I’m still in a bit of a daze after the last few days in Maryland at Winter soldier 2008. So much happened, it’s really hard to try to pin it down with words. I was so blessed to meet such good people and to be on the periphery of a very loving fellowship of servicemembers who have seen the hell of war and are now standing up to be true “Winter Soldiers and Patriots” by telling the truth about what they saw and participated in.
That fellowship is one of the things that stood out to me. By no means is IVAW without fault, but these folks seemed to me to do an awfully good of looking out for each other. I feel now though very, very strongly that the peace and anti-war movements have not done near enough to support them. I think there’s value to anything that we do to speak out against the evils of war, but I think the most important thing we can do is to help servicemembers and veterans.
The truth is that Bush, Clinton, Obama, McCain, who ever the corporate powers pick for us won’t end this ****ing war. Maybe a Democrat will slow things down a bit, but I don’t think they are really going to do anything substantive to end the occupation and to end the horrible things we are doing to those who are serving. The war is hell. You can’t deny this unless you don’t know anyone who has seen the hell first-hand.
And let’s quit telling ourselves the comfortable myths about how our country “supports the troops.” You can put a billion of those stupid ribbons on your cars, but it is not changing the fact that we as Americans are sending 18, 19 and 20 year olds to kill and maim, and to kill and be maimed. Everyday, young men and women are being put in harms way and told to pull the trigger, to shoot at women and children, and we back home just blithely go about our lives, spending money right and left like there is no tomorrow.
This has to end!!! We must do all that we can do to really support the troops, by helping them to resist the oppression they are experiencing and by helping them to be freed from the slavery of military service.
If you haven’t watched any of the WS testimony yet, then I challenge you to watch it. Just tune into even one servicemember’s testimony and listen. It’s broadcast live as we speak until 9 p.m. EST tonight on Free Speech TV (if you have Dish network), on some cable access channels, on the radio in some places, and online. You can find out the best way to watch/listen by going to the IVAW website.
But don’t think you can find out the testimony through the corporate media. Very, very few news outlets are covering this (even though, it frankly is a much, much bigger deal than any of the stupid presidential debates). Of course there is a reason for this. The same corporate interests who depend on the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan also own the media. And since THE WAR WOULD END IF THIS TESTIMONY WAS REALLY HEARD BY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, (see Alternet: Winter Soldier — America Must Hear These Iraq Vets’ Stories – by Penny Coleman), then WE THE PEOPLE must stand up and demand that our congressional representatives hear this testimony and act to end the war, and WE THE PEOPLE must do all we can to help the troops get out of the war, because the truth is that we can’t count on our supposedly democratically elected leaders to do the right thing
So fight! We must convince the youth of America to RESIST instead of enlisting! We must stand behind the troops who are refusing to participate in tyranny! We must do everything we can do to end the war!
I’m sorry I’m preaching and screaming online, but there are times for preaching and screaming. And there are times for resistance, and this is such a time.
0 thoughts on “Still stunned by everything at Winter Soldier”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hi
I was at Winter Soldier, working with Displaced films for who I have built and maintained the sirnosir.com website. I also worked as the senior researcher for Sir! No Sir! so there was nowhere else I could have been last weekend. Because I was working on the computer most of the time, the only way I caught most of the testimony via KPFA.
I found myself feeling both alienated, because of the material I was researching (I had the distinctly unenviable task of reading the rants of the Gathering of Eagles) and incredibly inadequate, because my work with Sir! No Sir! has had no effect on the bastards who started and continue this war. I have been incredibly lucky in my life to have made certain choices, the most important of which was my decision to focus on GI resistance 14 years ago. However this did nothing to prepare me for the overwhelming desire to rip my skin off and scream stop this madness, you who have done this to our children are dishonorable and soulless men. I realised, on the Saturday afternoon that was essentially a cop-out. I an as responsible as they are because I have done nothing to stop it. They are my son’s age and I left promising myself I would not get outraged by the small shit any more. There is nothing else in this world that requires our collective outrage than this criminal enterprise. What I have resolved to do is find a way to channel that outrage into active and overt support for these young men and women. Btw, as I am supposed to document the variety of voices raised by the Winter Soldier hearings, if you come to the militarylies blog you may well find the piece you wrote the first thing you read.
Thanks for supporting the Winter Soldiers, and I hope I had the pleasure of talking with you while you were there.
James
The Winter Soldier Testimony was fraud.
Many statements have been made that because John Kerry participated in Viet Nam, he had earned the right to protest the war. I want to say an unequivocal “I agree”. But that being said, I’d agree that ANY American has that right. Dissent is critical to the maintenance of freedom and I’d not deny that right to anyone for any reason.
However, as with any right, there come responsibilities. One of the responsibilities incumbent upon any who dissent is to do so in a PRINCIPLED fashion. It is their right to dissent, but it is their duty to do so responsibly.
THAT is the crux of my problem with John Kerry’s dissent. For the most part it was based on fraud. His dissent was NOT based in truth. His dissent was not conducted responsibly. It was, in my opinion, based on mischaracterization, outright lies, and fraud.
[Much of what I’m going to quote here comes from an excellent book that I urge all to read concerning this specifically and Viet Nam and its veterans in general. The book is “Stolen Valor” by B.G. Burkett. I’ll append “[BG]” after those quotes so excerpted.]
Neil Sheehan, certainly not a proponent of the war in Viet Nam by any stretch, characterized what was going on at that time quite well. Sheehan destroyed the credibility of Mark Lane’s book “Conversations with Americans” by revealing most of the “veterans” who’s “atrocities” Lane quoted hadn’t been in combat or even in Vietnam in many cases : READ the rest here:
http://www.qando.net/archives/002160.htm