EnlightenedSoldier

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Notes From the Road

As I write this from somewhere around 30,000 feet, I am terrified. Each time the engine changes from a steady hum to a whine and each patch of turbulence we hit, I am afraid we will fall out of the sky. My emotions run the gambit from simple anxiety to relative calm to sadness to mind numbing fear. I am bound for Seattle and the Veterans for Peace Convention. At this moment, I am acutely jealous of a good friend who was able to travel by train. I like the train, you meet interesting people, you get to walk around and as a bonus, I was never sent half-way around the world to a war based on lies on a train.

When I was younger, I loved to fly. I always insisted on the window seat and would oohh and ahhh like a small child at the scenery below me. The small cars and tiny trees were mesmerizing, especially during take-off and landing. Now I can barely stand it. The longer the flight the worse it is. Since I travel frequently, this has become a serious problem. Sometimes, I have to take anti-anxiety medication just to get on the plane. I hate taking the medicine almost as much as I hate flying; in fact I often opt to suffer through flights that are less than three hours long, like this one, the first leg to Atlanta, just to claim a small victory over my psychological injury. On longer flights, like this evening’s cross country flight to Seattle, I have to give in to the demons that have been following me since my involvement in the Iraq war and take the medicine. Longer flights take me back to the nearly twenty-four hour flights to and from Iraq. They bring back all of the uncertainty, all of the apprehension and all of the impending doom of going there and at the same time, evoke all of the sorrow, frustration and anger of the way I was betrayed by my government that I felt on the flight home.

Because I know the truth about Iraq and the very dangerous direction the Bush/Cheney Cabal have taken my country, I deal with the demons in order to spread the message of peace that is so vital to reclaiming my country. Usually, I will spend at least an hour of each flight, before taking my drugs, preparing a speech or reading the most recent news reports from Iraq and elsewhere in order to be prepared. I am usually, anxious about the upcoming event, knowing that I will have to answer questions about my experience and try to relate what it is like to come back from war. I do not consider any of the questions particularly hard, I am comfortable with my testimony; I know it’s true. What I worry about is how well I can relate that truth to an audience that does not know the horrors of which I speak. The entire experience is always an emotional roller-coaster. Today, however, I am excited to be traveling to the convention. I don’t know if I will be speaking, performing or merely one of the hundreds in attendance, but I do know that I will not have to work hard to relate to the people I will meet there. I know they understand me. I will see old friends like Elliot Adams and Stan Goff, both combat veterans of the Vietnam War, who have helped me through the many rough spots in the last year. I am even more excited that I will be reunited with many of my brother and sister Iraq Vets. My friend Camillo Mejia who went to jail rather than return to Iraq will be there, as will Garrett Ragenhagen and Joe Hill whom I met at last year’s convention. I know that I will meet new members and develop new relationships with veterans from all eras. But the best part of it all is that all of these people and I understand each other. Together we will learn about important topics to continue our work such as nonviolence, coping with PTSD, community organizing and so much more.

I am even more elated that on Saturday, my brothers from Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather to elect an official governing body and move into the next phase of our organizational development. After the convention on Sunday, I will join my brothers and sisters at the Canadian Border to rally with War Resisters who have fled to Canada rather than participate in the immoral and illegal occupation. I have wanted to meet the war resisters for a long time and am proud to stand in solidarity with them. I so often wish I had had the courage to stand up for my principles when my orders to Iraq came.

I am certain that on Monday, I will go home rejuvenated and ready to continue the struggle toward peace and justice. The only thing that could be better is if I didn’t have to take an airplane to do it.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Why I'm A Prairie Dog

On the morning of November 23, 2005 I was sitting on a bench in the McLennan County Jail. I had been arrested with eleven of my fellow activists an hour or so earlier for protesting outside the Bush Ranch in Crawford Texas. We would later be called the Prairie Chapel 12, individually prairie dogs and at that moment we were listening to a Justice of the Peace read us our rights. As I heard him say “you have the right to remain silent,” it was suddenly clear to me that as Americans, all of us can remain silent about anything, but I ended up on the bench exercising my right and duty not to remain silent.
For me, the road to Crawford began over three years ago. In February 2003, I was a career military man, a new father, and devoted husband. My government had been waging a public relations campaign against the country of Iraq for several months and now war was imminent. I kissed my wife and daughter good bye and boarded a bus to go get on an airplane bound for Iraq. I refer to this event as the end of my other life. I was going to Iraq because George Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, ties to the Al Qai’da terrorists who attacked our country on September 11 2001, and Iraq was a threat to national and global security. To keep my nation and the world safe I was willing to risk my life and everything I had on the premise that my government would not ask me to risk my life in vain. I was wrong. None of it was true. In fact, now there is overwhelming evidence that our government knew well before I went to Iraq that there was no tangible evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officers never happened. In short, our government knew that the government of Saddam Hussein was not a credible threat to U.S. national security. The war in Iraq has in reality weakened national and global security by creating a hotbed for terrorism and a target for would be terrorist to attack.
In May 2003, I returned to the United States. Many would say I returned home, but one does not fight in Iraq and get to come home again. I was plagued by nightmares, crushing guilt, depression, anger and horror at what I had been forced to do. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and discharged in March of 2005. My marriage ended shortly thereafter. My life will never be the same again. The hardest part of it all, is that the reasons I joined the military are virtues and I still hold them today. I joined the Navy because I believed that freedom was at risk. I believed that as a member of the global community, I should attempt to serve something greater than myself. I joined the Navy to “support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” I hold all of those ideals as dearly today as I did then. But today it is clear that freedom is truly at risk from individuals inside our government who seek to destroy the Constitution and all that it stands for. I thought I was defending freedom, but in reality soldiers do not fight for freedom, soldiers fight for governments and have to hope that freedom will somehow survive the ordeal.
In August, I went to Crawford Texas with the mother of a fallen soldier to ask the president a simple question: for what noble cause have so many in our military sacrificed their lives? Predictably, Bush refused to meet with us and after we left McLennan County passed an ordinance that outlawed “residing in a bar ditch.” The law defined reside as eating, sleeping, erecting a structure, storing trash or erecting a port-a-potty in a ditch as well as parking in the ditch within 16 miles of the Bush Ranch. If the county enforced this law indiscriminately, they would have to arrest hunters for sleeping in their trucks, road crews for erecting port-a-potties at work sites, county inmates on trash detail, and even sheriff’s deputies for eating lunch in their squad cars at break time. No, it is obvious that this law seeks to encourage all of us to exercise our right to remain silent and let our government blindly destroy the world in which we live.
The judge is right, I have the right to remain silent, but with 160,000 of my brothers and sisters in arms are still in harm’s way and thousands more struggling with the aftermath of service in an unjust and immoral war, I have an obligation not to remain silent. I am outraged about what our country has done in the name of freedom and democracy. The war in Iraq weakened our national security by giving “terrorists” of the world reasons to hate us. We have destroyed the country of Iraq, killed 2,223 American, over 100,000 Iraqis, and spent over 170 billion dollars with no end in sight. For me to remain silent about that makes me culpable in the crime. I know there may be consequences, but I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Speaking Truth To Power

On July 15, I had the privilege of testifying before the first International Truth Commission on poverty in the United States. More than 500 people gathered in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio at Lincoln Park to hear the testimony of nearly fifty panelists. The commissioners were accomplished members of the national and international human rights movements and included independent UN experts, Union Leadership, and clergy. Likewise, the panelists were also from locations around the United States. We heard from immigrant workers from California and Florida, farmers from Kansas, victims of Hurricane Katrina from the gulf coast and many others. The stories told by panelists were truly heart breaking. I spent the day amidst disadvantaged and poor people who only want the things many Americans take for granted: a job that pays a living wage, a solid education, healthcare, and the opportunity live a comfortable life. Unfortunately, for millions, the American Dream is just that: a dream. One woman told of a dear friend who died of an aneurism while waiting for the state to decide if she was qualified to receive state healthcare benefits. Another man told of losing his family farm when big conglomerates took over his community. “Farming is big business in Kansas. Farmers are an endangered species,” he said. Another testified about a family that had their natural gas turned off because of non-payment during the coldest winter months. That family was one of two that burned to death within a single month due to fires started by kerosene heaters. We also heard of youths who chose militarism over prison when they could find no other path out of the desperation in which they lived their lives. Each story was heartbreaking and highlighted the disparity between the American Dream and the American Reality. .

The most emotional moment of the Commission for me came after the Right to a Living Wage Panel. The war came home when I held a woman who had just testified about her son’s service in the Marine Corps. Her son, like me could find no other way into a college classroom except through the battlefields of Iraq. Her description of him reminded me of myself when I joined the navy. He was Young, well intentioned, frustrated by his chances of going to college or finding a good job. He chose to gamble his life as a marine on the battlefield of Iraq in order to fund his college education. He lost that gamble. I cried as I held his mother in my arms, because I know that but for the grace of God, her son could have been cradling my mother in his arms. I cried because his death in Iraq is meaningless. It’s meaningless because the war is not being fought for our national security. The death of this poor immigrant boy is meaningless because his life was laid not on the alter of freedom, but on the alter of corporate greed and the military industrial complex. In an action that is no consolation at all, he was posthumously awarded American Citizenship.

The experience was heartbreaking because of the utter desperation of those in attendance. In one of the wealthiest nations in the world, no one should have to work three jobs just to provide for their family. No one should have to take the path of the drug addict to escape the horror of their life and no one should have to sacrifice their humanity on a battle field for the bottom line of Halliburton and Bechtel for a college education and a steady job. Yet, the commission was filled with these stories and so much more. This was only a small sampling of the testimonies shared at this historic event. However, I left filled with hope. The Truth Commission is a vital first step in reclaiming America. Average citizens with seemingly little power have begun to gather together to change this country. I was reminded of the old saying, “Never doubt the power of a few thoughtful, caring people to change the world. For no one else ever has.” One of the things that I learned in the military is that if you put one foot in front of the other, you eventually get where you need to go. The road ahead is long, but we will keep marching together and together we will change this world.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

What's In A Number?

“One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”- Joseph Stalin

Though hardly mentioned in mainstream media, this week the Pentagon released notification that three more American soldiers have died in Iraq, bringing the American death toll to 2,500. With the Bush Administration’s typical Stalin-esque callousness, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow glibly dismissed the tragic milestone saying, “It’s a number and anytime we reach one of these 500 benchmarks, people want something.” To him and the Administration, the 2,500 dead and 130,000 Americans currently serving in Iraq are just numbers, numbers that do not include any of his loved ones or the loved ones of anyone serving publicly in the Administration. This flippant dismissal cannot lightly brush aside the pain, anguish and utter destruction brought by this war. If the Administration truly believes this war can be reduced to mere numbers, perhaps we should consider some statistics left out of Mr. Snow’s arrogant, insensitive and inflammatory remarks.
Mr. Snow makes no mention of the estimated 18,490 American troops wounded in Iraq, 8,500 of whom were not able to return to duty. Nor does he mention that this war has created a new medical term “polytrauma” to describe troops who have been so horribly wounded that they require teams of doctors and scores of nurses to care for them. Mr. Snow makes no mention of the 30% of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking mental health care. He makes no mention of the 3 VA hospitals that will be closed this year as the number of veterans eligible for services sky rockets. Mr. Snow’s “number” does not include the 226 of the so called “coalition of the willing” who have sacrificed their lives in this war, many from countries who have already realized that victory is impossible and disentangled themselves.
Chief among the “people who want something” are the Iraqi people, who have sacrificed more than 4,800 police officers in the line of duty. As many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in a war over which they had no control. Thousands more have died or contracted illnesses from the lack of electricity, poor sanitation, and dirty water created by this war. The statistical view also obscures the psychological impact of thirteen years of constant bombing, destroyed buildings, ruined homes, unemployment and utter despair felt by many Iraqis. The majority of Iraqis believe the occupation is destabilizing their country: 64% of Iraqis believe that crime and violent attacks will decrease when American troops are withdrawn; 67% of Iraqis believe that day-to-day security will increase when American troops are withdrawn and 73% of Iraqis believe that the political process will be more cooperative when American troops are withdrawn.

On his second point, Mr. Snow is right; as Americans begin to feel the impact of this seemingly endless war, we want something. Recent polls show that nearly 50% of us want our troops withdrawn within the next year. Moreover, 72% of troops serving in Iraq believe the war should be ended by December of this year. Perhaps that is because the troops have spent significant time on the streets of Iraq as opposed to Mr. Snow’s one day photo op in the heavily insulated Green Zone.

Mr. Snow is correct, in the literal sense, 2,500 is just a number. But we must never glibly dismiss what that number represents. It represents hundreds of children that will grow up without a parent. It represents thousands of men and women that will not grow old with their spouses, and it represents thousands of grieving parents that will never spend another holiday with their children. It also represents a war that defies logic and responsible government by even the most conservative standards. After enduring thousands of pointless deaths, the majority of Americans want what they wanted when the death toll was only 2,499: we want the war to end. The American people want the war to end, the British and other coalition countries want the war to end, the Iraqi people want the war to end, and we want it to end before Mr. Snow is dodging another tragic benchmark.

Mr. Anderson Goes to Washington

On April 27, along with two Iraqi women, I testified before the COngressional Out of Iraq Caucus. The following day my statement was read into the record by Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey of California. Below are my comments.

Congress Woman Woolsey, Representatives and Distinguished Guests, it is a pleasure to again appear before you to discuss the need for a military withdrawal from Iraq.

I joined the United States Navy at age 19, immediately after I graduated from school. Like most young people who join the military, my reasons were both philosophical and economic. I wanted money for college, I wanted skill training, and I wanted time to decide what I really wanted from life. But more than that, I wanted to serve a cause greater than myself and I wanted to defend the American ideals expressed in the constitution. I believed that the navy would be my career for that majority of the nine years I served. I am still honored to have served my country. However, the events that occurred in Iraq made further service impossible.

I boarded a plane on February 1, 2003. The reasons I was being sent to war were reported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties between the Saddam Regime and the Al Qaeda Network. At the time I regarded the validity of this information largely irrelevant. Soldiers do not set policy, we enforce policy. We follow orders. We have no choice save to do what we are told and hope that our nation’s leadership will not send us into combat for the wrong reasons. In this case, the government of the United States of America failed us.

I was completely untrained and unprepared for what I experienced in Iraq. In the seven years preceding my deployment to the Middle East, including two years with a Marine infantry battalion, I had not set foot in the desert or had any training how to fight or survive there. I had fired my nine millimeter service pistol exactly once, in the summer of 2000. I was such a poor shot that the range safety officer threw me off the range. The next time I fired my weapon was around April 13, 2003 in what is now Sadr City, Iraq when my convoy was ambushed. Following that engagement, I was told I would not be issued replacement ammunition because there was none to be had. My platoon Sergeant told me “do not shoot unless your death is imminent,” as though I would be firing my weapon for any other purpose.

My battalion “crossed the line” on March 20, 2003. We moved up to Basra then across near Nassaria and then finally, straight up the center of the country to circle Baghdad and enter through what is now Sadr City. We fought three major engagements and took a total of four combat dead and one to friendly fire. We were redeployed to the United States at the end of May almost as soon as President Bush issued his “Mission Accomplished Speech.” I knew at that time redeploying forces from the theatre would be a mistake because we were still encountering resistance and no major units had surrendered, they had just evaporated into the cities. Major Combat was over only in the World War II sense. However, the Guerrilla War was just beginning.

I watched through the summer and into the fall as the American death toll continued to rise. However through this time I was dealing with my own demons. Each time a firecracker went off or a car backfired, I dove for cover. Once while driving on Camp Lejeune, I drove past a rifle range that I did not know was “hot” until they began firing. I realized two miles down the road that I was doing over sixty miles an hour. I was having nightmares and insomnia. I had a short temper and frequent flashbacks. These are classic symptoms of PTSD, yet like most veterans I know, I was in denial. It was not until I spent New Year’s 2003/2004 curled up behind my couch as my neighbors launched fireworks that I realized I had a problem I could not handle. I sought treatment and was eventually discharged from the Navy.

The crisis for veterans is very real. At a time when our government is creating combat veterans exponentially, it is simultaneously diminishing the care facilities. We should be opening VA hospitals not closing them. Veterans should be able to get care immediately and be offered services through a live contact outreach program, and finally there should be seamless transition from the DoD to the VA. By this last comment I mean that records should be transferred and much of the burden of proof left to the DoD, not the individual to substantiate a claim, because the individual will often be retraumatized by the experience.

I am before you today representing a 250 member national veteran’s organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War. We were formed in August 2004 with the following goals. First, we advocate for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. Forces from Iraq. Second, we want full, mandatory, funding for the VA to care for all veterans eligible for services. Finally, we want funding available for the Iraqi people to rebuild their country. This can be easily accomplished legislatively. A bill meeting these requirements would be laid out in the following manner:

1. We express the intent of the United States that all U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Iraq within thirty days and from the theatre of operations with in one hundred and eighty days.

2. Funding for the VA will be mandatory and a one time immediate emergency supplemental appropriation will be made to prepare the agency for the returning veterans. A study can then be conducted to determine an accurate figure to operate and strengthen the administration.

3. A supplemental budget will be determined for the nation of Iraq to pay the costs of reconstruction. The allocation will be paid annually for a period of ten years. This allows the Iraqi people to determine what their nation should look like and how they will rebuild it.

Can We Come Home Now?

My friend Doug died on Martin Luther King Day. I hadn’t known him long, but we had a lot in common. We both lived in the south, were both veterans of the Iraq War, both felt betrayed by our government for sending us to a war without purpose. Both of our marriages had been destroyed in the aftermath of the war, and finally we were both struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Doug and I both fought during the invasion of Iraq, he was an army National Guardsman and I was attached to the marines. I don’t really know how Doug’s PTSD first manifested, but I do know he had a different battle than I did. I had been back less than a month when I found myself diving for cover when the neighbors launched bottle rockets. Soon I was unable to stand any noise that sounded like gunfire. I felt profound guilt that I had come home alive when others I knew did not, and I was plagued by nightmares of the horrors I had experienced far from home.

Because I was still in the navy, I was able to refer myself to the psychiatry department at the local military hospital and was diagnosed with PTSD. After a year and a half of treatment, I was discharged from the military with disability pay. Doug was not so lucky; he was a National Guardsman and not entitled to care in the regular military system. He had to turn to the Veteran’s Administration who determined he had a Personality Disorder. A malady which, by definition, exists before a person becomes of military age and thus, the VA will not compensate for it or treat it. The VA thus would not acknowledge his subsequent PTSD that afflicted him in Iraq. So Doug suffered the demons of war without adequate treatment. He struggled for two years trying to make ends meet, all the while fighting with the VA for the disability benefits he had earned in the sands of Iraq. He drifted from job to job because of his temper or as he put it because he had been trained to kill and that was what he knew. Yet, even though our paths were different, we had yet another thing in common. After fighting so hard against the torment of life after warfare, we were both tired. We just wanted our lives back and Doug knew, as I do, that this can never happen.

Doug and I are not alone. 30% of Iraq veterans have Stress related mental health problems. The divorce rate among Iraq Veterans is very high. Homelessness, unemployment and drug abuse are also on the rise. As Doug put it in an article written shortly before he took his own life, “All is not okay … for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers … will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.”

Doug and I are America’s returned veterans, her sons, left on our own to suffer after the torment of war. I still struggle through life. I often remind myself that I have to bring myself through for my daughter. I force myself to hope that even though my personal finances are in shambles, my marriage destroyed, and nearly everything I once held dear left on the rubbish heap created by this war, this torture cannot last forever. Some days I believe it, on many I don’t.

Though some may question his actions or his motives, Doug was just one of thousands of the forgotten casualties of the Iraq War. He was killed in action long before he died. On my darkest days, I almost envy Doug, because he had the courage to end his suffering. But in reality, I know that his act was not one of courage, but one borne out of the deepest despair. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraq veterans, 150,000 still in Iraq and every one of us is in harm’s way. Doug has gone to rest, but you the citizens of America cannot; you do not have that luxury. While you are tucked safe in your beds, we veterans are still out here in the cold asking, “Can we come home now?”

An Open Letter to Bubba

I’ve seen you around. I’ve seen you driving your gas guzzling SUV with the “Support Our Troops” ribbon on the back. I’ve seen you wearing your pro-war/pro-bush t-shirts as you walk right past me in my Iraq Veterans Against the War t-shirt as if I don’t exist. And I’ve seen you at anti-war rallies and meetings where I often speak, as you wave your American flag and call me a traitor. In this country we have freedom of speech. But you owe me and every other veteran of this war the respect of listening to our experience.

Your magnet says “support our troops,” but what have you done for us? Not a penny of the proceeds go to us, instead they go to sweatshops in China. You say that I am not supporting the troops when I say that they should come home. But I am, because I know that there was no threat to our nation from Saddam Hussein, I know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and I know that we were not welcomed in Iraq as liberators. I know that the Iraq war was not worth fighting. I know, because I fought there. You say I’m confused. But what do you know about Iraq? You’ve never been there.

You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don’t support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to Iraq unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn’t even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making Iraq a democracy, but yet the “insurgency” worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.

At present, 2,241 of my brothers and sisters in arms have died. In some way, they may be the lucky ones. Over sixteen thousand others have been wounded in this war, thousands more than planned. The term wounded sounds sterile, bland, and inoffensive. But, in reality, many of them have been so horribly damaged that medical science had to create a new word to describe their wounds: polytrauma. These people would have died in earlier wars, but because of the gallant efforts of brave doctors and medics, they get to live. They get to live with teams of ten or more doctors just trying to get their broken, mangled bodies through another day, as their families look on in horror. They get to live in a physical and emotional hell, not able to recover and not able to voice the pain they feel or the psychological demons they face. All the while suffering with a Veterans Administration under funded by nearly three billion dollars and unable to care for them in the manner they deserve.

So which one of us supports the troops? You, who has never set foot in Iraq and wants to leave my brothers and sisters there until they complete whatever the undefined mission of the week is, or me, the veteran of this war who has seen the carnage of battle, the rampant indifference of my countrymen, and just wants to bring my brothers and sisters home alive and care for them when they get here?

Keep coming to the rallies. Maybe I’ll get through your thick skull eventually. But remember I waved my flag in Baghdad, so you can sit down, shut up, and listen to me.