Attn: Obama Transition Team re Max Cleland

In consideration of Max Cleland as Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs

by

Willie Hager

www.vetspeak.org

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Crackerswamp, Fl -I write this from the perspective of someone who has actively worked at the grassroots level with Veterans, dating back to 1972; in that light, I wholeheartedly endorse Max Cleland for this cabinet post. One that is so important to all who have served, or will in the future, serve America, in the armed forces.

I am also encouraging all of my fellow Veterans to participate in a public call for this appointment, as a unified body politic. In addition, I (and I hope all of you, as well) will be making efforts to gain support from with-in the ranks of the existing organizations to which I belong, or have a history with.

This includes Vietnam Veterans Against The War, the VFW, and Vietnam Veterans of Florida, State Coalition, and the IVAW, regardless of any other considerations that these organizations might be fostering at this moment. I hope that all of you will join me in doing the same.

Max is one of us. He is not a political opportunist, nor a lackey of anyone's doctrine or political party, nor is he running for any other office. He is a pragmatist who has been there, and who speaks the language of Veterans...something we call "VetSpeak", here at www.vetspeak.org.

He is not an operative of anyone's political agenda, or an operative of any organization or political party. He is also not a man who hesitates to Speak Truth to Power when the chips are down. In addition; he never, ever, abandons the troops when the incoming fire seems overwhelming, or when it is the seemingly politically expedient thing to do...in other words, Brothers and Sisters who have also served; he has our backs! This, regardless of which war we may have served in, since WWII, The Big One...or which political party we support.

He is knowledgeable, articulate, charismatic, and mission oriented...and, yes, Jimmi Hendrix; he is experienced! I mean, he has already been there 'n done that, after all. As is referenced here in a posting that I found at http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/, who is formally endorsing Max, and where I found this quote; “Max has the experience, he served as head of the VA under Jimmy Carter. He served as a US Senator. He knows veterans, he knows the issues, he knows the job ( see, http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11581).”

Hell, he has most everyone's respect, if not their direct support; with the exception, of course, of the Swift Boat clones and their operatives, who have already done their best to destroy his character with their slanderous dribble. Just as they did to John Kerry's, and just as they are, at this very moment, attempting to do over at www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/politicalinsider/entries/2007/09/11/the_woes_of_max_cleland.html

Appointment to any other post would be under-utilization of his talents, abilities, and experience, not to mention a throwaway to Democratic Party favorites. Ones who have less experience, or heart, or sense of purpose. We are not the Democratic Party; we are America's Veterans, joined in blood and service as a result of having faced mortal danger, back-to-back, during America's most troubled and dangerous times...regardless of political affiliation. We are entitled to an honest broker and advocate to oversee our affairs, as such.

I don't see this as a contest twixt he and Tammy Duckworth (divide and conquer tactics), as some have suggested that it should be. I see this as the positioning of someone to this most important post who has in their heart the best interests, and the best quality of life possible for America's Veterans, and who has an eye towards implementation of their most pressing priorities. This, as opposed to the positioning of someone to protect the current appalling administrative situation at the V.A. A situation that routinely denies Veterans, at every opportunity, the well-earned, blood-soaked, and traumatizing entitlements, that they so richly deserve.

This is about the positioning of an advocate, in face of confining budgetary considerations. Considerations that are top heavy in administrative costs, and short on "service". In short, we need a new paradigm for Veterans' care. A re-vamped, efficient and caring delivery system for Veterans. One that advocates for the Veteran, rather than makes every effort to screen them out and deny benefits, and which employs a draconian, self-serving appeals process. I believe that, based on history and experience; Max Cleland is just such a person.

Speak out; don't let them make this about choosing up sides between Duckworth and Cleland, thereby creating schisms amongst our own ranks. Don't lose sight of the ball, or the goal line. Make it about choosing the most demonstrably experienced, qualified individual for the job. Speak out for the sake of all Veterans, all the time; rather than when it is simply politically expedient, or might garner a few more votes.

Semper Fi!

www.vetspeak.org

Long Beach Veterans Day Redux

The Battle of Long Beach:  

Traditional Veterans Day Parade(rs) vs. Pro Peace Vets

By

Horace Coleman

 Ed Note: Horace's piece is the story of the culmination of a campaign that VetSpeak.org embarked on in of November of 2007.   It was a successful grassroots cyber-campaign, one that carried the day for anti-war Veterans' groups who had been denied participation for over thirty years, as so eloquently demonstrated in Horace's reflections on the day.  Two of the original SoCal VVAW Veterans who had been denied access back in 1972; VetSpeak.org's  Jan Ruhman and George Johnson, both active in VVAW and VFP, as well as VetSpeak family, were on hand to savor the People's victory over partisan governance. It gives meaning and new life to the old movement battle cry; Power to the People!  It gives also gives substance to, and belief in, the new People's rallying cry; Yes We Can! WH

In 2007 Long Beach, CA made national news.

It wasn’t for something typically Californian. Not an earthquake, forest fire, movie première, Rose Bowl game or a surfing contest.

It wasn’t about something new to inject into your lips or face, the latest fashion craze or the “in” recreational drug. It was about veterans and veterans support groups being kept out of a parade. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Military Families Speak Out (MFSO and Veterans for Peace (VFP) were banned from marching in a city backed and aided public Veterans Day parade.

Impassioned speeches were made. Tears were shed by conservative vets. Parade permits were filed and then rescinded—just before the 2007 parade started.

An old, disturbing, American trend has reemerged. Free speech is alright—as long as there’s mass approval of your opinion and presence. “Free speech zones” have become popular. You know, those places far away from an event, those attending it and the media covering it, where folk whose existence “bothers” others are corralled.

Members of the Long Beach city council were involved in parade planning. City resources were used. Active duty military personnel, conservative and traditional veterans groups, high school bands, floats, DAR members, Gold Star Mothers and bikers were welcome.

The city got a highly publicized black eye last year for banning “dissident” elements. Negotiations with the city included not carrying protest signs or distributing literature. No problem. Jabbar McGruder (then president of the Los Angeles chapter of IVAW) was told he could even ride in the same convertible as a parade marshal—as long as he didn’t wear a T-shirt or any thing else that identified what group he belonged to. No dice!

This year IVAW, MFSO and VFP contingents marched, wearing T-shirts with the names of their group, behind banners with the names of their groups. Yes, they carried American flags. The name of each group and what they were about was announced just as it was for every other group in the parade. Watchers clapped and yelled in approval.

When the pro peace / anti war groups passed, people cheered. One woman said “Thank you for what you’re doing!” Some people shouted “Obama!” as they went past.

The next day’s local rag, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, had a gallery of parade photos. In it was a picture of an MFSO member’s hand flashing the “V” sign and wearing a “Bring Them Home Now” bracelet. There was one of Ryan Endicott, a Marine and Vice President of Los Angeles’ IVAW chapter. He was wearing a blue head band with white stars and a black T-shirt with white letters (“IVAW;” “Iraq Veterans Against the War). Ryan carried an American flag folded into a triangle. He held it the same way a troop does when presenting the flag to the next of kin of a dead service person.

People from neighboring cities and counties—veterans, military family members and sympathizers—marched proudly. To paraphrase the late singer Sam Cooke, “change has come!” But it didn’t just happen.

People like George Johnson and Jan Ruhman, members of both VVAW and VFP, spoke before the Long Beach city council. They don’t live in that county but vets were being disrespected and they, as they often do, saw a need and helped fill it. They marched.

So did Pat Alviso—a founder of the local MFSO chapter and the very dynamic mother of a son recently deployed for his third tour in the War on Terror—who was also instrumental in getting the city council to reverse its decision. Many others helped. It took a lot of axe blows to fell towering high handedness. Maybe the powers that be realized they didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. Or, that a person can be a genuine, patriotic vet and honestly think every war this country fights isn’t waged well or justified.

Perhaps the city didn’t want any more bad publicity. Or, some one realized that many more people “support” the troops than become troops (less than 1% of the public does military service) and all that do serve deserve respect.

Perhaps the Gold Star Mothers, who on this Veterans Day called IVAW members “traitors,” wanted other mothers to really feel their pain.

Some French guy named Voltaire said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That’s un-American—so some think. They seem to prefer chauvinism. That word is derived from the name of a French over-the-top super patriot. Two off its meanings are “militant and boastful devotion to and glorification of one’s country” and “fanatical patriotism.” That’s the not the “American way;” or is it?

All “wars” don’t involve physical violence. A war isn’t “good” because the U.S. is in it. Maybe when (if) we learn that we’ll have better—and fewer—wars.

A double amputee war vet was in the front rank of the VFP contingent. Is that patriotic enough for you? The charge for walking in the Freedom March, open to individual citizens who marched at the end of the parade, was $10. As veterans know, patriotism has a price.

www.VetSpeak.org

The part of the RNC that America didn't see on TV...

Darth Vader Clones Come to St. Paul
by
Russ Scheidler

Ed Note: Russ is a VetSpeak.org founder. He has represented our efforts at the VVAW 40th Anniversary gathering in Chicago, and at the IVAW Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan. Now, here he is again, at the RNC , in St.Paul, Minn. It took him a couple of weeks to regroup from this event, but it didn't diminish his perspective. We are proud to share it here as a reflection on how little has changed in America, since the VVAW historical Silent March at the RNC in Miami, 1972WH

Well, it’s been six weeks since the Republic National Convention was held here in St. Paul and I’m just now able to write about it. Veterans for Peace (VFP) and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) also held their national conventions in a south suburb the weekend before. I attended there to help out at an info and merchandise table for the chapter from the Bay Area in California. I had not sat down for more than five minutes when I felt those old freaky vibes of PTSD dragging me down. It only helped a little to play my guitar and I suppose most of my songs sounded a bit like the blues.
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It was a very difficult scene seeing the old GI Movement guys and gals along with VVAW members that I hadn’t seen in over thirty years right next to the IVAW people. The old crew all had their VA meds for their daily aches and pains, most wore glasses now and moved a bit slower than the last time we saw each other. I think the average age was around sixty. The younger IVAW folks were much more active and prone to smile. But, I just couldn’t get happy to think that here we are again with another ill-defined war that has degenerated into a counter-insurgency fought with "smart bombs and stupid leaders" so that a few of the Uber-rich can make a ton of money.
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Just how much money and how much war has changed became very clear after reading the book “Blackwater” about the mercenary contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We now have more mercenaries in Iraq than we do real soldiers. They are paid many times more (billions and billions of dollars) than the real troops and they are answerable to no one! Not Iraq law and not US law. I cringe whenever I read about some soldier being court-martialed who let the moment get the best of him and shot some prisoner that may or may not have deserved it in a place where you can’t tell the good guys from the bad. Meanwhile, the “Contractors” create a free-fire zone whenever and wherever they feel like it.
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And then the Republicans came!
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Every freeway ramp between the airport and both downtowns (Minneapolis and St Paul) had cops guarding them. Downtown St Paul had become an armed camp full of riot cops. With their black helmets, kneepads, boots, heavy vests, visors, shields, riot sticks, etc. they looked like hundreds of Darth Vader clones. The block next to where I work is the old police station. At lunchtime or after work, locals had to walk through 100-200 heavily armed cops in small groups as they prepped their gear and chatted about their families and the upcoming night when most of the action was going to happen.
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As a local union officer in the Capitol area, I had been to a meeting months before with the State Patrol Major that was said to be in charge of security planning. He said they didn’t expect too much trouble because the bad guys could hardly afford a used car. He also said that not much would be happening in front of the capitol. Then he told us where they would be setting up barriers for both the inner and outer rings of security.
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It only took one glance to see they were creating an “Ambush Alley” for the demonstrators. I also realized that the Major either didn’t know what he was talking about or he was lying and I hoped it was the latter. The greens in front of the Capitol are a natural gathering place with lots of open space and multiple options of access into downtown. Most of those were blocked off with snowplows (huge trucks with very imposing and monstrous snow blades on the front). They take up most of an intersection by themselves. And, of course, most of the demonstrators are college educated. They may be poor, but they are not stupid.
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The IVAW opened things up with a powerful silent march behind Arrrendo's casket on Sunday.
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The main show began on Monday, Labor Day. The main march made it through the cops kill zone without too much trouble. However, demonstrators created actions that bracketed the downtown area at four main entrance points. About the same time, a group of neo-anarchists broke from the main march and smashed a few store windows and slashed a few tires. They chanted “These are our streets!” as they threw newspaper boxes and trashcans into the street. I knew they didn’t mean that they would be back this winter to help shovel snow or next spring to help fill potholes or would help pay the increased taxes needed to keep the streets from decaying into trash. In my heart, I felt Buenaventura Durutti turn in his grave. The Anarcho-Syndicalyst from the Spanish Civil War had from 500,000 to a million people attend his funeral in the middle of a civil war. Durutti’s anarchists were a type of trade unionists. The people on the streets of St Paul had the look of someone who hardly ever worked more than a part-time job at Starbucks.
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The cops strike back!

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It was at that point that we began to see the new tactics. There were flying squads of about twenty cops per squad on bicycles in light riot gear who got there first. Then came the small caravans of 4 or 5 mini-vans filled with about 5 to 8 fully dressed riot cops that descended on the scene. Finally, the main guard showed up and the street became a free-arrest zone. Anyone and everyone in the zone was arrested. Demonstrators, journalists and locals who just happened to be there were all swept up in a vast and uncompromising net of cops. Tear gas and pepper spray were everywhere within the zone. Concussion grenades or flash-bangs were thrown into the crowds to create confusion. It wasn’t hard to be confused with all of that happening within a few minutes and occurring over a several block area in a downtown canyon of buildings.
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And then came Thursday night when the test of wills resulted in the cops directing people to cross the Sears parking lot. They told the marchers they would be OK if they went that way. Then they swept up a huge group of people and forced them onto a bridge over the freeway. There they arrested hundreds of people. Again, they gassed and flash-banged the demonstrators, journalists and locals in a huge ambush.

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They didn’t have to arrest those people. The fight was pretty much out of them by that time. There had already been three or four skirmishes as they tried to march that evening when delegates would actually be at the Convention Center. No evening permits for marching were ever given for that night. The prevailing reason for the round up and arrest of over 800 people that was given was that they couldn’t expect the cops to take the time to distinguish journalist from demonstrator. That is not only an insult to my intelligence, it is an insult to the four-year degrees that each and every one of those cops has to have to become a police officer.

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Real soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to distinguish friend from foe even when they all look alike and real bullets are flying. However, cops in America cannot be expected to make any distinctions among the home folks when the most dangerous thing they seemed to have was a bucket of piss!
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I have seen the future, which is really still the past; and it looks like an army of Darth Vader clones whose enemy is a free press and, most of all; We the People!
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www.VetSpeak.org

WALKING THE PERIMETER @ RNC by Di Wood

Friday, September 5, 2008, High Noon

ST. PAUL, MN -- This is a flower and a plastic band I picked up on my final walk around the Xcel Center perimeter a few minutes ago. The forklifts are busy loading the folded, black mesh fences onto flatbeds; the media is packing up all the lights, cameras and action into rented trucks. And it is actually a deceptively quiet, beautiful afternoon in downtown Saint Paul. With the fences down, it's easier to breathe a little better. But the sight of them is still unsettling; I know they did their job all too well.

I am so proud to know so many brave, honest people who showed up in Saint Paul to voice their opinions to their leaders -- to speak truth to power -- no matter what danger it posed to their own lives and personal safety. Thank you for your service and keep on marching. Please remember what happened to Carlos' son -- and the continuing plight of all our sons and daughters, in all occupied nations, who are lost or still facing horrific, life-altering situations because of the power and greed of a few. Bring them home now! (ivaw.org)

"Holli Drinkwine, spokeswoman for the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department, denied Thursday that police used excessive force. “The police showed great restraint in what they were doing," she said. "They were dealing with 300 criminals on the street while trying to protect the 10,000 peaceful protesters that were in St. Paul."

"Minnesota State Public Safety Commissioner Michael Campion said the arrests were made at an interstate overpass that separated the marchers from the Xcel Center, where Sen. John McCain was preparing to address the GOP faithful. He said the objective was to contain the protesters and keep them from reaching the convention hall."

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Here are some closing observations, feelings and questions as I look back over the last few days:

The RNC security force was loaded for bear, heavily stocked and armed, and ran a very tight ship on the streets of Saint Paul. There was tolerance for protest within certain, very restrictive limits. Delegates needed to be protected, yes, but voices need to be heard in a place where so many of our elected officials gather. What is the cost to freedom of speech?

The show of firepower did not maintain the peace, it destroyed it – strengthening a “them and us” attitude and causing some people to feel obligated to fight back. The City of Saint Paul did a great job protecting the Xcel Center, but at what cost? Thousands came to show peaceful support mostly for the ending of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet many were turned back or arrested by heavily armed police, National Guard and others -- front line foot soldiers set up to take the fall for leaders hiding behind miles of barricades, scary rhetoric and misued American flags. Sound familiar?
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The streets of Saint Paul felt progressively like an occupation. Instead of the “enjoy the RNC events,” publicity those of us who work in Saint Paul received from our companies, encouraging us to come to work and join in the spirit of the convention, the streets of Saint Paul felt progressively like an occupation. It was an occupation, mirroring the foreign policies of our government turned on its own people – for what?

Who is the bad guy? It is a very strange thing to be marginalized for voicing opinions to our own elected officials. To be portrayed (and protected against) as the bad guy by such powerful forces is crazy. Once again, the most sane people I know – the ones who attempt to live inclusive lives and continue to speak truth to power – are marginalized, bullied and assaulted. But why?
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The turnbacks on the other side of the city impacted the Peace Picnic on Harriet Island. With the protestors trapped on the other side of the city, the heartfelt, inclusive, gathering designed to bring everyone together at the end was much quieter than anticipated. This was an event where people of all ages could converse with people like Carlos Arrendondo (whose son died in Iraq) and Hart Vigas (the first IVAW veteran testifier at Winter Soldier 2), Michael & Cynthia Orange who blogged for VetSpeak (and who continue to speak truth to power in their own writings and out in the world); Vets for Peace, and other peace organizations. The music played, the lemonade flowed, the children played, but the silence was deafening.

Love, Di Wood, 9/5/08, 11:43 AM, Saint Paul, MN

I'm PISD!

By
Agent Orange
(From the RNC)

I’m suffering from PISD (Politics-Induced Symptoms of Deflation). It’s a form of depression caused when naïve hope for political change is rapidly squashed by the reality that the powerful elite who run the Empire will only permit a limited dose of democracy. I’m prone to the disease because I still suffer from an innate optimism that periodically compromises my immune system.

As I write, I’m taking a brief break between the Vets for Peace (VFP) national convention that was here in the Twin Cities last week and the peace marches triggered by the RNC Convention that began Monday in St. Paul. To parallel the bumper sticker, “If you aren’t mad, you’re not paying attention,” I’ll say, “If you’re not down, you don’t know what’s going down.”

I felt the first symptoms of PISD during the VFP convention. One of the keynote speakers, James Yee told a story that was so unbelievable it had to be true (here’s a link to a Democracy Now! Interview with Mr. Yee: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/6/fmr_army_chaplain_james_yee_on.) Amazing that the same organization that graduated Yee from West Point as an Army officer and assigned him as the chaplain in Guantanamo for Muslim guards and prisoners would then charge him with treason, threaten him with the death penalty, imprison him in solitary confinement for 78 days, and subject him to the same sensory deprivation abuses he spoke out against at the prison. When the Army could produce no substantive evidence at his court martial, it dropped all charges, awarded him two medals for this same service, and then granted him an Honorable Discharge.

Among the prisoner abuses he spoke of were those that only left scars on the soul. The military of the religious right, which asserts so much control in this country, uses the prisoners’ religious beliefs in a jujitsu move designed to demoralize them and inflict deep insults. He confirmed the stories we’ve all heard: how the interrogators desecrated the prisoners’ copies of the Koran by urinating on them, and how female interrogators used their bodies to assault the prisoners’ religious and social mores. Yee also described how interrogators forced their Muslim charges to bow down within a circle painted on the floor with a Satanic pentagram in its center while they screamed at them to pray to Satan. It reminded me of the stories I read as a youth of the Roman Empire’s persecution of the early Christians’ faith. Kafka couldn’t write a stranger story even with Solzinetzin as a coauthor.

Before I could climb out of the rabbit hole created by Yee’s speech, the next speaker at the VFP convention that night, Jeremy Scahill, knocked me right back in with his description of the Empire’s private military. Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. My wife, Cynthia (VetWrite), and I had heard him speak when we witnessed the Winter Soldier hearings last March in DC. Even though it was the second time I heard the story of the Bagdad massacres by Bush’s Blackwater mercenaries, Scahill’s unique and riveting storytelling, replete with details and tongue-twisting Iraqi names and places, captured my attention once again and placed me back in that mental horror movie.

Noam Chomsky warned about mercenaries when he wrote about Vietnam, “Usually wars like the Vietnam War are fought with mercenaries—like the French Foreign Legion. The U.S. tried to fight what amounts to a colonial war with a conscript army. And a colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You’re not fighting armed forces. You’re fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.”[1]

The clincher that brought on full-blown PISD for me was Scahill’s description of Blackwater’s pervasive presence in New Orleans immediately after Katrina’s landfall. Armed with war-zone weaponry normally reserved only for the military and police in this country, Blackwater mercenaries explained to Scahill that they had been deputized by the Governor of Louisiana to “confront looters and stop criminals” and to “protect FEMA” even though FEMA personnel did not arrive in the area until days later.

“Bagdad on the bayou,” as Scahill termed it three years ago, served as a warning of our “radical privatization of government” and increasingly militarized society. He said we still have 40,000 more private contractors than US troops in Iraq and that a shocking “70% of our intelligence apparatus is now in private hands,” including the separate CIA-like division of Blackwater. Scahill cautioned us against expecting real change even if Obama wins the Presidency. “Obama’s staff told me that he has studied the issue of mercenaries and has not ruled out their use.”

In a similar fashion, we now have St. Paul under siege with the arrival of the Republican National Convention and hundreds of private guards, National Guard troopers, FBI, Homeland Security, and local police, armored with fearsome automatic weapons, gas and concussion grenades, pepper spray, and three-foot-long night sticks. Like futuristic cyborgs—part human, part head-to-toe black Kevlar—they line our streets in police-state fashion. As we VFP members gathered Sunday on the lawn of the State Capitol to lead a permitted march of five hundred into downtown and up to the double rows of fencing that protected the Republican conventioneers from the unwashed, a menacing formation of five Black Hawk assault choppers circled low and slow over our assembly and then returned a half an hour later for a repeat of the maneuver.

All of this was not just a show of force intended to intimidate (which it most certainly does); it’s applied force. For example, St. Paul Police, under orders from Homeland Security, conducted preemptory raids on homes and arrested people on conspiracy charges (which triggers memories of the Chicago Eight who were charged with conspiring to incite a riot while crossing state lines on their way to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, convicted, and later found innocent on appeal). Police here have abused protestors and even arrested journalists, including Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and her staff (refer to
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn09022008.html). There have been gross overreactions by police in response to minor acts of property damage and acting out by hooligans (got to wonder how many are working for the FBI, which again triggers memories of the agent provocateurs of the 60s).

Another keynote speaker at the VFP convention was Scott Ritter, the former chief United nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He floored me with his prediction of this election year’s “October Surprise.” Hours before in my workshop on the decisions that led into the quagmire of Vietnam, I had described the “October Surprises” engineered by Nixon for his election in 1968 and by Reagan for his election in 1980. For 2008, it will be the restart of the Cold War in Georgia, Ritter predicted. Worse yet, Ritter said the Georgia crisis will only delay the inevitable attack by the US on Iran.

You can’t catch PISD from depressing news alone. The severity of the disease comes from the distance that separates the highs of optimistic hope for change and the lows of crushing reality—the deflation factor. The VFP conference, my first although I’ve been an active member since 1991, showcased the vitality and dedication of our membership. I met so many people with amazing stories of how the dark sides of their military experiences have become the engine for changing their own lives and helping to improve conditions in the country. The esprit de corps was palpable. Only a Dr. Phil workshop would have had more men hugging each other.

Fortunately, my writer mentor and wife of 35 years (VetWrite) provided a beautiful description of the moving opening ceremony for the conference that featured Native American speakers and drummers so I need not revisit that topic (refer to entry on 8/28/08 at http://vetspeakblog.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-08-30T20%3A13%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=5). I’ll turn instead to our Executive Director, Michael McPhearson, who made several cogent remarks to open the conference including the exhortation that we “get out of our comfort zones” to further the mission of VFP. Referring to the Million Doors for Peace Project (http://www.milliondoorsforpeace.org/), he said, “We’ll have to get out and talk to our neighbors.”

We heard from two dozen excellent speakers and I attended half a dozen workshops. A real asset was the presence of so many members from the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW, read more about the group’s dramatic march to the RNC Convention to demand a briefing with John McCain, http://ivaw.org/). These are young men and women who bring an energized momentum to VFP. They are expert taking great advantage of the now well-developed peace infrastructure and the organizing power of the Internet and cell phones. But we all ride on the many shoulders of our heroic predecessors in the movements of the past (anti-war, labor, suffragette, civil rights, prisoner rights, etc.)

A highlight of the VFP conference was the speech by Rick Hanson, a member of Military Families Speak Out. The Hanson’s son, Eric, served two tours of duty in Iraq. He spoke to the shared mission of all assembled: “It is good to be surrounded by the integrity of this gathering. To have the IVAW with us here renews our hope. . . . [You speak out] with a validity that can not be dismissed by anyone. The Veterans for Peace individually and collectively . . . serve as role models to all of our groups . . . . We are grateful to be the recipients of your experience and heartfelt empathy. . . . We are whole-heartedly committed to succeed in our combined mission of ending this catastrophic war and taking care of our kids as we get them home.”

For a final comment, let me express how pleased I am that at my side throughout the VFP conference and the peace marches was my wife, Cynthia, and for some of the events, our daughter and her husband. Waging peace is a family value.

www.VetSpeak.org

[1] “The Lessons of Vietnam: An Interview with Noam Chomsky,” reproduced form Indochina Newsletter, Issue 18 (November-December, 1982).