On a Sunday afternoon in February, a young man
made a plea to a room full of 400 antiwar activists who had
gathered in St. Louis for three days of strategizing on how to end
the war in Iraq.
“I’m probably the most experienced
activist in my organization and I’ve been an activist for one
year,” 25-year-old Michael Hoffman said, “so we need
your help with logistics.” In return, he promised that his
group would serve as a shield. “When there are massive
protests, we will be out front. We will say that you are doing
everything you can to support the troops by demanding that this war
is ended, and ended now.”
Hoffman’s speech was short, but it was
one of the few that brought a standing ovation from the crowd of
United for Peace and Justice delegates, a coalition of more than
1,000 antiwar groups that is sponsoring nationwide protests of the
Iraq war this weekend. As he left the dais and made his way through
the crowd, he seemed surprised by the reaction he got —
indeed, surprised to find himself in this role of war resister.
Until the summer of 2003, Michael Hoffman was
a U.S. Marine with the 10th Regiment. Hoffman, who says he believed
from the beginning that this was a war for oil, had been slated to
get out of the service before his unit shipped out to Kuwait in
February 2003. But two days before his time was up, his sergeant
called him to let him know that the secretary of the Navy had
instituted “stop loss,” which meant that those soldiers
deemed necessary to the war could not get out of the service when
promised; Hoffman would be going to Iraq instead of home to
Allentown, Pa. What Hoffman saw when his unit went into Iraq on
March 20 only hardened his opposition to the war.
“Seeing the civilian casualties and the
horrible things that were done and the destruction we laid on that
country, it seemed pretty clear to me that we never had the
Iraqis’ best interests in mind,” he says.
Today, Hoffman is a co-founder of the
fledgling organization Iraq Veterans Against the War and also a
centerpiece of the peace movement’s emerging strategy.
Antiwar activists are determined to make the
military a major pillar of the movement, both by homing in on one of
the war effort’s weak spots — the military’s
faltering campaign to recruit new soldiers — and by embracing
antiwar troops.
It is an alliance rich with promise. Part of
the challenge for this peace movement is persuading Americans that
attacking the war is not the same thing as attacking the troops. At
the same time, putting veterans on the front lines of the peace
movement has drawbacks — among them the risk of reinforcing
the notion that civilian opposition to war is somehow less
legitimate.
Buoyed by news reports of dissent in
the ranks, antiwar leaders are convinced that soldiers make
valuable allies. “They have a credibility in this
conversation that allows them to reach more people and to take on
some of the arguments of the conservatives in a more persuasive
way,” says Charley Richardson, one of the co-founders of
Military Families Speak Out and the father of a soldier who served
in Iraq. Richardson and his wife, Nancy Lessin, have seen Military
Families Speak Out grow from 200 families in 2003 to more than 2,000
families today.
“More soldiers and spouses are speaking
out today,” says Lessin, who believes that even more harbor
antiwar sentiments but stay quiet. Noting that the organization has
seen a membership shift — it used to be predominantly parents
of soldiers; now more wives of soldiers have joined — Lessin
is encouraged: “That is significant because that’s
where the code of silence is greatest, on military bases, and
that’s where breaking the code is more difficult.”
Huge numbers? No. But a symbolic presence can
be powerful — letting others who feel similarly know that
it’s OK to speak out. And putting military families and
soldiers up front can shift public opinion, organizers say.
“Part of the problem is that no one,
from the next-door neighbor to the politicians in Congress, wants
to be seen as not supporting the troops,” Lessin says.
“Our role is to change that construct, to say that real
support of the troops right now — when they have been sent
off to fight and die in a war based on lies — is to fight
against a war that never had to happen. We say, ‘We need you
to support the troops this way.’” Getting vets and
military family members involved is thus critical. “This
group of people gives us permission to speak out against the
war.”
Helping this effort along are some recent,
highly visible signs of disgruntled troops. There is Army Spc.
Thomas Wilson, the soldier who, during a feel-good town meeting in
Kuwait, got so much press when he asked Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld why soldiers were being forced to “dig through local
landfills for pieces of scrap metal” to reinforce their
vehicles instead of the Army providing properly armored equipment.
Then there were the 23 members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company
in Iraq who mutinied, refusing to drive their trucks on what they
considered a suicide mission. Further, peace activists have been
encouraged by a spate of well-publicized lawsuits from both
enlisted soldiers and officers.
The suits draw attention to what U.S. Sen.
John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, dubbed a “back-door
draft,” in which tens of thousands of veterans who had gotten
out of the service, active-duty soldiers who believed they had
completed their tours in Iraq, and officers who put in for
separation or retirement have been told to think again. (One
56-year-old Californian, who served three tours in Vietnam before
getting out of the service decades ago, was among those recently
ordered to report for duty.) Although the Pentagon has reminded the
public that we are at war, lawyers for some reluctant soldiers
contend otherwise. In cases filed in the past few months, they
argue that the U.S. is engaged in “nation building” and
“putting down the Iraqi insurgency” — two
activities not covered under President George W. Bush’s
declaration of a “state of emergency” on Sept. 14,
2001. Because Congress never formally declared war against Iraq,
they say, the president does not have the power to ignore the
contractual agreements soldiers sign upon enlisting. (And indeed,
Bush reassured the nation on May 2, 2003, from the deck of the USS
Abraham Lincoln, that the war in Iraq was over and had been won by
U.S. forces: “Major combat operations in Iraq have
ended.”)
In addition to fighting in the
courts, war opponents have tried to build bridges with progressives
inside the military community. “We affirm that defending your
country and supporting your troops does not mean suppressing your
conscience,” the Civic Soldier Forum announces in a
soon-to-be-released ad for military publications. The forum, a
national organization of self-described “progressives who are
also patriots,” comprises military analysts, active-duty
troops, civilians, and veterans.
At the grassroots level, progressives are also
working to involve soldiers. For example, in Fayetteville, N.C.,
home of one of the Army’s largest posts (Fort Bragg), as well
as an Air Force base (Pope AFB), the Quakers are joining up with
Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out,
Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace and September 11
Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to organize a large antiwar
demonstration on Saturday. They are expecting anywhere from 4,000
to 10,000 protesters.
Meanwhile, in Vermont, activists are taking a
completely different tack. Here, in a state with no active-duty
military bases but a number of National Guard soldiers, 50 towns
passed a resolution on March 1 to end the war. “This war is
being perpetrated in our names with our tax dollars,” says
Sherry Prindall, mother of a National Guard soldier deployed to
Iraq. Speaking in radio commercials broadcast across the state, she
has been urging Vermonters to consider the war a local issue.
Though organizers admit that their resolutions are unlikely to end
the war, they see this as a significant educational effort.
The effort dovetails nicely with the rest of
the peace movement’s counterrecruiting efforts, which are
newly focused on the National Guard. “This is just one part
of the larger struggle to deny the government the troops it needs
to fight the war,” explains Richardson of Military Families
Speak Out. Banding together with the American Friends Service
Committee, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace,
and United for Peace and Justice, Military Families Speak Out
intends to bring the war home by exposing the local impact of the
war on soldiers, families, communities, and states through a focus
on the National Guard.
Because as many as 50 percent of some
states’ National Guard troops are deployed at any given time,
residents are left without the state-based emergency-response teams they may need.
“This is an issue that state legislatures can and must take
on,” Richardson says. Not only do antiwar activists hope to
expose this vulnerability and propel more states to adopt
resolutions like Vermont’s, but they are also ultimately
going for a trickle-up effect. If grassroots activists can persuade
a city councilor to support their cause, and then a state
legislator, eventually members of Congress might feel they have a
supportive base for taking a stand. To that end, peace activists
are tying the cost of the war to local issues. Libraries and
schools are underfunded, the argument goes, because money is going
instead to fund military adventures. “We have to say that
Bush’s budgets are immoral and we are looking for moral ways
to use our money,” says Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code
Pink, an organization of women for peace.
Meanwhile, college students are protesting the
presence of recruiters on their campuses, and parents of young
people are beginning to speak out against the military’s hunt
for high-schoolers.
Cindy Sheehan, a California resident whose
24-year-old son Casey was killed two weeks after he arrived in Iraq in
April 2004, says she gets furious when recruiters call the house
asking to speak to her three younger kids. “They get the list
from the schools,” she says, referring to a little-known
clause of the No Child Left Behind Act that requires public schools
to provide recruiters with students’ names, addresses, and
home phone numbers — or lose federal funds. “I tell the
recruiters that sacrificing my oldest son for a lie is already way
too much and they’re not getting any of my other kids!”
Sheehan is the perfect example of the kind of
folks peace activists insist are part of a silent majority: She
opposed the war but was disinclined to speak out.
“I was stunned and dismayed when the
United States invaded Iraq,” Sheehan says. “I
didn’t agree with it. I didn’t think it was right, but
I never protested until after Casey was killed.” She pauses
and steels herself for what feels like the hundredth brutal mea
culpa: “And I am very sorry I didn’t.” Taking to
heart the old union slogan “Don’t mourn,
organize,” Sheehan is clearly deeply immersed in both. Along
with dozens of other families who lost soldiers in the war, she
formed a new organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, and has
made it her penance to share the details of her own experience.
“Now I am doing anything I can to
shorten this war and save other families the pain we’re going
through,” she says.
Sheehan’s voice and those of
other military families are being welcomed in the peace movement.
And more soldiers themselves are slowly creeping out of the
woodwork. But getting huge numbers of troops involved may be a long
shot. There is tremendous peer pressure in the military community
— the Defense Department calls it “bonding” and
considers it the cornerstone of military training — and
soldiers who are vocal about their opposition to the war face
considerable obstacles. Not only may their peers shun them, but the
Army may go after them as well.
The Civic Soldier Forum runs ads in various
military publications. One that is forthcoming in the Stars and Stripes raises
a provocative question: “Who says that those who defend
democracy cannot practice it?” Eloquently posed, the question
is not merely rhetorical. There are so many rules governing
soldiers’ political lives that most seem to shy away from all
activism for fear of breaking one. (Regulations even specify the
size of bumper stickers allowed on their cars.) Officially, members
of the armed services may participate in protests as long as they
are not in uniform, don’t divulge military secrets, and
don’t appear to be speaking for the military.
“Unofficially, your supervisors can give you every single
horrible detail they can find,” says Hoffman, the Iraq
veteran who spoke at the St. Louis antiwar event. “In Iraq,
they can put you on every dangerous mission they need to
staff.”
Lou Plummer, an Army veteran whose son Drew
was home on leave from the Navy the day the Iraq war started, says
his son paid a big price for speaking his mind. Lou brought Drew to
a peace vigil that day in Fayetteville. When an AP reporter
interviewed Lou and then turned to Drew and asked what he thought,
the young man told him he thought the war was about oil. “He
didn’t speak to any other reporters. He is not an activist.
He just answered the question from his heart,” Lou recalls.
Days after Drew’s comments ran in the press, when he reported
for duty at the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, he was charged with
violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The
charge was disloyalty. When Drew was hauled before his superiors,
his father explains, he “was asked if he sympathized with the
enemy and said no. He was asked if he planned to sabotage the ship
and said no. He was asked if he was sorry for what he said to that
reporter and he said no. So he was convicted of disloyalty and
demoted.”
Hoffman insists this isn’t uncommon.
“Lots of guys who speak out then get railroaded into an
Article 15 hearing because they’re offered a choice between
that and a court-martial,” he says. Under an Article 15
hearing, soldiers forgo legal representation and a trial, instead
agreeing to let their commander make the call through a less formal
administrative hearing. “And basically you’re guilty
until proven innocent,” says Hoffman.
Although the antiwar movement embraces
soldiers who brave such hostility to express their qualms about the
war, dissenting military voices do not always share all of the
peace movement’s goals and priorities. As a result, these
alliances have the potential to backfire. For example, Spc.
Wilson’s comment to Rumsfeld about the lack of armored
vehicles was the complaint heard ’round the world. But if it
gets invoked as justification for increased military spending, the
cheers may fade. Or if the complaints of military families who
lament the current operational tempo that has their spouses
deployed more than they’re home spur a military buildup, they
may find themselves at odds with the larger peace movement.
Ultimately, there is a danger that the
soldier’s perspective, so crucial to the peace movement now,
may prove problematic to the larger progressive movement that
activists hope this will spawn. After all, for many soldiers this
is a one-platform plank, making their immediate asset their
long-term flaw.
“So many of the other activists at this
United for Peace and Justice convention can be written off by
Americans as crazy pinko commie lefties,” Hoffman told me
privately, after he had addressed the larger assembly of peace
activists in the St. Louis convention hall. “But we’re
the vets who’ve been there and fought, and it seems
it’s hard for us to be dismissed.
“We’ve been to Iraq. We’ve
seen it. We know it’s wrong. We have to end it.”
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2005.
