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How Do We Best “Support Our Troops”?
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by Kristina Gronquist, W A M M
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When, in 1957, the U.S. decided to jump into Vietnam and take over where the French colonialists left off, I had just been born. I was in high school from 1970 to 1974, the years when the war was ending. I did not become active in the peace movement until 1972. My civics teacher had completed a tour of Vietnam and was adamantly opposed to the war. I also had history and social studies teachers whose lessons were relevant to what was going on in those times, so I became immersed in learning about all the issues, the turbulent decade of the ’60s, and the huge and complex antiwar movement.
In my early twenties I dated a man several years older who had many friends that had been in Vietnam. They had a host of problems. Some had contamination from Agent Orange (a chemical defoliant) and had to go regularly to the VA hospital for treatments, many were heavy drinkers and drug users, and a few had committed suicide. I remember one vet in particular who had been dubbed “crazy Mike” by his buddies. Crazy Mike, with his long tangled hair and full beard, rarely said a word when he was sober but when he drank he became worrisome. He would mumble incoherently and pace.
Although I heard charges that the peace movement of that era was disrespectful to the returning soldiers, it is something I never experienced. (Actually, there was never any proof of antiwar protesters calling the troops “baby killers” and spitting on them. Last fall a professor at the Metro U who teaches a class on the ’60s said that research showed that there weren’t any incidents of returning soldiers being abused by peaceniks.) In appearance the vets I knew looked like the hippies of the day, but they were anything but mellow. At times I was afraid of them, or for them. Working-class white guys, not college-bound, I knew they had been drafted, that they had been sent unwillingly to their fate. It never once crossed my mind to put them down for having gone to Vietnam, and I never dared ask them a thing about what they had been through.
Today’s antiwar community has been careful to separate its opposition to the war from the issue of the troops, making a distinction between opposing the policy in Iraq and opposing the troops that volunteered to join the military and be sent there. “Support Our Troops—Bring Them Home” is a common refrain. Every pro- or antiwar Democrat or Republican politician who gives a speech about the Iraq War prefaces their comments with praise and adulation for the troops: How brave they are, how they have performed superbly, how they are doing a wonderful job, etc. This need or requirement to provide carte blanche blanket praise for all the troops, for all the branches of the military, gives me pause.
What does “support the troops” entail? Do I support the troops that tortured at Abu Ghraib and the medical personnel who violated their sacred professional oath to report it? Do I support sharpshooters who have killed families at checkpoints because their vehicles did not slow down or stop soon enough? Do I support the troops that participate in civilian killing sprees like the one in Haditha, Iraq, last year, or in Afghanistan this year, where an entire Marine squadron has been ordered out of the country? (A dozen people, mostly civilians, were left dead after soldiers sped through a 10-mile stretch of road in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangahar province shooting at pedestrians, people in cars, public buses and taxis, following a suicide attack on their convoy.) Do I support male troops who have raped and sexually harassed female military personnel, abuse which is reported to be widespread in today’s co-ed military?
When I think back to my many firsthand experiences with returning Vietnam veterans and analyze the horrendous human cost and fallout from Vietnam (where 60,000 people never returned at all), I cannot help but come to the conclusion that support for the troops, at this point in time, means supporting their trip back home and fully funding their physical and psychological aftercare.
War as a system to resolve modern conflict is simply untenable, it fails. War always breeds more violence and never solves root problems. Soldiers (any human being) put in a system that is so dark and inherently evil will have a hard time not succumbing to those same tendencies. Benjamin Ferencz, who presided over the trials of Nazi soldiers after WWII, has stated that the only way to prevent war crimes is to stop war; he believes you can’t have one without the other. Soldiers will cause pain to others, internalize that pain, and regurgitate it if they come home, and even kill themselves.
We support our troops by keeping them from going into meaningless battle, and as an antiwar activist, I tried that, and failed. So they were sent, yes. But once they are at war, I am not going to support what they do there, nor do I want to fund their weaponry with tax dollars desperately needed here at home. The bill that recently passed the Democrat-controlled House wants us to spend $100 billion more on this foul war until at least Sept. 1, 2008. Over the next eighteen months, how many more lives must be ruined? We must answer: No! Get our troops out of harm’s way now. Funding this war for one more second is too long. |
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Word UP
The result we see now is that we were dragged into a swamp of hatred between brothers, and that all the bloodshed was for the sake of war leaders to get more power and fortune.
—Hussein Ali, a teacher from Diwaniyah, Iraq, speaking about four years of U.S. occupation, on 4/9/2007, the anniversary of the day that Baghdad fell to the U.S. armed forces.
Over the next short period there are three primary tasks for the anti-war movement. Pressure Republicans and conservative Democrats, shore up Progressives, and conduct massive public education on why funding withdrawal (of troops from Iraq) is the right policy. The anti-war movement must realize that Congress is not comprised of peaceniks, but also that political compromises will be made along the way. Constant pressure from both sides will be needed. In the long process to end the Vietnam War, over 30 votes were taken on various pieces of legislation. Public pressure was the key to moving legislation and changing lawmakers positions. That same pressure is needed now.
—Erik Leaver, the Carol and Ed Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the policy outreach coordinator for Foreign Policy In Focus.
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© 2007 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete May 2007 Index - click here
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