MoPress

Author: mopress

  • Eyewitness to Aug. 20

    An official with the “coalition” that makes up Camp Casey had been talking to the ISO to diffuse the situation. I caught snippets of what he was saying… He said things like, “If it were up to me personally, I’d have no problem at all with you guys being here. What we need to do is all meet and discuss this, and figure out how we can all come together on this… The problem some people are having is not your presence here, but that you set up a rather large book table, with large signs and banners promoting the ISO, rather than the antiwar effort and Gold Star Families for Peace… All the money we raise here is to keep the peace effort here in Crawford going [free food, beverages, tents, shuttles, etc.], while some are objecting to your selling your books which goes to the ISO…” etc. It seemed that he was saying that they would be able to stay on, but that the ISO might have to do tone it down a bit.

    At a few points on Saturday, members from the ISO *did* jump up on the table, trying to get everyone’s attention, shouting things like, “We’re getting arrested,” and “They are kicking us out.” This was at the beginning, when they were told rather forcefully by someone that they had to leave. (There was a guy who was being [aggressive] about it, apparently he was a Vietnam vet; after he initially stirred it up, he disappeared from the scene. Someone told us that they thought *he* was arrested.) A few times the cops (there were two of them) did pull someone aside, to talk to privately, but insisted that no one was being arrested unless they refused to pack up their books. We watched them pack up their books in boxes, and carry them to the trunk of their car. It seemed everything had calmed down, the cops kinda faded away, it was just the Camp Casey official talking with the ISO, so [the two of us] left, figuring it was being worked out… Personally I didn’t like the presence of the cops at Camp Casey, but I have to say that they seemed to handle it professionally; they tried to calm things down, and insisted over and over, “We are not the ones kicking you out. It is the Camp Casey people who object to your presence. We are here serving them; if they don’t want you here, then it’s our job to see that you leave…”

    –received via email Aug. 27, 2005

  • A Response to Thomas Palaima

    By Susan Van Haitsma

    I always read with interest the columns of UT classics professor, Thomas Palaima. He and I have visited together concerning issues related to his course on war and violence studies. I appreciate his insight and experience.

    Palaima’s American-Statesman commentary, “A grieving mother asks an impossible question,” (8-23-05) states that Gold Star mother, Cindy Sheehan and the hundreds of supporters who have traveled to Crawford, Texas to join her, are asking a question which “has no factual answer.” Palaima suggests that families of soldiers killed in Iraq must deal with their grief as all of us must when confronted by “death and severe trauma” in our lives. Palaima recounts several personal brushes with death in the context of accidents that he has survived, reminding us that there appear to be no satisfactory reasons why, in accidents, some die and others are spared.

    But, soldiers who are killed in war do not die as a result of an accident. Most of the killing that is done in war is neither unexpected nor unintentional. The decision by US government leaders to invade and occupy Iraq involved certain knowledge that US soldiers and Iraqi civilians would be killed. US government leaders did not know how many persons would be killed or what their names would be, but they chose instruments of death as their method and knew that death would result. Somehow, leaders decided that the deadly human consequences would be worth the imagined gains of their cause. Sheehan and thousands of other ordinary Americans are asking President Bush and his administration to explain their cause and name those gains. If there are no factual answers to this straightforward question, US leaders are not leading.

    Even if one thinks of the deaths of Iraqi civilians and US soldiers in Iraq as unfortunate accidents, what does that say about our culture of life? Most accidents assume a calculated risk – a gamble. Is a culture of life furthered by deciding that some lives are expendable? By willingly wagering the lives of the youngest adults in the US and the lives of young and old in Iraq, praying that certain family members and friends are not killed or injured, physically or mentally, whose lives are being traded for whose? What parents would give the lives of their children to protect their own?

    As Sheehan has said many times, her son, Casey, was not ‘lost’ in war, he was killed. Killing does not happen accidentally. I appreciate the way she has often stated that her son was an “indispensable part” of her family. Love for our children is something we know deeply; it is the fiercest love of all. Our children are indispensable parts of our families and our larger communities. Why would we allow our 14 – 18 year-olds to be wooed by military recruiters? Why would we decide that our youngest adults should bear the brunt of war?

    We would do well to listen closely to soldiers who are returning from Iraq. During the annual Veterans for Peace convention held August 4 –7 in Dallas, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) shared powerful testimony of their experiences in Iraq and their reasons for calling for withdrawal of troops. Said one member of IVAW from the stage during a plenary session, “When people tell me they are proud of what I did in Iraq, I say, “Well, I’m not. You don’t even know what I did over there.’”

    Iraq war veteran and conscientious objector, Camilo Mejia, spoke candidly about the prison term he served for desertion when he refused to return to Iraq because of human rights violations he witnessed. He reported receiving support from other soldiers for his stand against the war, yet warned against the “culture of silence” within the military that discourages truth-telling about the costs of war.

    From prison and since his release last February, Mejia has been an eloquent spokesperson for the rights of conscience. “By putting my weapon down,” he says, “ I chose to reassert myself as a human being.” He has helped mobilize support for other GI resisters, including Army Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who has recently begun a 15-month prison sentence for refusing to serve a second tour of duty in Iraq. Amnesty International has adopted Benderman as a prisoner of conscience.

    Palaima suggests there is no human plan that explains why persons are killed in war. Veterans and family members of soldiers killed in Iraq are speaking out and suggesting otherwise.

    Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth and is an associate member of Veterans for Peace

  • Sheehanism! Note from a Texas Reader

    All the people at Camp Casey would do well to abandon all their isms and adopt Sheehanism. For the simple reason that its the only damn thing that has worked.

  • A Reply from Norway

    "Raw talk revival" – good article. Tnx 4 the epiphany I got fm yr description of army base kids in practical terms living a socialist life. I’ve seen that life-style as elitist privilege, but of course: It’s simply a society (the military one) taking care of its own. And why not extend this to everyone? Very good Q.

    It seems the concept of socialism has taken such a bad-mouthing & beating in the US over the past century, that noone (in the Dominant Public Sphere) any longer looks at its actual practical contents. Scared away fm looking at & pointing to good solutions, simply for these solutions being too similar to the denigrated concept of socialism. Neat trick fm the powers that be interested in stalling Equitable Reciprocity. Yet the roots of the USA can be found in the proto-socialist movement of the French / New England intellectuals of the late 18th century: Freedom, Equality, Solidarity being the main slogan (slightly updated – "Brotherhood" = Solidarity). Better keep that fact shunted aside by being talked to little pieces of no consequence (again in the DPS).

    Living in Norway we keep being told ours is a semi-ideal society near to socialism – the social-democratic approach. But although on the outskirts of ‘Empire’, attitudes here are strongly ‘guided’ by signals fm the US. We can do as we please, as long as our economic premises follow US ways. Which leaves fairly little to discuss. Luckily our oil makes us filthy rich, allowing a semblance of equality to be poured atop the basic inequalities. Meanwhile the ideology (?) of ‘privatization’ gnaws at the roots of our hard-won welfare-society. Which is why I’m concerned with what happens in the US. It directly impacts us pretty quickly.

    So when smbd in the US speaks truth to power, that is very much in my personal interest, too. Pls keep it up.