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11.17.10
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HOW MANY MORE FOR OBAMA’S WARS?
U.S. soldiers wounded during a roadside bomb attack are evacuated aboard a helicopter
by a medevac team, 101st Airborne Division, from a Tactical Control Point in Kandahar
province, Afghanistan September 27, 2010. REUTERS/Erik de Castro
In One Moment In
Afghanistan, Heroism
And Heartbreak:
“Honcho Hill Would Be
Afghanistan’s Hamburger Hill”
“These People,” He Said, Meaning
The Afghans, “Won’t Leave This
Valley:
“They Have Been Here Far Before I
Could Fathom An Afghanistan”
“Last April, After Three More Years Of
Killing And Dying In That Valley, The
Americans Decided To Leave The Place
To The Locals”
EVE OF BATTLE Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, center, before the fight in which Sgt. Joshua
Brennan, far left, and Spec. Hugo Mendoza, far right, would die. Photo: Lynsey
Addaio/VII
[Thanks to Alan Stolzer, Military Resistance Organization, who sent this in.]
November 13, 2010 By ELIZABETH RUBIN, The New York Times
Three years and three weeks ago. Dusk was falling fast on the Korengal Valley.
We were crouched on a shrub-laden plateau some 8,000 feet up in the mountains. The
soldiers were exhausted and cold. We’d been sleeping in ditches for five nights.
Insurgents were everywhere.
We could hear those insurgents on the radios saying things like: “They are all the way on
the end at the top sitting there.”
Pfc. Michael Cunningham, a deadpan Texan, said, “That is so us.”
Actually, it was much of Battle Company of the 173d Airborne Brigade, which was
spread across the mountains — First Platoon around Honcho Hill, watching over Second
Platoon in a village below called Landigal.
And the Taliban were itching to hit us again.
None of this had been part of the plan for Rock Avalanche, Battle Company’s six-day
mission to tame the valley before the onset of winter. But then again, that is what war is,
the mocking of plans.
The reaction in those moments of mockery is why we have Medals of Honor. But no one
knew that Rock Avalanche would be one of the defining events in the Afghan war. That
Honcho Hill would be Afghanistan’s Hamburger Hill.
Two days earlier, the Taliban had ambushed Battle Company in the forests and spurs of
the Abas Ghar ridge. At stunningly close range, they had shot and killed Sgt. Larry
Rougle, one of Battle Company’s best, toughest and coolest.
They had wounded Sgt. Kevin Rice and Spec. Carl Vandenberge, two of Battle
Company’s biggest.
And they had stolen night vision goggles and machine guns. That’s why, on this night,
Dan Kearney, the 27-year-old captain, had sent Second Platoon into Landigal — to
demand their stuff back from the villagers, who played dumb.
For a day or two everyone had been in shock and mourning and out for blood.
Now the fear was palpable. “If they can get Rougle, they can get any of us,” said Sgt.
John Clinard.
I was with Captain Kearney and his command group on the plateau and soon we were
helicoptered, in five minutes, to the Korengal Outpost.
But First and Second Platoons had to trek back through ambush country, under a full
moon.
As our Black Hawk left us off, rockets and machine-gun fire echoed off the valley’s walls.
First Platoon on Honcho Hill was getting hit. I heard Lt. Brad Winn on the radio,
shouting. His boys needed help. Five were down. Captain Kearney radioed commands
to his other platoon. “Drop everything, cross that river, help your brothers.”
Snippets of information hung in the air. “Urgent wounded Josh Brennan.” “Six exit
wounds.” “Needs a ventilator.” Kearney cursed and threw down his radio. “Eckrode leg.
Valles leg.”
“Who is the K.I.A?” “I think it’s Mendoza.” Spec. Hugo Mendoza was a medic from El
Paso and Arizona, Sgt. Joshua Brennan a quiet Gary Cooper type from Wisconsin. “We
are in contact again. Enemy K.I.A. in custody. Over.”
Kearney radioed back: “Keep bringing it on them,” and “Slasher is coming.”
Someone radioed they could see a man making off with Brennan’s rucksack and his M4.
In came Slasher, the AC-130, and the rucksack guy was dead.
Captain Kearney took a breath and told First Sgt. La Monta Caldwell: “Brennan’s
probably going to die. I would go and hold his hand and pray with him.” Which is what
Caldwell did.
As airpower took over, thunder and lightning lit up the sky while the two platoons forded
the river and climbed up to the Korengal Outpost.
They were drenched. Their eyes bulging and bloodshot. Their faces stained black.
Nearly everyone in First Platoon had a bullet hole in his vest or helmet.
Sgt. Chris Shelton dropped the belongings of an insurgent named Mohammad Tali. Sgt.
Salvatore Giunta had shot and killed him as he was dragging off Brennan. “His face
looked like a Halloween mask,” Shelton said. “No brains. I got them all over my hands. I
have to wash them.” The only reason they didn’t take more casualties, he said, was
Giunta and Gallardo.
Hunched over, elbow on his knee, head resting on his palm, Captain Kearney began
calling the families of the dead.
The next morning I found Sgt. Erick Gallardo outside and Sergeant Giunta on guard
duty. At just 23, Gallardo was the eldest in his squad and felt like the father. “Best thing
is for us to be a family, take care of each other,” he said.
“It’s five months in and we have five K.I.A.’s, couple platoons worth of Purple Hearts. Not
one person in my squad got out without a bullet round. It doesn’t feel good at all.”
And they told what had happened.
The platoon had waited until dark when the Apaches were overhead before heading out,
single file, Brennan in the lead. (Brennan was always in the lead, without protest. Even
after he’d been shot in the calf two months earlier when their patrol was ambushed. He’d
do anything for his friends.)
Not 300 meters on, they fell into the ambush. Gallardo remembered running forward to
get control of the fight, R.P.G.’s landing in front of him, bullets hitting the dirt, and then
one finally whacked him.
“When I fell, Giunta thought I was hit. He tried to pull me back to cover and got shot and
hit in the chest.”
But body armor saved both of them. Gallardo got Giunta and two other men and said,
“On 3 we are going to get Brennan and Eckrode.” They threw grenades, dropped down,
prepped the second round, and Gallardo shouted, “Throw them as far as you can.”
They found Spec. Franklin Eckrode wounded but trying to fix his weapon. Gallardo
began dressing his leg and suddenly heard Giunta yelling back: “Sergeant G, they are
taking Brennan away.”
Giunta told me: “I just kept on running up the trail,” he said. “It was cloudy. I was running
and I saw dudes plural and I was, like, ‘Who the hell is up here?’ I saw two of them trying
to carry Brennan away and I started shooting at them. They dropped him and when I
looked at him, he was still conscious. He was missing the bottom part of his jaw. He was
breathing and moving and I pulled him back in the ditch.”
His voice broke.
Everyone in the small observation post was failing to hold back tears.
“He was coming to and asking for morphine and I said, ‘You’ll get out and tell your hero
stories and come visit us in Florence,’ and he was, like, ‘I will, I will.’ “ Out of the sky
dropped a hoist and a medic and they gave him a trachea tube and Giunta kept
squeezing the bag to keep him breathing. There was silence and fidgeting.
And then Giunta said, “All my feelings are with my friends and they are getting smaller. I
have sweat more, cried more, bled more in this country than my own.
“These people,” he said, meaning the Afghans, “won’t leave this valley. They have been
here far before I could fathom an Afghanistan.”
“I ran to the front because that is where he was,” Giunta said, talking of Brennan. “I didn’t
try to be a hero and save everyone.”
On Tuesday Giunta will become the first living soldier to receive the Medal of Honor
since Vietnam.
He has said that if he is a hero then everyone who goes into the unknown is a hero.
He has said he was angry to have a medal around his neck at the price of Brennan’s
and Mendoza’s lives.
It took three years for the Pentagon to finalize the award.
And it is puzzling to many soldiers and families why the military brass has been so
sparing with this medal during the last decade of unceasing warfare.
As for the Korengal Valley, Giunta was right.
The Korengalis would never leave or give up.
Last April, after three more years of killing and dying in that valley, the Americans
decided to leave the place to the locals.
ACTION REPORTS
Call For Assistance:
With Outreach To Members Of The U.S.
Navy At San Diego
From: Mark Shapiro, Military Resistance Organization
To: Military Resistance Newsletter
Subject: Outreach To US Sailors San Diego
Date: Nov 15, 2010 5:29 PM
I’m on the lookout for an Outreach partner here in San Diego.
If there are any ‘Military Resistance’ readers in the San Diego area who would be
interested in joining me in Military Outreach please get in touch with a view to
meet up for a coffee to discuss the possibilities.
Please put ‘Outreach San Diego’ in the subject line.
A prompt reply assured.
Mark Shapiro
mshapirouk@yahoo.com
[On July 4th 1968, Mark Shapiro was among a group of seven U.S. war-resisting
troops who turned up on the lawn of the US Embassy in Stockholm to stage a sitdown protest against the war in Vietnam. T]
POLITICIANS CAN’T BE COUNTED ON TO HALT
THE BLOODSHED
THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE
WARS
“The single largest failure of the anti-war movement at this point
is the lack of outreach to the troops.” Tim Goodrich, Iraq
Veterans Against The War
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Florida Soldier Killed In Afghanistan
Sgt. Juan L. Rivadeneira of Davie, Fla., 27, was one of three soldiers killed Nov. 13,
2010 by a bombing in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Fort Campbell)
Missouri Soldier Killed In Afghanistan
Cpl. Jacob R. Carver of Freeman, Mo. was one of three soldiers killed Nov. 13, 2010 by
a bombing in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Fort Campbell)
North Carolina Soldier Killed In
Afghanistan
Army Spc. Jacob C. Carroll of Clemmons, N.C. was one of three soldiers killed Nov. 13,
2010 by a bombing in southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Fort Campbell)
Foreign Occupation “Servicemember”
Killed Somewhere Or Other In
Afghanistan:
Nationality Not Announced
November 16 Reuters
A foreign servicemember died following an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan
today.
Fairborn Native Soldier Killed In
Afghanistan
November 16, 2010 By Mark Gokavi, Staff Writer, Dayton Daily News
FAIRBORN — Family and school officials have confirmed that a Fairborn native and
Army soldier originally stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., has died in Afghanistan.
Spc. Jesse Adam Snow, a 2003 Fairborn High School graduate, reportedly was killed in
Afghanistan but the U.S. Department of Defense has not officially released the time,
place and circumstances of his death.
“He was quiet, but he always worked hard for me and he always tried to do the right
thing,” said Major Tony Rulli with Fairborn High School’s ROTC program. He said he
learned of Snow’s death Monday. “I could see Jesse serving his country.”
Rulli, who also taught most of Snow’s five other siblings, said he met Jesse when he
was a 9-year-old Little League baseball infielder. “He was a good, solid kid, a social
animal who had some close friends,” Rulli said. “Everybody loved Jesse.”
Rulli said Jesse Snow is the son of Senior Master Sgt. John Snow, who served at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and that the family has several military members. “I
would say it’s a patriotic family,” Rulli said.
Snow’s brother, John W. Snow, released this statement: “Jesse Adam Snow is a
beloved son, brother, and uncle. He is by far the most caring and selfless man I know.
He wanted nothing more than to do what was right for his country. Jesse said he had
witnessed evil. He stressed the importance of our role in Afghanistan. He accepted what
could possibly be his fate in the hope of making the world a safer place to live. “Our
thoughts and prayers go out to his fellow soldiers of the 101st Airborne and all other US
Military forces. There will forever be a painful void in our lives. We only hope that his
noble sacrifice will never be forgotten and not have been in vain.”
John W. Snow said Monday night that found out about his brother’s death late Sunday
night, which was John’s 30th birthday. John W. Snow said the family will fly to meet his
brother’s body during the escort home.
Snow had listed he was a member of Infantry 1-327 IN 101st Airborne Division Air
Assault based in Fort Campbell. He was also working with the NATO International
Security Assistance Force.
According to NATO, the ISAF’s mission is: “In accordance with all the relevant Security
Council Resolutions, ISAF’s main role is to assist the Afghan government in the
establishment of a secure and stable environment. To this end, ISAF forces are
conducting security and stability operations throughout the country together with the
Afghan National Security Forces and are directly involved in the development of the
Afghan National Army through mentoring, training and equipping.”
Some family members who received the news at about 11 p.m. Sunday, said they had
been up all night and are currently making funeral arrangements.
As of 8:30 p.m. Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense had not officially released the
time, place and circumstances of Jesse Snow’s death. Funeral arrangements are
pending.
“A U.S. Military Officer Exhorted
Them To Let Afghan Police Or
American Soldiers Know If The
Taliban Came To Town”
“Nodding In Agreement Amid The
Group Were Three Men Who
Looked, Dressed And Talked Like
The Other Villagers. They Were
Taliban”
Stupid German General Says Taliban
“Will Not Have Anywhere To Hide”
“Nowhere To Hide?” Echoed A Tribal
Elder From Panjwayi. “In Fact There Are
Many, Many Places To Hide. Everywhere
In The District, They Move As They Like”
“Who is a Talib?” he asked. “A man who takes up a gun and fights us. But we are
all Afghans, speaking the same language, in the same turbans and getup. We
can’t arrest everybody.”
[Thanks to Michael Letwin, New York City Labor Against The War & Military Resistance,
who sent this in.]
October 5, 2010 By Laura King, Los Angeles Times [Excerpts]
Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan —
On a recent bell-clear autumn afternoon a few miles outside Afghanistan’s secondlargest city, villagers listened courteously as a U.S. military officer, speaking through an
interpreter whose grasp of the local language seemed shaky, exhorted them to let
Afghan police or American soldiers know if the Taliban came to town.
Nodding in agreement amid the group were three men in beards, turbans and sandals
who looked, dressed and talked like the other villagers.
They were Taliban.
“They were standing right there with us, and everyone was too scared to say anything,”
a farmer named Farid, who grows pomegranates in the Arghandab district, northwest of
Kandahar, said as he described the encounter last month.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials characterize the ongoing confrontation
as the inexorable tightening of a noose around the Taliban, an enemy depicted as
increasingly beleaguered and on the run.
But for Kandaharis, both urban dwellers and villagers from the surrounding
farmlands, the narrative is somewhat different.
Taliban militants, they say, retain near-total freedom of movement inside and
outside Kandahar, as long as they stash weapons in a widely scattered network of
caches rather than carrying them around.
“Night letters,” the insurgents’ dreaded warning missives often aimed at civil servants
and prominent tribal elders, still arrive with clocklike regularity. Most disappointingly,
local people say, the improved government services touted as equal in importance to the
military drive have largely failed to materialize.
“Security is better, but it’s still a wartime situation,” said Kandahar’s mayor, Ghulam
Hamidi, interviewed in the governor’s compound, a sprawling fortress in the city center
where many senior officials live and work because it is too dangerous for them outside
the barricaded walls.
“We can’t fill government positions because people are afraid to come and accept these
jobs. Everyone is a target.”
In conversations with Kandaharis, the perceived impermanence of the Western
presence is a constant theme — coupled with the Taliban’s ability to fade away and then
reappear.
Even in areas declared secured by the foreign forces, the insurgents simply bide their
time, and then filter back — much as they did in Marja in neighboring Helmand province,
which remains a dangerous place more than seven months after a U.S. Marine-led
offensive.
One much-touted recent military operation took place in Mahlajat, a farming
district on Kandahar’s southwestern fringes. Afghan forces, heavily supported by
Western troops, staged a five-day operation in late August that they said largely
cleared the district of Taliban fighters.
“It’s not safer,” said Hamidullah Rafiq, a Mahlajat farmer who used to grow opium
poppies but switched to wheat after a government seed giveaway.
He is thinking of switching back, because the insurgents, he said, become angry when
farmers who changed crops could no longer pay as much toward a Taliban-imposed tax.
“The Taliban are still in the district in big numbers,” he said, shaking his head.
“They come to the door and take food and shelter and whatever else they want from us.
We are poor people. What are we supposed to do?”
Moreover, one Kandahar district’s relative safety sometimes comes at the expense of a
neighboring one’s. When military pressure is applied in one place, the insurgents most
often decamp to another, or take shelter in the city itself — a growing phenomenon,
nervous urbanites say.
The Western military is trying to address that “squirting” effect with what it describes as
multipronged offensives, such as one kicked off late last month in Kandahar’s Zhari and
Panjwayi districts. Code-named Dragon Strike, it is meant to deprive the insurgents of
several sanctuaries simultaneously.
At the onset of that operation, a NATO spokesman, German Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz,
said insurgents “will not have anywhere to hide” — an assertion met with
incredulity by villagers from the targeted areas.
“Nowhere to hide?” echoed a tribal elder from Panjwayi named Haji Abdullah, whose
family has farmed there for five generations. “I am sorry, but in fact there are many,
many places to hide. Everywhere in the district, they move as they like.”
The Western military says one of its primary success stories in Kandahar has come in
the form of near-nightly raids targeting midlevel Taliban commanders.
But in a densely populated urban environment, local people are feeling the heat as well.
During the course of one such operation last week, the Western military reported
that a man who had menaced coalition forces with an assault rifle had been shot
and killed.
He turned out to be an off-duty police officer who lived next door, said Col. Fazal
Ahmad Shirzad, the police security chief.
“I would say that in these raids, the intelligence is correct about 60% of the time,” he
said. “And wrong about 40% of the time.”
Shirzad said as long as the Kandahar operation continues, NATO forces — and even
Afghan police and soldiers — will continue to be bedeviled by the difficulty of
distinguishing friend from foe.
“Who is a Talib?” he asked. “A man who takes up a gun and fights us. But we are
all Afghans, speaking the same language, in the same turbans and getup. We
can’t arrest everybody.”
REALLY BAD PLACE TO BE:
ALL HOME NOW
Navy corpsman with India company 5th Marines, First Marine Division, patrols Nov. 5,
2010 in Sangin, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)
A U.S. Marine from the Eighth Marines calls for more ammunition during a battle against
Taliban insurgents in Musa Qala district in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province
November 7, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly
U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, First Marine Division, under fire Nov. 7,
2010 in Sangin, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)
U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, First Marine Division , return fire during a
patrol, Nov. 7, 2010 in Sangin, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)
U.S. Marines from the First Battalion, Eighth Marines Bravo Company return fire during
battle against Taliban insurgents in Musa Qala district in southern Afghanistan’s
Helmand province November 7, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly
MILITARY NEWS
THIS IS HOW OBAMA BRINGS THEM HOME:
ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE
The casket of Lance Cpl. Terry E. Honeycutt, at Arlington National Cemetery Nov. 15,
2010. Honeycutt, 19, of Waldorf, Md., died Oct. 27 in Afghanistan, of wounds received
while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Ann
Heisenfelt)
Veterans Day Parade
11.11.2010
Fifth Avenue, New York City
Photos: Next Left Notes; Bud Korotzer
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had
I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of
biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
Hope for change doesn’t cut it when you’re still losing buddies.
-- J.D. Englehart, Iraq Veterans Against The War
I say that when troops cannot be counted on to follow orders because they see
the futility and immorality of them THAT is the real key to ending a war.
-- Al Jaccoma, Veterans For Peace
“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to
time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
-- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787
One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head.
The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a
so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen
of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.
Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
December 13, 2004
The Social-Democrats ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the
tribune of the people who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and
oppression no matter where it appears no matter what stratum or class of the
people it affects; who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a
single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take
advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his
socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and
everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of
the proletariat.”
-- V. I. Lenin; What Is To Be Done
“The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the
Army from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the
government to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy”
-- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt
It is a two class world and the wrong class is running it.
-- Larry Christensen, Soldiers Of Solidarity & United Auto Workers
Masters And Servants Of War:
I Grew Up Believing In The Nobility Of
Military Service. But Today, I Mainly
Feel Angry At Those Who Profit By
Others’ Sacrifice:
“It’s Up To Us Civilians, Whenever
Possible, To Reach Out To Our Sons
And Daughters In Uniform”
American first world war cemetery, Seringes et Nesles, France. Photograph: Brian
Harris/Rex Features
From: Clancy Sigal
To: Military Resistance Newsletter
Sent: November 14, 2010
Subject: Masters and servants of war: Clancy Sigal
14 November 2010 By Clancy Sigal, Guardian News and Media Limited
But there’s a one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
– Bob Dylan, “Masters of War”
Although warlike by nature, I was raised, as was Barack Obama, by an antiwar mother
who preached (but sometimes did not practice) pacifism.
Perhaps I inherited a dominant rage gene from my absent father, who served jail time as
a war protestor even though he, too, had a violent personality. A child of contradiction, I
saw nothing wrong in hating the idea of war while, at the same time, obsessively
dressing up to play boy soldier.
The “interwar years”, a slight breathing space between the Flanders trenches and the
beaches of Guadalcanal and Normandy, conditioned me to an ongoing war fever. You
had to be a zombie not to be infected by newsreels and radio reports of the Japanese
massacre of Nanjing, Mussolini’s air raids on Ethiopia, our “banana wars” in Central
America and the Spanish civil war.
My latent pacifism was no match for the gladiator drumbeats of blood. School teachers
made us boys memorise Horace’s “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – it’s great to
die for your country. I couldn’t wait to be called to “my” war against Hitler and Hirohito.
Not even army duty as an infantry replacement cured me – though I’d been told, in
ghoulish detail, of war’s reality by barracks buddies who were combat veterans of the 4th
Infantry, which had landed at Utah Beach.
Back on furlough, in my Chicago neighbourhood, pals who had “been there”
overwhelmingly agreed that being under fire was a nauseatingly terrifying experience.
My friend “Bobby” had his hand blown away on D-Day-plus-Two, and to this day
“Marvin” has not recovered from the Ardennes tree-bursts of German shrapnel. Windows
all over Chicago’s west side had gold star flags put there by mothers who had lost sons
in battle.
But it wasn’t until I emigrated to England that I felt the full emotional impact of the malign
power behind those words we over-use on Veterans Day and Remembrance Sunday:
fallen hero.
Hitchiking beyond the Wash or riding on the (then) fabulously cheap British Rail, in each
and every town square I always found a stunning first world war monument listing name,
rank and unit, followed by shorter lists of the dead from 1939-45.
Standing in the rain, gazing at the honour rolls of the Accrington Lads, Leeds Chums
and Grimsby Pals – whole towns’ full of young men wiped out – a Great War generation,
many still rotting in Passchendaele shellholes – I imagined blood rather than water
dripping off the granite rifles and helmets and winged angels of the obelisks.
Hearts as well as bodies go dead. A generation of women had lost their sons,
husbands, fathers and boyfriends in the muddy trenches and, with them, their own
hopes. I kept meeting women – regiments of them – who never even got a chance to be
wives. “Butcher” Field Marshal Haig ended those women’s lives, too, in his line-abreast
“final pushes” against the German Machineengewehr at Ypres and the Somme that
killed nearly 1 million men in a single battle.
Hanging around the northern coal mining villages, I also met men, in their late fifties and
sixties who had been there. Outside Eastwood, Nottinghamshire – DH Lawrence’s
birthplace – an elderly miner once picked me up and gave me a lift in his three-wheeler.
He had been in the 45th Foot Sherwood Foresters in 1916.
“Oh aye, hardly anyone from my lot got back. I was gassed. The mustard. Went back
down to pit – imagine, with my lungs. You know they killed us all, even ones like me,
who made it out, felt dead.”
There are American towns, too, like Bedford, Virginia and Brook Park, Ohio, where, in
one war or another, lost most of their young men, sometimes in a single engagement.
The physical and moral courage of these killed soldiers is astounding.
To walk into a storm of enemy bullets or patrol a minefield, knowing the odds are against
you… suspecting your generals are stupid or half-mad… sticking it out because of “unit
cohesion” (brotherly love)… having the guts to get up out of a sheltering foxhole under
tree-bursts in yet another blundering attack like the Ardennes.
It’s enough to make you a pacifist, which I’m not.
On Veterans Day in the US (formerly Armistice Day), and on Remembrance Sunday in
Britain, my respect for the soldiers’ pride and stoicism turns to rage at the (old-fashioned
phrase) “merchants of death” who themselves never march to war, but see to it that the
young and poor do.
A few blocks from where I live, homeless, dazed Vietnam, Iraq and now
Afghanistan vets sleep under the 405 Freeway, a stone’s throw from a vast VA
military cemetery – the irony lost on no one.
Except perhaps on Diane Feinstein, one of my two California senators, whose
husband, Richard Blum, owns a controlling interest in two war-related companies,
thriving in Iraq and Afghanistan, that directly profit from the invasions Feinstein
voted for.
But there’s work to be done past the rage. Over 100 veterans kill themselves every
week, the highest proportion being Iraq and Afghanistan combat GIs, aged 18-29. This
“suicide surge” – denied by the Pentagon and Veterans Administration, but exposed
again and again in the mainstream media – is the most poignant face of a deeper
scandal, the “war on terror” that is destroying a generation of our best children.
The harm that this “long war”, lasting 50 to 80 years – now embraced as official
Pentagon doctrine – does to our young people, physically and mentally, should be
recognised as a deadly infectious disease.
It’s up to us civilians, whenever possible, to reach out to our sons and daughters in
uniform.
They are in mortal danger not only from Taliban bombs, but from our indifference to the
1% of the US population (a new low) on active or reserve duty. This cultural divide
between us and them is a silent killer, more deadly than any military drone.
Mesopotamia (July 1917)
“The Slothfulness That Wasted And The
Arrogance That Slew, Shall We Leave It
Unabated In Its Place?”
[Written in 1917 upon the occasion of the efforts of the British Imperial government to
conquer what is now known as Iraq.]
By Rudyard Kipling
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
Sounds Of War
From: Dennis Serdel
To: Military Resistance
Sent: November 01, 2009
Subject: Sounds Of War
Written by Dennis Serdel, Military Resistance 2009
Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th Brigade,
purple heart, Veterans For Peace 50 Michigan, Vietnam Veterans Against The War,
United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan
********************************************************
Sounds Of War
It’s another grinder day
chalk scraping on a chalkboard
as the war goes on and on
combat boots slamming sandpaper
Soldiers goose bumping mountains
all gnashing clashing
trying to kill an enemy
like filing on steel
jets fighting rage
with rockets tumbling as an
out of control tank
into a village crowd leaving
mother father who can’t run away
faster leaving an orphaned child
from their homes crackling
with fire in a level pointing
upward off balanced
as surviving villagers scratch
Humvee’s glass as Soldiers
watch twisting their tension necks
grinding and snapping along
pebbles and sand dragging
down a dusty road shots fired
with the double thump
of the body and the backpack
against a small crack
as the vertebrae clicks one
time like last time water being
gurgled washing down pills
hopes of surviving wondering
about this different place
in surround sound theatre
called Afghanistan proving
ringing a bell after
the first round in Iraq
this corrupt country too
doesn’t vote with crumbling
folding purple paper
as fear fires across the land
and forehead
that those that
would have voted would be
whacked by a machinegun
rat-a-tat-ed then snipers
aiming as buzzards fly
looking for fresh American
food their favorite as
the Taliban and War Lords
just one-vote the Country
all by themselves
the needle pokes in
the mountains then chopper
back count down from 100
on the death meter
the slice of the incision
excoriating the night
roars gasping gurgling
screaming yelling hollering
whimpering wailing bellowing
gnawing teeth grinding
the explosions walk across
the target a bomber filled
with land mine opens
it’s cargo as fighter jets
eject missiles
choppers mini-gun burps
thousands at a time
DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN THE
MILITARY?
Forward Military Resistance along, or send us the address if you wish and
we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or stuck on a base in
the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off
from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the wars, inside
the armed services and at home. Send email requests to address up top or
write to: The Military Resistance, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y.
10025-5657. Phone: 888.711.2550
DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK
[Thanks to Linda O., who sent this in.]
CLASS WAR REPORTS
Multi-Billionaire Compares Proposal
To Raise Taxes On Hedge Funds To
“When Hitler Invaded Poland”
“‘Asking Hedge-Funders To Pay Taxes
At The Same Rate As Everyone Else
Amounts To The ‘Persecution Of The
Minority’”
October 6, 2010 by Jim Hightower, Creators Syndicate [Excerpts]
Look out, they’re angry. Foaming-at-the-mouth angry.
And they’re lashing out, saying they won’t take it anymore. As one of their leaders
angrily cried, “It’s a war.” Indeed — they’re on the move to take their country back.
Forget the tea party rowdies, this is the champagne party!
More precisely, it’s the Dom Perignon-$1,000-a-bottle-champagne-party, propelled by —
get this — billionaire’s rage.
Yes, some of the richest, most pampered people on the planet — people who literally
wallow in luxury every day, with never a concern about losing a job, a home or health
care, or getting their kids into college — these people are wailing in self-pity.
They are Wall Street hedge-fund operators, which essentially means they are high-flying
financial flimflammers.
What has stoked them into an elitist fury is a Barack Obama proposal to close off a
ridiculous tax loophole that has let them pay only 15 percent of their lavish income in
taxes, rather than the 35 percent rate that us commoners pay.
One of the richest of the ragers, Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, sees
Obama’s proposal as an outrageous intrusion into the suites of the elite, comparing it to
“when Hitler invaded Poland.”
This over-the-top-tantrum comes from a multibillionaire — a guy who spent $3 million in
2007 just to throw himself a birthday party! Come on, Steve, you’re filthy rich. Stop
hyperventilating, and pay your taxes!
Pathetically, the real root of this sad Hedge Fund Rebellion is a feeling by these
powerful, super-privileged megalomaniacs that they are being picked on.
One even whined that asking hedge-funders to pay taxes at the same rate as everyone
else amounts to the “persecution of the minority.”
Good grief, man, get a grip! Next thing you know, these doofuses will hire Glenn Beck to
host a weepy telethon to “Save the Billionaires Tax Loophole.”
But it’s not enough that the wealthy elite want to exempt their excessive, ill-gotten
income from any fair contribution to the public good — they also want to slash our
incomes.
Many of America’s top-paid CEOs are the very ones who’re ruthlessly axing
America’s middle-class jobs, and they are reaping gains from our pains.
A new survey finds that corporate chieftains who inflict economic pain on the
company’s workers receive more financial gain for themselves.
The Institute for Policy Studies examined the layoff-payoff records of America’s 500
largest corporations during the past couple of years. IPS researchers report that the 50
CEOs who fired the most rank-and-file employees averaged 42 percent higher pay than
their peers, averaging an extra $3.5 million each.
One of the champions in this contest of convoluted corporate compensation was Mark
Hurd. As chief executive of computer giant Hewlett-Packard, Hurd dumped 6,400
workers in 2009 — a year in which he pocketed a paycheck of $24.2 million. Earlier this
year, Hurd was forced to resign from HP after an internal investigation found that he
falsified some expense reports. No need to weep for Mark, though — he was
comfortably compensated for this bad turn of fortune, receiving a severance package
reportedly worth $40 million.
Being bad, you see, can be awfully good for a CEO’s bottom line. For example, IPS
documented one category of badness-to-goodness that is especially infuriating.
Five of the 50 leading pink-slip-issuers last year were also bailout barons. Among
them was Kenneth Chenault, honcho of American Express, which got $3.4 billion
from us taxpayers in 2008 to save it from financial ruin.
In gratitude, Chenault subsequently offed 4,000 employees, then helped himself to
a paycheck of nearly $17 million, including a $5 million cash bonus.
Troops Invited:
Comments, arguments, articles, and letters from service men
and women, and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to Box
126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or send email to
contact@militaryproject.org: Name, I.D., withheld unless you
request publication. Same address to unsubscribe.
NEED SOME TRUTH?
CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER
Traveling Soldier is the publication of the Military Resistance Organization.
Telling the truth - about the occupations or the criminals running the government
in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more
than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance to Imperial wars inside the
armed forces.
Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class
people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a
weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces.
If you like what you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in building a network
of active duty organizers. http://www.traveling-soldier.org/
And join with Iraq Veterans Against the War to end the occupations and bring all
troops home now! (www.ivaw.org/)
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