The New ‘Noble Cause’ Reasoning!
“If People Want To Support The Troops, Then They Should Support Us Coming Home”
“The First Antiwar Movement Organized By Active Military Personnel Since The Vietnam War”
The following is posted in Thomas Barton’s most recent edition of Military Project-G.I.Special. You can visit that link to read all of his News Letters, or you can download this recent addition .pdf here: GI SPECIAL 4K7: “This War Is Not Right”.pdf. It will also be cross posted at my site where, on the right hand side you can also find the 15 most recent ‘G.I. Specials’ I still host for Thomas after his site went down, mysteriously, a few months ago, and was down for quite awhile before it mysteriously reappeared.
November 01, 2006 Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation The Soldiers Speak Out & Nov. 02, 2006 By Mark Benjamin, Salon.com The antiwar GIs & November 06, 2006, Gordon Lubold, Army Times Staff writer Active troops going public to oppose war {This is a Subscription only access view article}
[Excerpts of above articles – of which I blockquoted Thomas’s Highlighted points, adding links not found in the News Letter- some e-mail servers were blocking at reception point because of certain links contained in earlier editions]
“As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for US troops to come home.”
This statement – the Appeal for Redress – has been signed by over 600 active-duty soldiers who have had enough of seeing their brothers and sisters sacrificed to the disastrous war in Iraq.
Seaman Jonathon Hutto and Marine Sergeant Liam Madden spearheaded the Appeal which is co-sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace {the VFP site is being rebuilt, if not getting directly to the site, with this link, click on ‘Home’, at top of that page, it’ll take you to the New Home Page} and Military Families Speak Out.
It is the latest effort stemming from the antiwar energy that has emerged among military families, veterans, and active military, including generals and other high-ranking officers.
It’s also the first antiwar movement organized by active military personnel since the Vietnam War.
A minority of the troops who have signed on so far are reservists, while more than 75 percent are active-duty service members — more than 60 percent of whom have served in Iraq.
Hutto, who served off the Iraq coast from September 2005 until March, told the Washington Post, “I hear discussions every day among my shipmates about the war in Iraq and how it doesn’t make any sense at this point. There is no victory in sight.”
“We’ve heard many voices, we heard from some politicians, some activists and pundits. We haven’t heard from the men and women who actually serve, and I think that’s a constituency that has to be heard from,” he said in a phone interview Oct. 23.
There are “thousands of men and women” who believe that it’s time to end the war, he added.
Madden served in Anbar province from September 2004 until February 2005.
“I don’t think any more Iraqis or Americans should die because of the US occupation,” he told ABC News. “If people want to support the troops, then they should support us coming home.”
Madden cited his disillusionment with a war based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction and phantom links between al Qaeda and Iraq.
At a White House press briefing last week, press secretary Tony Snow {whom I believe Never Served- but fancies himself amoung the blabbering crowd as an expert of Military/War and Everything else, just ask FOX Propaganda, whoops News-JS} dismissed the protest effort as tiny, and suggested the participants were not “proud” of their service. At that time, only 65 service members had signed on.
“You get 65 guys who are, unfortunately — no, not unfortunately — 65 people who are going to be able to get more press than the hundreds of thousands who have come back and said they’re proud of their service,” Snow told reporters.
Madden says he takes pride in his service to his country, and that he loves the Marine Corps.
“Joining the Marine Corps was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” Madden told me over dinner in Washington, about a 45-minute drive from his post at Quantico, Va.
But he harshly criticized what he considers to be a botched strategy — along with the shifting rationale for the war, its high human toll and the poor prognosis for success.
He said there is “an implied trust” between soldier and government that the military will not be ordered into a dubious, costly adventure.
“When it becomes blatantly evident that you are being exploited then it is justified for those in the military to dissent,” Madden said. “This war is not right.”
David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said he thinks that disillusionment about Iraq is “latent but widespread” among troops.
“I think they are expressing a sentiment that is really there,” he said, referring to the small but growing group of protesters. “I think we could see a newly emerging soldiers’ movement,” Segal said. “I don’t think it is there yet. But the germ is there.”
One soldier, speaking under condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said, “I don’t think that the American public realizes just how many soldiers and service members in general really do have reservations about what is going on over there….It’s very hard. These soldiers seeing all this tribal fighting, ethnic fighting going on around them….There is not really anything you can do to stop this.”
Madden admits that it is difficult to say exactly how many of his fellow Marines quietly agree, beyond those who have participated in the campaign. A drafted soldier in the Vietnam era might have been quicker to make his voice heard. But fear of retribution prevents professional service members in particular from voicing their concerns in order to protect their careers.
Yet the silent resistance runs deep, Madden believes. “It is more than anybody would ever admit,” he explains.
“A lot of people are in the military for life, because of their economic situation. But their hearts may be against this war.”
At least some measure of that sentiment has surfaced recently: A February 2006 poll by Zogby International showed that 72 percent of troops serving in Iraq thought the United States should get out by the end of the year.
Another soldier said he believed the Appeal would have “a snowball effect” and more and more people would sign on.
“Once they start seeing momentum going forward and more and more service members coming out, they will be much more inclined to come out as well.”
“These brave men and women, who put their lives on the line for our nation every day, must be heard.”
The top brass has taken notice. Organizers say they got a call last week from staff on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who asked for details on the number and kind of troops signing on to the protest.
The campaign of appeals to Congress is largely the brainchild of Jonathan Hutto, a 29-year-old Navy seaman based in Norfolk, Va., recently named the best seaman of the quarter on his aircraft carrier. While floating off the coast of Iraq in December 2005, Hutto read “Soldiers in Revolt” by David Cortright, a chronicle of the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.
Back in Norfolk in June, Hutto invited Cortright to town to address an off-base meeting of about 100 like-minded people, including many military service personnel. Madden happened to be in town visiting a friend and he went to see Cortright speak. Then Madden and Hutto began exchanging e-mails, and the movement took shape.
“We are appealing to the best of our political leadership. We are appealing to our government.
“And if those appeals are met we can avoid those more massive forms of protest.”
Cortright, who was active in the GI movement during Vietnam and is now a research fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, has become an advisor and organizer of the protest movement.
“This is an incredibly elegant and interesting way for service members to express their feelings about the war, in a legal way, to their congressional reps,” Cortright said in a phone interview. Despite the formal approach, he added, the appeals are based on powerful personal convictions. He said they “reflect this growing feeling in the ranks” that the war in Iraq “is not working.”
While the methods may be different from Vietnam, Cortright said he detects a striking similarity in the disillusionment among service members from both wars — particularly as the mission in Iraq becomes increasingly unclear to troops there, and the war continues to “drift sideways,” as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner put it early last month.
The movement includes soldiers who say they still love the military, but are angry because it is unclear to them just what they are supposed to be doing there. Daily patrolling through Iraq’s dangerous streets serves as one example.
“There is a civil war going on and we are stuck in the middle of it,” one female Army soldier, who had returned from Iraq in September, told me.
She has signed on to the current protest to Congress, but did not want her name to be made public out of fear that it might hurt her military career.
She said of the daily patrols: “You go out and you drive around the city to show a presence. Sometimes you stop and search houses. But a lot of times you drive around for a while and drive back, unless you get hit, and then you come back a little earlier. In some places, you were guaranteed to be hit within 15 minutes.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, now a senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, acknowledges there is debate about whether service members should speak out. “That is a tough question to come down on,” Gard said. “We have a social contract in this country that the military does not question the civilian control over it.”
“But the flip side,” Gard continued, “is that there is an implicit assumption that they will not put the military into harm’s way and accept casualties except in causes that are reasonably in the national interest. In this case, I can’t find a rationale that makes any sense.”
The Appeal:
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As the ‘Chimp’ and his Controlling Puppeteers:
Wage their War of Choice, Wasting Billions A Week on same, paying Mercenaries Tens of Thousands of Our Money ‘Each’ while Military Personal, putting lives and limb on the line receive a Tiny Fraction of that as their Pay. Do we keep hearing about How This Country, of which the Greater Majority isn’t Sacrificing a Damn Thing, treats it’s Military Personal.
The following is an LTE to the Army Times:
Troops Need Child Care Help
Letters To The Editor
Army Times
11.6.06
Why do we have to pay for child care, giving up one-sixth of our pay or more if we have more than one child?
The military could make child care a military occupational specialty. It could fall under the medical field. Medics are already qualified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first aid, emergency medicine and other specialties. This MOS could become a 68W with a pediatric/child care additional skill identifier.
One or two pediatricians could work for an installation’s day care center. This would free up appointments for military and dependents at other medical clinics. All physicals, well-baby and other appointments could be handled at the day care site and not at the clinics.
Child care could become a 24-hour service. This would also help soldiers when they have charge of quarters, noncommissioned officer staff duty, field training exercises or other military obligations, such as having to work late.
Units would not have to release soldiers to go pick up their children, losing manpower and compromising military duties.
When soldiers have duty or go to the field, they would have to bring proof of duty to the day care center from either their first sergeant or company commander. Soldiers would have to care for their own child on holidays, training holidays and weekends unless they are working.
Staff Sgt. Eric J. Kelley
Baumholder, Germany
Why is this, and so much more, being Dumped on our Military Personal! This should be a No-Brainer, especially at times of ‘Wars of Choice’. This ‘Country’ should be Giving All to our Military Personal whom we seem to find no problem sending them to Invade other Countries, on Extremely Questionable Reasoning, than Not ‘Sacrificing’ any of our so called Wealth taking the measures to insure they and their families are taken care of!
All they get are Empty Words ‘Support The Troops’ from the likes of the Politicians who sent them, Military Leaders jockeying for Rank Advancement, Talking Heads of the MSM and Rightwingnut Talk Radio Programs, and of course the
The Kombat Keyboard Badge w/yellow Elephant
{Thanks BOHICA for this one!}
of the ‘Chickenhawks’ All, 101st Keyboard Brigade!
This Country never seems to see the Shame in their treatment of those who Serve them, at their Choice, while they Serve and when they Return, especially with PTSD!!!
Signature:If the recent Lancet reports of 655,000 Iraqi deaths are true, a field of markers representing that tragedy 51′ wide (15.55 m) would be 21.14 miles (34.02 km) long.
(If markers were three feet apart in all directions, as in the Arlington Memorials around the Country)
