Winter Soldier (26 page)

I had an opportunity to meet with families in Iraq who lost two, three, four, five members at the same time. These people opened their doors and their hearts and gave me a beautiful welcome.

When my son died, it made me crazy. I have a grandson. Jesus had a sixteen-month-old baby, only sixteen months old. When Jesus died, everybody cried in the house, and my grandbaby watched everybody and did not understand what happened. I guarded my grandson. I went to the park and played with him, because he is mine.

I didn’t have an opportunity to cry for my son. I didn’t have the opportunity because the government told me, “Your son died with a shot to the head. It’s impossible for you to see the body because the face is destroyed and it’s not good for the family. We will not pay for the funeral for you, because you chose your own cemetery.”

Much later, I learned that the military lied to me. My son did not die when he received the shot to the head. Jesus died when he stepped on an illegal American cluster bomb and waited two hours for medical assistance. Then he died.

I miss my son. I cry every single day for Jesus. It’s been five years. On March 27, it will be five years since my son died in Iraq. But when I come in here today with Iraq Veterans Against the War, and I see Camilo, and I see Juan, and I see Jethro, I see Jesus. This is my new family. These are my boys. My sons and my daughters are here in Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The war destroys families. The war destroyed my life. I had some problems with Jesus’s mother, because when Jesus died and I began to speak out, I began traveling around the country and around the world. I got divorced because the family couldn’t understand why I began to change my life. I was cashier. I was newspaper deliverer. I had a job.

But when Jesus died I needed to tell young people that it’s necessary to get more education. No more violence. More school, no more weapons, no more bombs. My family didn’t understand me and it was destroying for me.

I have had the opportunity to review my life. I have a new wife, but believe me, it’s not easy. But this is only one story. Carlos has another story. We have more than four thousand stories now. Five years. How many more stories do you need? How much more blood do the American people need, to stand with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, with the families and say, “Bring the troops home now!” How many more years?

I’m tired. It’s been five years. Every single day, I go to schools, I go to the rallies, and I tell the people. But people continue to die, and the children in Iraq continue to die because my government destroyed their lives. My government destroyed my grandson. Please, join together for peace and love. Thanks so much.

Nancy Lessin

On behalf of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), we want to say to IVAW what an honor it is to be witness to this profound and historic event, and what an honor it is to work with you in bringing this horrific era to an end. We are your families, and you are our hearts.

In fall 2002, when MFSO was founded, the drumbeats for war were deafening. We noticed that all those who were saying, “We gotta go to war” weren’t going anywhere, nor were their loved ones. It was our loved ones who would be sent off as cannon fodder, to kill and die in an illegal, unjustifiable invasion. People said to us, “But your loved ones volunteered.” We told them about contracts. Every member of the military signed a contract to defend the Constitution, but the implied vow of the United States government is that you will never be sent into harm’s way for no good reason.

We wanted to prevent the invasion for so many reasons. Among them was a deadly equation we learned from the history of this country and from the Vietnam War. Racism plus dehumanization equals horror.

From early on in the invasion, we got e-mails like this one. “My son will be leaving for Iraq within the month. In his last phone call he said he was ready to go over there and kill any Muslim in sight. He even said he’d kill women and children, anyone whose skin is brown. Ironically he’s Asian. His skin is very brown. He was calling the Iraqis rag heads. How does a mother respond to that kind of anti-human ranting?”

On November 14, 2003, we asked one of our members if he could write something for our loved ones and all servicemembers about not losing their humanity. That’s how we put it. The next day Stan Goff had written an open letter to GIs called “Hold onto Your Humanity.” It ends this way:

You are never under any obligation to hate Iraqis. You are never under any obligation to give yourself over to racism and nihilism and the thirst to kill for the sake of killing, and you are never under any obligation to let them drive out the last vestiges of your capacity to see and tell the truth to yourself and to the world. You do not owe them your souls. Come home safe and come home sane. The people who love you and have loved you all your lives are waiting here, and we want you to come back and be able to look us in the face. Don’t leave your souls in the dust there like another corpse. Hold onto your humanity.

We tried to find ways to ask this of our loved ones. MFSO member Rick Hanson wrote about saying goodbye to his son at the airport:

I was a father talking to a son with total absence of reference. I had no wisdom to offer; instead, I asked more of him. I asked him to stay focused. I asked him not to let his guard down ever. I asked him to do what he was trained to do. I asked him to do what he needed to do to survive, and yet maintain his moral compass in the middle of it all. I asked my nineteen-year-old son to do all of that, and then I apologized as a father for being so asleep, for being so cynical and complacent that I let this country send him to this war.

In what might have been my next-to-last hug of Eric, I left my tears on his right shoulder, as he left his tears on my right shoulder. We held our breath for seven, 12, 15, 18 month deployments, back-to-back deployments, third, fourth, fifth deployments, stop-loss deployments. The ringing of our phone, a knock on the door carried new sinister meanings. We held our loved ones close in our hearts, until we could once again hold you close in our arms.

Today MFSO includes almost four thousand military families from across the U.S. and on bases around the world, many with loved ones now in Iraq. MFSO also includes families of war resisters. A growing number of MFSO members are spouses living on bases and in base towns, and there are over 130 Gold Star families, members of our National Chapter, Gold Star Families for Peace. Their loved ones died as a result of this invasion and occupation.

For those of us lucky enough to have our loved ones come home, all is not well. Every day we get e-mails like this one:

I need your help. My son’s body showed up at my house for Christmas, but his mom and I did not know the person who claimed to be our son. He is severely drunk every day, belligerent. He has nightmares every night of the murdered innocent children and Iraqi civilians, and the Army abandoned him as far as giving him help. They will go out of their way to help him reenlist though.

Or this one from MFSO member Stacy Bannerman:

I got my husband back whole physically, and I think his heart is here, too, but I’m not so sure about his mind. He still checks to see where his weapon is every time we get in a vehicle. Although his body is back there is a war that remains between us. I am left to deal with the lost years of time, the lost love of my life. I want to talk with my husband about what he’s going through, but I don’t have the words. Hell, I don’t even have the questions. What’s the conversational opener to this: So you inadvertently killed Iraqi children. How’s that going for you?… How am I supposed to? How are we?

You already heard from MFSO members Joyce and Kevin Lucey, about their son taking his own life. April Somdahl is also here with MFSO. Her brother, Sergeant Brian Rand, was declared psychologically non-deployable after his second tour in the Middle East, but the army deployed him to Iraq again anyway. He shot and killed himself shortly after returning from that deployment.

There’s a line in a poem about the first Gulf War that bears repeating here. It goes, “If I’m sad, how do you suppose that Iraqi mother feels?”

We understand that it’s never been a politician who’s ended a war. It’s always been a social movement. We are proud to be building this movement with IVAW, including this movement inside the military community.

Charley Richardson

This is an occupation that has brought war home and taken its toll on military families. It isolates us from the rest of the nation in our grief, our fear, and our suffering. It enforces a code of silence about an occupation that never should have started, makes us feel alone, and steals our voice. A code of silence remains in effect while the yellow ribbons fade and the magnets fall off the SUVs. A code of silence begins with the troops and extends to their families, and has now been spread to the rest of the nation. The occupation of Iraq has become a war on dissent, particularly dissent within the military community, a war on democracy, and a war on truth.

There are those who say that we as a nation didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam. But unfortunately for all of us, the decision makers did learn the most important lesson: be sure that the vast majority aren’t directly affected by the war, and silence the rest with lies and fearmongering. Also, be sure that the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful are not affected or even inconvenienced by the war.

Our so-called leaders have specifically chosen to insulate the majority from the war, and to dump the domestic impact of the war on the troops and their families. They have created a public that despite their opposition to the war is disconnected, distracted, and intimidated.

Sitting here at the National Labor College, I’m reminded of something one of my mentors in the labor movement once told me: that strikes are not won or lost on the picket line. They are won or lost at the kitchen table. The military knows this well. They know that gaining support from the families or at least keeping us silent is critical to keeping this war going. Being called a disgrace to our son was one of the most painful things that Nancy and I have ever experienced, even though we know we are not a disgrace.

The military funds an institute at Purdue University, studying how to keep military families “on the farm.” Watch the recruitment ads on television. They’re not aimed at the recruits anymore. They are aimed at the families, the ones that need to be convinced. They are working to keep the families silent, and we at MFSO are working to help families find their voice. Every day new families step forward, silent no longer. Together we are building a movement and a community that can support our loved ones in their opposition to the war as well.

While being told by the establishment to be silent, military families are often asked [by the antiwar movement] why our loved ones haven’t refused to fight. We are even attacked because our loved ones are in the military, as if the war were somehow our fault. MFSO supports those who have taken stands of conscience and refused to fight, but we also know that it is the citizens of this country who have allowed this administration and Congress to invade Iraq and to keep the war going. It is all of our responsibilities.

The silence of the majority has meant death for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Americans have surrendered their humanity by covering their ears and closing their eyes and going about their daily lives. They have surrendered their humanity by being against the war but not doing anything to end it.

Not one more life. Not one more dime. Not one more lie. End the occupation. Bring the troops home now and take care of them when they get here.

Through their occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration and Congress are running our military into the ground. Afraid to implement a draft like the one during the Vietnam War, politicians have sent the same soldiers to the front again and again. More than 565,000 Americans have been deployed more than once to Iraq or Afghanistan.1 In December 2006 the organization Swords to Plowshares reported approximately 50 percent of troops in Iraq were enduring their second tour of duty. Another 25 percent were on their third or even fourth tour.2