Thoughts on Occupy: the method is the goal

A few thoughts about the Occupy Movement:

First, I am overjoyed that this movement has been overwhelmingly nonviolent in its methods and intent.  This in itself is huge.  Through many of the demonstrations already staged, the effectiveness of nonviolent strategies has been reinforced to participants and observers.  In cases where nonviolent discipline has held most strongly, as in the case of the UC Davis students, the movement has gained its greatest support. 

I am very impressed with the breadth of creativity in tactics and expression.  I love all the kinds of art forms that participants have been using.  I was an occupier on the first day and took part in a street theatre action, and it felt right to be using the creative arts right from the beginning.

The emphasis on democratic, truly grassroots process bodes well.  Always, the methods are embedded in the ends achieved.  It's wonderful to see groups of people sitting together, doing the hard, hard work of consensus building.  I have some experience with this from taking part in Quaker business meetings, and I appreciate both the rewards and the challenges of  the consensus process.

I am concerned that targeting the "1%" as culprits in our economic stuggles may lead to certain people being labeled enemies.  To me, the enemy is not certain people, but rather systemic problems in US society and culture. Militarism is a culprit, for example, but that doesn't mean soldiers are enemies.  In fact, like city police, military personnel are caught in the problems of the system in many ways, just as civilians are.  If we can focus on reducing the resources put into maintaining a huge military structure, then that is addressing the problem.  Focusing on the wealthy or the police doesn't get to the heart of the matter, even though the confrontations have been educational.

This is where I think the nonviolent methods used by occupiers have been teaching us well.  We can see so clearly that, as the UC Davis students said, words are greater than weapons.  We have the tools of nonviolence to protect ourselves and to make change. 

So, to me, this is where the Occupy movement may lead.  As Occupy and the hundreds of thousands of nonviolent demonstrators across the Middle East have been proving, people power really can trump military power.  Military might is an obstacle to democratic reform, not a champion of it.  If people all over the world decide it, we can divest from the weapons trade, a dead-end business.  We do not need huge military forces to "protect" us. We can draw them down and invest instead in businesses that create rather than destroy. I am convinced that our economy will prosper if we do that.


        

Day of the Fallen

The Workers Defense Project organized a march and rally today called 'Day of the Fallen" to commemorate the deaths of construction workers in the state of Texas.  We began the march at the Federal Building Plaza and carried 138 black coffin replicas to the steps of the Texas Capitol. 

Although the coffins were built lightly of foam core board and contained only air, I felt the heaviness of the sadness we were conveying.

People had come for the march from as far away as El Paso, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.  We numbered about 300, I think.  Included were union members and family members of construction workers who had died on the job.

Jim Hightower spoke, and Eliza Gilkyson sang.  Rev. Jim Rigby emceed.  There were prayers in English and in Espanol, gospel music and a singalong of "If I had a hammer," led by a young trio.

We stood with our CodePink banner in solidarity, and I watched legislators and their aides come out of the capitol, skirting our demonstration, looking sideways at the coffins.  I wanted them to stop and listen, but they walked quickly on.

On my way home, I looked out the bus window at the beautiful buildings in our downtown, the new lofts and storefronts.  Most of the people who built them can not afford to live in them.  Some of the people who built them were injured on the job.  Some were not paid for their work.  When I pass the spot on Rio Grande where three immigrant men fell to their deaths because of faulty equipment, I sense their spirits are present, asking me why.  The chic little shop that opened a few feet from where the men hit the earth is called, "Bodega on Rio."         

Victory of Nonviolence in Egypt

I am absolutely elated by the triumph of nonviolent people power in Egypt! Like so many supporters all over the world, I’ve been glued to news from Egypt since January 25, feeling a mixture of hope and concern for the movement, praying that demonstrators would be able to adhere to nonviolence despite violence done to them. Every day, my hope deepened as people displayed great courage and creativity in the face of weapons, police force, imprisonment and torture. And now, today, such joyous success! When tyranny is overcome through the power of nonviolence, there is no sweeter victory.


I have to think about Iraq – and how Saddam Hussein likewise could have been ousted through a people’s movement, had there been enough support for a civil resistance movement to grow. Instead, the US did exactly the opposite – destroying civil society through the savage bombings of 1991 and the years of debilitating economic sanctions that followed. The invasion of 2003 was not only a crime against an already battered people, it was the antithesis of how to encourage democratic reform. The people’s movement in Egypt has put in even starker relief the debacle of US policy in Iraq and gives us a vision of what might have been. Democracy cannot be forced at the point of a gun.

A positive corollary of the Egyptian people’s movement is this: I have a sense that during these 18 days of mass demonstrations, there has been less violence throughout the Middle East. People have watched the movement in Tunisia, then in Egypt with much interest, taking note that mass nonviolent protest has garnered much more sympathetic attention around the world than terror attacks.  I can imagine that someone who might have been contemplating committing a suicide bombing would now change his mind.  The success of the nonviolent movement will surely motivate more groups and individuals to take this lesson from the Egyptian people and acknowledge that violent strategies are too costly and only serve to justify state repression and violent intervention.

Now, will this obvious lesson also be learned by the Pentagon?

What MLK might have told us today

Good piece by Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Right Project:

Perhaps, if the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were to write a letter on the holiday set aside for him, it might go something like this, albeit more eloquent:

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Forty-seven years ago, in August 1963, while imprisoned in the Birmingham jail for nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, I wrote a letter in longhand to eight religious leaders. They had criticized me for moving too fast on issues that didn't concern me, and saw me as an outsider from Atlanta, Georgia.

I reminded my religious colleagues that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider."

Today, as I look about, I am bewildered by the many political leaders, who assemble each year to commemorate me. They almost seem to make me a saint. It is as if many of them never heard my message. These leaders forget about my unrelenting challenge to this country's economic structures that leave so many people in severe poverty. Do they remember I was assassinated while trying to help low-paid Memphis sanitation workers raise their salaries? Do they not hear my lament about the racial barriers in education?

Instead, they focus only on the "safe" part of my life, not my voice lifted in prophecy against war and poverty, for which I was severely chastised. How can they not answer those contradictions I spent my life laying bare about the United States?

They ignore the many times I called America to task for using war against perceived national security threats. Then, it was Vietnam. Now, it is Iraq and Afghanistan.

When will Americans heed the vision of Isaiah to transform our weaponry of death into tools for peace to end world poverty?

Terrorists build off social inequality, lack of education, poverty, and a perverted view of the United States, which they perceive as materialistic and militarily aggressive. War, the killing of innocent people, and destroying social infrastructure provide them with recruiting opportunities they would not otherwise have.

What if the United States had used the $1.3 trillion it has spent on the wars to build schools and hospitals in foreign lands? Or starting farming coops? Those would have yielded more success in our common struggle against terrorism. And the world economy would have been better off.

Instead, 7,000 troops have died -- not to mention the tens of thousands now disabled, and a hundred thousand or more non-combatant men, women, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I also lament the attacks on immigrants in our country, people who have migrated here to support their families. Perpetrating discrimination against them because of their national origin or religion will come to justify discrimination against others, an alarming regression in the hard-fought victories we won so painstakingly.

As Leviticus reminds us, "When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself."

When you get together on my birthday holiday, don't just celebrate the strides we have made -- for many more remain to you. Organize to end injustice, anywhere and everywhere.

Your brother,

Martin

James C. Harrington is a civil rights lawyer and professor in Austin.

photo by makingpeace from today's MLK March and Celebration in Austin, Texas

Victory for DC civil disobedience

Good news issued yesterday by Veterans for Peace:

Washington, D.C. – January 4, 2011: Anti-war military veterans and other activists celebrated a breakthrough victory today in DC Superior Court, when charges were dropped, following arrests in front of the White House, on December 16, 2010. Over 131 people were arrested in a major veteran-led protest while participating in non-violent civil resistance in a driving snowstorm. US Park Police charged all 131 protesters with “Failure to Obey a Lawful Order,” when they refused to move. All remained fixed to the White House fence demanding an end to the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and further US aggression in the region.
Among those arrested were members of the leadership of the national organization Veterans for Peace , Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dr. Daniel Ellsberg; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges; former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern; and, Dr. Margaret Flowers, advocate for single-payer health care.
Forty-Two arrested opted to appear in court and go to trial with the first group appearing in DC Superior Court on January 4, 2011. Prosecutors from the DC Attorney General’s office stated that the Government “declined to file charges due to missing or incomplete police paperwork.” Presiding Magistrate Judge Richard Ringell confirmed that the cases were dropped and defendants were free to leave.
Those who participated in this action make this statement:

“This is clearly a victory for opposition to undeclared wars which are illegal under international law, have led to the destruction of societies in Iraq and Afghanistan, bled the US Treasury in a time of recession, and caused human rights violations against civilians and combatants. Many of us will return to Washington, DC, to support an action on Tuesday, January 11, 2011 to protest the continued use of Guantanamo detention facility, including torture of detainees in violation of international law.”

The defendants were represented by co-counsels Ann Wilcox, Esq. and Mark Goldstone, Esq. Ms. Wilcox stated: “clearly the Government and Police felt that these veterans and their supporters acted with the courage of their convictions, and did not wish to spend the time and funds necessary for a trial proceeding. This is a major victory for the peace movement.”
For more information visit www.stopthesewars.org or on facebook.

Veterans carry out civil disobedience mission at White House gates

In cold and snowy conditions in Washington DC on Thursday, some 131 peace advocates, most of them military veterans, were arrested at the White House gates in a planned nonviolent civil disobedience action organized principally by members of Veterans for Peace. Among those arrested was Daniel Ellsberg, who, along with journalist, Chris Hedges and others, spoke eloquently before their arrests. Good videos and photos posted at the Veterans for Peace website.

photos above by Ellen Rachel Davidson

March of the Dead at SMU

Good piece by Medea Benjamin, published on Huffington Post:

Several thousand people lined up to see George Bush, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice shovel dirt into a hole at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the site slated to become the George Bush Presidential Center housing a museum, library and archives.

Over 100 peace activists showed up to protest, including New York City artist Laurie Arbiter, who helped organize a March of the Dead and carried a sign asking "Does America Have a Conscience?" "Rather than build a library, we should leave the broken ground and just fill it with a big pile of rubble," said Arbiter. "That would truly represent the catastrophic results of the Bush Administration."



As part of the March of the Dead, protesters dressed in black, wore white death masks and had signs around their necks representing dead Iraqis, Afghans and U.S. soldiers. The dramatic march stopped traffic and provoked strong emotions in passers-by, participants and even the police. Renee Schultz, who drove from Indianapolis to join the protest, wore the death mask and a sign representing a 23-year-old female U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. "When I first put on the mask, I just stood there and cried. I kept thinking, 'I am 23 years old and had my whole life ahead of me. Why did I die?'" Schultz looked over at the riot police and noticed that one of them also had tears streaming down his eyes.

When the marchers attempted to reach the public viewing area, the police forced them back to the designated "protest pen" far from the ceremony. One of the protesters, a wheelchair-bound veteran of the Korean War and World War II, angrily told the police that he did not fight in two wars to be told that his freedom of speech would be confined to a "protest zone."

The gathering was part of a three-day People's Response, filled with rallies, marches, teach-ins, and exhibits of crosses and soldiers' boots to represent the war dead. Organized by Texans for Peace, The Dallas Peace Center, CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace, among others, the speakers included former FBI agent Colleen Rowley, former CIA agent Ray McGovern, retired Colonel Ann Wright, professor Robert Jensen, and Texas State Representative Lon Burnam.

Among the protesters was also Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who led a prolonged protest outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas in 2005. "Bush should not be allowed to profit from war crimes, crimes that he has even admitted to," said Sheehan. "It's not right that he will make millions from his book and speaking engagements, while millions have been killed, displaced, tortured and had their lives ruined because of him."

The protesters focused on the lies Bush told the American public to justify invading Iraq, his authorization of torture and the need for accountability. "Accountability is the sign of a true democracy," said former CIA agent Ray McGovern. "No one should be above the law and the truth must not be buried or rewritten."

Protesters were also concerned about the policies the new Bush Center will promote. President Bush said the Center would include an "action-oriented institute" to advance the principles his administration stood for, including the "benefits of limiting the role of government in people's lives." According to local organizer Leslie Harris of CODEPINK, "this really means promoting the same kinds of disastrous policies that brought us pre-emptive war, economic crisis, environmental disaster, unprecedented presidential power, and diminished civil and human rights. We can't let one of America's worst presidents shape our future policies."

The peace activists who came to protest Bush also discussed their disappointment with the Obama administration and the difficulties they anticipate in pushing the new, more conservative Congress to stop funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the actions they encouraged were:

· supporting the Midwest anti-war activists whose homes were raided by the FBI and supporting the January 15 FBI protest in Washington DC;
· promoting local campaigns, including citywide resolutions, to bring our war dollars home;
· reaching out to allies, particularly groups victimized by the economic crisis, but also reaching out to members of the Tea Party who want to see cuts in Pentagon spending;
· pressuring the State Department to stop using private security contractors;
· supporting the December 16 veteran-led civilian disobedience in Washington DC;
· organizing a delegation to Iraq to take testimonies from Iraqis about George Bush and the legacy of the US invasion;
· building on the new calls by Amnesty International and the ACLU to prosecute Bush for war crimes;
· stopping John Yoo, author of the "torture memos", from teaching law at the UC Berkeley law school.

For some light entertainment after long days of protest, a group stopped by local Barnes and Noble to reshelve -- and photograph -- Bush's Decision Points in a more appropriate place in the store. These included placing the book next to The Murder Business in the True Crimes section, Wing Nuts in the Fantasy Section, When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice in the Legal Section, and our favorite in the Children's Section, Dr. Seuss' Will You Please Go Now?" With the renewed media attention on George Bush, including his sanctioning of torture, Bush might do well to take Dr. Seuss' advice.

AP photo by G.J. McCarthy

The ground truth of the Bush Lie-Bury

Great AP photo by G.J. McCarthy from today's demonstration during groundbreaking ceremonies for the Bush Lie-Bury at SMU University.

Kathy Kelly: A Ground Zero Reflection

Posted on today's Waging Nonviolence blog:

The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection

by Kathy Kelly

Libby and Jerica are in the front seat of the Prius, and Mary and I are in back. We just left Oklahoma, we’re heading into Shamrock, Texas, and tomorrow we’ll be in Indian Springs, Nevada, home of Creech Air Force Base. We’ve been discussing our legal defense.

The state of Nevada has charged Libby and me, along with twelve others, with criminal trespass onto the base. On April 9, 2009, after a ten-day vigil outside the air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive targeted assassination program. Our trial date is set for September 14.

Creech is one of several homes of the U.S. military’s aerial drone program. U.S. Air Force personnel there pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. The different kinds of drone include the “Predator” and the “Reaper.” The Obama administration favors a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special Operations raids to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever Al Qaeda presence exists in these countries. As the U.S. accelerates this campaign, we hear from UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, who suggests that U.S. citizens may be asleep at the wheel, oblivious to clear violations of international law which we have real obligations to prevent (or at the very least discuss). Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near Ground Zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small “ground zeroes” in multiple locales on an everyday basis.

Libby, at the wheel, is telling Jerica about her visit to Kabul, in 1970. “I worked for Pan Am,” said Libby, “and that meant being able to stay for free at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. After landing in Pakistan, we hired a driver to take us across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. All along the highway we saw herds of camel traveling along a parallel old road. I wonder if the camel market in Kabul is still there?”

Jerica says she’ll look for it. She and I have been hard at work to obtain visas and arrange flights for an October trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. [Libby is exceptional in that she hasn't tried to talk Jerica out of the dangerous travel.]

Conversation switches to whatever CD has just come on, and I tune out, wondering if I’ve done my share of issuing warnings to Jerica about traveling in a war zone.

Tinny music and rural Texan countryside blend together.

My thoughts drift to the Emergency Surgical Center for Victims of War, in Kabul. A little over two months ago, Josh and I met Nur Said, age 11, in the hospital’s ward for young boys injured by various explosions. Most of the boys welcomed a diversion from the ward’s tedium, and they were especially eager to sit outside, in the hospital garden, where they’d form a circle and talk together for hours. Nur Said stayed indoors. Too miserable to talk, he’d merely nod at us, his hazel eyes welling up with tears. Weeks earlier, he had been part of a hardy band of youngsters that helped bolster their family incomes by searching for scrap metal and unearthing land mines on a mountainside in Afghanistan. Finding an unexploded land mine was a eureka for the children because, once opened, the valuable brass parts could be extracted and sold. Nur had a land mine in hand when it suddenly exploded, ripping four fingers off his right hand and blinding him in his left eye.

On a sad continuum of misfortune, Nur and his companions fared better than another group of youngsters scavenging for scrap metal in the Kunar Province on August 26th.

Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to “engage” the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children.

General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it’s unsafe for them to gather in the schools.

I think of Nur, trapped in his misery, at the Emergency surgical center. He’ll be one among many thousands of amputees whose lives are forever altered by the war and poverty that afflict his country. Many of these survivors are likely to feel intense hatred toward their persecutors. 300 villagers in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province took to the streets in protest on August 12, following an alleged U.S. night raid. “They murdered three students and detained five others,” one of the protesters said. “All of them were civilians.” Villagers, shocked by the killing, shouted that they didn’t want Americans in Afghanistan. According to village eyewitnesses, American troops stormed into a family home and shot three brothers, all young men, and then took their father into custody. One of the young men was a student who had returned to the family home to celebrate the traditional “iftar” fast at the beginning of Ramadan. Local policemen are investigating the allegations, and NATO recently conceded that they may have killed some civilians. (see www.vcnv.org Afghanistan Atrocities update).

The drones feed hourly intelligence information to U.S. war commanders, but the machinery can’t inform people about the spiraling anger as the U.S. conducts assassination operations in countries throughout the 1.3 billion-strong Muslim world. “Sold as defending Americans,” writes Fred Branfman, “(it) is actually endangering us all. Those responsible for it, primarily General Petraeus, are recklessly seeking short-term tactical advantage while making an enormous long-term strategic error that could lead to countless American deaths in the years and decades to come.”

The Prius is comfortable, but my side of the backseat has become a makeshift office. The most important file contains Bill Quigley’s comprehensive argumentation as to why the court should allow us to present a necessity defense based on international law. Bill is the Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. On September 14, we want to call on him as an expert witness. We and our codefendants have chosen to mount a pro se defense to try to persuade our judge that far from committing a crime we have exercised our rights and our duties, under international and U.S. law, to try to prevent one and to raise public opposition to usage of drones in “targeted” assassinations.

Jerica hands me the questions we can use to elicit Bill’s testimony. We try to word our questions so that the evidence will be admissible in court. “Could Bill please inform the court about citizen’s responsibilities under international law, could he explain to the court what articles and statutes we will be invoking?” To a layperson, it seems like an elaborate game of “Mother May-I,” and we haven’t even started developing questions to ask Col. Ann Wright, the former U.S. diplomat, who had helped re-open the U.S. Embassy in Kabul shortly before resigning her job in a refusal to cooperate with buildup toward the May 2003 U.S. Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq.

Rounding out our trio of expert witnesses is former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. We hope his personal experience within the U.S. government might arouse the court’s more careful attention to the seldom-discussed legal issues that are fundamentally at stake here. However, the judge has already indicated that his calendar only allots one day for our trial.

Libby, Jerica, Mary and I have blocked out at least ten days, inclusive of travel, for our small contribution to an ongoing effort of people around the world working to put drones on trial. We’re in New Mexico now. I feel cramped and restless, and I wonder if Tucumcari, where we plan to stop for lunch, has internet. We can’t possibly bring the testimony of Afghans and Pakistanis to court this Tuesday. Their testimony, borne on bodies scarred and mutilated and harbored in memories of nightmare, will never be given away and cannot be given in court. Extrajudicial killings are killings without rule of law, without trial. Few if any Afghan or Pakistani civilian survivors of U.S. wars will ever travel to a U.S. court of law for consideration of their grievances.

And at this moment I realize that if we were four Afghans or Pakistanis or Iraqis traveling in a war zone, we’d have spent this entire trip watching not the Southwestern landscape, but the skies.

Under The Hood press conference coverage: Killeen Daily Herald

Good article from yesterday's Killeen Daily Herald. The online posting also includes testimony offered by visiting speaker, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, whose joint Jewish/American/Iraqi heritage gives her a special perspective on what is happening in Iraq.

Rally for Peace
by Amanda Kim Stairrett, Killeen Daily Herald

Peace activists gathered in Killeen Monday morning to speak out against U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The event, which was hosted at Killeen's Under the Hood Café, focused on Iraq and the president's recent announcement that U.S. combat operations ended there today. Speakers also questioned the deployment of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment to Iraq. The final of several thousand of the regiment's troopers departed Fort Hood for the Middle East Friday in what military officials call an advise-and-assist mission. Those soldiers will assist Provincial Reconstruction Teams and help prepare Iraqi security forces to care for and protect their own nation.

The 1st Cavalry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team will deploy soon for the same mission.

Central Texas activists were in town Aug. 23 to protest the regiment's deployment. As buses carried soldiers from main post to West Fort Hood's Robert Gray Army Airfield, demonstrators waited on the overpass with their headlights turned off, according to information from Fort Hood and videos posted on YouTube by participants.

As the buses drove south on Clarke Road Gate at about 3:40 a.m., the demonstrators held up banners and chanted. Several blocked the buses' path for a short time.

"Acting to protect Department of Defense personnel and equipment, Fort Hood police moved the demonstrators away from the intersection to the sidewalk," read a statement from Fort Hood.

Individuals were released without incident and the bus convoy continued to the airfield, it went on to read.

Post officials did have advance knowledge about the demonstration, they said.

Monday's speakers included Cynthia Thomas, Under the Hood manager; Rep. Lon Burnam, a Democrat from Fort Worth and former director of the Dallas Peace Center; Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, a peace activist of Muslim and Jewish heritage; Larry Egly, of the Peace and Justice Support Network of Mennonite Church USA; and Leslie Cunningham, of Texas Labor Against the War.

CodePink Austin, Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace were also represented.

Monday's event was just one of two in Central Texas "aimed at peeling back the mass deception surrounding 'the end of combat operations,'" according to information from Under the Hood. The first was a talk in Austin Sunday featuring Wasfi.

Most Americans are lulled to sleep because they think the war is over, Burnam said. He attacked Presidents Bush and Obama, saying the "expansionist" war was an illegal and immoral occupation — something that was fiscally wrong to start seven years ago.

Burnam heavily criticized the Iraq war's financial burden on the country, saying it was wrong for Bush to start two "outrageous" wars while providing tax cuts. Burnam said he was tired of officials using the "financial back of us working folks" to fund conflicts, and quoted a 1953 speech by President Dwight Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

It is time for Obama to end the occupation, end tax cuts for the rich and cure a deficit that will hurt "our children and grandchildren," Burnam went on to say.

Thomas said Under the Hood started a telephone campaign to make sure non-deployable soldiers were not deployed. The organization has previously worked with soldiers and families from the regiment who said they were not fit to deploy.

The administration and command know there aren't enough soldiers to cover two wars, Thomas said, and they continue to ignore family members and soldiers instead of focusing on their well-being.

"This community is not going to be able to survive it much longer," she said.

The 1 percent of the U.S. population in uniform are the ones fighting and paying the most, Thomas said.

If people really wanted to support the troops, they would be fighting for them to come home, she added.

Contact Amanda Kim Stairrett at astair@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7547. Follow her on Twitter at KDHmilitary or www.facebook.com/astairrett.

For more information

Under the Hood is located at 17 S. College St. It is open daily from 5 to 10 p.m. Visit the café online at www.underthehoodcafe.org.

For more information about Texas Labor Against the War, visit www.txlaboragainstwar.org or call (512) 470-8485.

To learn more about Wasfi and her work, visit www.liberatethis.com. To read her prepared remarks about the war's effect on the Iraqi people, visit www.kdhnews.com.

photo from Killeen Daily Herald

Charlie Clements, Veteran for Peace

This weekend, Veterans for Peace is marking its 25th anniversary during its annual meeting, held this year in Maine, where the first VFP chapter was formed.

It was good to see this article, published today in the Maine Sunday Telegram, featuring VFP member, Charlie Clements. I remember hearing Mr. Clements speak here in Austin at the Friends Meeting House years ago -- sometime in the late 1980's, I believe. He was working at great personal risk as a medical doctor in El Salvador. He wrote about the experience in his book, Witness to War. Hearing Charlie Clements speak was part of my own awakening to the realities of US foreign policy.

Here's today's article:

Activist's personal journey stretches from battlefield to protest march

by Bill Nemitz


How does a soldier become a peace activist? For Charlie Clements, the answer lies somewhere between the lines of a 40-year-old military document that he keeps to this day.

“It says I’m 10 percent mentally disabled,” Clements said with a smile last week. “My protest was quite a silent one in some ways – I went quietly into the night.”

Clements, 64, is executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He’s also one of 300 or so military veterans who will march through Portland’s Old Port this morning to mark the 25th anniversary of Veterans for Peace, which has grown to more than 6,000 members nationwide since its founding here in Maine back in 1985.

Military service does different things to different people.

Some wear it for a lifetime as a badge of honor, weaving their war stories more deeply into their very identity with each retelling.

Others tuck it away in the closet and rarely, if ever, talk about it again.

Then there are these vets, almost all decades removed from their days in uniform, who spend their gray-haired years marching not to the sound of a military band, but rather to the lyrics of anti-war protest songs.

Each, of course, has his or her own story. For Clements, once an Air Force pilot who flew more than 50 missions in Southeast Asia before deciding one day he couldn’t anymore, it begins as a 17-year-old cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the mid-1960s.

“The dominant thought in my class was, ‘We hope the war doesn’t end before we get there,’ ” Clements recalled as the Veterans for Peace conference got under way Thursday. “Because wars are where young men test themselves, they are where young officers make their mark, they are what we were trained for.”

Upon earning his commission as a second lieutenant, Clements enrolled with the Air Force’s blessing in a graduate astronautics program at UCLA. He could have sat out the Vietnam War with his nose in a book, but he decided eight months into the program that he had a duty to serve in Southeast Asia.

He remembers walking in uniform past protesters at UCLA in the fall of 1967 – back in those early days of the anti-war movement, the protesters would just stand silently with their signs while he and his comrades passed by.

“I remember thinking very clearly that I knew much more about the world than these people did, that this was their right to do this,” he said. “And that I would go to Vietnam and defend their right to do this because I have a better understanding of this threat that faces us.”

CHOSE TO PILOT TRANSPORT PLANE

He also knew he didn’t want to kill anyone. So, upon graduating from flight school, he chose to pilot a C-130 transport plane rather than an assault aircraft and, with the war at full tilt, departed for Vietnam in August of 1969.

“What (the C-130) afforded me was a vast opportunity to see the war from different perspectives,” Clements said. “And with these experiences, I began to have encounters that gradually lifted the scales off my eyes.”

He once watched then-President Richard Nixon insist on the Armed Forces Network that the United States had no military presence in Laos, when he knew for a fact that C-130s just like the one he flew were ferrying personnel and supplies to secret U.S. bases there.

“Before that, it had never occurred to me before that the president would actually go on television and lie,” Clements said.

He once transported a group of 60 Viet Cong prisoners from one location to another – he was struck not just by the hatred in their eyes whenever they looked at him, but by an intensity, a sense of purpose that he rarely saw among young American GI’s.

GETTING THE BODY COUNT RIGHT

He once showed up at a morgue to pick up the body of a soldier killed in action. “You can’t have him today,” a sergeant told him. “The body count’s not right and we have to hang onto him for a few days.”

Known for his sharp intellect, Clements once was asked by his higher-ups to write a history of the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System by which C-130s delivered ordnance and supplies without actually touching down. The so-called LAPES procedure didn’t work well. That didn’t matter.

“I soon realized they were going to record this the way the Air Force wanted it recorded,” he said. “Not necessarily the way the pilots perceived it was happening,”

Then there was Cambodia.

In the spring of 1970, Clements flew a top-secret delegation of State Department officials to Phnom Penh – he was told at the time it was for an off-the-record meeting about securing a portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that passed through that country.

Only later would Clements learn the meeting was actually to plan the overthrow of Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk – a precursor to the invasion of Cambodia launched that May. As he flew troops into Cambodia the day before the invasion began, he found himself consumed with anger.

“I’d had this rationale that I wasn’t killing anybody, that I was an innocent of sorts,” he said. “But throughout that day I began to understand that I was very much a part of the machinery of war, that I was greasing the skids of war. And I decided what I was being asked to do was immoral.”

He asked for and received an emergency medical leave home. And when he told his stateside commanding officer that he could no longer fly missions in Southeast Asia, he was sent to an Army medical facility for what he thought was a routine psychiatric examination.

Upon his arrival, a hospital nurse handed Clements a set of pajamas.

“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I’m staying over at the officers quarters.”

“No, you’re staying here,” replied the nurse. “This is a closed psychiatric ward and you’re not leaving.”

There he remained, without visitors or telephone privileges, for weeks. And six months later, after refusing an offer to have his record sanitized if he’d just go back to Saigon and resume flying, the Air Force quietly declared him 10 percent mentally disabled and gave him an honorable discharge.

PUTS MEDICAL SKILLS TO USE

Clements would go on to become a physician and combine his medical skills with human rights work in Central America, where he spent the early 1980s treating victims of the civil war in El Salvador (many wounded by the same U.S. military aircraft in which he once trained). It was there, in 1985, that he met and joined the founders of Veterans for Peace.

He also later served as president of Physicians for Human Rights, traveling to Sweden in 1997 to accept the organization’s Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to ban land mines.

And now here he is in Maine, one of a small battalion of gray-haired veterans who emerged from war convinced that there has to be a better way.

Clements knows that some perceive Veterans for Peace as a ragtag group of radicals bent on tearing down the same country they once took an oath to protect. He also knows that perception could not be further from the truth.

Even now, he said, he has nothing but “empathy and respect” for those currently serving in the military – not to mention the families who have endured two, three, four or more deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I think our military is, more than ever in my lifetime, separated from the rest of society,” Clements said. “There’s a gulf between the ordinary civilians in our country and the military. We’re fighting two wars, but nobody (outside the military and their families) feels like they’re making any sacrifices.”

Time will tell whether the aging Vietnam veterans who now dominate Veterans for Peace will be replenished in the coming years with soldiers equally disillusioned by their service in Iraq or Afghanistan. Clements’ experience tells him the transition from the battlefield to the protest march often takes years, not weeks or months.

He’s also come to expect that as he and his comrades parade through downtown Portland this morning, some on the sidelines inevitably will call them a disgrace to the uniform they once wore.

But that piece of paper – the one that all these years later still labels him 10 percent out of step with the powers that once were – leaves him no choice.

“You don’t do this because of what people will think,” Clements said with another anything-but-angry smile. “You do this because of something inside you that compels you to speak your truth.”

photo by Derek Davis, published in the Maine Sunday Telegram

IVAW Convention covered in Killeen Daily Herald

Good to read this front page story in today's Killeen Daily Herald:

Activists Protest War Outside Post

by Amanda Kim Stairrett

In conjunction with the sixth annual Iraq Veterans Against the War convention in Austin, Killeen's Under the Hood Café is hosting a concert and barbecue Saturday.

Under the Hood, at 17 S. College St., is a "place for soldiers to gather, relax and speak freely about the wars and the military," according to www.underthehoodcafe.org. Organizers also provide support services for soldiers and their families, including counseling and legal advice.

Set to perform are Travis Bishop, who was arrested in August at Fort Hood after refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, Ryan Harvey and R.A.S. Admission is free for those with military identification and a suggested donation of $5 each for those without.

This is the first large-scale event Under the Hood has hosted, said Manager Cynthia Thomas. The goal of Saturday's event is to let veterans and the military community know Under the Hood is there and willing to support them, Thomas added.

The Iraq Veterans Against the War convention began Thursday at Austin's Huston-Tillotson University and ends Sunday. Activities include Fort Hood outreach, panels and workshops.

Iraq Veterans Against the War is a nationwide organization made of past and present soldiers who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, according to information from the organization. It was founded six years ago during a Veterans for Peace convention in Boston "to give a voice to the large number of active-duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent," according to its website, www.ivaw.org.

It is also "dedicated to fighting for adequate physical and mental health care, full benefits and other support for returning veterans," read www.ivaw.org.

Goals of the convention are to discuss important issues in the veterans' movement and "serve as a significant opportunity for support in a recovering community," Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said in a statement released by the organization.

Austin was chosen as the convention site because it is an hour from Fort Hood.

"This community, especially due to past traumatic events, deserves our outreach and everyone's attention," he said. "It is part of (Iraq Veterans Against the War's) mission to reach out to those service members and veterans who have been fighting since Sept. 11. If they are questioning the illegal wars and occupations and choose to resist, we support them."

Local protest

Conference attendees and local activists protested at Fort Hood's East Gate Thursday, chanting and displaying signs that said they support troops when they disobey their officers; calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and return of American troops; repealing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and Arizona's immigration enforcement law; getting Israel out of Gaza; and supporting no war but the class war.

The protesters, many of whom were Iraq veterans, marched along Veterans Memorial Boulevard and Fort Hood Street, chanting and carrying signs.

Chants included "Resistance is justified when people are occupied," "They're our brothers, they're our sisters, we support war resistors," "Money for jobs and education, not for Afghan occupation" and "Occupation is a crime from Iraq to Palestine."

Matt Southworth served as an intelligence analyst from 2002 to 2004, serving a tour to Iraq. He now works as a campaigns program assistant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobbying group that operates in Washington, D.C.

Southworth said he and others support the troops, but are against the war, and one of his prime focuses is ensuring veterans get the health care they need.

Support is key, said Chris Capps-Schubert, a former signal soldier who served for three years before being discharged for desertion. The convention and protest aim to show veterans at Fort Hood that Iraq Veterans Against the War has a presence. It's a place to turn to, he said, adding that veterans can get in contact with those who can support them.

In the oil "clean-up," who does the dirty work?

When BP CEO, Tony Hayward says, "We will clean every last drop" of the beyond-disatrous oil contamination of the water and shores of the Gulf Coast, I wonder who he means by "we". The front-page story in the Austin American-Statesman that features this quote, along with a photo of a "devastated" Hayward also features a photo of "a worker" using a hand-held mop to sop up an oil-soaked section of sand on Port Fourchon Beach. The worker is not named and he is not a white man.

Who is doing the dangerous, back-breaking work of "clean-up"? How much are they getting paid? What if they get sick in the process of handling oil sludge? Are they US citizens with health insurance?

I would like to see the clean-up work being done by the executives of BP, beginning at the top. Also, stockholders, as owners of the business, share responsibility for the accident. They took known risks by drilling so deep into the ocean floor. Do they feel it's fair to transfer the messiest consequences of those risks onto the backs of others?

Loving our Mother via the Houston Art Car Parade

There's a social mixer exercise where people in a group tell each other, in turn, something they think others are unlikely to know about them. For me, the idea is not just to learn more about each other, but to be reminded that we are all deeper and broader than we will ever know. One aspect of empathy is the happy surprise.

Sometimes, I do a version of this exercise in my head when I am with some people I know and others I don't -- thinking, that is, about the remarkable qualities and circumstances I know about folks, and wondering whether, if others knew those things, would it change the ways they think?

I was doing this last Saturday in Houston as I rode along with our CodePink Austin Peacemobile entry in the fabulous Houston Art Car Parade. Our theme was "Love Your Mother," -- since the parade is held the day before Mother's Day -- with "Mother" meaning our common planet as well as all moms everywhere. We also meant: peace is green, and war is not.

Four of our group rode in the Peacemobile, and six of us rode our bicycles alongside the car as part of our entry. This year, because we had held a fundraiser in Houston the night before for the GI Coffee House, Under The Hood, our group included the UTH director, her two daughters, and two young US Army veterans from Killeen.

The parade, the largest of its kind in the world, is lined with thousands of spectators. I thought about my friends in the Peacemobile. Would the crowd guess that in the passenger seat was a soldier who is going through the process of filing as a Conscientious Objector? Would they know that in the back seat was a woman who worked for years at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and also felt so strongly about the wrongness of US policies in Central America that she spent 6 months in prison for an act of civil disobedience on a US Army base? Would they guess that the child sitting next to her was the daughter of a Ft. Hood soldier who did three tours of duty in Iraq, even after a serious head injury during his second?

I think the people exchanging peace signs with us would have been surprised to learn that one of us on the bikes was just recently released from the military brig in Ft. Lewis, WA after serving a term for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. They might have seen his t-shirt with peace sign and just assumed he was a "peace-nik" since day one. Would they guess that he hails from Kentucky, plays and sings 90's country, and is a devoted Christian?

As I thought about my companions, I was full of wonder. What were the chances that each of us would find our way to this moment, sharing this parade?

As we rode along, I also watched the crowd. Making eye contact with as many people as I could, I called out, "Happy Mother's Day!" Lots called out in response, "You, too!" or "Love Your Mother!" as they read the messages on the car and my bike. When I looked into their faces, I could catch only a glimpse of the mysteries they contained.

To me, that's the essence of why war must end. Every person is a universe of experience and potential. How could we destroy such a deep well, a vessel of possibility? How could we kill someone who we might find, one day, tooling along beside us in a parade?

When President Obama campaigned on the "Change" theme, I thought most about how individuals can change, rather than how things change. We evolve over the course of our lives. If lives are cut short, denying us the opportunity to change, then evolutionary progress on a larger scale suffers, too.

The Houston Art Car parade is all about creation and transformation. We're outlandish, unique and beautiful, rolling forward together. Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

photos:
from top, moi on my peace bike, from bubbaofthebubbles' flickr site (Bubba is my neighbor, Robert, he of yard art fame)
the Peacemobile, with globe engineer, Heidi
the Peacemobile on parade, from Boptimist's flickr site
my favorite other biker, from Barry D's flickr site

Gene Stoltzfus, man of Spring

I've been thinking so much this week about Gene Stoltzfus, remembering some of the things he said during his several visits to Austin in recent years. I've been re-reading his blog posts and the moving testimonials written about him since his sudden death on March 10. I remember liking very much the way Gene often used terms like "enliven" or "awaken" in his talks, referring to the positive growth that peacemaking can engender. He had a way of being able to talk about very difficult things with a gentle and discerning approach, so that one could listen, empathize, and then discover the energy to act.

The first time I met Gene was in the Spring of 2005 when he drove through Texas on a Christian Peacemaker Teams speaking tour. While he was in Austin, he spoke to a peace studies class at the University of Texas, a meeting of Veterans for Peace, a group at the Mennonite Church, with an editor at the Austin American-Statesman and at a bakery with a writer friend, Greg Moses, and me for a story we co-wrote about Gene and CPT (published on Counterpunch).

I liked Gene right from the start. His demeanor made a person feel comfortable and welcome. It was partly the Santa Claus beard and figure, but it was more than that. You got the feeling that peacemaking was something he knew very, very well.

The final time I saw Gene was last October, when he was a guest speaker at the second annual Assembly to Honor Freedom of Conscience, organized chiefly by members of the Austin Mennonite Church. I took notes. Gene's first words to the assembly were, "Hello, everyone. Thank you for what you are doing!" That was very typical of Gene -- to thank others, even though he was the one to be appreciated for coming so far to be with us.
I also recall Gene talking on that occasion about something I hadn't heard him discuss before. He related his own experience with PTSD, finding much in common with GIs who also spoke at the assembly. Gene's PTSD had developed as a result of what he saw and experienced in Vietnam when he was doing alternative service as a conscientious objector in the 1960's. He said that when he returned to the US, he could sleep only about 20 minutes a night for about the first 6 months back. He had dreams about the dead he had seen in Vietnam. He also had a recurring dream about LBJ and Ho Chi Minh -- that he was trying to get them together, and just when he was about to succeed, they'd slip away. In another recurring dream, he was in a speeding car racing down a hill about to crash. Gene said he'd kept a dream diary for the past 40 years, which he credited as part of his healing.
Acting from conscience has risks. It also, as he said, opens new relationships and closes others. "Fundamental to every conscious decision is saying yes to some things and no to others." Often, the trajectory of our careers changes.
"Conscience gives our imagination a new lease on life," he said. "We think of creative ways to act. Conscience is not captured by the right, the left or the middle, or even by religious people. It's available to all of us."

I've been thinking especially about Gene today, as I've been home, listening to music wafting in all my open windows from SXSW venues in the neighborhood. In the front windows come strains from a stage set up about two blocks down. In the back porch windows come voices, guitar licks and drumbeats from a backyard set-up nearby. I can see people in chairs, listening carefully and applauding generously. I think Gene would like this, too. It's all about creation. Spring is emerging. As long as the earth and we earthlings spinning on it remember our purpose, our creative centers, our lives will be re-leased.

Thank you, Gene. Your courage, compassion, wisdom, creativity and vitality endure.

Georgetown students stand up to General Petraeus

A friend forwarded this link for a youtube video of Georgetown students rising to read names of civilians killed by US weapons as General David Petraeus was speaking at a college assembly. These bold students reminded their fellow students and professors what a Jesuit University should stand for. I commend their action.

Sick of War

Yesterday, I participated in a "Sick of War" demonstration outside the East Gates of Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas. The vigil, which was planned for morning and afternoon, rain or shine, by staff, supporters and soldiers at the Under The Hood coffee house, was joined by about 25 others throughout the day. The demonstration was called to emphasize the shortcomings of mental health care given to soldiers returning from deployments, and the tendency of military medical staff to prescribe pills rather than comprehensive treatment.

We carried on with the event despite rain and cool, windy conditions, and a number of journalists came by to document the proceedings. Here is a report published today in the Killeen Daily Herald.

With IVAW member from Austin, Bobby, leading us with his megaphone, we chanted: "Money for Haiti, Not for War!", "Money for families, Not for War!", "Money for soldiers, Not for War!," "Money for schools, Not for War!" ...

We stood on the lot of an abandoned gas station right at the corner of "Tank Destroyer Blvd." and the entrance to Ft. Hood. We could see directly across the fence the building where soldiers we know have been court-martialed for refusing orders to deploy to war. I witnessed the court-martial of GI resister, Mark Wilkerson, in that building in 2007. I felt sad having to be there still, in 2010, protesting the wars that continue.

As drivers passed by our corner, many looked on curiously. Some opened their windows to hear the chants. A few gave us the thumbs up. Some gave us the single finger. Bobby called out, "Thanks for half a peace sign!"

Above are some photos I took of folks who took part. People came to the event from as far away as Denton, San Marcos, Ft. Worth, San Antonio and Austin.

Peacemaking highlights of the decade

Over the New Year holiday, writers have published lists of highlights -- in genres such as politics, movies, music, etc. -- from the past year and the last decade.

Here is my list of just some of the many positive movements and trends toward peacebuilding over the last ten years -- examples of bold, creative, nonviolent People Power standing up to political, military and corporate power.


1) the worldwide antiwar demonstrations in February 2003, the largest coordinated protests in human history, in opposition to the Bush Administration's planned invasion of Iraq

2) the "Saffron Revolution" in Burma in 2007 -- Buddhist monks and students leading the movement against the tyrranical military junta in Myanmar

3) the ongoing Truth and Reconciliation process in Rwanda, maintaining stability and preventing a resurgence of retaliatory killing after the genocide of 1994

4) the Iranian people's democratization campaign of last year, which continues in spite of the government crackdown against it

5) the largely nonviolent, grassroots resistance against the illegal coup this past summer and fall in Honduras -- despite serious poverty among the Honduran population, the lukewarm response of the US government and outright support of illegitimate coup "Golpistas" by some US Congresspersons

6) growth of resistance to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan among US military veterans, active duty personnel and military family members. Iraq Veterans Against the War was formed in 2004, Military Families Speak Out began in 2002 and Veterans for Peace will mark its 25th anniversary in 2010. These organizations have grown significantly since their beginnings and have organized numerous events around the country and abroad. Cindy Sheehan's "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX in 2005 drew widespread support. IVAW's Winter Soldier hearings in 2008 have brought to light military realities in Iraq and Afghanistan that have been under-reported in the mainstream press. Veterans have organized Winter Soldier panels in a number of other cities since the initial hearings, including two in Austin last Spring. The GI coffee house in Killeen, Under The Hood, opened last year.

7) a resurgence of activism among young adults on issues of war and peace, the environment, education and immigrant rights, AND a resurgence of activism among us middle-aged women -- who defy ageism with our energy and life experience!

8) exponential growth of the alternative press and social networking. More news is more available to more people. Regular folks like me have been able to publish our writing online and organize quickly through the internet. The traditional media has incorporated more interactivity into their sites. Kudos to the AAS for their early embrace of this trend -- such as hosting reader blogs.

9) a resurgence of interest in creative arts and crafts -- making things ourselves or buying from local artists and craftspersons

10) growth in all things green -- green building, urban farming, native planting, bicycling, alternative energy production. Every step toward sustainability lessens the underlying motivation for war.

Clearly, our world faces dire threats -- most of them man-made. But, I find much inspiration for reversing destructive cycles through courageous, innovative ways such as these that so many people are working to preserve, understand and revere all life.

Standing on the side of life

posted today on Common Dreams, as published in the Toronto Star:

Why a Resister Chose Canada Over the War in Iraq

by Rodney Watson

I am from Kansas City, Kansas, and I joined the U.S. Army for financial reasons in 2004 after my steady job of seven years ended.

I enlisted for a three-year contract with the intention of being a cook and not in a combat role. I wanted to support the troops in some way without being involved in any combat operations.

A recruiter promised that I could do this.

In 2005 I was deployed to Iraq just north of Mosul where I was told that my duties as a cook would be to supervise and ensure that the local nationals in the dining facility were preparing meals according to military standards.

But instead of supervising in the dining facility, I was performing vehicle searches for explosives, contraband and weapons. I also operated a mobile X-ray machine that scanned vehicles and civilians for any possible explosives that could enter the base.

I had to keep the peace within an area that held 100 to 200 Iraqi civilian men who would be waiting for security clearances, and shoot warning shots at Iraqi children who were trying to set up mortars to fire at the base.

In Iraq I witnessed racism and physical abuse from soldiers toward the civilians.

On one occasion a soldier was beating an Iraqi civilian, called him a "sand nigger," threw his Qur'an on the ground and spat on it. The civilian man was unarmed and was just looking for work on our base. He posed no type of threat and was beaten because soldiers brought their personal racist hatred to Iraq.

This was not what I had signed up for.

After all the wrongs I witnessed in Iraq, I decided that once my one-year tour of duty was over I would never again be part of this unnecessary war.

When I returned home, my unit was informed that we would be redeployed within four months. This would put me beyond the term I signed up for. I was going to be stop-lossed and forced to serve past my contract.

While on two-week leave I made my decision to come to Canada and not return to my base at Fort Hood, Texas.

I have been here in Vancouver since early 2007. I have been self-sufficient. I have fathered a beautiful son whose mother is Canadian. I plan to marry her and to provide our son with a loving and caring family unit.

I have made many friends and I have built a peaceful life here.

My son and my wife-to-be are my heart and soul and it would be a great tragedy for my family and for me personally if I were deported and torn away from them.

I think being punished as a prisoner of conscience for doing what I felt morally obligated to do is a great injustice.

This Christmas I hope and pray that people will open their hearts and minds to give peace and love a chance.

I appeal to the Canadian government to honour your country's great traditions of being a place of refuge from militarism and a place that respects human rights by supporting my decision, and the decisions taken by my fellow resisters to refuse any further participation in this unjust war.

I ask that you urge your government to respect the will of the majority of Canadians by acting on the direction it has been given twice by Parliament to immediately stop deporting Iraq War resisters like me and to let us become permanent residents here.

My heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones in this unnecessary war.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2009
Rodney Watson is an Iraq War veteran who was ordered deported by the Harper government this fall. On Sept. 18 he took refuge in Vancouver's First United Church. Dec. 27 will be his 100th day in sanctuary. Watson's request to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds remains outstanding.

Letter handed to President Obama today on behalf of Iraq Veterans Against the War

I hope that President Obama will read the following letter that was presented to him today by Michael Kern of the Ft. Hood chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. A friend wrote that Michael handed President Obama this letter as the President shook the hands of soldiers in Michael's barracks. The letter was accepted by the President's security detail, apparently.

Here is the letter, straightforward and sincere.

President Obama:

In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated "These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil." Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.

You also said that "We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government". Sir, we appreciate that-but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental healthcare for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are broken.

You said "We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident." Sir, one of the answers is self evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental healthcare for all soldiers.

You stated that "As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for." Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our servicemembers indeed have access to quality mental health care. The Army has only 408 psychiatrists — military, civilian and contractors — serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers that exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.

We ask that:

1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.
2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels-from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.
3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice
4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.
5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.
6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.

Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.

You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.


-Iraq Veterans Against the War