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Gulf Vets Against the War?

Reborn on the Fourth of July?

On June 10th, in an article on the growing sophistication of Iraqi military resistance the Washington Post quoted Captain John Ives, an American officer stationed in Fallujah* as saying "It could get worse before it gets better. It's a matter that some people want us dead. We're just going to have to take them out." If somehow I were able to raise a beer with Capt. Ives, I would tell him that he's got his causality mixed up. What most Iraqis want, it should be clear, is not to have you dead, but to have you gone. Granted, a significant number of them see the best chances of that in trying to physically harm you and your comrades, no laughing matter for you I'm sure, but if you weren't there, the fact is that those you feel you have to "take out" would not being giving much of a thought to you.

Whether Capt. Ives would understand the point is of some import to those Americans who would seek to counter the imperial ambitions of the Bush administration. As resistance to the war within Iraq increases, the Bush administration will likely become more worried about "credibility" in its narrow militaristic sense. This is not the "credibility" of are we telling the truth, already shot to the wind for most of the world, but the "credibility" of will we destroy you if you mess with us, a "credibility" that is dearly held to by successive U.S. foreign policy planners no matter what administration. It is young, mostly naïve, soldiers like Capt. Ives that are required for the bloodbaths necessitated by this latter form of "credibility."

One of the greatest strengths of the anti-Vietnam War movement, contrary to the widespread myth of protesters spitting on returning veterans, was the successful incorporation of Vietnam Veterans Against the War into the movement, later popularized by Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July," about antiwar veteran Ron Kovic (somewhat simplistically and bombastically, but that's Oliver Stone for ya). It was the young soldiers returning from the war that knew first-hand the types of slaughter required to carry out Johnson and Nixon's policies and a number of them became the most eloquent spokesmen against the war.

Capt. John Ives and many of his compatriots could conceivably amend their understanding of the situation and follow in the footsteps of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Israeli Refuseniks, and many others if the antiwar movement reaches out to returning soldiers and quite likely even if they don't.

*As of Sunday, still a center of troubles for American occupation forces.

— guest posted by Rob Johnson
BellumAmericanum

Resistance chapters forming in a community near you

In an earlier e-mail, Ben Regenspan wrote:

TvNewsLies.org has posted a poignant and urgent letter from Eric E. Johansson, an ex-US Army Paratrooper and Infantryman who is now president of the SF Bay Area Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69.

The letter is titled:   NOW PEOPLE OF GOOD CONSCIENCE SHOULD STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK !
Eric's message should be heard by people everywhere!  Please link to this message if you can.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 30, 2003 1:14 PM

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