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ISR Issue 59, May–June 2008



REPORTS AND ANALYSIS

Putting the war on trial

IVAW’s new Winter Soldier hearings in Washington

By ERIC RUDER and ASHLEY SMITH

OVER THE course of three days, the stories spilled out of dozens of anti-warriors—tales of home invasions that terrorized families, beatings and torture of detainees, indiscriminate fire in residential neighborhoods, and the devastating use of air power. In mid-March near Washington, D.C., current and former members of the U.S. military gave harrowing testimony about their firsthand experiences in two occupations as part of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, which was organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

This historic gathering served several purposes. As a whole, the testimonies cut through all the government misinformation about the success of the U.S. troop “surge.” Based on the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation, which was organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), today’s Winter Soldier like its predecessor brought to light the war crimes and atrocities that are the inevitable consequences of U.S. military policy. At the same time, Winter Soldier brought together the largest number to date of antiwar troops and veterans of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to cohere IVAW’s sense of its own strength.

The ashen faces, trembling voices, and tears of the veterans who spoke conveyed to the audience the pain these men and women had to endure as they re-lived the trauma of life in a war zone, but such intensity only heightened the power of the stories they told.

Hart Viges, who joined the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division after September 11, 2001, was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003, and participated in the initial Iraq invasion force in March of that year. His voice heavy with regret, he recounted his orders to launch a mortar assault on the city of Samawa in southern Iraq after some people were spotted entering a building.

“We got that fire mission, and we destroyed that building with our mortars,” said Viges, who was part of a panel focused on the military’s rules of engagement. “This isn’t army to army. People live in towns. It’s beyond imagination to think that civilians don’t live in towns. It’s upside-down thinking.... I don’t know how many innocents I’ve helped kill.

“Another big piece of weaponry they used on this little town of Samawa is the Spectre Gunship AC-130 with a couple of belt-fed Howitzers, a super Gatling gun...I’m not sure of the exact nomenclature.

“They would sweep around Samawa, just pounding the city. This is definitely a sight to be seen, this airplane. Even though the rounds are coming from up in the sky, it’s almost like the ground is shaking. Over the city, over neighborhoods, Kiowa attack helicopters with their Hellfire missiles, F-18s dropping bombs that would shake you to the bone, all the while I was laying down mortar fire on this town, full of people...

“Never a good thing came over the radio. One time, they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation. In Iraq, any car can be a taxicab. You just paint it white and orange, and there you have it.

“One of the snipers across the radio replied back, ‘Excuse me, did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ And the lieutenant colonel replied back, ‘You heard me, trooper. Fire on all taxi cabs.’ And once that conversation ended, the town pretty much lit up. All the units that were in there fired on numerous cars.”

The panels also took up the issue of racism and dehumanization of the “enemy,” discrimination based on gender and sexuality within the U.S. military, and the deplorable state of medical neglect that many troops and veterans must contend with as they seek to recover from their wounds, both physical and emotional, after returning to the United States. In addition to veterans recounting their experiences in Iraq, there was also testimony from military family members, mental health advocates, GI rights organizers, and independent journalists such as Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Dahr Jamail, and author Anthony Arnove. There were also taped interviews with Iraqi civilians.

The mainstream media, however, ignored the event, imposing a virtual media blackout on it despite the presence of hundreds of soldiers. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watchdog organization, noted that despite attention from international media outlets, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune didn’t even send a reporter. The Washington Post covered the event as a local interest story. The major television and cable networks completely ignored Winter Soldier. Given the mainstream media’s complicity in disseminating Pentagon spin for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this blackout shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

The movement itself will have to make sure that testimony like that of former Marine and Iraq veteran, Jon Turner, gets out. At Winter Soldier, Turner narrated his own video footage of “kills” he and his fellow soldiers committed in Iraq. In one video, his commanding officer states, after having called for a 500-pound bomb, “I think I just killed half the population of northern Ramadi. Fuck the red tape.” Turner then declared, “There is a term, ‘Once a Marine, Always a Marine.’ But there is also a term, ‘Eat the Apple, Fuck the Corps.’” After saying that, he ripped the military ribbons from his chest, through them to the floor, and proclaimed, “I don’t work for you no more.”

Such testimony is the beating heart of a new veterans and GI resistance to the U.S. war machine. It carries on the tradition of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland’s famous Fuck the Army tour during Vietnam that rallied tens of thousands of troops to oppose that war.

There were some serious problems at Winter Soldier, however, that need to be addressed in order to build a healthy movement against the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

First there were unwarranted and unnecessary efforts by event organizers to control the content of speeches and testimony. Event organizers gave talking points to testifiers and invited guests, including journalists, which proscribed the use of certain words such as “war crimes,” “atrocities, “truth,” and “lies.” Presenters were also asked not to address the issue of the upcoming presidential elections. Whether or not this was done in the name of making the event more media friendly, it was misguided. No social movement, least of all one of soldiers and ex-soldiers, should police the speech of its own members and supporters.

The issues of exclusion and red-baiting also raised their ugly heads. In one case, a couple of IVAW members fabricated a story of harassment as a cover for expelling a member of the International Socialist Organization from the event. Although the IVAW board of directors initially voted in favor of this expulsion, they reversed themselves after the facts came to light and later issued an apology and retraction. Another ISO member, an active IVAW organizer who did a great deal of work to help organize Winter Soldier, was removed from the program management team, ostensibly because he failed to promote the prescribed “talking points” with some of the invited guests. He was then removed from his position as regional co-coordinator on the charge that he “undermined Winter Soldier.” Yet another ISO member was asked to leave the event allegedly because she was distributing literature, although she was doing so only privately, and there were, moreover, plenty of other people at the event distributing literature, as there should be at any vibrant political gathering.

The organizers’ policy of tailoring an appeal to make it more acceptable to the mainstream media in this case appears to have had a corollary effect of declaring other ideas and analyses unacceptable at Winter Soldier. It goes without saying that this approach discourages open debate and discussion, the lifeblood of any serious movement, and can lead, as it did in this case, to maneuvers to marginalize what some deem “unacceptable.” It must also be added that this media strategy, as already noted, failed to attract much mainstream media.

Most importantly imposition of political litmus tests to determine who has the right to speak or organize in the movement severely weakens it. An ISR editorial from May-June 2005—in a defense of “a mass, non-exclusionary” antiwar movement—quoted the respected radical pacifist and peace activist A.J. Muste, writing in the 1960s, on the need for the Vietnam antiwar movement to reject anti-communism:

In practice, a non-Communist coalition is in danger of becoming an anti-Communist one, though it may desire to avoid that. In any event, its program will in the long run tend to be moderate and its resistance to the war restrained in policy. It will tend to seek allies to the right. If by any chance its resistance to the war policy should be stiffened and become radical then it will find itself classified with the left, the “enemy,” anyway and in its actual withdrawal of support from the Administration and from the war actually will be in that revolutionary and noble position.
The editorial continues:
Perhaps antiwar movement leaders who decided to exclude radicals on political grounds, real or imagined, believe that they are acting in the best interests of the movement. But they are wrong. As Muste points out, the end result of this censorship is to tear out the guts of the movement—to remove from its center the people who are the most consistent and passionate opponents of the war. And let’s be clear: the effect isn’t only directed at self-proclaimed radicals and socialists. It also stifles the emergence of activists with a deeper and more thoroughgoing understanding of the war and what it will take to end it.
The point of all this is that we should be building a movement that can accommodate points of view across the political spectrum so long as there is agreement on the basic points of unity of IVAW. Such an approach allows for the healthy coexistence in IVAW of GIs who understand that their strength flows from collective struggle regardless of their political perspectives. In fact, it is a sign of a healthy and growing GI movement if the IVAW can create an environment that allows for the political radicalization that some participants undergo while at the same time welcoming those new to the movement or fresh from the battlefield, even if those GIs still reflect some of the conservative ideas drilled into all military personnel by their commanding officers.

There is nothing at all wrong with attempting to secure better and more media coverage. However, the antiwar movement won’t change the media by adopting the spin techniques of powerful corporations and politicians.

Grass-roots activism and ongoing movement organization are necessary to raise public consciousness of the protests of the antiwar movement—and the media’s representations of them. There is no shortcut to good media coverage. What’s required is the patient work of building a vibrant, mass antiwar movement.

The success of Winter Soldier, in spite of the media blackout, puts us in a better position to carry out the on-the-ground organizing of the kind that built the last GI resistance movement. The future of the IVAW lies in building strong chapters that collaborate closely with other antiwar organizations and allies.

The potential for such collaboration was a crucial element of Winter Soldier. Many of the more than 200 IVAW members in attendance left inspired and excited to build the organization. The alternative and left-wing media rallied to fill the vacuum left by the corporate media, broadcasting the event across the country. And antiwar activists in cities and on campuses worked with IVAW to build local screenings of the testimony. In the aftermath, many of these formations have helped IVAW organize local Winter Soldier events.

In the hearings themselves and all the solidarity the event garnered, the potential is obvious for building a new Winter Soldier movement as a key component of the overall grass-roots antiwar movement.

Eric Ruder is a journalist for Socialist Worker and Ashley Smith is a member of the ISR editorial board.

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