess the typical thing any kid living small-town-rural-USA would see, in movies, maybe a little bit in the news.

When you were growing up, do you recall a lot of clear divisions as far as class is concerned?

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Very little in the communities that I grew up in, because we were all pretty poor. I mean, even people that were considered wealthy for the area, you know are still considered low-middle class for a lot of other areas.

Did you enjoy school as child?

I guess not really, not really, I think I enjoyed the interaction but, school was kind of a breeze, so I didn’t put much effort into it. I was kinda indifferent, it seemed like it was just something I was going through the steps.

What is the highest level of education you have completed?

Completed? Um, I’ve got an associates degree.

Are you in school now?

I am in school now, studying engineering now, my associates degree is in business.

Where are you going now?

Anne Arundel Community College.

What were some of your earliest dreams / ambitions as a child?

Man, I don’t…I wanted to be a professional athlete [laughs], probably. Yeah, I was really into basketball and stuff when I was a kid.


Eighteen.

So, was this pre-9/11 or post 9/11?

Post, April 25, 2002. So, a few months after.

What was the major motivating factor for you to sign up then?

I was a state champion pole-vaulter and I had an academic scholarship for all my tuition and fees to go to a state school, so I was going to West Virginia University. And a recruiter

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called me up one day and asked me what I was doing after school and I thought I nailed him by saying ‘I’m going to college’ and he was like ‘well, how you going to pay for it?’ And I thought about and was like, ‘I don’t know, my parents I had haven’t really discussed it.’ So, that was what really got the wheel spinnin and I had friends that had joined since 9/11 and I figured, you know, it seems like…at this point, you know, I still bought into all the rhetoric about us and we hadn’t invaded Iraq, yet, either. I actually graduated basic training the day we invaded Iraq.

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There were troops in Afghanistan at this point though, correct?

There were, I believe.

So, the recruiter called you and…?

Yeah, it just all seemed like it happened pretty fast, like I barely, like when I went to

MEPS,

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I don’t even think that I knew I was going to sign up. I thought I was just going to take the ASVAB 3 – which, I scored pretty well on – and the next thing I know I’m sitting in here, signing, you know, my signature and my initials a hundred times and a picking job, and I’m like

‘what the hell is going on?’

So, basically the financial aspect was your main motivation?

That was what sparked my interest, but I still thought it would be a really patriotic and hardcore thing to do, at the time.

Looking back, do you feel the military recruiters provided you with an accurate description of what military life would be like and what you were signing up for?

1

March 20 th

, 2004.

2

Military Entrance Processing Station

3 Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery

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Not really, like, a little bit, they would tell some stories, but you know, I was a reservist and they really sold me when I saw the dollar signs, so I was pretty easy for them, I think.

Actually, I guess I didn’t think it out very well, cause I didn’t ask a lot of questions.

How did your family and friends react to your decision?

Well, a lot of my friends were going in, cause like I said, I live in rural West Virginia and there’s more veterans per capita in that state than any other state in the Union.

4

So, a lot of my friends were already going in. My family was like, you know, ‘you’re a grown-ass-man, it’s up to you.’

What had you planned on doing after you got out?

Well, I had decided - I knew some people that had graduated from my high school the year before, that went to school for a semester, took the next semester off for basic and AIT,

5

and then got back, so they just lost a semester, rather than wasting the last summer before college – so, I thought that was a really good idea, so that’s what I did. I came back and transferred schools and I was in, actually my first semester back – after training – I got called up to be on a deployment, it was on Veteran’s Day.

So, had you planned to make a career out of the military?

I was going to see how it would pan out, you know, I was getting the GI Bill 6 and that was nice, so, I guess I was going to see how long it took me to get done with school, how that went. You know, I really hadn’t decided one way or the other, but it was something that I thought about.

And what branch did you enlist with?

4

SEE: http://veteranshistory.wvu.edu/

5

Advanced Individual Training

6

The historic legislation that provides military personal and veterans with money to pursue an education.

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Army, the Reserves.

Why did you pick the Army?

Because they had the highest incentives and they were the ones who called me first.

Can you describe what your basic training was like?

Um, basic training was my favorite part of my military career [laughing]. I went in, actually the first reception and the first week or so really sucked, I was kinda like ‘what the fuck am I doing here?’ Like, ‘oh, this isn’t fun at all.’ Then once we got down [inaudible], we started doing some training, you know, I just thought it was fun, you know, I didn’t take it too seriously.

I mean, I took it very seriously as far as learning the training, but some people, man, some people just couldn’t handle it and I thought it was hysterical, cause the drill sergeants were going to look for something to smoke you about anyway, cause everybody needs to get knocked into shape.

So, you’re going to do a bunch of exercise anyway, no matter what you do, so you can’t sit there and get upset if you fuck up and make everyone else….

So, what was the general makeup of the people you served with, as far as race, gender…?

Well, in training, I was in Fort Leonard, Missouri and I had a co-ed basic training, so I had all race, colors, creeds, ages…some Puerto Ricans, one kid from Ukraine. When I got back to my unit it was a lot less diverse.

You said your training was co-ed, meaning there were women training as well?

Yeah.

Was that a different atmosphere than when you were deployed?

Well, yeah, of course, it was basic training in the woods in the winter, I would say…but, yeah, I mean as far as the interaction, yeah cause, I was in a combat unit, we actually had two in

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my company – two women – that were attached to us from headquarters, a medic and a mechanic.

So, was Iraq your first deployment then?

Yeah.

And what year was that?

Well it started in 2003, I got called on Veteran’s Day, 7

had to report two days later. We did three weeks of AT, went on active duty the day after my twentieth birthday, 8 in December and then shortly after went to Wisconsin, went for a couple of months did some training and then went to Iraq in February 2004 to February 2005.

So what did you know about Iraq, prior to deployment?

Well, I knew where it was geographically, I knew it was hot, I had heard a lot about

Saddam Hussein, culturally - I knew very little – I knew they were oil rich, but there was economic issues, political issues. That we invaded or we liberated Kuwait from Iraq in the early

90s, other than that I guess it’s probably about it.

Had you followed the debate over whether or not to go to war?

See the interesting thing about that is, I was in basic training ten weeks prior, like I said I graduated the day we invaded. So, and we didn’t, I mean we were surprised when they told us who won the Super Bowl, so we didn’t know what the hell was going on out there. No idea, we had very little contact with people. So, I really didn’t know much about it at all and they were like ‘hey, congratulations, guess where you’re going.’ We’re like ‘oh.’ But, of course at that point we’re all pumped up, we’re just out of basic training, we’re rough and ready, freshly trained recruits, man.

7

November 11 th

8 December 7 th , 2003

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So, between the end of basic training and the time you were actually sent to Iraq, did you ever have any opinions of whether or not you thought it was strategically a good idea to go in?

Well, it seemed like – at that point it was still early – after they said that major combat operations were over and Baghdad feel and they found Saddam Hussein, it seems like the picture was painted to the public that we were there cleaning up our mess, winning the hearts and mind, yada-yada-yada, pulling out, setting up their government real-quick style, we’d be out of there, six months we figure. And, I came back to a unit that was deployed, so there’s only a dozen people in my unit a most and you know, I guess I had a little bit of a left behind syndrome. I didn’t volunteer for a deployment, but I didn’t turn it down, I don’t that I woulda had the choice.

But, I accepted it and kinda looked forward to it, at first.

So, what were your main duties in Iraq?

Well, my MOS 9 was 21-Echo – Heavy Construction Equipment Operator – so, we offered…I was in a support platoon in a Light Combat [inaudible] Engineer Battalion, so we operated bulldozers, graters, sea trucks, bucket loaders, dump trucks, so on and so forth. So, we did a lot of, building up a lot of American posts, force protection, stuff like that. Cleaned up a lot of messes, you know, whatever devastation might have been wrecked. We did a lot of route clearing, for some units, we did a lot of dirty work for some units. We got to the point we had to start filtering in with the line platoons doing IED

10

sweeping missions - hunting for IEDs – so, we did a lot that, so we were pretty busy.

Can you describe what a basic day in Iraq was like?

9

Military Occupational Specialty

10


Afghanistan.

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No, not one [laughs]. Cause, it was, I guess we had the privilege of having new missions all the time, the longest we were at the same mission was maybe a month or two – less that two months. So, we did a lot of different things, some days, some weeks, we wouldn’t have shit to do, we’d just do junk duty around the post or play cards. Or, be gainfully employed working in the motor pool, so some days you’d just spend all day changing tires in the motor pool. You might have a guard duty. Some days, you go out, if your not on a mission, you go tear down a house.

So, how were you received by Iraqis on a daily basis, did you have any interaction with them?

Oh, of course. Initially, we were still accepted very well, like they were very thankful.

You know, you’d go by, shit, you’ve heard it time and time again, of the kids coming out, with thumbs up, saying ‘thank you, America-good, Bush-good, Saddam-bad’ and all that stuff. But, it also depended on where in the country you were, it depends on where you were…. I guess the longer we were there, we had less and less fans. I guess, people were trying to work with us, but very frustrated with us.

Did you speak any Arabic at this point?

Oh, very simple phrases, a brief greeting, telling someone how to stop.

What is your most distinct memory, either a specific event or duty, you had while in Iraq?

Oh, I mean, I don’t, I got probably hundreds, if not a thousand hours on a bulldozer, I learned how to operate equipment very well. I can’t think of, there’s a lot, I was there for over a year, so there’s a lot that I could say.

Do you ever recall being asked to sacrifice your personal ethics when you were there, did you ever feel like you were doing something that you morally had a problem with?

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It’s kinda like, I had moral qualms in hindsight, some of the things I did, like tear down someone’s lively hood – their restaurant – you know, based on someone’s word or tear down a house based on what someone said that, we were just asked to do this. So, looking back on a lot of things, and the way I treated people, you know.

So, at what point during your service or after, did you realize you were against the war?

Well, when I was there, after a while, you know, you’re sitting in a country six, nine months and you’re not seeing the progress that we were being told was supposed to be happening, at least. You know we weren’t rebuil…we were destroying so much stuff in Iraq and we weren’t rebuilding their stuff. We weren’t, we were cleaning it up, you know we might push some rubble into a pile, but we were just building up these military – American military – posts, so we’re just like, after a while, we just had to sit there and ask ourselves, ‘does anyone know what we are doing here, what are we doing here, what the fuck are we doing here?’ But, I can’t necessarily say that I was against it, then. I was just like really scrutinizing the situation. And, when I got home, I really just distanced myself from it, tried to plead indifference.

So, when you talked to other service members - in those debates about what you were doing there – what was the overall consensus or overall feeling?

Well, a lot of people shared the same sentiments, like ‘I don’t know, what are we doing here?’ But, to us, we did a lot of force protection, like searching for IEDs; to us, our concern wasn’t why they were there, our concern was making sure that they weren’t there anymore, so that Americans would be more safe.

So, when people were there, did people feel like they could win, like there was an objective? Beyond, clearly finding an IED is a task that can be achieved, but was there any sense of a larger task?

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No, that was the issue, that’s what I’m saying, it is like we can’t figure out the ultimate mission, the ultimate goal of us being here. Because, you know, we saw, okay, they captured

Saddam, turned him over to the Iraq people, secured the Green Zone, instituted a government, they had their election, they had their security force, how much longer does this need to go on?

So, what about now, how would you like to see the Iraq war end?

Immediately [laughs]. ‘How’d I like to see it end?’ I’d love to see it end. To answer your question, I think that we can safely pull out troops in a very very short amount of time, you know, we’d just backtrack out of the country and get every combat operation as far away from that country as we can.

Why do you think that in the debate that’s going on right now, the possibility of a safe and quick withdrawal is made to seem impossible?

Well, here’s why it is impossible; it’s impossible because we can’t do that without protecting interests. Now, you know, that’s kinda vague, we’re protecting national interests, is that, you know, oil rights, profits, amongst other – I would consider – immoral profiteering in a country? But, I mean, physically we can do it and we need to do it, cause our military needs this to end.

At what point did you leave Iraq and end your service?

I left Iraq in February 28 th

, 2005, was in Wisconsin for seven to ten days, got home early

March and tried to assimilate back into society. I got out of the Army in July 2006.

What rank were you when you left the service?

E-5 - Sergeant.

Why did you leave when you did?

I was asked to leave.

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Why?

Legal issues.

Can you talk about that?

I’d just rather not.

Did you end up with an honorable discharge, at least?

General, under honorable conditions.

So, what was the first thing you did when you left the service?

I went to a festival that weekend [laughs], I had a great time.

What did you try to do afterwards as far as work or school?

School, I was going to school, it really blew when my GI Bill stopped coming, but I kept going to school. I actually dropped out a couple times, since I’ve been back. And I’ve tried…I’ve worked a couple times, no more than like four of five months. I bartended for a while, I worked a little bit for my dad.

Why did the GI Bill stop coming?

Because of my discharge.

Do you have to have an honorable discharge to continue it?

Yeah and in the Reserves the rules are a little different, you can only get it while you are in the Reserves.

So, did you find it difficult to get back to civilian life?

Yeah, yeah, I did. You know, you come back, like I was really excited to be home and see everybody and have all this freedom to run around and blow all this money that I had saved up. But, you go home with expectations, like, great you’re going to be around your loved ones again, but everyone’s grown, it’s been a year, sixteen months, whatever. So, everything is a little

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different and after a while, you know after the parties over, it kinda sets in and honestly I still haven’t been able to function. Like I said, I’ve dropped out of school a couple times, I’ve only been able to hold a job for a few months. So, it’s still rough, as a matter of fact.

Did you feel like the skills that you got in the military have helped you in your post military life?

The discipline – when I choose to use it – is helpful. There are some skills that I learned that I have just decided not to utilize, I think I could have, like operating equipment, I could have taken some classes and got my CDL,

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I just kinda chose not to.

Have you had much of a relationship with the VA, since you got out?

Very little, very little, I went in for a check up. I’m actually getting ready to see someone at the VA.

Have you suffered any physical or psychological damage as result of your service?

Physical, not really, I thought my hearing got worse, which, I guess it did a little bit, but it’s still not too bad. Psychologically, I’ve had some issues I guess.

Do you think it’s hard to address those in the military culture, like even saying something like, ‘I have PTSD’ 12

is that something that’s looked down upon? Is there a weakness associated with having any kind of mental illness?

Yeah, probably, I can’t really say I had a lot of experience with that cause, I kept a lot to myself, cause I wasn’t deployed with my unit, I was [inaudible] to another unit, and then I came back to the States and went back to my original unit, so they had a different deployment than I did.

Were they in Iraq?

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Commercial Driver’s License

12 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

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Yeah.

So, how did you become active with IVAW?

Well, I read about them online. Joined and just linked up with some of the guys, started doing actions, just ran with it.

Had you ever had any experience doing any kind of political organizing or activism?

No, a little bit of writing maybe.

What are some of the actions with IVAW that have been the proudest be a part of?

Um, the march we did in Philly - it was a couple of weeks before Winter Soldier – from

Constitution Center to Valley Forge, I thought that was an awesome action.

13

I thought it made a lot of, it was a twenty-five mile march, it was over a couple of days. I had a really good time and like I said, I thought it was really meaningful, it was the first time I spoke publicly. You know, I didn’t do a lot of organizing for Winter Solider, but I was there and I was proud to be a part of that.

So, prior to becoming active in IVAW, what did you think of the anti-war movement in general?

I just, I really didn’t know much about it. Cause, like I said, when I came home, I kinda distanced myself from everything, I really didn’t watch much news or TV; I really didn’t know what was going on, on one side or the other. And then once I started saying ‘you know what, forget this, I gotta deal with this’ I started looking into it a little more, but I didn’t know too much about it.

And had you ever heard of other organizations, like Veterans for Peace or VVAW?

13

This march was called the weekend before the Winter Soldier hearing and was carried out by members of the Philadelphia chapter. It was a twenty-five mile march from Philadelphia to

Valley Forge, which tried to attracted attention to the upcoming Winter Soldier.

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I had heard of Veterans for Peace.

Was that before, when you were in the service?

Naw, maybe in an article or something, but not really.

And had you ever heard of or read about the whole concept of GI Resistance?

Yeah, I heard about a lot of that stuff from Vietnam, from the Vietnam Era. And a few, I mean, I knew…we had a deserter or two in my unit. I knew a lot of people that had just thrown their arms up and said ‘forget it.’

While they were in Iraq?

One person went on leave and never came back, never reported back. One person we had issues with even before we got deployed, I don’t know what his status ever really was.

Looking back to Vietnam and what happened there with VVAW, how do you feel VVAW has had an impact IVAW?

Oh, I think they’ve helped us out, I haven’t been with the organization for too awfully long, but I’ve been around a lot of those VVAW guys and they are very helpful, you know, I like having them around, they’re always interesting to talk to, it’s always good to get a wise perspective on things. With the things they’ve done, I’m sure there’s a lot of things we can learn

– both good and bad – from what they’ve done, more good though, of course [laughs].

In the presidential race going on right now, all of the candidates talk about ‘supporting the troops,’ ‘ending the war,’ ‘helping veterans,’ ect., do you feel like any of them are resonating anything you’d like to see talked about?

You mean, am I…

Not necessarily a specific candidate, but do you feel like any of the candidates are actually addressing those terms of ‘supporting the troops’ or ‘ending the war’?

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I can’t say…no, I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone’s really painted a clear picture of withdrawing troops from Iraq. Generally, the best scenario with the three major presidential candidates - which I think that’s what you’re asking about – is we could maybe pull our troops out in a year and half, that’s another year and half of war, come on.

Even with the best plans there is still the Green Zone in place and residual forces left in the country…

Yeah, yeah, it’s all or nothing, we can’t half-ass pull out of Iraq and then, it’s not a compromise.

So, how do you react when people throw around the phrase, ‘supporting the troops,’ across the spectrum almost all Americans say something about supporting the troops in some way?

I think half the time people are full of if, I even look at my step-mother’s car, there’s a yellow ribbon magnet that says ‘support the troops’ but, I can’t think of anything that she’s done to support the troops – sent me a couple of care packages. But, a lot of people just say that blindly, just because it’s the American thing to do, but I don’t see very many people going out there and supporting the troops, talking to the troops, seeing what they need. If they want to support em, then they should actively try to support them.

So, why did you chose to be in IVAW as opposed to other organizations that are against the war?

I just came across them and pretty much agreed with everything that I read about and I was just interested in their action. And doing what I could do, to do my part basically. I mean I didn’t really, to be honest with you, look into too many other organizations.

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Do you ever feel like it’s hard to operate in IVAW - which has its three very specific goals 14 - within a border peace movement, with other organizations that have different, not necessarily conflicting goals, but are much broader in spectrum?

No, I don’t think it’s hard at all. Because, as veterans we have this platform that a lot of anti-war activists don’t – that most other groups don’t – so, there is a lot of things that, are relevant, but are not our main concern as veterans. So, I think that’s the kinda thing we can all pretty much agree on across the board.

So, has your family been supportive of you becoming involved with IVAW?

Um, not entirely, but for the most part. My moms really supportive, her family pretty much says they’re proud of me. I don’t think my father takes me very seriously, he hasn’t really supported much. But, I haven’t talked to most of my family about it.

What about friends or other people you served with, have you told them what you are doing?

Yeah, I have a good friend of mine, from way back before either of us joined the military,

– he was in the Marine Corp – he joined recently. And I talked to other veterans I was deployed with, who have expressed gratitude or said that I was basically doing a good thing.

So, what do you plan to do now, are you planning on going back to school, again?

Actually, I’m in the process of leaving school, again. This will probably be my last semester for a while.

You have any idea of what you’re planning on doing?

14

“Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq; reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.”

SEE: http://ivaw.org/about

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Not entirely. Well, I gotta visit the VA. I’m a coordinator, like an organizer for IVAW –

Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator – and some things I’ve gotta catch up on.

So, what are the duties of Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator?

[laughs]

I mean it sounds like an important position.

It’s nothing particularly special, it’s just like an organizers position. I have six chapters in the region – DC, Philly, New York, amongst others 15 – and I just kinda, which I’m going to have a lot difficulty doing, but trying to promote lateral communication across the board, getting all the chapters that are close to each other, talking with each other about helping with fundraisers and events, and outreach, and this and that. You know, just keeping everyone on the same page. Another big thing that I have been trying to tackle lately is starting new chapters, there’s a few cities that I’ve targeted recently that, trying to get people on board.

Within that role, do you have anything on the horizon as far as actions or campaigns?

Well, like I said, one of the things that I’m focusing on is, there’s a few chapters…there’s an art show coming up in Baltimore, actually, and I’m trying to plan a meeting – cause there’s no chapter there – with some of the members in that area, cause there’s plenty of them and see if I can start a chapter there, after the art show, which is a fundraiser for IVAW.

15

New York, Philadelphia, Fort Meade, Washington, DC, and Newark are the five official chapters in the Mid-Atlantic region. SEE: http://ivaw.org/chaptersandregions

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James Gilligan

I am perched on the foot of James Gilligan’s bed throughout this interview, while he sits near the head resting against his pillows. During my hour with James he recounts his vast career as a Marine and describes his transformation from Marine to anti-war activist. James has served all around the world in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay,

Cuba. James masterfully intertwines his personal narrative with an in-depth political commentary of currently world affairs. Despite having only recently became active with IVAW,

Gilligan speaks with a passionate articulation that is usually reserved for longtime professional organizers.


Well, I was born in New York City and I grew up, New York City, all five boroughs,

New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and then back to New Jersey.


My father’s side of the family was pretty large, I think he had five sisters, so it was quite a large family on that side. But, I spent most of my childhood, from sixth grade on, in foster care and previous to that, I spent most my time with my family on my mother’s side, which was next to nothing.

Did your parents divorce when you were young?

They did, they were separated officially, probably in the forth grade, but the divorce was probably finalized sometime around high school.

And how did you happen to get into foster care?

My mother gave me up. She gave me as a child ward to the state.

Were you having problems or…?

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We had problems, me and her, back and forth. It was something that basically, I was a direct emulation of my father and the arguments and things that she was going through with my father – he was blinded and he had brain cancer and eventually he developed adult onset diabetes

- he required a lot of medical care and my mother couldn’t handle it, so she abandoned him. And he, basically went to the care of his family in New Jersey and they adopted me in 9 th

grade, so I finished out my high school with my father’s family.

So, how old were you when your mother gave you up?

Sixth grade.

And then you were in foster care for…?

Three years.


My father, actually, it’s a bit skeptic, we don’t know exactly the truth or the whole truth, at least. But, he served in the Army for a very, very brief time. I believe he was sent home because he was underage, something about filling out his paper work on accident, or something

[laughs].

This was around Vietnam Era or…?

During Vietnam Era, I guess not even Vietnam Era, so post-Vietnam…towards the end anyways. My family…wasn’t really a military history.

What about a history of political activism in your family?

We have an uncle of mine, who’s pretty much on the left side of the fence and he’s moved to Oregon and vowed that he’ll never set foot on the East Coast again, so…[laughs]. We have one, at least, person that’s politically minded, in my family, I would say everybody is…a

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little active about their politics and whatnot, but aside from the voting or the fireside conversation so to speak, nobodies really getting into what I’m doing.

So, when you were a child, did you have any early impressions of military service?

Yeah, yeah. I was asked by my mother’s boyfriend, when I was in something like fifth grade or something, he said ‘what do you wanna be when you grow up?’ And I said ‘I wanna be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Navy Seal.’ It was then that, I guess he was like ‘wow’ you know, so he started telling me a little about the military, but not much. And he had served himself - he was a Purple Heart recipient – and he later adopted me when I was in ninth grade, but he passed away that year, so I was later adopted by my father’s family.

I guess my first impressions of the military was me trying to call the recruiter to see if I couldn’t join the military any sooner. When I was fifteen I called, when I was sixteen I called, when I was seventeen I called, when I was eighteen they called me. And they said, ‘how would you like to come down and take a test?’ And I said ‘sure, I’m suspended from high school anyways, so I’ve got the next few days to play with’ and they guys like ‘alright, well were going down to Philadelphia.’ And we go to take this test down at the MEP 1

center and I took the test and I passed pretty good, so the military was right on my doorstep, so to speak.

What about your impressions of political activism as a child?

I really didn’t have any. You have to remember, I grew up in the Regan Era onto the

Clinton Era, there wasn’t much politics, it was the Regans and it was the Clintons. I mean, there really wasn’t much of a history of big political changes or shifts or, you know, the House or the

Dems or anything like that moving in one direction or the other. For me, I really went into the military, not even caring about politics. The military for me, was a job…as a mercenary would

1

Military Entrance Processing

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get paid to fight in the Congo or something, I was getting paid to protect and defend and serve my country. So I looked at it like, I guess the Roman legionnaires would look at it when they were serving for their country – not the ones that were, of course, taken by the Romans – but the ones that were actually volunteering, they were serving for obvious monetary gain, of course, and because it was a job, a job that they were qualified for.

So, was the monetary aspect the most influential for you?

The monetary aspect, really had little to do with it. For me, it was the travel, I really wanted to travel, I wanted to be independent, I wanted to be…I wanted to have that name, you know, ‘United States Marine’ attached to my name and I did.

Now you signed up when you were eighteen and that was…?

I went into the Delayed Entry Program

2

at eighteen, in September-October of 1998 and then in 1999, when I graduated from high school in June, I contacted my recruiter and he had me slated to go in September of 99, for boot camp, and then he just said ‘well, somebody cancelled, so we can send you in July, how would you like to go in a couple of weeks?’ I was like ‘hell yeah, I got nothing going on here,’ so I went in, in 99, July.

When you went in did you have a plan for afterwards, did you want to go in for a career, did you want to go to school afterwards?

Let me tell you, when you first go into the military, you’re planning just to get through the day. I mean, that first night when they pull you in there, they keep you up the whole night, they check you medical stuff, they check your physical stuff, they make you do stupid things back and forth, back and forth, and then they get you to sleep for a couple of minutes. And then the next day you’ve got more training and the next day you got more training; the military just

2

This program offers recruits the opportunity to sign up for service a year prior to actually entering the service. SEE: http://www.delayedentryprogram.com/

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became the next day for me, I mean, there was very little fore thinking on my part, I know there were several Marines in my unit who maybe found time to go to school – to go to college – or some guys had planned to when they got out, to open a their own business with a small business loan or do some other things. But, for me, honestly, I was sucked into the training, I was sucked into the work effort. In my six years of being in the military, I did two and a half years in

Okinawa, I did Korea, South Korea, I did Thailand, I did Iraq, I did Afghanistan, I did Pakistan, I did Kyrgyzstan, I did Kuwait, I did…you know, all these other places – Cuba – I mean, I was constantly deployed, I didn’t have time to think about what was going to happen after the military.

How did your friends and family react to your decision to join the military?

Oh, they loved it. For all my family members, it was like ‘aww, smiles, and what a great job he’s going to be doing’ but, when I reenlisted…

And what year was this?

I reenlisted in 2003, in Kuwait, just prior to going into Iraq, so this would be just prior to my first combat experience, I reenlisted for two more years. And my family thought, well there were some members of my family that were like ‘that is the dumbest fucking decision that you can make’ and I was like ‘well, wait a minute, it was cool for me to be a Marine when we were in peacetime, but now that I’m a jarhead, 3

fighting in the war, now I am making the wrong moves?’ And they were like ‘well, maybe you don’t know everything about it and da-ta-da-tada, but good luck, come home with honor, come home with your courage, your integrity, your dignity.’ My family really didn’t make judgments on me, with how I was going be or not. My friends were, I guess detached. Any friends that I had contact with in high school, we just

3 Jarhead is a slang term used describe Marines.

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separated. If I ever came home on leave, it’d be a phone call and I’d have two or three people, say that they’d like to stop by, but only one person would. I really lost connections with my friends, my family too.

I had a cousin, he…for maybe two or three yeas of his life, he thought that I wore Marine

Corp dress blues all the time, because my aunt would show him the picture of me when I was calling on the phone and I’d be like ‘oh, let me speak to Dylan’ and he said to me one day, when

I was in Okinawa, he says ‘James, how come you don’t ever take a shower, I have to take a shower, how come you don’t?’ And I’m like, ‘well, what are you talking about Dylan?’ and his mom gets on the phone and she’s like ‘well, I always show him this picture of you from Marine

Corp boot camp, with you in the dress blues.’ So, for the two and a half years that I was in

Okinawa, I maybe went home, once or twice, you know, for just a few days…so, that’s all he ever knew me in.

What was the general make up of people you served with, as far as race, class, gender?

White, predominantly white, it’s becoming more of a mix of black and Hispanic, but when you join the military, the first thing they tell you in Marine Crop, is ‘there’s light green and dark green, but we’re all green inside.’ So, race doesn’t have much of a priority; it’s gender that has a priority. My first four years were with…I was in an MOS 4 field, where I could have had women deployed with me, this was interesting, because obviously women in your area, in your workspace, it changes the environment. My last two years, were with an infantry unit, we didn’t see women. I mean, in Afghanistan, I maybe saw thirty or forty American females, ever…unless

I was on the major bases. So, you just didn’t see women. But, as far as races go, there’s all kinds in the Marine Corp.

4 Military Occupational Specialty

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Is that kind of unity more common in the Marines than in other branches of the military?

I could never comment on the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Coast Guard; but, I can tell you this, with Marines, you could have a white Marine walk down the street of Harlem and meet a

Hispanic Marine or something and it’d be like ‘what’s up, what’s up devil-dog, 5

you know, what’s up, Semper Fi, 6

whoo-rah’ you know, I just got off the phone with a gentleman who’s working with the VA – he’s a former Marine – and he’s like ‘Semper Fi.’ I did a full interview yesterday morning and the guy who was doing the interview – he was former Marine – so, as a

Marine you have a bond, yes. I would say for sure, we have a tighter bond than I guess the normal person, but I’m assuming the Army has the same kind of camaraderie within the units….But, for a Marine, it doesn’t matter whether if you were an engineer in the Marine Corp or if you were…a truck driver, you’re still a Marine and a rifleman first and that does build quite a bit of bond.

So, where were you first stationed and what year was that?

The first duty station for me was Combat Engineer School, which was in Courthouse

Bay, I was there in 99 to 2000. Then from there, I went to Okinawa – Camp Hansen – from

2000 to 2002. While in Camp Hansen I was forward to South Korea for a few month and then I was forward deployed with Operation Cobra Gold 7 to Thailand for a few months. I came back in

2002, to America, I turned down orders for Quantico,

8

for a teaching position, because I knew we were going to war. So, I turned down orders and I chose to go to a combative unit, which

5

Devil-dog is another slang term used to refer to Marines.

6

Semper Fi is Latin for ‘Always Faithful’ and is the motto of the US Marines.

7

Operation Cobra Gold refers to multi-branch military training exercise, which is held annually.

SEE: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/cobra-gold-2000.htm

8 Referring to the Marine Corp Base at Quantico, Virginia. SEE: http://www.quantico.usmc.mil/

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was 2 nd

Combat Engineer Battalion and I was transferred to the HNS

9

company office to Kuwait in 2003, I was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, with my unit, CB Main – Combat

Engineer Battalion Main – we were in combined, joint task force from the 1 st

and 2 nd

Combat

Engineer Battalions, which is the East and the West Coast. And while serving there I was serving as a member on the NBC Reconnaissance Team – Nuclear, Biological, Chemical

Warfare Recognizance – basically, it was our jobs to go ahead and basically tell our unit commanders the proper procedures for searching, as well as the seizure of such materials. So, if we found any bunkers, we would probably be the first ones to go and take a look at them. When

I came back from there, from Iraq in 2003, in May, I was [inaudible] – transferred my jobs from engineer to infantry – and I was deployed with 3 rd

Battalion, 6 th

Marines, Weapons Company,

CAAT Platoon – Combined Anti-Armor Team.

And while with 3 rd Battalion, 6 th Marines, 3-6 Weapons Company CAAT Platoon, I was immediately forward deployed to Cuba, for sixth months. So after coming back from Iraq, I went straight to Cuba, for sixth months. And I as on the fence line

10

from May to November of

2003 guarding the fence line…of Cuba / Guantanamo Bay – and that’s US Naval base GTMO.

Also from there, from Cuba, I came back in November and in 2004 we went to Twentynine

Palms for winter attacks and then we came back. Then we went in May of 2004 to Afghanistan till November of 2004 and while in Afghanistan I was deployed to many different [inaudible] and a couple of major bases. I finished out my deployment there in November of 2004 and then went from there to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, again, and I stayed there until February of

2005, where by which my reenlistment options were; reenlist with no money, no bonus, no job

9

Host Nation Support

10

The fence line in Cuba refers to the border that separates the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base from the rest of Cuba.

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transfer, no nothing, I would be going back to combat for six to twelve months in Iraq with a general.

Let’s go back for second…

Sorry…

That’s alright. Was it common to have that many different deployments all over the place, was that something you sought out?

I wanted to travel, right [laughs]? I told you that first, right? There’s some guys that get to one unit and they stay with that unit for four years, no problem. There’s some guys that get to that unit and they deploy right away and then when they come from that, then they’re put on another deployment…or something else or they transfer duty stations. I was one of the guys that,

I did a few deployments and then I did some more deployments later on. I had a brief lull when I was in Okinawa for about a year – I was under investigation – so, I didn’t deploy. But, let me tell, my Sea Service Deployment Ribbon has four starts on it, so that means I’ve got it five times.

So, prior to going to Iraq, what did you know about the country or the situation there?

It was hot [laughs].

Was that the extent of it?

Prior to going to Iraq, what I knew about it was; in the first Gulf War we had went into the southern oil fields and we helped secure the oil fields as well as push Saddam and his forces out of Kuwait and Saudi…outer lying areas. Basically, we really didn’t do too much. I mean, we knew it was going to be a hot country, we knew it was going to be desert country, we knew we were going to be facing MOUT

11

– Military Urban Operations…Situations – which is basically fighting in cities, we knew it wasn’t going to be jungles, we knew it wasn’t going to be

11 Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain

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the high mountains or anything like that, we knew it was just going to be, probably in the cities.

And there wasn’t really much of an emphasis on roadside bombs at the time, there really wasn’t much of an emphasis on anything, other than ‘weapons of mass destruction’[in a deep, robot like voice]. And that was the big thing.

Had you assumed you would be fighting the Iraqi army or was the plan…

Aw, fuck, we thought we were going to be gassed first. But, then we realized…that our units, were going to hit them as hard as the could [slaps hands together] right away, the first units to hit were the Patriots and the long range bombers – the bombers that were fueling in Missouri and then flying to Iraq and coming back. Then you got the F-117 – the stealth bombers – you got the B-2 bombers, you got all of the special operation troops, that were running all sorts of screening missions. Then you had tanks, you had AmTracs,

12

you had tons of armor, then you had us. And we were to be making the initial breech into Iraq, because Saddam had dug a few trenches, placed a few obstacles, and so had the Kuwaitis. And we were going to have to breech through all of these obstacles to get to the road, where we wanted to go, to go north, towards

Baghdad. It turns out, we didn’t even have to do it.

We just literally drove through a border checkpoint…twice [laughs]. My unit is the only unit in the history of warfare, ever, to have assaulted the same country, twice, in like fifteen minutes. If you can imagine, there’s the six languages of the NATO, right, so there is probably twelve different language signs and all these signs are basically saying…‘war this way, boys’ and it’s pointing to the right. So, my unit commander was the only commander to go to the left.

We breeched into Iraq, we passed this border checkpoint guard – and, I’m locked and loaded, my bolt to the rear, sling shot, you know, I’m looking down the chamber, I’m ready to fight – cause,

12 A type of armored vehicle.

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I’m thinking the first time we get over to these oil fields there’s going to be Feyadeen troops running all over trying to light these bombs on these oil wells. These GOSPs – Gas-Oil

Separation Plants – and when we passed this border guard, he had no clue that we were even coming by, he was like, looking at us and then he kind of saluted and waved and it was like

‘welcome to Iraq’[speaks with a fake Iraqi accent]. So, we drove in, we spent fifteen minutes going around these oil pipeline areas and we had these huge eighteen-wheelers with these huge…heavy duty construction equipment…on the flatbeds and we were having to make K-turns and shit and we realized that these Red Crescent trucks, these like…Red Cross – the Muslim version – were ahead of us on the road and we’re like ‘how the fuck did they get there?’ And we realized…we’re on the wrong road, so we had to get a UN escort out of Iraq and back into Iraq.

Now, that’s something that my news reporter, whose imbedded with us, didn’t even report on…to report such a big massive failure on the first day of the ground war, forget about it.

Since you just mentioned embedded reporters, what was the relationship like with the embedded reporters that were following you guys around?

My embedded reporter was Carl Prine, he was for the Pittsburgh Tribune…Carl and I had a what I would consider to be a very laughing good time, but Carl was really…in my own opinion, he had to report on certain things and that was it. Whatever he could report on, he was trying to, but let me tell you, I don’t think that he reported on half of the shit he probably wanted to. The relationship with us and Carl was special, unlike any other reporting relationship, because Carl was a prior service Marine, he achieved an NCO

13

rank, so, when he joined up with us, they gave him like officer rank in status as a reporter. So, basically he could go up to an O-2 an O-1 and say ‘hey sir, how you doing, what’s up?’ and they would be like ‘hey Carl, how you

13 Non-Commissioned Officer

123

doing?’ and he’d be like ‘I need help or I need an interview, but he couldn’t go up to like a field grade officer and start shooting the shit. The thing with Carl was, he traveled with wherever we went, he had to protect himself, he had to buy his own gear, the military didn’t issue him a flak jacket, I don’t believe. Carl looked like he just walked out of the local Army-Navy store and just showed up on the frontlines in Kuwait. But, he was a cool dude, he gave me a phone call when I was in the GOSPs, he gave me a phone call because I gave him a five-minute interview.

14

So, he gave me a phone call on the sat phone, 15 so I’m calling over the sat phone, there’s scuds going down…we got Patriots going that way, Doha at the time is getting bombed and I’m calling home to New Jersey and I’m like ‘hey, Aunt Cookie, how you doing…I’m like, here in Iraq.’

What were some of your main duties in Iraq?

Security.

Security.

Security, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You are always securing yourself, the Marines around you, and all of the equipment in the convoy. As an engineering battalion, we were supposed to be doing engineering missions or supporting engineering missions or being called up to support engineering missions for the grunts. We secured an airfield and made a field expedient runway, because at the time the Army had no food, but they had excess ammo; the

Marines had no ammo, but tons of food. So, the Marines and Army were swapping food and ammo and the generals got involved and said ‘fuck no, we’re getting a runway down tonight, this is not happening.’ I was also a member of the NBC Reconnaissance Team, I rode with my warrant officer, I can’t remember his name right now. But I also rode in the Intel vehicle, with

14

SEE: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_125176.html

15 A satellite phone.

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our S-2 sergeant and S-2 officer. Basically, I was really just a…I received training as an engineer, but I became a security guy – that was it.

Did that transfer into checkpoint work?

Searching cars, searching vehicles, searching houses, searching bunkers, searching tunnels, searching…I did so much searching and I never found shit. I mean, the only thing I found was a lot of old gas masks that were ditched by the Iraqis that were fleeing the area. We found some Saddam money. We found a whole bunch of crap literature on the ‘Zionist-Western-

Israeli-State-of-America’[said with a sinister Arab accent] all this other crap. We found the Iraqi

Atomic Energy Facility, we secured that for a couple of weeks. We really didn’t do much, we did security, a lot of security.

When you were in Iraq did you feel like there was anything you had to do that conflicted with your personal ethics or your sense of what it meant to be a soldier?

I was a Marine, first off [laughs].

Sorry.

But, I, man let me tell you, some of the things that I remember in Iraq, is just like the kind of people who you’re deployed with. You have some people who are humanists – who believe in, the loss of life is greatly deeply affecting them – then you have other people who are, I mean, borderline socio-paths – they eat, sleep, breath, and shit the Marine Corp – and for them it’s all about the mission and there is no gray line. You know…I don’t know. Looking at the children’s faces was a big thing, knowing that their father, their mother, their brother, their sister, somebody in their family is probably going to be killed by us in the next few years and now I’m looking back into my memories and seeing their faces - I wonder how many of them are dead. You know, you would be asked by the locals, ‘how do you feel about coming here, how do you think

125

to protect us, how do you think to protect these problems that we have, what is America doing for this, what is America doing for that?’ I mean, they’re asking just Joe Blow on the street with a gun. I mean, I’m sorry, PFC

16 …Anders on the side of the street is not a diplomat, PFC Anders is a Marine Corp 240-Gunner or something like that.

So, in that situation could you talk to the civilians that were asking those questions?

Would you be allowed to say what you thought about being there?

Oh, yeah. I would talk to them and I would try to make reasonable sense of what the fuck I was doing, but I mean, even I don’t understand it.

On that scale you mentioned early, ranging from humanist to borderline sociopath; where did you feel you were falling in that?

I felt I was falling in the self-defense range. Anytime I assumed a combative role in the

Marine Corp – I believe that was on the self-defense as well as the offense – it was my job to defend myself, my job to defend people around me, and I would have no problem with exercising extreme and deadly force to do such. However, I always kinda looked at like, what is it really that’s going on? I tried to look deeper into things. You know, I saw somebody down the end of a runway and he’s picking up ammunition and shit, you know I could have fired a couple of warning shots at him or I could have walked up to him and arrested him or whatever, or because he’s collecting explosive ordnance, I could have freaking shot him as an enemy combatant. But, I knew he’s probably souvenir hunting, I mean shit, it’s cool, guns are cool. So, he’s probably souvenir hunting, you know I didn’t really think too much about it at the time that

16 Private First Class

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he could be building a bomb, but that’s today’s fears…is IEDs

17

and stuff. So, every time you come into a situation you have to get out of your box and take a look at everything around.

This has effected me when I come home, because now I can’t switch it off [snaps fingers]. Now, I’m hyper-vigilant all the time, now I’m always recognizing things, I’m always aware of…how many people are on the train, how many people are on the train platform, how many people are walking around me, you know? I’m aware of helicopters that are passing over, everything, the whole bit.

So, at what point in your service did you realize you were against the war?

I didn’t.

Not when you were in Iraq, at all?

It came down to be where my reenlistment options came up. And after doing six honorable, faithful years for the Marine Corp, after receiving the Good Conduct Medal, after doing so many deployments in so many different countries, so many different regions…the only option that the Marine Corp gave me for reenlistment was to go back to Iraq. And I told them, very nicely, ‘thank you, but fuck you, it’s not happening for me.’ Let’s say my sister, I’ll just say…J., has two tours in Iraq, my sister, J. as well – another J. – has two tours in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan, her husband has multiple tours in both regions, my cousin, W., he has tours in the Middle East region and is now being retrofitted for nuclear subs, okay, Uncle Sam has gotten his from my family. I mean, I just, you ever hear of three times the charm? That’s all I could think about, I didn’t see much combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, face-to-face firefighting, I mainly saw things like mortar rounds, you know I saw artillery strikes against us, I was a tunnel rat in

17


Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan, that kinda stuff affects me. I did a lot of vehicle mounted convoy operations, I was involved in an IED attack, my vehicle wasn’t hit, but I was involved in one. And, you know, coming back from Afghanistan I just couldn’t see going back to Iraq to push it, to really push my luck.

Were they going to threaten you with stop-loss at all?

At the time, the rumors of stop-loss were going around, ‘they’re gunna do it, they’re gunna do it.’ Some, MOSs 18 were stop-lossed already, not all MOSs, my MOS was one they were trying to hand out money to, so, being as I didn’t qualify for the money, because they never gave me the MOS designating code, because they never sent me to the School of Infantry - they sent me to Cuba instead – I was never going to be promoted, not in the infantry. I was only promoted to sergeant on inactive reserve. You know, I just couldn’t see staying around, anymore, for that shit.

During your time in Iraq, did you feel you were fighting a war you could or that there were some objectives that could actually be attained?

When we had got to Baghdad, I remember we had done a convoy mission into Baghdad.

It was almost dusk and we rolled up to the Hilton, alright, this was just after they pulled down

Saddam’s statue in the center ring. We were kinda looking around and Baghdad was quite, there was no artillery, there was no mortars, there was no nothing…just people in cars and they told us this is one of the quietest nights we’ve seen yet. Later on, maybe a day or so later, I was just south of there, in this area that we had secured and President Bush was on and he announced…the mission accomplished. I was kinda like, I was amazed a bit, by the whole thing…when he had said ‘mission accomplished’ we knew we had taken Baghdad, but what

18 Military Occupational Specialty

128

mission was accomplished? And then our leaders told us that we were going back to Iraq [pulls out a pile of photographs and points to one of the pictures of himself], this is ‘mission accomplished’ that’s the day that he said ‘mission accomplished.’ Our leaders told us that in

Iraq, the next forces to come on were going to be participating in Operation Phase-1 Bravo. And we were like ‘what the fuck is Phase-1 Bravo, we just took this country, we went to fuckin

Baghdad, we won, [shouts],’ and the guy was like, ‘well, Operation Phase-1 Bravo is where we install the interim government for Iraq and [inaudible] their economic and social developments as well as…’ And we were like, ‘what, does that have to do with the average Marine, you know’ and they’re like ‘well, not much right now, because the National Guard is coming into replace you and then after that the reserves will be called up, and after that it will probably go to an

Army Unit and then after that, it will probably go to a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and then after that Marines will probably be called up again, to act as police troops.’ And we’re like, ‘wait a minute, so we’ve become police offices, we’re going to divide up the county into three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, whatever, providences and we’re going to become police officers, while they’re trying to shoot at us.

Because, let me tell ya, my unit, we didn’t really kill anybody, we didn’t really see any firefights in Iraq. So, all those people the Feyadeen, the Iraqi Republican Guard, where did they go? I mean, you had guys that were surrendering to Apache helicopters. You know, an Apache gunner, flies down, and he’s not going to open up his 20mm cannon on 150 guys. He’s gunna radio in, ‘I’ve got 150 guys here, it looks like they’re all surrendering,’ why? Because we cut the head off the snake so quick…so, you got 150 guys going to surrender, and then the helicopter flies away, what do you thing happens to those guys? You know, recently in Iraq, they had 500

129

to 2,000 troops in the month of March, desert at the battle of Basra.

19

These are Iraqis that we trained, deserting; where do you think the latest militia is going to come from? Imagine this if you will. 2,000 guys divided by four, cause it’s four men for a fire team – that’s a lot of fire teams – it only takes four guys to run a really good crew, to go and place IEDs to go out and do sniping missions, to go out an do any mission you want. I mean, we’re training the people that are going to be fighting against us, we’re training the people that are going to fighting against them, it’s all crazy.

What about now, what would you like to see the resolution be? What can physically happen in Iraq?

Since we can’t press the reset button, we have to deal with what’s going to happen, we are going to have problems with the three major tribes – Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds – they are going to be fighting over land. You’re also going to have violence coming from, supposedly,

Iran. You may even have violence coming from Palestine-Israel, you may have violence coming from Turkey,

20

you may have violence coming from Kuwait…who knows? You’ve got billions of dollars at stake, BILLIONS, somebody’s going to try and lay claim on that, best believe. And somebody is going to feel that they should have a little piece of it, but they’re going to be cut off

[claps hands together quickly] and they’re not going to have any of it. So there’s going to be violence.

If you ask me, I think we need five minutes and seventy-two hours. That’s five minutes for the Marine security guards to go arrest everyone on Bush and Cheney’s staff; seventy-two hours, if it doesn’t drive, if it doesn’t roll, if it doesn’t drag, if you can’t fly it, tow it, truck it, out of Iraq, leave it. Leave it as a down payment for the Iraqi people’s reparations that we fucking

19

SEE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7321461.stm

20 SEE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7260478.stm

130

owe them. I can’t even begin to imagine, when we had 4,000 dead soldiers we had paid over a billion dollars in SGLIs, that’s Service Group Life Insurance. Each service member, when he dies, his family receives or his next of kin receives a quarter of a million dollars - 250,000 -

250,000 times 4,000 is one billion. Now, imagine how many Iraqis are dead, over 100,000 – most papers are saying – some are even claiming 1 to 2.5 million, there’s a lot of people dead, that’s a lot of reparations that we fucking owe. I mean, yeah, some of them have died from violence from Iraqis, some of them have died from violence from insurgents, suicide-bombers and whatnot. But, Christ, I mean, I’m not even a religious person but, shit, we fucking, best believe we owe them money, we owe them something. It’s not going to be like Vietnam where we freaking left and that was it, I mean, we’ve gotta do something for em. I think the least that we could do is leave everything for them.

So, when faced with your reenlistment options, it was either go back to Iraq or…what was the other option?

Get out.

And you elected to get out, was that an honorable discharge?

Honorable RE Code-1 Alpha, which is the highest form of discharge you can get. With an Honorable RE Code-1 Alpha, you are top of the line, cream of the crop, they want you back, if you ever want to you can go ahead and give em a call. There has been guys that have been out five, six, seven years, give em a call, they’ll put through your paper work, see how much rank they owe you and get you back in the service. But, for me, I’m claiming disability with the VA right now so, they’re not going to call me.

So, what was the first thing you did when you ended your service?

131

I immediately, immediately, and I encourage this for anybody, to see the VA as soon as they get…even notification that they are getting out. I saw the VA right away, I got out on terminal leave, which is extra vacations days, in February 2005, I was officially out in March of

2005. I received my DD-214, which was my piece of paper that said I was out of the military, I received that, March of 2005, I received in April my VA benefits. That quick, because I had put em in right away.

Then I did what most Marines and soldiers do, I tried to find work. The first job interview they asked me, ‘have I killed anybody?’ On the job interview. Yeah, that’s, it’s brash, it’s rude, and if I could I would have done something about it right there. But, I did seven jobs, maybe eight jobs in one year, and I realized that I couldn’t handle or control anything that was going on in my life and I needed to get away for America. So, I left, I went to Europe for a few years – two years, just under it.

And I came back in connections with the vets, Veterans for Peace and the Veterans for

Peace recommended that I check out IAVA,

21

I checked them out, but they looked like a cookiecutter Democratic-shit. So, then I was like, ‘aw, that’s great, whatever’ then the Veterans for

Peace guy said, ‘well, you’ve got to check out Iraq Veterans Against the War’ and when I checked out this website – IVAW.org – I found these guys and was like ‘aw, this is fucking cool.’ I started Youtubing everybody and seeing everybody talk and I was like ‘yeah, right’ I’m not anti-American, I’m not anti-troops, I’m not anti-military, I’m anti-loss of human life, I’m anti-wrong mission, I’m anti-George Bush, I’m anti-politic [chuckles]. And, I hooked up with these guys from Winter Solider and that’s how I came to be here.

21 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American - SEE: http://www.iava.org/

132

So, was IVAW your first entrance into political activism or any kind of anti-war activities?

Let me tell you, in the two years that I was traveling around Europe every time I’d meet somebody, it’d be like ‘so, what country are you from?’ And, I’d be like ‘I’m from America,

[begins to sing] I’m sorry’ and that’s exactly what I would tell them and they would always laugh and giggle and then we’d have a little talk about our politics and whatnot. And, for just under two years, I spent pretty much every fucking day of my life talking to people about how much I disliked the war. And it bored on my soul, just that I was the only one speaking out, how come nobody else is doing this and how come I’m going through the fucking problems I’m going through with the VA and I’m going through problems with my mental health and I’m going through the problems with girls and relationships and family and money and, oh my god. And then I saw these guys and I was like ‘ahhh, these guys are right on point with where I’m at.’

And, this is where I entered into the arena, so to speak.

So, were all of your feelings against the war coming just from personal experience or were you getting outside material from academic stuff or…?

I spent two or three years clued to Yahoo-news, always looking at what the Yahoo-news has to say about it and cursing at the freaking computer screen when I see what they are saying, cause I’m like ‘it’s bullshit, it’s lies, it’s not true, or it’s only partially true, or why aren’t they telling the real deal? Why is it that there is a female, twenty-something year old reporter, reporting from freaking Los Angeles, whose never left the West Coast? When the military is never held accountable and they’re not getting on TV and speaking, and when they do speak, it’s some hootie-tootie general.’ Let me tell you, you wanna get the real raw account, go get Lance

Corporal So-and-so off of his post, at like three in the morning and ask him how he feels about

133

being away from fiancé, for fourteen months, in Iraq, where he could get fucking shot when he goes back on post. And, Lance Corporal So-and-so is probably going to tell you ‘this is how I feel’ but, let me tell you, his command is not going to like it, his command is going to suppress it, he command is going to try to suppress his voice, and that’s what pissed me off so much. Is that we’re not getting the actual, real deal intelligence, from the people on the ground, from the boots on the ground.

Before you got involved with IVAW, what were you impressions of the anti-war movement before that, when you were in the service, because there were a lot of anti-war marches against

Iraq, before people even went into Iraq?

I wasn’t even aware of it, I wasn’t aware of it. Being in the military, they put the blinder on you, right? And when that blinder is on, you can only see what’s at the other end, and at the other end is ‘November of 2004, I’m coming home from Afghanistan,’ that’s it, everything else is in that blinder. All of your family, is kind of like outside of it, all of that political hootie-tootie bullshit is all outside of it. We really weren’t even notified, I mean, there were maybe one or two people that I even knew that didn’t even like the war. And the one guy that I met, he was in my unit before we went into Iraq – he was a conscientious objector

22

– he was called into the first sergeant’s office and the first sergeant went ‘what if they go ahead and them Iraqis come into your house and they rape your wife and they kill your daughter, how would you feel about that?’ And the guy said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe in what we’re doing, I don’t…I can’t conscientiously go there and take someone’s life’ and he got fucking yelled at from the first sergeant and they still deployed his ass.

22

The Central Committee for Conscientious Objector is one of many organizations working with

COs, today. SEE: http://www.objector.org/

134

Since becoming active with IVAW have you been involved with any actions, what are some of the things you’ve been doing?

Well, after testifying

23

in Winter Soldier, in the 17 th

, 18 th

, and 19 th

of March 2008,

24 went ahead and I took place in the actions on the 19 th

for the five-year mark of this horrible

I occupation.

25

We marched, pretty much all over DC-area, but we stormed and took the Archives

- we jumped a fence about eight and a half feet tall – and there was three IVAW members, myself, Dan Brown, Adam Kokesh, and a VFP guy.

26 We were waving flags and we were on a bullhorn for about twenty-five, thirty minutes, they were going to arrest us and they couldn’t, because we were acting in a non-violent peaceful protest. We have the right to protest, we have the right to assembly, we have the right to free speech. After that, I also took place in a protest on the 21 st

of March,

27

when we hit 4,003 dead US soldiers; we had four in the same day, seventy-two dead Iraqis that day, 29,064 wounded and thirty dead that month, so far, on that day,

I carry around the slip of paper on my wallet, so…

After that, I took place in a GI resistance conference in New York City. I’m also scheduling some stuff in the future, I’m going to be participating in a conference on Afghanistan in Germany, in June. I’ve got some other things planned in Rutgers, I’m going to be speaking later on this month. As well as, I’m trying to help support a high school walkout that happened

23

To view James’ testimony SEE: http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony/rules-engagementpart-2/james-gilligan/video

24

Winter Soldier actually too place the preceding weekend from March 13 th

through the 16 th

.

25

On March 19 th

, 2008 there were a series of separate direct actions going on throughout

Washington, DC. One large march was avoided and instead a series of small marches, street theater, road-blocks, and other forms of direct action were taken with a number of groups organizing independently, but maintaining a respectful coordination and solidarity with each other. SEE: http://www.5yearstoomany.org/

26

Media coverage of this was sparse at best, but here is a brief description and video of the action: http://ivawactions.ning.com/video/video/show?id=835788:Video:3822

27 SEE: http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display_brief/130441/index.php?limit_start=32

135

in Princeton, New Jersey. I’ve got a few things on my plate so far, it’s filling up, which is great, because it’s about time that I’m given the outlet to wake America up.

So, getting involved in this anti-war culture of which IVAW is a part, do you find it hard to navigate as a veteran?

No, no, I’m on the tip of the spear right now. When it comes down to it, of the anti-war movement, I feel like I’m on the tip of the spear. And, I feel that a lot of the other organizations are more than willing and ready to help aid and support us. Sure, we’re always going to have the people that don’t like us, that’s fine, but I welcome them with open arms when they come across that side of the line and they say, ‘you know what, I want our boys home, too.’

Now, what about working with people who are further to the left, as far as people that don’t like the military, who don’t think we should have standing armies, the anarchist or the communists or whatever, who are natural allies in some sense, but if you are focused more on the three objectives of IVAW, is it hard to navigate those relationships?

I look at it like this, Iraq Veterans Against the War – IVAW – has three standing missions, which is the end of all occupying forces in Iraq, reparations for the Iraqi people and their government, as well as full benefits for all returning veterans. I personally have my own mission statement, which is the end of all occupying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, reparations for all Iraqi and Afghan people and their government – because I’ve served in both areas. I personally don’t get involved with the Socialist or the Communist Parties, I had someone approach me at Winter Solider and he approached the wrong guy, because let me tell you, I lived for over a year in Bulgaria, which is a former communist society. And my ex-girlfriend, her grandfather was hung, upside-down in his well, because he refused to sign over his land to the communists, so I don’t associate with them. As far as the anarchists go, yeah, it sounds like a

136

great idea. You know, total fire sale, sell it all off, freaking write off all debt and start from a new. Fuck the police, fuck the [inaudible], fuck the man, whatever, but in all actuality, some of these things are really put in place to help protect us, not only from other people abroad, but from ourselves. Yeah, you know, I got a ticket the other day in New York City, for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, that is the police state we live in. But, you know what? Let me tell ya, if, you know, somebody’s beating up a woman or something like that on the street, I want to know that I can go ahead and call the police and have them come and save that woman.

So, in your own personal mission statement, you include Afghanistan in that?

I do, in my own personal mission, yeah.

Why is that?

Well, I served in Afghanistan for sixth months and I’m fully aware that Afghanistan does not get the same media, because there’s not so many deaths in Afghanistan. But, if you did want to recall, Pat Tillman

28

was one of the prime deaths there over in Afghanistan, my unit personally had two dead in Afghanistan. So, I mean, Afghanistan does hit home. But, that’s another crazy mission all together, I mean, they say we’re looking for Taliban and for Al-Qaeda, you know what I say? I say we gotta start small first, let’s start with Grenada, let’s start with a really small island, maybe Puerto Rico or something like this. Because, let me fucking tell you, Afghanistan is very vast, you wanna see a picture of Afghanistan? That’s how vast you’re looking at [reaches back into his pile of photos and selects one], now they’ve got underground tunnels, they’ve got caves, they’ve got mines, they’ve got mountain ranges…. When it comes down to it, let me tell ya, we might as well be looking for Osama on the moon. It’s just not possible, whenever they see us coming, I mean, that’s a losing mission right there.

28

Pat Tillman was an NFL star who was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire.

4SEE: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/zirin

137

Before becoming active in IVAW were you familiar with the concept of GI resistance or with Vietnam Veterans Against the War?

That’s a very good question. Prior to me joining IVAW I had not really heard of any organizations that were in the peace movement. I’ve heard of American Legion, 29

I’ve heard of

Veterans of Foreign Wars,

30

I’ve heard of Vietnam Veterans of America

31

and I thought these organizations were there to help me get my claims put in with the VA, these organizations were to help me find a job, if I wanted to weld steel or do some cab-driving or something like that, these organizations were there to give me my dollar-fifty draft beer on Wednesdays. But, these major organizations, Veterans for Peace, Code Pink,

32

stuff like this, I really didn’t know about them, I mean, I’m just now getting involved into the whole thing and for me it’s, I mean it’s like losing your virginity all over again. Because I’m really finding more and more every day. Like, at Winter Solider, one of my roommates was Michael Hoffman, 33 I didn’t even know that that was the co-founder of this fucking organization, that’s like how obliviously out of the loop I am right now. And, I’m trying to catch up and it’s a long difficult process.

How do you react when people use the phrase ‘support the troops,’ what in your opinion does that actually mean and how should people use that phrase, if they should at all?

Uh, ‘support the troops’ is something that I think many people will throw out there, they’ll say – especially the people who are against us – they’ll say ‘how dare you do this, how dare you become a traitor, how dare you become a pinko-commie or whatever, a fascist, how dare you become a hippie or whatever, you should support the troops.’ And I love it, I love it

29

SEE: http://www.legion.org/homepage.php

30

SEE: http://www.vfw.org/

31

SEE: http://www.vva.org/

32

SEE: http://www.codepink4peace.org/

33 SEE: http://ivaw.org/founders

138

when they say that, cause I do support the troops 110% I support the troops, I support everything about the troops. I don’t support their commanders, I don’t support their leadership, I don’t support them being called upon to do some of the missions that their doing right now. And I think honestly, they would be better situated, and better suited, and better off, if they were at home. But, I will absolutely, 110% support the troops and I think that those people that do say

‘support the troops’ need to take a look at what they’re doing to support the troops, because what they’re doing, is doing some flag waving. You know, put a yellow bumper sticker…no, that’s remember the troops, alright, you wanna talk about support the troops? Donate about $5,000, so that way they can go ahead and buy an new Dragon Skin

34

bulletproof vest, that’s support the troops. Go ahead an mail a $5,000 check to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and I will say that you support the troops more than I do.

Has your family been supportive of you being involved with IVAW?

My family, they…I contacted my aunt and I told her, ‘hey listen, Al-Jazeera 35

to BBC

36 covered us,’ she says ‘I Googled the name, I Googled IVAW, I couldn’t find anything on it’ I just don’t think that’s possible, because I know when I Google my name and IVAW a lotta shit is coming up [laughs]. You know, for me, I’m looking at that and saying, ‘maybe I’m not getting the proper support,’ but that’s okay, they’re still family, blood is thicker than water and when it comes down to it, politics aside, they’re my family still. And if they don’t realize that when I go and see them, then that’s fine, but they’re still my family.

It sounds like you have a lot of organizing ahead in your immediate future, but do you have any long-term plans of where you want to be in the future?

34

SEE: http://www.pinnaclearmor.com/body-armor/dragon-skin.php

35

SEE: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/55ABE840-AC30-41D2-BDC9-

06BBE2A36665.htm

36 SEE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

139

I think I want to continue to help veterans, I wanna continue to help, especially those that are coming back and were AWOL or conscientious objectors, because these are the men that will never receive VA benefits and I think that they need to have some form of legislation passed to cover – to umbrella them – as well, as backdating the same thing for people from the Vietnam

Era. There’s far too many homeless on the streets right now and if you asked any one of these homeless men, they’ll probably tell you they served in Vietnam.

37

And let me tell ya, being homeless, having been homeless, having stripped down to a bag, I can tell ya, this [moves over to his closet and pulls out a large back-pack] is what my bag looks like, there are a lot of guys out there with a lot less. And as far as I look at what’s going on right now, you have some members of IVAW, that were homeless. I can only imagine, like, if these people aren’t receiving the kind of care…they’re going to fall of the face of the earth.

I think I want to do something long-term working with vets, I’m also an amateur musician, and I’m getting now into speaking out in the public, but long-term…I’m just trying to take it day by day for myself, cause I’m dealing with problems myself. I’m dealing with my

PTSD, my back and my neck, my hips and my knees, everyday, I’m in pain right now, I can’t even turn my neck to the right. So, I’m just trying to, you know, push on, make the next days count, because if I wait five years to speak out, it’s going to be five years too late for the men on the ground, but if I can speak out today, if I can speak out next week, if I can speak out next month, that’s one step closer to pulling out the rug of GI resistance. To, making these guys step forward to their commanders and say ‘we’re not going to be part of this war machine’ and that’s important for us, we have to get that word out soon, because the war in Iraq is just going to get worse.

37

While statistics are difficult to gather in this field, it is estimated that approximately a quarter of all homeless individuals in the US are veterans. SEE: http://www.nchv.org/index.cfm

140

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