The Veterans For Peace Engagement Campaign
Veterans For Peace members have watched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan play out over the years. One thing always hits them hard: The burdens of these wars are suffered unduly by our military members and their families, many of whom have endured multiple deployments, some as many as five.
Seventy-five years ago, Marine Major General Smedley Butler spoke out about the treatment of our soldiers. Butler fought in many of the US military actions around the world in the early part of the 20th century. At the end of his 33-year career, he wrote a book titled War Is A Racket in which he detailed how war profiteers benefited immensely from World War I, while the ordinary soldier paid the price. He put it this way:
“The soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heartbreak that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters. When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.”
Much has changed in the intervening years, but the fundamentally unfair equation General Butler pointed out has not changed.
The condition he wrote about of being “mentally broken” is very real today for a significant percentage of soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today it’s called “post-traumatic stress disorder” but it’s the same thing, and many soldiers often go undiagnosed or are inadequately treated. There are too many suicides; rates among soldiers in Iraq doubled last year, and the number of suicides among returning veterans is alarming. Then there’s alcohol and drug abuse; dangerous driving habits; broken families; AWOLS and desertions. All this is compounded by the fact many soldiers realize the justifications and explanations for the wars are bogus. They feel betrayal by their elected leaders; it’s easy to become angry and bitter.
Because of all this, large cash bonuses have not been as successful as the military would like to retain soldiers at the end of their enlistments. At the same time, recruitment standards are being lowered. West Point graduates – men and women invested in and anticipated as career soldiers -- are leaving the service at an alarming rate upon the expiration of their required six years of service. Then, there’s the hated stop loss policy, in which soldiers who thought their enlistments were up are rudely told they must remain for extended periods of time deployed in Iraq because they are needed for the war.
All this adds up to a military under great stress, a military that is breaking. The same thing happened during the Vietnam War. It got to a point the army was in a state of near collapse with soldiers refusing orders and even murdering their own leaders. This stress contributed to the ending of the Vietnam War.
At the 2006 Veterans For Peace convention, Lt Ehren Watada -- the first commissioned officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq based upon a belief that the war was illegal -- told attendees that there were many more soldiers who felt like he did and that he believed they would resist if they knew they had support from civilians.
Who better to provide such support than members of Veterans For Peace?
Veterans For Peace has over two decades of experience promoting peace and social justice as an alternative to the growing militarization Of America. The preemptive war of choice in Iraq is only a symptom of this militarization process.
The Veterans For Peace Engagement Campaign has been created to help facilitate the kinds of support Lt Watada spoke of through solidarity with active duty soldiers and outreach to them at their bases. That support involves contact and the dissemination of materials detailing the rights all active duty soldiers have, information on the various agencies and organizations that can help them and the fielding of any questions soldiers might have about speaking their minds or resisting. One thing such support does is help soldiers resist the war while staying within the bounds of the law.
The timing now for outreach is right. Our soldiers are being asked to take too much of the sacrifice for misguided wars on their and their families’ shoulders.
VFP engagement with active, reserve and guard soldiers in the US military involves many different approaches, in different regions of the country and with varying degrees of mobility and permanence. Depending on location and the proximity of bases and armories, VFP chapters around the country can figure out how they wish to engage and what works best for them.
Iraq Veterans Against The War and Military Families Speak Out are also involved in outreach. When and where possible, the VFP Engagement Campaign will work closely with IVAW, MFSO and other groups in this outreach effort.
Go here to read a testimonial by David Cortright on the project.
David Cortright is professor of peace studies at Notre Dame University and author of Soldiers In Revolt: GI Resistance During The Vietnam War
Last updated: 8/9/08
