Unity-Struggle-Victory: Veterans Organizing in the 21st Century

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ED NOTE: For all of those currently caught in the debate that is taking place with-in progressive Veterans' organizations; the common denominator amongst us is that we are all Veterans, all other considerations set aside. As such, we have quality of life issues that effect each and everyone of us, as well as that of our families, and increasingly that of our neighbors. We also have a responsibility to ensure that today's returning warriors are properly cared for. This, regardless of personal political ideology. There must be unity of purpose amongst us, in order to bring national focus on those issues, and create momentum for change or reform. Pragmatic solutions will not be forthcoming, not without our setting aside our political and ideological differences, and agreeing to work together on achievable common focus issues. By pooling our talents and our resources at the grass-roots, we can bring about change, at the national level.
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The model for this as a workable strategy is exemplified in this open letter to the Veterans community, from Steve Crandall, VVAW CA Central Coast Chapter President. It is based on one that we discussed in Steve and Carolyns' living room, during one of our stops on the VVAW West Coast Tour, earlier this year; they have already put the plan into action, as he tells us, in his letter. Unity of purpose, and clearly defined achievable goals...it works! WH ( Photo: VVAW West Coast Tour, Steve & Carolyn's)

Steve's letter, a lesson for all of us; action, speaks louder than words...

After reading the back and forth emails regarding IVAW and VVAW, I thought about our own chapter and what role we play in the VVAW org and what keeps us together.
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Our chapter is made up of thirteen or so members. Seven are actively involved by attending all monthly meetings, manning the three Street Fair booths per year and serving at the Stand Down when it was operating. We can’t count on the other members to come through all the time so since the seven are the boots on the ground we make all the decisions.
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Of the seven active members four of us are veterans (3 Vietnam War and 1 Vietnam era) the other three are our spouses. We tried to bring on “civilians” and they actually joined but it didn’t work out. As much as they wanted to help veterans and end the war in Iraq they couldn’t relate to what being in war or even being in the military was like. Their intentions were good but if it’s not a fit it doesn’t work.

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We tried to recruit other Vietnam veterans that were against the war in Iraq but there was one excuse or another for why they couldn’t make the meetings or events. For this reason we have decided not to create a group based on numbers that look good on paper, but rather a group that can be cohesive and therefore affective in our efforts. (Photo: VVAW, last Memorial Day, Santa Barbara)

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Initially I thought our group could do it all but soon realized we were limited based on our available time, energy and the simple fact that we are a group made up of volunteers.
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Our chapter has one common thread that will out weigh all others and that is, our desire to help veterans. Helping veterans also means educating the public about the detrimental affects of war, veteran’s health issues and governmental policies.
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We have also formed close alliances with The Soldiers Project and The Ashcraft Foundation. We (along with Jan Ruhman of SD VVAW) will be meeting with MFSO and IVAW Los Angeles in June to discuss broadening our alliances. We are also working together with Veteran’s United for Truth and Duty’s Calling to get our LA VA veteran’s land back from the Brentwood Conservancy Group. This event will be our first effort to create a Veteran’s Coalition that includes all veteran’s groups.(Photo: VVAW West Coast Tour stop: LA V.A. Veterans's Memorial Park, site of the VA Land Grab)

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Today, Sunday, we (all seven) are sifting through over 600 books, 100 VHS movies and 300 CDs we have collected for the new local state veteran’s home opening up in late summer. We will be putting labels inside the front cover of the books “Donated by the CA Central Coast Chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War”. Although it was our idea for the labels we were also encouraged by the VA to label the books (blows my mind).
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I know we (VVAW members) disagree about the war in Afghanistan . Even within our own chapter there isn’t a consensus. But what brought us back together was the war in Iraq and what holds us together is our willingness to help veterans. That is our common thread.
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The IVAW like all organizations will have their disagreements / fall-outs and will need to find the common thread that will hold them together. If they wish counseling we are there to help but we can’t force it on them. Unity will come with finding that commonality in which they can all agree. It’s up to them.
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Steve Crandall, President
CA Central Coast Chapter VVAW
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www.VetSpeak.org

Winter Soldier Southwest follow-up: Together Then, Together Again...

40 years of tears and one Winter Soldier

By

Mickey Krakowski
USMC 1967-71
RVN 10/68 to 11/69

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It’s strange how some things in life fall together at most appropriate times. This year marks the 40th anniversary of my tour in Vietnam. The very recent reconnection with my brothers from VVAW after a 35 year lapse. The culmination of my struggles with the VA dealing with compensation and medical treatment and finally a reconnection with a woman I loved, that endured my deployment to Vietnam, that had in her possession a 100 letters I wrote while away. All these things felt to me as if they were predestined and that they have a purpose. I hope what I gained from the Winter Soldier gathering in Pasadena, held this past May 9, helps me heal and gives me purpose to continue the struggle against war.

A week before the conference I had a call from Jan Rhuman. He invited me to take part in the Winter Soldier Southwest and requested that I pick up, a friend from way back, in southern Colorado. I left for my journey on Friday May 8, I had to drive 170 miles to Durango to pick up a former friend and fellow revolutionary brother I haven't seen in 35 years, a fellow Marine, (Alfredo Cabrera….then Che and now Calixto). Calixto and I had 5 minutes to greet each other before we jumped into the car and drove almost a 1000 miles to Pasadena (we were so lost in our conversation that we actually got lost). The long trip seemed much shorter than it should have been as I reacquainted myself with my comrade and discussed politics as we always had. It’s always good to rekindle relationships that have a history in political and personal struggles.

We arrived early in the AM Saturday to rooms awaiting us at a hotel near the Pasadena College venue. The morning came early as Jan Rhuman (the perpetual VVAW organizer) had us up soon after 8 AM. He helped set up a Winter Soldier forum at Pasadena Community College along with Wendy Barranco of IVAW. Winter Soldier Southwest involved VVAW, IVAW and AVAW (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan). There were also other groups that spoke, Military Families Speak Out and Gold Star Mothers (mothers who lost sons and daughters). VVAW was to start the event and supply security for the day (keeping those right wingers at bay if they came to disrupt the proceedings). Jan had assembled a crew of VVAW and VFP volunteers to guard the conference.

Jan, Calixto and myself were the first to address the auditorium about our experiences in the Vietnam war and how the conduct of war has remained unchanged throughout the years.

Jan started with the history of American conflicts since Vietnam and some of the history of the anti war movement and VVAW. Included were a number of wonderful quotes to embellish his speech. Calixto spoke next about his combat experiences as a leader of Marines and some of the events he had witnessed. His testimony was emotionally charged and at a few points he had succumbed to tears. I had to exert all the strength to keep reducing myself into a sobbing blob. My turn came next. This was the first time I ever had to speak to an audience of strangers, I was incredibly nervous and had difficulty trying to say what I wanted. I tried to speak of the unseen wounds that warriors bring home with them. I tried to explain about the frustration of a system (the VA) that disavows responsibility for our care. I felt my delivery inadequate, possibly because of my desire to not fall apart on the stage. I think now of what I could have said and hope for another chance to unburden my soul.

I wished I would have had the courage to tell what was really in the back of my mind. The pain I sometimes relive over and over during the years. A feeling of helplessness and rage.. I was a radio operator for a Battalion Landing Team 2/7 operating off of the LPH 10 Tripoli for the first half of my tour in Vietnam. The ship held 1000 marines and was capable of steaming anywhere along the coast and off load it contingent of Marines as needed for support or for operations. I directed air support, artillery fire, food and ammo drops and medivacs.

The medivac experience was my lowest point in my time in Vietnam. It had nothing to do with killing but of watching death occur. I had been out on a number of operations and had never experienced more than a few medivacs in a day.. Between November 20 and December 9 of 68’ we went out on an operation called Meade River. The purpose of the combined action was to move the inhabitants of nearly 141 small hamlets in the largest of the County Fair operations to date. We received incredible resistance along our route and paid a high toll for the numbers we killed. 500 marines wounded killed in a two week operation. We had only 1000 KIAs and POWs to show for it. A very high price to pay.

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On one particular afternoon we had been caught in a cross fire and had a high number medivacs of wounded and dead. I tried to make myself useful between incoming choppers. I helped in any way I could, triaging and holding the hands of the severely wounded. I held the hand of a new guy in our company as he lay dieing. I listened to what he wanted to tell me, all the time telling him everything will be alright. He told me things to tell his family, friends and loved ones. I didn’t have time to write these things down. He died while I sat at his side and I felt incredibly helpless that I couldn’t get him on a chopper and to the hospital for treatment of his wounds. He passed away before I even knew his name, my promise of relaying his wishes an impossible task. His life slipped away on a muddy rice paddy dike slick with blood. I was mourning his loss, my helplessness in aiding him and my failure in helping him survive. A deep rage started at the corps of my being, I was going to extract revenge any way I could.. The months that followed were filled with my anger and torment of my victims. The phrase we used was that “We leave no witnesses!”.

The operation was a horrific experience, I witnessed the inhumanity of war and our failure to serve the people we were supposed to protect. There were further events that occurred during that operation. We had difficulty moving some of the handicapped citizens. Many of the old men and women were unable to walk and carry possessions. It was expected of us to help out. What we chose to do instead was to turn the duties over to the ARVN forces accompanying us to this village. Rather that carry their own, they chose to take four of the old men into a hut and killed them, just to save time.

As I listened to the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan warriors tell their stories, my memories came flooding back. The story was the same for most of us, the background a desert not a jungle for the latter. Many wept at the podium and in the audience, I wept with them too. The soldiers let loose a torrent of stories each one more horrifying than the last. The stories of torture, murder and personal acts of revenge. Stories continued of watching comrades die and the rage that followed. A simple explanation of my PTSD is the things we do, not in defending our country or the country we liberate, but how we exact revenge for loosing friends in the field, and in the process, unleash an uncontrollable rage and vengeance. We are soldiers and we react to situations without process.

The thing that the audience could probably never understand is that these recollections aren’t just words expressing what soldiers feel. To a war veteran they are also combined with the sights, sounds and smells that coincided with each event. The smell of burning huts, the cries of mothers, sons and daughters mourning lives lost before their eyes. The screams of the interrogated as young American soldiers ask unanswerable questions in English. The sounds of gunfire and artillery nearby, thumping of helicopters and the attitude that the only way to survive was to waste and raze everything in our path..

The conference continued when MFSO spoke next. They all suffered the fear of an eventual knock on the door and expectation of the two soldiers outside bringing them bad news. Families of deployed soldiers suffer their own PTSD and continue to live the horror as they watch their children, after their return, sinking into drug and alcohol abuse and self destructive, violent behavior. They are driven to support their children’s choice of entering the service of the United States and live in constant fear of how it affected their children

The last to speak were the Gold Star Mothers, women who lost children. I couldn't attend because I knew I had left Vietnamese mothers without their sons. I had souvenirs to prove it, I collected ID‘s of the dead.. I could only imagine what it would feel like to lose a child far to early in life.

On my return drive home, Calixto, a Nuevo York, Puerto Rican, claims to have healed himself of his PTSD through his own beliefs in spirituality and meditation. He asked me if I believed him when he said he was cured, my answer was immediately and unequivocally, NO! I gave him the “Look“ over the top of my sunglasses. I have no doubt that he too would question his rehabilitation.. He never argued in his own favor, he just patted me on my shoulder and we continued the drive. We talked till we were both too hoarse, regaling in the good old days, talking revolution and telling war stories, we both cried together. We both wondered the same things, did any of our demonstrating and revolutionary work serve a purpose? Did we change any government policy? Not.

Did we help someone decide not to join the military and become a government pawn? Yes we did. Did we focus attention on our returning warriors and their immediate needs? Yes! It's frustrating we could do no more back in the 70‘s, and yet, we still wish we could do it again. I dropped him off in Durango, CO and after a couple of hours sleep continued the final leg of my journey home.

I leave behind my own trail of tears, in my lone drive over the mountain passes. Driving alone in my car I was able to express the grief I feel for all my fallen brothers. I cried while agonizing the burden the surviving warriors have to carry on for the rest of their lives. I also came to realize that the older we get the more we realize the impact we leave in our wake and how it will affect us until we are gone.

The words I write are 2 dimensional on paper, they don’t have the 3D effect that the mind produces when memories flood back. I wish I could just make them go away, I wished I had served not only my country better but that I had helped save an oppressed people. Instead my memories are filled with the oppression I delivered, the lack of compassion I could have afforded the frightened people of South Vietnam. War is Hell and many, including myself, have to contend with the fires of shame and regret every day of our lives. Our purpose now is to make others realize that our conduct in wars need to be addressed, our returning brothers in arms need care and support and that things need to change so history isn’t constantly repeated.

For this winter soldier the war never ends and the memories flood back with every news report and newspaper article. The truth is never completely revealed, only the soldier knows the truth.
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www.VetSpeak.org

Soldiering on in Pasadena at Winter Soldier Southwest, Iraq and Afghanistan

Pasadena, CA--May 9, 2009

By Horace Coleman

The energy level was high. The atmosphere outside the lecture hall where Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) held Winter Soldier Southwest, Iraq and Afghanistan was like a combination convention, music festival, major sports event and appearances by popular celebrities.

“Event staff” volunteers (security, facilities, registration) at Pasadena City College functioned as if a mini Rose Bowl Parade / football game was going on. Wendy Barranco, president of the LA chapter of IVAW that hosted the event, quickly moved from place to place checking and overseeing detail after detail, resolving the usual last minute glitches and changes.

Sound system working all right? Lighting functioning properly? Media checking in? Water and microphones in place and name placards ready for panelists? Tables outside the hall assigned to organizations and vendors who had pre registered--and paid--for space? Panelists present? Security assignments filled?

CDs, DVDs, books, flyers, newspapers and pamphlets were unloaded and set out. Programs were passed out. People mingled with old friends and met in the flesh people they’d only known by e-mail messages, a chat room or phone calls. New acquaintances chit chatted and checked out the location of bathrooms before the event, lasting from 1 P.M. until 8 P.M., began.

Seven panels and a spirited Question & Answer session were held. The first panel was “History’s Relevance (VVAW)” composed of Marine VietNam combat vets. Jan Ruhman led it. The other panelists were Mickey Krakowski and Calixto Cabrera.

Ruhman set the context and gave details about the awakening about, and resistance to, that war. Krawkowski and Cabrera focused on the personal awakening and odyssey they made as they tried to get the smoke our of their ears and lives and tried to become civilians when back in “the world.” All reconsidered and recognized the reality their war experiences had on them. Cabrea spoke movingly of his trip through PTSD.

He stressed that different paths and treatments can lead to healing after trauma and PTSD and each person has to find and follow the way that works best for them. But there is—after time and much effort—healed life after war. Because there is no draft and more people “support” the troops than become one, today’s warriors do repeated deployments and have a higher rate of PTSD than Nam vets and a high suicide rate.

Other panels were “Boots on the Ground (IVAW)”, “A Daily Sacrifice (MFSO)”, “Military Tactics in the Occupations” (Marine Iraq vet Jacob “Jake" Diliberto), Activists of Today (VFP)”, and “GI Resistance (IVAW).” Many panelists made very good points.

Ruhman quoted Donald Rumsfeld: “The Geneva Convention does not apply.” “That set the state for torture,” Ruhman said. Marine Iraq war vet Ryan Endicott read from a moving piece he’d written describing combats incidents and flatly stated “I can not mend what I’ve broken.” Diliberto spoke of his “journey of repentance” to Israel’s West Bank and northern Israel and how “my world view of these people [Arabs / Moslems] changed.”

Marine Christopher Gallagher served three Iraq tours. He mentioned not having body armor on one deployment and that “contractors were paid five times what I was.” “U.S. imperialism is wrong” Gallagher told the audience. “You can’t bring democracy through the barrel of a gun.”

On the “Daily Sacrifice” panel, Navy wife Paulina Brooks spoke frankly about the strains of military life, readjusting to a “new” husband every time he returned from a deployment (including eight combat tours in a 26-year career) and the drinking problem she’d developed and conquered. Her Lt. Commander, surgeon husband, David talked about the PTSD he’d developed and the RPG he’d been wounded by. It was fired at such close range it didn’t travel far enough to arm itself and explode but its impact did damage that later caused three heart attacks. That—and PTSD—ended his military career and his ability to do the work he was good at and proud of.

Tina Richards, a member of the same panel, told the stories of her two military sons. One, despite having been wounded in a mortar attack and having reached the end of his enlistment, was stop lossed and scheduled for redeployment. She begged, demanded, demonstrated, lobbied and pleaded with military and congress people. Finally, within days of military and VA personnel actually and seriously evaluating the situation, her son was discharged—with 80 percent disability. She shared accounts of having one-sided phone conversations with her other son. He would listen with the barrel of a gun in his mouth as she talked him out of suicide.

Arturo Cambrom told about his son, the most gentle and caring of his children, who planned to use his enlistment bonus to start a day care center. Home on leave before his second Iraq deployment began he began showing obvious signs of PTSD (including flashbacks).

A soldier with PTSD in a combat zone is a danger to them self, the people in their unit and to the civilians there. Such a person has intermittent diminished capacity. Consequently their actions, triggered or driven by a mind taking in information inaccurately, can be inappropriate. Or, bad judgment may lead to action that worsens PTSD--or gets someone killed.

Dangerous and devastating things can easily happen in any part of this cycle when there is easy or instant access to rifles, machine guns, explosives, helicopter or fixed wing gun ships, artillery and mortar fire, fighter / bomber and drone air strikes.

One Iraq vet testifying at Winter Soldier Southwest said that one night on guard duty a troop manning a heavy machine gun mounted on a vehicle swung the gun around to investigate a sound behind him. A sniper? A suicide bomber?

The weapon went off as he turned. When he looked back he saw that the troop who’d been standing nearby had been cut in half. The gunner knew him. On the spot he took out his sidearm and killed himself with a shot to the head.

Friendly fire is Milspeak for “My bad!” Here’s an example of unfriendly fire, given by the same person. It’s also about night guard duty. Some suspicious shadows with what might have been guns were approaching. Someone fired at the shadows. They turned out to be boys with sticks waving them in greeting at the Americans. There’s a military mantra that goes “When in doubt, take ’em out!”

One of the day’s many highlights was the “Activists of Today” panel VFP conducted. VFP past president Eliot Adams made two significant remarks. Adams gave a quote about war that he attributed to President Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of Western allied forces during World War II: “ . . . It’s brutality, stupidity and futility.” Adams said Obama “cannot create the change we need; we must do it. “

That statement made me think of another I’d heard: “We must be the change we need!” If you’re not, you’re just like the zeros in a number, place markers with more weight than significance.

That made me write this down: Don’t just protest! Affirm. Know history. Plan. Build coalitions. Revise and work your plan.

After a dinner break there were two more panels. One was on GI Resistance and was conducted by IVAW members Tracey Harmon and Jabbar McGruder. Practical and effective “resistance” is hard in the military. The organizational structure of the military is a pyramid with a narrow apex. Power and authority live there. Orders, commands and demands flow down to the pyramids broad base. The apex basically answers only to itself and the political figures funding it and directing the targets of its actions. If you want to change the military, change the top and change will trickle down.

The last panel was called “The Ultimate Sacrifice.” It consisted of members of Gold Star Families, parents who’d lost a child to war. Jane and Jim Bright (mother and step father of Evan Ashcroft, KIA in Iraq) talked about their son and the foundation they’d started to aid today’s war vets, honor Evan and keep his spirit alive. Jim Bright said he’s quit being an activist about seven times but always came back. Two other mothers spoke of the pain and loss they’d felt after their sons had been killed. One mother was still agonized by her decision to sign her underage son’s enlistment papers. But, how long would that have kept a young man determined to join the military out of a uniform?

You’d think that a day listening to what most people avoid acknowledging would be hazardous to your weekend. However, the crowd leaving after the Question & Answer session seemed uplifted. Perhaps it was seeing and hearing intelligent, articulate and informed war veterans who’d walked the walk and performed more practical patriotism in harsh conditions than most war hawks and arm chair patriots ever would.

Maybe it was people saying in front of God and every one that they’d drunk some government Kool-Aid, experienced pain, loss and fallen down but gotten up again and were moving on. It could have been the call to abandon partisan politics and unite to forward common goals good for the country.

The colonies that became an expansionist nation and then an empire have morphed into lifestyles and demographics dependent on credit cards and deficit budgets to pay for overreaching ambitions and delusions.

Reality wants its—now.

It will take more than puffing up your chest and chanting “We’re #1!” to change course on this ship of state. There are some battle tested patriots willing to accept the challenge, though.

Still, it all makes you wonder if the U.S. will grow up before it dies or . . . .

www.VetSpeak.org

Winter Soldier Reflections

Ed Note: This post is a re-edit of a piece that first appeared in our VetSpeak.org on-line magazine commemorative, IVAW Winter Soldier 2008 - Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. With just minor tweaks, it was still appropriate as a precursor for this weeks upcoming Winter Soldier Southwest event.WH

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These are the times that try men’s souls…

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By
Willie Hager

www.VetSpeak.org

xx“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.

Those words penned by Thomas Paine in 1776 were referencing the Continental Army huddled together at Valley Forge, freezing and severely tested in battle. They had many wounded, were short on food, and critically short on military supplies. However, they were not short on spirit or in heart. These first Winter Soldiers – the rag-tag Continental Army of patriots who marched up from General Washington’s Valley Forge winter bivouac – sent the best trained and equipped army in the world at that time scurrying back to England.

An observation: It ‘don’t’ have to be cold for there to be Winter Soldiers.

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Ever since Valley Forge, Winter Soldiers have met the challenges of our nation’s greatest moments of distress and peril. Like I said; It ‘don’t’ have to be cold for there to be Winter Soldiers. Their greatest stands have occurred in all climes; Boston Common, the Battle of New Orleans, the Alamo, Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, the sands of Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, the Frozen Chosin, and the Hanoi Hilton.

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The spirit of the Winter Soldier – fueled by true patriotism; love of one’s country and its political ideals – transcends popular political party or special interest group thinking and political operatives’ rhetoric and spin, with ideals that are grounded in the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights and in our inherited principles. It is the soul and an unshakable sense of duty to one’s nation that makes one a Winter Soldier; the soul to stand and fight in face of withering fire; to patriotically march up into history, unafraid, principles unscathed, no matter how overwhelming the odds.

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In 1971 in Detroit, at the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI), the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) produced yet another band of patriots who, this time, marched off the battlefields of Vietnam and into history. Speaking truth to power, Vietnam Veterans testified about the tactics of “pacifying” the Vietnamese people at a sit-rep designed to inform the American people of the Truth about what was being done in Vietnam in their name.

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The VVAW WSI testimony was not leftist political rhetoric and spin coming from the mouths of communists and “wannabes”, as those of the swift boat 527 ilk would have you believe. This testimony was the real deal. It was given by Winter Soldiers barely come of age (average age in Vietnam was 19 years old)…those “doin’ the doin’s” as they say here in the South; young men barely grown, with “thousand yard stares,” addressing often blindly patriotic parents with words few wanted to hear, for fear of the burden of responsibility it may bring.

And once again in history, here we are. For those of us who lived through Vietnam, soldier and citizen alike; it is Déjà vu.

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Well, now a new generation of Winter Soldiers is marching up from battle to bring the Truth about their war to the American People; those of the Iraq Veterans Against The War (IVAW). The latest group of Winter Soldiers will come from the shadows at Pasadena City College, on Saturday, May 9, 2009, at an event entitled:

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Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan – Eyewitness Accounts of The Occupation.

This event is planned to start at 1:00 pm on May 9, 2009 at Building R room 122 @ Pasadena City College.
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These Combat Veterans and in-country logistical support personnel will testify about the impact of America’s boots-on-the-ground involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan. Involvement that arose as the result of the Bush administrations’ lies about the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq and their alleged “ready availability” to terrorists worldwide. IVAW has accepted this mission in spite of mounting personal perils and sacrifice, in the same spirit of patriotism that inspired the testifiers at VVAW’s WSI, in 1971, and at Winter Soldier I&A, at Silver Spring.

These troops are the true Winter Soldiers and American patriots who will soon have their patriotism, motivation, war record and military service questioned publicly by self-described patriots who accuse them of not “supporting the troops” because they are profoundly moved to testify to the Truth that they have lived, in the name of America.

Forget the rhetoric of “pride” and blind “patriotism” – think for yourself, hear what your Combat Veterans have to say, take personal responsibility where responsibility is needed, and make things right…for the Veterans, and for America. That is truly supporting the troops. That is a patriotic first step in recapturing our flag and our Constitution...one we can all take at no cost, but with major gain. A patriotic act that is contrary to the swiftboating of the honor and service of those who have fought in foreign lands in our name.

There is nothing more American than our own Winter Soldiers speaking truth to power in the face of grave personal sacrifice and peril.

Today’s IVAW Winter Soldiers will not be there alone, though. The Old School Winter Soldiers of VVAW will be there with them, back to back. The VVAW

Together Then…
Together Again…

www.VetSpeak.org

A Marine Mom's take on flagged draped coffins...

Flagged Draped Coffins
by

Tina Richards

US flagged draped coffins

our children inside

Iraqi flagged draped coffins

their children inside,
Afghani flagged draped coffins
their children inside


As I hold a lily to place on our children’s coffin,
my heart is torn.
So many Marines I have broken bread with,
Thanksgiving dinner,
Christmas dinner
I remember their eyes with so much innocence
Their families spread far and wide
For that day,
we became their family
I became their mom
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These children who returned home in flagged draped coffins.
Not knowing what war and occupation would bring them
Conflicted
I mourn for what should not have been,what should not be
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Trusting their government not to lie
Not to send them into harm’s way,
unless it was absolutely necessary
I see their innocent faces each time I see a flagged draped coffin,
I go to lay a lily upon them
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But then I hesitate
I hear my son’s words
“Mother,” he told me with a tear stained face,
Innocence no longer there
“I thought what we were doing was right,“
“I was told we were going to liberate the Iraqi people.”
“I trusted our leaders.”
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“Baghdad,”“We set it free,”
“We set it free by shelling them with our artillery.”
“As we began to secure the city,to safeguard the innocent civilians,”
“I saw three children playing,”
“I thought, ‘Yes that is why we are here.’”
“I saw a girl, maybe ten or eleven,
just the age of my sister,
playing with her younger brother and sister”
“Twirling something in the air.”
“Pink and Purple streamers she twirled it by.”
“Her brother and sister laughing.”
“Laughing at the pretty toy,”
“Delivered by the US military. “
“I realized at that moment,
it was a bomblet from our artillery.”
“Unexploded ordinances.”
“Cluster bombs.”
“In the moment I went to run,”
“to scream,”“to shout, “No, No’”
……it detonated.
“In an instant,half her face and arm gone.”
“Her brother and sister lay dead before her”
He said, “At that moment, I knew all I had been told was a lie”
“You cannot liberate or bring democracy with a howitzer,” he cried.
That thought would haunt him for years,
as he would bring a gun to his mouth
and call me to say he didn’t deserve to live.
Not live with the guilt of all the children killed
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I think of that little girl,
Her brother
Her sister
I am so overwhelmed with sorrow and shame.
That our soldiers and Marines so trusting,
so patriotic,
have been so misled
I brought my sons up to be Patriots
The occupations are not patriotic,
There is no honor
It is genocide.
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As I lay the lily on the Iraqi coffin,
I make a vow
We must stop the killing of all these innocents,
perpetuated by the war profiteers,
military industrial complex,
our government
No more “patriots” will I raise

www.VetSpeak.org