PORTLAND, Oregon ― Veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Iraqis, Afghanis, Vietnam veterans, and family members of U.S. military personnel converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the “Winter Soldier” hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.

At the Unitarian Church downtown, some 300 people gathered to hear the testimonies, which left many in tears. The five-hour event was comprised of three panels; Voices of Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, The Human Costs of War, and Building Resistance to War.

The goal of the event is to give veterans a platform by which to disseminate information about their experiences abroad to the general public.

“War changes people. You do not come out of a combat zone the same,” Iraq war veteran Chanan Suarez Diaz told the audience while moderating the veteran’s panel. “War is very numbing…it comes to a point that you see so much destruction you become numb. This bullshit about bringing democracy or liberation is nonsense ― we’ve killed over one million Iraqis.”

Jan Critchfield, an Army National guard specialist, discussed his job working in Iraq as an army “journalist”, that in his words, “I was a propagandist, pure and simple.”

A somber Critchfield said, “I’m not proud of any of what I did over there ― it was inhumane and it changed me as a person. I didn’t do anything but yell at people, push people around, and aim my gun at people.”

Other vets spoke as photos taken by soldiers were shown on a large screen above the stage.

Josh Simpson explained his work as an army counterintelligence agent in Iraq. “We would go to houses without any evidence, arrest people, and pay our source hundreds of dollars. This was common, it was a crazy cycle.”

“We were raiding houses every night in Mosul,” he continued. “You ransack their stuff, then ask our officer who he wanted to detain.”

The number of people detained was a measure of success for a unit, Simpson explained. “People’s mothers would be grabbing me, asking me why I was taking their child away, and I never had an answer. It’s terrible to push an elderly Iraqi woman away so you can take her child and load her into your Stryker vehicle, when you don’t even believe they belong there.”

Evan Knappenberger served one year in Iraq with the Army 4th Infantry Division working as an intelligence analyst. “We are responsible as soldiers, we are murderers of over one million Iraqis,” a visibly shaken Knappenberger said. “I participated in burglary, trespassing, knowledgeable negligence, criminal assault and battery, rape by association, and gangsterism, I am standing here today as a criminal ― in a sense of the word that only someone who has worn the uniform can understand.”

“While I was in Iraq, I did many things, but nothing for freedom,” he added. “We’ve lost this war on the polemic battleground of semantics. By naming arbitrary rules of engagement, we rationalised murder ― this I witnessed…by calling it liberation, we justified occupation, this I witnessed…”

Chris Arendt, who was a block guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre during 2004-05, spoke of his experiences “working at a concentration camp, and the people I was working for were invading other countries.”

He explained, “I had a lot of time to think about things. What we do there is completely contrary to our own set of laws. We have 650 people in Gitmo right now waiting for us to do something with them. What have they done? They don’t even have charges! We are ruining people’s lives.”

“Time is the silent killer there,” Arendt explained, “You just put people in a cell and tell them they are never going home, and watch them slowly break apart. I wish I was angrier when I was there, but it was impossible to feel there, you can’t feel, feelings are just not something you want to bring there in your rucksack., but I’m still trying to unpack them, three years later.”

David Mann was an Army Specialist who was deployed to Nasiriyah, Iraq in 2003 and forced to return after his tour ended under the “stop-loss” policy for a second deployment to Balad, Iraq in 2005.

“We were told not to stop when children ran in front of our vehicles as we invaded Iraq,” he explained, his voice cracking. After being stop-lossed, Mann checked himself into an emergency room after threatening to kill himself.

Weeping he continued: “I told them I was going to kill myself if I had to go back to war. I was sent back…every man, woman and child who has died in this war has died in vain, because it was a war based on lies and profits.”

The event was sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Seattle Chapter, the American Friends Service Committee, PDX Peace Coalition, and the American Iranian Friendship Council, among many others.

On another panel, Dr. Baher Butti, formerly the chief psychiatrist at a mental health clinic Baghdad, told the stunned audience, “The Iraqi population has mass post-traumatic stress disorder, everybody is just trying to survive.”

Dr. Zaher Wahab, professor of Education at Lewis & Clark College, who serves as a senior advisor to the Minister of Higher Education in Afghanistan, spoke eloquently of the catastrophic situation in Afghanistan.

“There is now more bombing in Afghanistan than in Iraq, because they are so short of troops,” Dr. Wahab explained, “The average family lives on one dollar per day, two million people are seriously mentally ill, 70 percent of Afghanis are traumatised. The society is being murdered by the occupation, and it’s being done on live television.”

Iraq war veteran and former Marine Benjamin David Lewis, 23 years old, also attended the event. Lewis, who has served two tours in Iraq and four years as a Marine, including being in Fallujah during the November 2004 siege that killed thousands of Iraqis and destroyed much of the city, had just received his involuntary activation order to redeploy, as he is in the Individual Ready Reserve.

“My plane to Kansas City that takes me to be screened and get my orders leaves tomorrow,” Lewis told IPS on Oct. 18. “Presumably I’ll get my orders to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, but I’m going to refuse to activate.”

Lewis explained that when a soldier is screened for deployment, they have five months to get their affairs in order before being shipped abroad. At the end of this five months, he has decided he will publicly refuse his orders to deploy.

When asked why he would refuse the orders, Lewis said his decision was based on educating himself about the goals of the U.S. government and military, coupled with his experience in Fallujah during both 2004 sieges, of which he said, “My battalion in spring 2004 was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions (GC).”

“During the spring siege we sent military-age males back into the city, and were ordered to kill them,” he told IPS.

Of the November siege, Lewis added, “The intention of the military was to take over and occupy the main hospital in Fallujah, which violates the GC’s, as well as our being ordered to target all ‘military age males’.”

The intention of his refusal to activate is “To let the American public and other veterans know that this is an illegal war, and everyone should be opposing it.”

The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.

From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled “Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan” outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“If we are going to end these occupations, we have to share this pain,” Camilo Mejia, Iraq veteran and Chair of the Board of IVAW stated to conclude the veterans panel. “Only by sharing this pain, and acting to end it, can we heal ourselves and educate the American public.

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A basic call to action

Introduction

      I often find myself asking, “What role protests will play in our Revolution?” In the United States when using mass mobilizations as a tactic for direct action, the victories are few and far between. One obvious contradiction to this would be the anti-WTO protests that took place in Seattle, Washington in 1999. Demonstrators successfully halted negotiations by blockading the meetings perimeter; delegates were confined to the restraints of their hotel rooms. However, after this famous mobilization the government vowed something like this would never happen again. Since then protests have done little but voice opinions, despite many attempts of blockading or reaching drastic change (Bush was never impeached and the republicans still had their convention). Does the fault lie in our government’s recent decision to heighten “security,” or are we left with the blame? 

      Direct Action protests have worked in various countries such as Mexico, Algeria, France, South Africa, the list goes on. What is it that gives the demonstrations the intensity to accomplish their goals? Well, maybe it can be summed up in the cries of the ‘Aarsh, “ You cannot kill us, we are already dead.” As Revolutionaries we aren’t pushing this as far as we can go. Perhaps we’ve become so comfortable that in the midst of the smoke and tear gas: “I might not make it to work next week,” “That paper won’t get turned in,” or “I’ll miss my court date.” Former four-star general and U.S. secretary of state Alexander Haig once said, “Let them march all they want – as long as they pay their taxes.” Now, I strongly believe that there are many more important things than protesting, however, I wholeheartedly believe that they are an important part of social movements and if Revolution is a process, then every battle counts. 

Clarification on “Protesting as a Tactic”

      This brief primarily focuses on what I call, “protesting as a tactic for direct action,” which basically means, aiming to accomplish a goal, such as: Blockading or mobilizing for change. In light of recent events (namely the RNC) it has been proven that this act might be harder then once conceived. When we bring about this strategy, the paradigm of “non-violence” is no longer effective. This is mainly due to the escalated level of defense used by the police and National Guard. Recently, on October 2^nd, 2008 for the first time in history an active U.S. Armed Forces unit was given a dedicated assignment to USNORTHCOM, a program to “provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts.” They are the ones that stripped us of the rights to protest non-violently, a significant change in strategies must be used to counter this.

      One may ask, “Well, where do we go from here?” I do not believe this is an easy answer, nor do I believe the answer will easily reach consensus; there is no end all, know all conclusion. In fact this question might be answered with the assertion of another question, “How far are you willing to go?” In search for the answer one might also look for successful actions in other countries. For example, in Tizi-ouzou, Algeria protestors blockaded the roads with cars and burning tires, and hurled stones and firebombs in defense of the blockades, this action ultimately halted corrupt polls. Another example would be, the tight formations and unity of Greek Black Bloc making the group as a whole almost impenetrable. The common theme these tactics share is strategy, a common game plan.

      A proposal is in order, here in America, a common strategy needs to be agreed upon; and the RNC welcoming committee made great strides for this. However, the problem with leaving room for a diversity of tactics is that if one group gives an inch while the other takes a mile, it compromises the strategy. That being said, this was not the welcoming committee’s responsibility, knowing the strategy, the affinity groups should have reached consensus on what tactics were to be used. This brings us back to the question of non-violence; when deciding, one must take into account the task at hand and the best means for accomplishing that goal. We can no longer sit down on the streets while authorities continue to gas, beat, and remove us; we must defend our actions by any means necessary. 

Conclusion

      Industrial Capitalism continues to reign, while the world sits face to face with extinction. It is now obvious that they are ready and willing to defend it until the bitter end. Unless the proper measures are taken we may never come face to face with true freedom. They’ll watch from skyscraper windows as their pawns destroy our knights. The machine will keep running, but responsibility lies with those who watch and do nothing. What I have said here, might not be news to anyone; this isn’t an instruction manual or a survival guide, instead think of it as a basic call to action.   

Works Consulted

3. Goodman, Amy. “Is Posse Comitatus Dead? US Troops on US Streets” Democracy   Now! (2008)
4. Henri, Binyamin. “On Protesting” Cascadian Ascendant 1 (2005): 1.
5. Mayoux, Stephen. “Anger Among Algeria’s Berbers.” You cannot kill us, we are already dead. – St. Louis, MO: One Thousand Emotions, 2006.

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A generation of traumatized children

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Dispatches from Iraq

By Dahr Jamail

Long before I discovered the mysterious mix of pain and relief that writing from the heart brings, I was pursuing a Masters in English Literature at Central Washington University in the small town of Ellensburg, Washington.

I was broke, like most grad students, and supported myself by working for two individuals confined to assisted living situations. One of them, Larry, was completely paralyzed. He was unable to speak, and could only blink his eyes. He had been in prison when the ill effects of an operation he undertook there had gone wrong, and were then compounded by an error by the anesthesiologist. His sustenance came from gulping small spoonfuls of food blended with milk. Never in his life would he ever again “enjoy” a meal. He would never be experiencing the simple actions of walking, singing, dancing, swimming, driving, fishing, wandering …

He may have been unable to speak, but Larry had a lot to say. He communicated by blinking his eyes. I would sit beside his prone body on the gurney and slowly recite the alphabet until he blinked on a letter. “C?” I would ask. Another blink. C. Recite again,”A?” Another blink. A. Recite to N, another blink. I would ask, “Can?” Another blink, “Yes.” “Can” would eventually become, “Can I have a drink?” I would get him some juice, or water, depending on what he would spell next.

It was laborious to communicate with him and it took patience and stamina. He lacked neither, for he had a book to write. We would spend three hours to produce half a page of text.

Everything was against him, but that was not going to deter him from trying to write his book, to tell his story. He had already arrived at the secret of writing that I, as a slow learner, did not learn until long after I dropped out of graduate school from lack of funds. It took me long to understand that I cannot keep quiet about what I know, and must write.

I had to have my heart ripped open, witnessing the occupation of Iraq before I knew that I must write. And I have written hundreds of articles, some papers, and now, two books. Forgive me if this sounds self-laudatory. but I oftentimes feel it is not enough … that I should do more. So, here I am writing, yet again. And as far as I know, so is Larry, because we both have a lot that we want people to know about.

Or, perhaps, we want only for people to acknowledge what they know already.

Less than a month from the American presidential election of 2008, the day after the so-called final debate, I sat writing some of this article in Oakland airport, awaiting a flight to Portland, as part of a team of journalists, authors, activists and military veterans from the occupation of Iraq. The team is embarking on a countrywide tour to talk about the occupation of Iraq and the American Empire, in the hope that the American public might consider resisting both.

“… for seven years, France has been a mad dog dragging a saucepan tied to its tail, every day unaware that we have ruined, starved and massacred a nation of poor people to bring them to their knees. They remained standing. But at what a price! While the delegations were putting an end to the business, 2,400,000 Algerians remained in the slow death camps; we have killed more than a million of them ….” 
-Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Sleepwalkers,” Les Temps Modernes, April 1962

The economy is in shambles. Yet, in the heated exchanges between Obama and McCain about the economy, there appears to be no connection whatsoever between the occupation, now costing a cool $3 billion per week, and the financial dire straights the country is in.

Here, in the East Bay Area of California, famed for its moderate temperatures, lots of sunshine and fresh ocean air, I peer across the Bay through the pollution to catch the silhouette of San Francisco. My eyes smart from the effort. We’re in a drought, the reservoirs are drying up. Water scarcity is a reality, even here. The Poles are melting. Within my lifetime, this airport may be completely submerged, along with the streets of several major US cities, one of a string of countless results of climate change.

I watched a plane unload and people rushing past, trying to remain abreast of the inhuman pace thrust upon us by the industrial growth society, a pace inherently unsustainable. I marvel continually, awed and uncomprehending that life here goes on as it does, while so much is burning.

Despite a collapsing economy and complicity in a system that is devouring the embers of a burning planet, the privileged carry on with their lives, “unaware.” But everyone knows. Even the most ardent supporter of the powers that be is aware of what the government of the United States has done and is doing to Iraq, to the world, to the planet.

I believe that, like me, most people, deep inside, know that many things have gone terribly wrong, that we must find a better way to exist.

Now, as I write, on October 25, 21 Iraqis and another US soldier are killed in Iraq, along with an additional 17 wounded Iraqis. These facts hardly garner mention in the American corporate media, because the “surge” has been a “success.” You and I are the intended beneficiaries of this “success,” as our lives grind on in this twisted Disneyland, while half a world away an occupation grinds on, carrying out industrial scale slaughter, with the unfailing support of our tax dollars.

History repeats itself, for we choose not to learn from it. I amend the above Sartre quote:

“… for over five years, the United States has been a mad dog dragging a saucepan tied to its tail, every day unaware that we have ruined, starved and massacred a nation of poor people to bring them to their knees. They remained standing. But at what a price! While the delegations were putting an end to the business, 4,700,000 Iraqis remained in the slow death camps as refugees; we have killed more than 1.2 million of them …”

“For 18 months, our country has been the victim of what the legal code has called a ‘demoralization offensive.’ And it is not by sabotaging its ‘morale’ that you demoralize a nation, it is by degrading its morality; as for the procedure, everyone knows it: by precipitating us into a despicable adventure, they have instilled in us, from without, a sense of social guilt. But we vote, we give mandates and, in a way, we can revoke them; the stirring of public opinion can bring down governments. We personally must be accomplices to the crimes that are committed in our name, since it is within our power to stop them. We have to take responsibility for this guilt which was dormant in us, inert, foreign, and demean ourselves in order to be able to bear it.” 
-Sartre, Les Temps Modernes, May 1957

Fifty-one years later, two generations away, in another time and another world, are we willing to recognize that we are accomplices to the crimes that are committed in our name, since it is in our power to stop them? Are we willing to take responsibility for this guilt, which was dormant in us, inert, foreign, and to demean ourselves in order to be able to bear it?

It would hardly seem so, considering how even much of the “antiwar” contingent believe corporate media drivel about the “surge” being successful. Would Americans call it a success if it translated into a thousand American citizens being killed or disappearing every month, as they do, on average, in Iraq? Thanks to the “success” of the “surge,” today approximately one-quarter of the total population of Iraq are either refugees or dead.

This latest manifestation of bread and circus has the American public enthralled. Our slavish faith in the media renders us unwilling to demean ourselves to the point of hearing the truth within. Millions in the country are transfixed by a politically inexperienced, religious fundamentalist hate-monger from a small Alaskan town known for its meth labs, marijuana growers, four-wheelers, snow-machines and a Wal-Mart Supercenter with the distinction of selling more duct tape than any other in the country.

This is the low-point at which “politics” in the United States has arrived. How can this charade even be taken seriously?

“It is not a good thing, my fellow Frenchmen, you who are aware of all the crimes committed in our name, it is really not a good thing that you do not breathe a word of it to anyone, not even your own soul, for fear of having to be judged. At the start you did not know, I can believe that; then you suspected; now you know, but you continue to remain silent. Eight years of silence have a degrading effect. And all to no avail: today, the blinding sun of torture is at its zenith and illuminates the whole country; in this light, there is no laughter that does not sound false, no face that is not made up to conceal anger or fear, no act that does not betray our disgust and complicity. Whenever two French people meet now, there is a dead body between them. In fact, did I say one? … In the past, France was the name of a country; let us take care that it is not, in 1961, the name of a neurosis.” 
-Sartre, from the preface to “The Wretched of the Earth”

What of my fellow Americans? What is their continual denial doing to them? Are we experiencing a mass psychosis? How long will this sleepwalking continue?

Resistance in Baghdad, meanwhile, continues with over one thousand attacks on occupation and collaborating forces every month. Conservatively, that’s over one attack per hour. That, too, is part of the “success” of the “surge.” Most Iraq war veterans know this. Adam Kokesh, a former marine, was ejected from the Republican National Convention during McCain’s “acceptance speech” for holding up a sign that read, “You Can’t Win an Occupation.”

“… the circle is closing, because we are going to be caught in a dreadful trap and, unfortunately for us, in a posture that we ourselves have condemned. False naivete, flight, bad faith, solitude, silence, a complicity at once rejected and accepted, that is what we called, in 1945, collective responsibility. There was no way the German people, at the time, could feign ignorance of the camps. ‘Come off it!’ we said. ‘They knew everything.’ We were right, they did know everything, and it is only today that we can understand: because we too know everything. Most of them had never seen Dachau or Buchenwald, but they knew people who knew other people who had caught a glimpse of the barbed wire or consulted confidential files in a ministry. They, like us, thought that this information was unsound, they kept quiet, were mistrustful of one another. Do we still dare to condemn them? Do we still dare to absolve ourselves?” 
-Sartre, Les Temps Modernes, May 1957

In early September, a cholera outbreak spread across southern Iraq and into Baghdad. It continues today, as scores are dead, hundreds sick, and it is still not completely contained. I received an email from Iraq recently, describing the condition of children in the al-Ghaziliya area of Baghdad. They sound to me like children in Somalia, suffering from the same chronic malnourishment, thin limbs, distended bellies, pencil necks, disease and starvation.

Around the same time, on September 10 to be precise, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdel Qader Mohammed Jassim confirmed that Baghdad planned to purchase F-16 fighter jets from the United States. “This plane is to improve the future ability of the Iraqi army to protect the entire country, including Kurdistan, from any foreign aggression,” Jassim told reporters in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The plan states that Baghdad “wants” to buy 36 advanced F-16 fighters from the United States.

The distended bellies are part of the entire country, but I doubt that the Iraqi army will be able to protect them with 36 F-16 fighter jets.

The question I ask myself is what will protect our country from collapsing under the burden of this enormous guilt of having systemically wrecked and destroyed another nation with such impunity? What will protect us from the awareness of being complicit in such unlawful and willful destruction? As the truth becomes impossible to ignore, are we to be transformed from a nation of sleepwalkers into a nation of insomniacs?

If Larry is willing to go to the lengths he is in order to write his book about his life and how he suffered within the prison industrial complex, it seems a good time to ask ourselves, What am I willing to do to effect positive change? Will casting a vote for a particular candidate stop the North Pole from melting in five years, as the latest scientific report shows us? Will walking away from the voting booth bring an immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all occupation forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

We must each ask ourselves, during this week before the election, what, precisely, we will be willing to do to bring about the change necessary to end all the illegalities being carried out in our name. For this question shall, of course, persist long after November 4.

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