HOW DOES A SOLDIER BECOME A PEACE ACTIVIST?
Activist’s Personal Journey Stretches From Battlefield to Protest March
by Bill Nemitz
Published on Sunday, August 29, 2010 by the Portland Press Herald (Maine)

For Charlie Clements, the answer lies somewhere between the lines of a 40-year-old military document that he keeps to this day.

“It says I’m 10 percent mentally disabled,” Clements said with a smile last week. “My protest was quite a silent one in some ways – I went quietly into the night.”

Clements, 64, is executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He’s also one of 300 or so military veterans who will march through Portland’s Old Port this morning to mark the 25th anniversary of Veterans for Peace, which has grown to more than 6,000 members nationwide since its founding here in Maine back in 1985.

Military service does different things to different people.

Some wear it for a lifetime as a badge of honor, weaving their war stories more deeply into their very identity with each retelling.

Others tuck it away in the closet and rarely, if ever, talk about it again.

Then there are these vets, almost all decades removed from their days in uniform, who spend their gray-haired years marching not to the sound of a military band, but rather to the lyrics of anti-war protest songs.

Each, of course, has his or her own story. For Clements, once an Air Force pilot who flew more than 50 missions in Southeast Asia before deciding one day he couldn’t anymore, it begins as a 17-year-old cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the mid-1960s.

“The dominant thought in my class was, ‘We hope the war doesn’t end before we get there,’ ” Clements recalled as the Veterans for Peace conference got under way Thursday. “Because wars are where young men test themselves, they are where young officers make their mark, they are what we were trained for.”

Upon earning his commission as a second lieutenant, Clements enrolled with the Air Force’s blessing in a graduate astronautics program at UCLA. He could have sat out the Vietnam War with his nose in a book, but he decided eight months into the program that he had a duty to serve in Southeast Asia.

He remembers walking in uniform past protesters at UCLA in the fall of 1967 – back in those early days of the anti-war movement, the protesters would just stand silently with their signs while he and his comrades passed by.

“I remember thinking very clearly that I knew much more about the world than these people did, that this was their right to do this,” he said. “And that I would go to Vietnam and defend their right to do this because I have a better understanding of this threat that faces us.”

CHOSE TO PILOT TRANSPORT PLANE

He also knew he didn’t want to kill anyone. So, upon graduating from flight school, he chose to pilot a C-130 transport plane rather than an assault aircraft and, with the war at full tilt, departed for Vietnam in August of 1969.

“What (the C-130) afforded me was a vast opportunity to see the war from different perspectives,” Clements said. “And with these experiences, I began to have encounters that gradually lifted the scales off my eyes.”

He once watched then-President Richard Nixon insist on the Armed Forces Network that the United States had no military presence in Laos, when he knew for a fact that C-130s just like the one he flew were ferrying personnel and supplies to secret U.S. bases there.

“Before that, it had never occurred to me before that the president would actually go on television and lie,” Clements said.

He once transported a group of 60 Viet Cong prisoners from one location to another – he was struck not just by the hatred in their eyes whenever they looked at him, but by an intensity, a sense of purpose that he rarely saw among young American GI’s.

GETTING THE BODY COUNT RIGHT

He once showed up at a morgue to pick up the body of a soldier killed in action. “You can’t have him today,” a sergeant told him. “The body count’s not right and we have to hang onto him for a few days.”

Known for his sharp intellect, Clements once was asked by his higher-ups to write a history of the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System by which C-130s delivered ordnance and supplies without actually touching down. The so-called LAPES procedure didn’t work well. That didn’t matter.

“I soon realized they were going to record this the way the Air Force wanted it recorded,” he said. “Not necessarily the way the pilots perceived it was happening,”

Then there was Cambodia.

In the spring of 1970, Clements flew a top-secret delegation of State Department officials to Phnom Penh – he was told at the time it was for an off-the-record meeting about securing a portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that passed through that country.

Only later would Clements learn the meeting was actually to plan the overthrow of Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk – a precursor to the invasion of Cambodia launched that May. As he flew troops into Cambodia the day before the invasion began, he found himself consumed with anger.

“I’d had this rationale that I wasn’t killing anybody, that I was an innocent of sorts,” he said. “But throughout that day I began to understand that I was very much a part of the machinery of war, that I was greasing the skids of war. And I decided what I was being asked to do was immoral.”

He asked for and received an emergency medical leave home. And when he told his stateside commanding officer that he could no longer fly missions in Southeast Asia, he was sent to an Army medical facility for what he thought was a routine psychiatric examination.

Upon his arrival, a hospital nurse handed Clements a set of pajamas.

“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I’m staying over at the officers quarters.”

“No, you’re staying here,” replied the nurse. “This is a closed psychiatric ward and you’re not leaving.”

There he remained, without visitors or telephone privileges, for weeks. And six months later, after refusing an offer to have his record sanitized if he’d just go back to Saigon and resume flying, the Air Force quietly declared him 10 percent mentally disabled and gave him an honorable discharge.

PUTS MEDICAL SKILLS TO USE

Clements would go on to become a physician and combine his medical skills with human rights work in Central America, where he spent the early 1980s treating victims of the civil war in El Salvador (many wounded by the same U.S. military aircraft in which he once trained). It was there, in 1985, that he met and joined the founders of Veterans for Peace.

He also later served as president of Physicians for Human Rights, traveling to Sweden in 1997 to accept the organization’s Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to ban land mines.

And now here he is in Maine, one of a small battalion of gray-haired veterans who emerged from war convinced that there has to be a better way.

Clements knows that some perceive Veterans for Peace as a ragtag group of radicals bent on tearing down the same country they once took an oath to protect. He also knows that perception could not be further from the truth.

Even now, he said, he has nothing but “empathy and respect” for those currently serving in the military – not to mention the families who have endured two, three, four or more deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I think our military is, more than ever in my lifetime, separated from the rest of society,” Clements said. “There’s a gulf between the ordinary civilians in our country and the military. We’re fighting two wars, but nobody (outside the military and their families) feels like they’re making any sacrifices.”

Time will tell whether the aging Vietnam veterans who now dominate Veterans for Peace will be replenished in the coming years with soldiers equally disillusioned by their service in Iraq or Afghanistan. Clements’ experience tells him the transition from the battlefield to the protest march often takes years, not weeks or months.

He’s also come to expect that as he and his comrades parade through downtown Portland this morning, some on the sidelines inevitably will call them a disgrace to the uniform they once wore.

But that piece of paper – the one that all these years later still labels him 10 percent out of step with the powers that once were – leaves him no choice.

“You don’t do this because of what people will think,” Clements said with another anything-but-angry smile. “You do this because of something inside you that compels you to speak your truth.”

Published on Friday, July 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Countering the Iraq War Spinners
The Truth of the Iraq War is That We Destroyed Iraq
by Jodie Evans

Almost eight years ago, I made my way to DC to meet up with Medea Benjamin and a few other friends to talk about what we could do to stop the Bush administration’s insane push toward invading an innocent country: Iraq. The next morning, eight of us were in front of the White House, on the steps of Congress and in the hearing for the resolution on Iraq; the day ended with two of us in jail. Our message was US Inspectors, Not US War. We had read articles about how the White House had been dreaming the invasion up over the summer and was waiting until September to push it because “you don’t launch a new product in August.” People’s lives were at stake, and they were treating war like the release of a new sports car.

We started CODEPINK in a desperate attempt to try to stop the war in Iraq. We vigiled outside the White House for five months, taking our message and outrage to the halls of Congress, press conferences and every invasion sales pitch we could gain entry to. We met with Nancy Pelosi, who told us she had a briefing with a Florida Senator that convinced her that there were no weapons of mass destruction. As the Democratic Whip she boldly broke with leadership to oppose the war. Sadly, her words were without action. The resolution swept through the committee hearing; we sat and listened with horror to Democrats arguing for the war, their arguments terrifyingly ungrounded in any real facts. Bush wanted to release his shiny new sports car and no one in Congress had the guts to say “This car is dangerous, it’s way too expensive, it doesn’t have any brakes, and it can only end in tragedy.” Congress just sat back and let him have his deadly toy, while we did whatever could to try to keep it off the road.

While we did not succeed in stopping the invasion, we did spend the past eight years organizing, mobilizing, expressing our outrage and exposing the futility, stupidity and enormous cost of this debacle for both Iraqis and Americans. We have countered the constant lies spewing out of the Oval Office, the “think tanks” and the media. We have worked tirelessly to try to bring our resources back home where they’re most needed–particularly as millions of Americans are turned out of their homes, people are desperate for jobs, and we need to reconfigure our entire energy system. By August 31, U.S. troops in Iraq are scheduled to be reduced to 50,000–marking what we hope will be the beginning of the end of this catastrophe. The Pentagon and the war supporters will undoubtedly spin this catastrophic intervention as a success–while Iraq lies in ruins and thousands of our soldiers have died in vain. Worse yet, it seems they have learned nothing from the disaster, as we are repeating it again in Afghanistan. Congress is voting for another $33 billion for the Afghanistan war while our states and cities go bankrupt and EVERYONE knows there is no military solution.

This insanity will have no end–unless we end it. This faulty “product” needs to be recalled.
Will you join with CODEPINK and other peace and justice organizations in sharing your voice during the week of August 25 to 31–the week that most of the US troops will return from Iraq? We need your help getting out the truth that the Iraq war was based on lies, has left Iraq in tatters, has drained our resources and MUST NOT be repeated for years to come in Afghanistan. There are so many who have paid the price of this crime….so many except those who are responsible. Sign up to join our action team for the last week of August; we will help you with tools and inspiration to write letters to the editor and op-eds, to call in to radio shows, to educate your colleagues. We need thousands of voices-yours counts.

Jodie Evans, a co-founder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace, has been a community, social and political organizer fo

There is an impressive slate of speakers, three of whom are not to be missed: Retired Col. Anne Wright who resigned in protest of the Bush administration policies; Michael McPhearson of Veterans for Peace and United for Peace and Justice; and David Swanson of War is a Crime. Listen to anyone of these three and I promise you’ll come away with inspiration and hope.

I am guessing such a conference will not be well-publicized before, during or after the fact. I know I read next to nothing about the recent SOCIAL FORUM that took place at the end of June in Detroit. I invite any one who reads this blog post and either attended the FORUM or read about it, to comment on any experience you had and any take-aways from the forum. We all need some inspiration in these days of horrific war and oil spills and the hottest June ever.
Even more locally for the Northamptonites among those reading this post, today at 4:30 p.m. in City Council Chambers behind City Hall in Northampton, there is a meeting of the Veterans Affairs Committee and I received an e-mail last week urging those of us who want to see the “BRING THE WAR DOLLARS HOME” resolution by the City Council move forward to attend. I hope I will see some of you there. This is yet another spoke in the wheel of peace that we need to have roll through the land…

Published on Saturday, July 17, 2010 by the Albany Times-Union (New York)
Peace Begins At Home: Albany Antiwar Conference

by Linda LeTendre

Driving through Columbia County a few months ago, I passed by the war veterans memorial in Ghent and thought how every town, no matter how small or remote, seems to have one. It left me wondering where the public memorials to the peacemakers are in our communities. Then it dawned on me as a Christian — those are supposed to be the churches.

Ask people where the peace monuments are in their community are and my guess is that you’d get a lot of head scratching. So disconnected from the Gospel mandate of peace and justice is mainstream Christianity that people don’t automatically connect the two.

It is little wonder then that the major national peace conference in Albany next weekend, July 23-25, with 400-plus people expected, has only one workshop on spirituality. It will be led by the internationally known peace activist Kathy Kelly, a founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. (Well, if you’re going to have just one workshop on spirituality’s connection to peace at a conference devoted to peace, it is wise to pick a superstar.)

With exception of Kelly’s group and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, none of the local organizations or local affiliates of national faith-based peace groups are listed as co-sponsors. Not even the Quakers. My guess is that the organizers didn’t think to invite them.

Before those of us of faith are tempted to pull the specks out of the conference organizers eyes, we need to pull the logs out of our own. As faith communities we do a poor job of living out, let alone preaching, the Gospel’s call to peace making and justice, so bought off, mesmerized and bamboozled are we by the military-industrial complex. Asleep at the wheel? Half the time we’re not even in the car.

This national peace conference, in our own backyard no less, is our opportunity for repentance, restitution, reconciliation and redemption simply by showing up. The term redemption originated from redeeming someone from slavery. It is the first step in healing and change to able to name what we’re slaves to, both as individuals and as a culture. This conference bids us to claim our legacy as peacemakers.

The conference will bring together peace and social justice activists from across the country to develop and vote on a national action plan. People will have the opportunity to voice their opinion on where the anti-war movement is today and where it should go. Just about all of the workshops have a basis in Scripture. Strategies to end wars and occupations (“Blessed are the peacemakers.” Matthew 5:9, and “But I say to you, love your enemies.” Matthew 5:44) will be the major focus of discussion as will treatment of political prisoners (“I was in prison and you came to me.” Matthew 25: 36).

There is an impressive slate of speakers, three of whom are not to be missed: Retired Col. Anne Wright who resigned in protest of the Bush administration policies; Michael McPhearson of Veterans for Peace and United for Peace and Justice; and David Swanson of War is a Crime. Listen to anyone of these three and I promise you’ll come away with inspiration and hope.

You can sign up for one day of the conference or the entire event The secular and faith-based peace movements need each other in order to succeed. No major social reform in the last century has been successful without the participation of the faith community. The faith community needs to be present next weekend in Albany. Come prepared to speak up and sign up. This is our community peace monument.

Linda LeTendre is an active Christian witness for peace. Her Waging Peace blog is at https://www.dailygazette.com/weblogs/letendre [1].

Bring the Troops Home Now

What: United Antiwar Conference

When: Friday evening through Sunday, July 23-25

Where: Crowne Plaza, Albany

Contact: Call UNAC at 227-6947 or go to http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org [2]

Cost: $80, $40 for students and low-income people. $25 for single-day registration; $10 for the Friday night public meeting.

Published on Monday, June 21, 2010 by The Detroit Free Press

US Social Forum: Activist Stands Ready to Be Part of Big Movement
As many as 20,000 people are coming to Detroit for a massive discussion of social change.
by Rochelle Riley

DETROIT – As many as 20,000 people are coming to Detroit for a massive discussion of social change.
First of all, “Yay!” that as many as 20,000 people are coming to Detroit.

Second of all, do not dismiss the grassroots activists, idealists, revolutionaries and community organizers (even Tea Party members inquired about space) who will be in the city for the US Social Forum from Tuesday through Friday. Organizers say it will be the largest gathering of its kind to explore, among many things, improving public education and strengthening the working class.

The forum grew out of the 10-year-old World Social Forum, which was a cry against “the world’s elite – a small amount of people, entrepreneurs and government officials – making decisions for the majority of people,” said Adele Nieves, a 36-year-old Detroiter who is the forum’s media spokeswoman.

“If you’re going to make decisions for every majority, then make sure you then do that with poor people’s initiatives in mind,” she said.

Even if you’re not participating, the forum will be hard to miss. It’s expected to take over Detroit’s west riverfront and will have meetings, workshops and discussions at sites from Cobo Hall to Hart Plaza, from Wayne State University to a USSF Village along the water behind Joe Louis Arena.

An Activist’s homecoming
The position of “community organizer” has earned great stature since the election of President Barack Obama.

But back in the day, for Jerome Scott, it meant underpaid activist trying to teach people economic and street smarts.

Scott will be among the throngs gathering in Detroit this week for the US Social Forum and for him, it’s also a homecoming.

He grew up the son of a tailor and a waitress in Detroit’s old Black Bottom neighborhood, worked in Chrysler plants for 10 years and helped found the League of Revolutionary Black Workers before moving to Atlanta, where he became a full-time community organizer.

He founded Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, which helped host the last US Social Forum that brought thousands of people to Atlanta. Scott and thousands of activists like him want to get America to focus on solving the problems of the poor, the working poor and the soon-to-be poor.

“You cannot really get significant social change without a large social movement in this country,” Scott said.

No different in fervor and size than the rallies that sparked civil rights and environmental improvements, the forum is to give grassroots activists a national demonstration of economic concern.

Yes, participants know that some will roll their eyes and others might question everything from their motives to their collective ability to see past the 1960s.

But Scott, who attended the old Wilbur Wright High School, rightly sees thousands of high school students graduating to lives of poverty and says corporate America cannot be trusted to solve problems that aren’t going away.

“I’ve been involved in social-change work all my life,” he said, “and I see the forum as one of those opportunities to talk to literally hundreds or thousands of people that are talking about social change and social justice.”

The ideal setting
And what does social justice — the kind forum attendees hope for — look like?

“It would look like full employment,” Scott said, “people not having to suffer from under- or unemployment, a government that actually serves the needs of the people, that actually looks at how to resolve problems rather than incarcerate such a high percentage of the population.

“We’re talking about resolving real everyday problems. … How do we deal with this whole situation with Detroit?”

There’s a question.

Scott isn’t coming to Detroit because it is Detroit. But he is glad that this year’s forum is being held in a place that speaks to every problem government faces: poor education, high unemployment, the loss of major industry, a place where four out of five eligible voters don’t vote.

“I grew up in a Detroit that was a manufacturing city that people with a high school education could get a job you could raise a family on. Those jobs don’t exist anymore anywhere. How do we deal with that changing situation when we still have this growing population?”

Monumental change
Scott says the forum may be the beginning of a movement that can literally shift government. He said, for instance, that he concentrated on the other side of Obama’s presidential campaign, the one that seems to be forgotten now, the side that said: “I can’t do it without y’all — which meant to me that if we don’t put the kind of people in the street that can pressure him to do what has to be done, there’s no way for him to do it.”

In a country where a community organizer turned junior senator can become president, is it possible for monumental change to begin with revolutionaries gathered in the poorest big city in America? Don’t dismiss the revolutionaries. They arrive Tuesday.

THE COURAGE TO LEAVE

By BOB HERBERT

There is no good news coming out of the depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. There once was merit to our incursion there, but that was long ago. Now we’re just going through the tragic motions, flailing at this and that, with no real strategy or decent end in sight.

The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military.

Seven American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Monday but hardly anyone noticed. Far more concern is being expressed for the wildlife threatened by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico than for the G.I.’s being blown up in the wilds of Afghanistan.

Early this year, we were told that at long last the tide had turned in Afghanistan, that the biggest offensive of the war by American, British and Afghan troops was under way in Marja, a town in Helmand Province in the southern part of the country. The goal, as outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our senior military commander in Afghanistan, was to rout the Taliban and install a splendid new government that would be responsive to the people and beloved by them.

That triumph would soon be followed by another military initiative in the much larger expanse of neighboring Kandahar Province. The Times’s Rod Nordland explained what was supposed to happen in a front-page article this week:

“The goal that American planners originally outlined — often in briefings in which reporters agreed not to quote officials by name — emphasized the importance of a military offensive devised to bring all of the populous and Taliban-dominated south under effective control by the end of this summer. That would leave another year to consolidate gains before President Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing combat troops.”

Forget about it. Commanders can’t even point to a clear-cut success in Marja. As for Kandahar, no one will even use the word “offensive” to describe the military operations there. The talk now is of moving ahead with civilian reconstruction projects, a “civilian surge,” as Mr. Nordland noted.

What’s happening in Afghanistan is not only tragic, it’s embarrassing. The American troops will fight, but the Afghan troops who are supposed to be their allies are a lost cause. The government of President Hamid Karzai is breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent — and widely unpopular to boot. And now, as The Times’s Dexter Filkins is reporting, the erratic Mr. Karzai seems to be giving up hope that the U.S. can prevail in the war and is making nice with the Taliban.

There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.

Americans have zoned out on this war. They don’t even want to think about it. They don’t want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.

Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.

Our government leaders keep mouthing platitudes about objectives that are not achievable, which is a form of deception that should be unacceptable in a free society.

In announcing, during a speech at West Point in December, that 30,000 additional troops would be sent to Afghanistan, President Obama said: “As your commander in chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined and worthy of your service.”

That clearly defined mission never materialized.

Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

From: The Alliance for Peace and Justice
Date: May 31, 2010
For more information, contact: Marty Nathan 413-531-9915

“Spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds $1 trillion”

Northampton, MA. This weekend, according to Northampton’s National Priorities Project, the total U.S. spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will exceed $1 trillion, the most expensive military effort in United States history.

This month, the thousandth US soldier was killed in Afghanistan. The number of US soldiers killed in the war in Iraq approaches 4,400 according to the Washington Post.  http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/ . There is no official count of Iraqis or Afghanis killed in the two wars, but estimates are more than 100,000 Iraqis and 20,000 Afghanis.

As US forces prepare for a major battle in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the Alliance for Peace and Justice is urging close scrutiny of the total cost of the war in terms of the dead, the wounded, and the federal tax dollars spent for the military effort.  In the midst of devastating cutbacks for towns and states across the country, those dollars could have been spent on needed educational, medical, housing, transportation, cultural and environmental  expenditures.

In Northampton alone, tax-payers have handed over $112 million to fund these wars in the last nine years. At present the city’s residents are paying $40,000 a day in war dollars.

Troops are being withdrawn in Iraq. But with little to show in Afghanistan for this devastating loss of life and resources – a resurgent Taliban, a corrupt Afghani government, and growing resentment on the part of Afghanis towards the American occupying force – we have asked our City Council to pass a resolution to speak forcefully to our Congressional representatives to bring the troops and the war dollars home. On Wednesday, June 23 at 7 pm the City will sponsor a public forum to discuss the “War Dollars” Resolution.

************************************************************************
ON THURSDAY, JUNE 3, AT 1 PM, MICHAEL KLARE, AUTHOR OF BLOOD AND OIL AND PROFESSOR OF HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE’S PEACE AND WORLD SECURITY STUDIES AND NATIONAL PRIORITIES PROJECT FOUNDER GREG SPEETER WILL JOIN THE ALLIANCE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE FOR A PRESS CONFERENCE AT CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS TO MARK THE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR EXPENDITURE AND ITS ACCOMPANYING LOSS OF LIFE IN THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ.

DISPOSABLE SOLDIERS

Joshua Kors | April 8, 2010

The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther’s life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant’s head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.

“I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at,” he says. “I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me.” Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors–including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge–was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.

Then came the headaches. “They’d start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank,” he says. “The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye.”

Doctors at Camp Taji’s aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn’t, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.

“To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face,” says Luther. “Then when they said ‘personality disorder,’ I was really confused. I didn’t understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain.”

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors’ fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier’s final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.

In July 2007 the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs called a hearing to investigate PD discharges. Barack Obama, then a senator, put forward a bill to halt all PD discharges. And before leaving office, President Bush signed a law requiring the defense secretary to conduct his own investigation of the PD discharge system. But Obama’s bill did not pass, and the Defense Department concluded that no soldiers had been wrongly discharged. The PD dismissals have continued. Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This should have been resolved during the Bush administration. And it should have been stopped now by the Obama administration,” says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. “The fact that it hasn’t is a national disgrace.”

On Capitol Hill, the fight is not over. In October four senators wrote a letter to President Obama to underline their continuing concern over PD discharges. The president, almost three years after presenting his personality disorder bill, says he remains concerned as well.

Veterans’ leaders say they’re particularly disturbed by Luther’s case because it highlights the severe consequences a soldier can face if he questions his diagnosis and opposes his PD discharge.

Luther insisted to doctors at Camp Taji that he did not have personality disorder, that the idea of developing a childhood mental illness at the age of 36, after passing eight psychological screenings, was ridiculous. The sergeant used a vivid expression to convey how much pain he was in. “I told them that some days, the pain was so bad, I felt like dying.” Doctors declared him a suicide risk. They collected his shoelaces, his belt and his rifle and ordered him confined to an isolation chamber.

Extensive medical records written by Luther’s doctors document his confinement in the aid station for more than a month. The sergeant was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Most nights, he says, guards enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on and blasting heavy metal music. When Luther rebelled, he was pinned down and injected with sleeping medication.

Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.

‘Every Night It Was Megadeth’

Luther entered the Army in 1988, following in the footsteps of his grandfathers, both decorated World War II veterans. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, he and his unit were deployed to New Orleans, where he helped evacuate residents and dispose of bodies left in the street. In 2006 he was deployed from Fort Hood in Texas to Camp Taji, where he performed reconnaissance with the First Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Maj. Christopher Wehri. “Luther was older and more mature than most of the soldiers. He was forthcoming, very polite,” says Wehri. “He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.”

Doctors at the aid station didn’t see him that way. Following the May 2007 mortar attack, Luther entered the base’s clinic and described his concussion symptoms to Capt. Aaron Dewees. Dewees, a pediatrician charged with caring for soldiers in the 1-7 Cavalry, grew suspicious of Luther’s self-report. “It is my professional opinion,” Dewees wrote in his medical records, “that Sgt. Charles F. Luther Jr. has been misrepresenting himself and his self-described medical conditions for secondary gain.” The doctor suggested that Luther was faking his ailments to avoid reconnaissance duty. He called the sergeant “narcissistic” and said Luther’s descriptions of his injuries were a mixture of “exaggeration and flat-out fabrication.”

Luther’s medical records document severe nosebleeds and “sharp and burning” pain. Still, the sergeant says he could sense that his doctors didn’t believe him. It was at that point–frustrated, plagued by blinding migraines–that he spoke of pain so severe he wished he were dead. “I made clear that I was not going to kill myself, that it was just a colorful expression to explain how much pain I was in.” Dewees agreed. In their records, Luther’s doctors note a “suicide gesture” and “‘off-handed’ comments” that the sergeant was going to kill himself, but Dewees said those gestures were “unlikely to have been a serious attempt” at self-harm. Nonetheless, Dewees wrote, such statements “must be taken seriously and treated as such,” that Luther “remains a threat to himself and others given his need for attention, narcissistic tendencies and impulsive behavior.”

Luther was taken to an isolation chamber and told this was his new sleeping quarters. The room, which Luther captured on his digital camera, served as a walk-in closet. It was slightly larger than an Army cot and was crammed with cardboard boxes, a desk and a bedpan. Through a small, cracked window, he could look out onto the base. Through the open doorway, the sergeant was monitored by armed guards.

Both Dewees and Lt. Col. Larry Applewhite, an aid station social worker, declared Luther mentally ill, suffering from a personality disorder. The next step was to remove him from the military as fast as possible. “It is strongly recommended that Sgt. Luther be administratively separated via Chapter 5-13,” wrote Applewhite, citing the official discharge code for personality disorder. In a separate statement, Dewees endorsed the 5-13 discharge and urged that it be handled rapidly. “I feel the safest course of action,” he wrote, “is to expedite his departure from theater.”

That didn’t happen. For more than a month Luther remained in his six-by-eight-foot isolation chamber, weeks he describes as “the hardest of my life.” He says the guards would ridicule him and most nights enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on all night and using a nearby Xbox and TV speakers to blast heavy metal into his room. “Every night it was Megadeth, Saliva, Disturbed.” The sergeant pulled a blanket over his head to block out the noise and the light, but it was no use.

“They told me I wasn’t a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries. Now suddenly I’m not a soldier. I’m a prisoner, by my own people,” says Luther, his voice tightening. “I felt like a caged animal in that room. That’s when I started to lose it.”

Isolated, exhausted, the sergeant who had been confined for being mentally ill says he began feeling exactly that. Finally Luther snapped. He stepped out of his room and was walking toward a senior official’s office when an altercation broke out. In the ensuing scuffle, Luther bit one of his guards, then spit in the face of the aid station chaplain. The sergeant was pinned to the floor and injected with five milligrams of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication. Sedated, Luther was returned to isolation.

Staff Sgt. James Byington, who was serving at Camp Taji with the 1-7 Cavalry, walked the half-mile to the aid station to visit his fellow soldier. Byington says that off the battlefield, Sergeant Luther was “animated and peppy,” the comedian of the chow hall. During combat, he says, Luther was focused and prepared, a key component in a farmland raid just outside Taji that discovered a cache of weapons and money. The man he found in the isolation chamber was neither the soldier nor the comedian, he says, but something altogether odd and decrepit. “He wasn’t energetic like he used to be. He wasn’t cutting jokes. Chuck’s one of those guys that talks with his hands. You go into a room with twenty guys, and you’re going to hear Chuck Luther,” says Byington. “Now he seemed half-asleep. He looked worn out.”

A few hours after Byington’s visit, Luther was called to his commander’s office. Major Wehri was frank. He held the personality disorder discharge papers in his hand. “And he said, ‘Sign this paperwork, and we’ll get you out.’ I said, ‘I don’t have a personality disorder.’ But it was like that didn’t matter,” says Luther. “He said, ‘If you don’t sign this, you’re going to be here a lot longer.’”

The sergeant signed. “They had me broke down,” he says. “At that point, I just wanted to get home.” Luther’s voice grows quiet as he recounts that final meeting. “I still remember Wehri’s face,” he says. “He was smiling.”

Wehri confirms his statements to Luther. He says he pressed the sergeant to sign because he felt it was in Luther’s best interest and in the best interest of the Army. The sergeant, he says, “had gotten so belligerent. If we had returned him to his unit, he would have been a danger to himself and to others. His behavior was not suitable to military service. And he wanted to get home. So I told him, ‘If your goal is to get home, and we’ve diagnosed you with personality disorder, your fastest way is to sign the papers. If you don’t sign, you’re just subjecting yourself to further anguish and discomfort.’”

Wehri insists that his comments to Luther were not pivotal to the sergeant’s discharge. Even without a soldier’s signature, a PD dismissal can proceed. But the papers would then move to an Army lawyer, and the process would be delayed. “You can’t force anyone to sign,” he says. “But if you’re going to be stubborn and not sign, try to play hardball, you run the risk of a dishonorable discharge. With Luther’s biting and spitting, I could have court-martialed him out right there for failure to perform in a military manner.”

The major says Luther’s real story is that of a good soldier who came home for leave, saw his wife’s new haircut and slimmed figure and was driven mad by fears of her infidelity. “When he came back to Iraq, something had changed. He had a negative attitude. He wouldn’t respond to direct orders. His head wasn’t in the game.” Wehri says it became clear to him that Luther was intent on returning home right away, a realization that left him disappointed but not shocked. “Soldiers are conniving,” he says. “They are manipulative. If they get in their minds they want to do something for personal gain, including going home, they’ll go to any lengths to get it.”

Wehri rejects the idea that the mortar attack and subsequent concussion could have triggered Luther’s woes. “That mortar attack was nothing,” he says. “Insignificant. Maybe he fell down. Sure. I’ve fallen down lots of times.” The major wonders aloud whether Luther is using that injury to justify his instability. He says if he thought the attack was significant, he would have investigated it fully and gotten the ball rolling for a Purple Heart.

The major confirms that Luther was confined to the aid station for several weeks and that his room was minuscule. But he says those circumstances were unavoidable. “Discharging a soldier with personality disorder is a very long and drawn-out process,” he says. “And Luther was a danger to himself and others. He needed to be watched. The aid station, that’s where they had 24-7 supervision.”

Wehri says he marvels at the idea that Luther could be a poster child for false personality disorder discharges. He has seen seven personality disorder cases in his career, he says. “And Chuck Luther was by far the clearest one.” The major says that when Luther’s troubles began, the sergeant’s behavior confounded him. Then, says Wehri, he heard from a commander who said Luther’s family had spoken with him and revealed that Luther had suffered from psychiatric problems before entering the military and had been treated with medication. “Then suddenly it made sense to me,” says Wehri. “This was not new. His symptoms were just popping up now, after he’d kept a lid on them for many years. It all clicked into place.”

But Luther’s wife and his mother say that story is flatly false. Both say they never had such a conversation with an Army commander and are emphatic that the sergeant never faced any psychiatric problems before entering the military. “Hearing that makes me really angry,” says Luther’s mother, Barbara Guignard. “Chuck was an all-American boy. He never took any medication, and he never had a problem.”

How Dewees and Applewhite came to the conclusion that Luther was suffering from a pre-existing mental illness remains unclear. They declined to elaborate on their notes or discuss the diagnosis of personality disorder in general. What is clear is that neither Dewees nor Applewhite spoke with Luther’s family before determining that his problems existed before his military service. The sergeant’s wife and his mother say that had they been asked, both could have provided key information demonstrating Luther’s stability and health before the mortar attack.

Spc. Angel Sandoval says he could have helped as well. Sandoval, who was stationed at Camp Taji and served under Luther in the 1-7 Cavalry, laughs at the idea that the sergeant was mentally ill. “Chuck was a lot more than ‘not mentally ill,’” he says. “He saved my life.” Sandoval describes heading into combat under Luther’s command. The specialist was ready to dump his side-SAPIs, large ceramic plates that strap to the side of a bulletproof vest, protecting the kidneys from machine-gun fire. “They’re bulky and kinda heavy, but he said, ‘No way, you have to wear them,’” says Sandoval. “Two days later I got shot right there, under my arm. It could have killed me.”

Luther, he says, was “one of the greatest leaders I had. He never steered me wrong. If they thought he was ill and needed medical help, they should have given it to him instead of kicking him out of the Army.”

But it was Wehri and Applewhite’s view that mattered. Soon after signing the personality disorder papers, Luther was placed in a DC-10 and whisked back to Fort Hood. There he would learn about Chapter 5-13′s fine print: he was ineligible for disability benefits, since his condition was pre-existing. He would not be receiving the lifetime of medical care given to severely wounded soldiers. And because he did not complete his contract, he would have to return a slice of his signing bonus.

At the base, a Fort Hood discharge specialist laid out the details. “He said I now owed the Army $1,500. And if I did not pay, they’d garnish my wages and assess interest on my debt,” Luther says.

Luther was then released into a pelting Texas rain. He called his wife, Nicki, to pick him up. “When I got to Fort Hood he was in the parking lot, alone, wet, sitting on his duffel bag,” Nicki recalls. “He had lost a lot of weight. He looked like…a little boy. I remember thinking, My God, what have they done to my husband?”

The President ‘Continues to Be Concerned’

Luther’s case is not an isolated incident. In the past three years, The Nation has uncovered more than two dozen cases like his from bases across the country. All the soldiers were examined, deemed physically and psychologically fit, then welcomed into the military. All performed honorably before being wounded during service. None had a documented history of psychological problems. Yet after seeking treatment for their wounds, each soldier was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then discharged and denied benefits.

That group includes Sgt. Jose Rivera, whose hands and legs were punctured by grenade shrapnel during his second tour in Iraq. Army doctors said his wounds were caused by personality disorder. Sailor Samantha Stitz fractured her pelvis and two bones in her ankle. Navy doctors cited personality disorder as the cause. Spc. Bonnie Moore developed an inflamed uterus during her service. Army doctors said her profuse vaginal bleeding was caused by personality disorder. Civilian doctors disagreed: they performed emergency surgery to remove her uterus and appendix. After being discharged and denied benefits, Moore and her teenage daughter became homeless.

“The military is exacerbating an already bad situation,” says Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense. “This is more than neglect. It’s malice.” Sullivan’s organization has spent the past few years pressing officials in Washington to take action on the personality disorder issue. In July 2007 he testified before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Sullivan told the committee that PD discharges needed to be halted immediately.

That month Obama put forward his bill to do just that. The bill was matched in the House by legislation from Representative Phil Hare, and it had passionate support on both sides of the aisle, from prominent Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer to high-ranking Republicans like Senator Kit Bond. Sullivan and other veterans’ leaders say they were hopeful that Obama would use the spotlight of the presidential campaign to generate further momentum for his bill.

That didn’t happen. In the twenty-one months of his presidential run, the Illinois senator never spoke publicly about PD discharges or his bill to halt them. Eventually, without widespread public knowledge or support, and facing opposition from senators who had never heard of personality disorder and worried the bill would open a floodgate of expensive benefits, Obama and Bond, the bill’s co-author, were forced to reshape it into an amendment and water down its contents. Their amendment did not halt PD discharges. Instead, it required the Pentagon to investigate PD dismissals and report back to Congress. The amendment, part of the Defense Authorization Act, was signed by President Bush in January 2008.

Five months later the report landed on Obama’s and Bond’s desks. The Pentagon’s conclusion: no soldiers had been improperly diagnosed, and none had been wrongly discharged. The report praises the military’s doctors as “competent professionals” and endorses continued use of pre-existing personality disorder to discharge soldiers whose “ability to function effectively” is impaired. The report’s author, former Under Secretary of Defense David Chu, further notes that though the Navy’s official label for the discharge is “Separation by Reason of Convenience of the Government,” soldiers “are not wantonly discharged at the convenience of the Military.”

It is unclear how Chu came to these conclusions. The report does not cite any interviews with soldiers discharged with personality disorder, or their families, doctors or commanders. That fact infuriated many military families, as it triggered memories of a 2007 study by former Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock. Pollock had been asked to examine a stack of PD cases. Five months later she released her report, saying her office had “thoughtfully and thoroughly” reviewed them. Like Chu, she commended the soldiers’ doctors and determined that they all had been properly diagnosed. The Nation later revealed that Pollock’s office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases she was reviewing [see Kors, "Specialist Town Takes His Case to Washington," October 15, 2007].

“He doesn’t talk to soldiers, and he doesn’t talk to their families?” says Nicki Luther, the sergeant’s wife, her eyes welling with tears. “I heard the same thing from that surgeon general, and I thought, You haven’t been in my house. You don’t know what I’ve dealt with. How dare you sit there and say you’ve investigated thoroughly and found nothing. That’s a crock.”

The Chu report does recommend several changes to the PD discharge system, alterations, it says, that will protect soldiers from being wrongly discharged. Those protections include requiring that a doctor diagnose the soldier’s personality disorder and a lawyer counsel him on the ramifications of the discharge. The report also recommends that the surgeon general review each soldier’s case and endorse the PD discharge before releasing the soldier from the military.

Chu, a Bush appointee, left office in 2008 with the president. But his findings remain as the Defense Department’s position on PD discharges. In early April the Pentagon released a statement saying that Clifford Stanley, the current under secretary, is implementing Chu’s recommendations and fully embraces his findings.

That fact left many on Capitol Hill enraged. “This study, with the new requirement to have the upper-ups approve discharges–all it basically did was set up one more hurdle. As far as we can tell, the impact has been somewhere between zero and less,” says Senator Bond. Bond says the Pentagon still hasn’t explained the fundamental contradiction of a PD discharge: recruits who have a severe pre-existing mental illness could not pass the rigorous screening process and would not be accepted into the military in the first place. Yet he says his office is looking at several cases, like Luther’s, in which the soldiers have been deemed physically and psychologically fit in several screenings before their personality disorder is diagnosed. “These men and women who have put their lives on the line, we owe them,” says Bond. “We have a responsibility. Discharging them with personality disorder–it’s just an easy way to duck that responsibility.”

The Republican from Missouri says he’s hopeful that Obama, his partner on the PD bill, will take action from the White House. “He has a unique chance now to change the whole operation, to alter the system from the inside.” In October Bond gathered a small coalition of senators and wrote a letter to the president, asking him to confront the issue once again. “In 2007 we were partners in the fight against the military’s misuse of personality disorder discharges,” wrote the senators. “Today, we urge you to renew your commitment to address this critical issue.”

The next week Senator Boxer, a co-sponsor of the original bill, submitted a statement of her own. “It is simply appalling that any combat veteran with a Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder would be denied medical care for injuries sustained during combat,” Boxer wrote. Even with the reforms that followed the Chu report, “we must make sure that the new discharge process…is working.”

The White House responded quickly, assuring the senators that the president still has his eye on personality disorder. President Obama “is determined to fulfill America’s responsibility to our Armed Forces,” says White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro. “The president was concerned with personality disorder discharges as a senator, and he drafted a bill. He continues to be concerned as commander in chief.”

Disposable Warriors

Luther hopes that concern will translate into action. The sergeant stands in his backyard, 1,500 miles from Washington, five miles from Fort Hood, talking about Obama’s bill and watching his 7-year-old daughter floating high above the family’s oversize trampoline, her face wild with joy. Luther looks on with sullen eyes. “Right now I can’t worry about Washington, or even about fixing my discharge papers,” he says. “First thing, I got to fix myself.” He gestures to his daughter, a mop of blond hair leaping to and fro. “I used to be like that: a goofball, all this energy. Now… I don’t know.”

Some nights he doesn’t sleep. Others he’s back in Iraq, in the aid station, in endless isolation. The blinding headaches and piercing shoulder pain still plague him, he says, along with panic attacks and bursts of post-traumatic stress-fueled rage. Luther broke four bones in his hand punching a hole in his bedroom wall. His family’s hallway is pocked with holes from similar incidents.

“He’s not the man I married,” says Nicki Luther. “And when I’m honest with myself, I don’t think I’ll ever have that man again. He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, sweating, swearing.” Nicki says he tries to be a good dad to their kids. “He used to wrestle around with them. But his body’s like an old man’s now. And he’s so quick to anger. The kids say, ‘We want our dad back.’ I don’t know what to tell them.”

Three years after the mortar blast, Luther’s life is still on shaky ground. Some days he’s posting love notes on his wife’s Facebook page and hand-delivering her favorite salad to her office at lunchtime. Another day, in the midst of an argument, he knocked down a family photo, then ripped the furniture out of the living room and dumped it in the garage, scaring his children. Soon after the birth of their fourth child, Marlee Grace, Luther and his wife separated. They reunited a few months later, in time for their eighteenth anniversary.

Luther knew he needed help. This time he sought it outside the military. He began seeing Troy Daniels, a psychologist, once a week. One fact was clear immediately, says Daniels. “He did not have personality disorder. The symptoms we were looking at looked more like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. To take a soldier having problems with vision, hearing and so forth–and to say he has personality disorder–that’s a bogus kind of statement. I don’t even think a master’s student would make that kind of mistake.”

While Daniels dismisses the Army doctors’ diagnosis as a “gross error,” he says he was not surprised by it. “I’ve treated hundreds of soldiers over the years, and I’ve seen a dozen personality disorder diagnoses. None of them,” says the psychologist, “actually had personality disorder.”

Yet all of those soldiers, he says, faced serious repercussions because of their discharge. “Many of the soldiers can’t get hired anymore. Every time they go for a job, they’ll have this paper that says they’ve been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Employers take one look at that and think, ‘This guy’s crazy. We can’t hire him.’ For most of the soldiers,” says Daniels, “it becomes a lifetime label.”

Luther luckily has secured a job, as a truck driver for Frito-Lay. Securing benefits has proved a bit tougher. Since being released from the Army, the sergeant has been locked in battle with the VA, fighting to prove that despite his PD discharge, his wounds are war related and thus worthy of disability and medical benefits.

Those efforts stumbled at first. In May 2008 the VA declared Luther “incompetent” and demanded that a fiduciary collect any disability benefits he may receive. Eventually, following a slew of paperwork and medical exams, the sergeant re-established his full standing. This past December–after VA doctors found Luther to be suffering from migraine headaches, vision problems, dizziness, nausea, difficulty hearing, numbness, anxiety and irritability–the VA cited traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and declared Luther 80 percent disabled. “PTSD, a consequence of the TBI,” wrote one VA doctor, “is a clear diagnosis.”

The VA rating cleared the way for the sergeant to receive disability benefits and a lifetime of medical care. But it hasn’t changed the Army’s view–or altered Luther’s discharge papers, which still list the sergeant as suffering from personality disorder. The sergeant, in return, has refused to pay back the $1,500 of his signing bonus that the Army says he owes, despite threats to garnish his wages. “I told them, Let me put it this way: as long as I’m breathing of my own free will, I’m not paying you a dime.”

Luther says what really boils his blood is having to accept that his military career is over while the careers of those who devised his discharge are flourishing. After Luther’s dismissal, Wehri, a captain at the time, was promoted to major and selected to be an executive officer with NATO. Dr. Dewees returned to Kentucky, where he continues to serve with the National Guard. Social worker Applewhite is now an instructor at Fort Sam Houston, where he teaches a class on how to identify mental disorders.

With or without the Army, Luther says he will continue to serve. With his health gradually improving and the bulk of his battle over, the sergeant is taking on a new mission: fighting the military on behalf of other soldiers like himself. Luther is now the founder and executive director of Disposable Warriors, a one-man operation that assists soldiers who are fighting their discharge and veterans who are appealing their disability rating.

Luther’s organization did not receive a hero’s welcome. Soon after founding the group, he discovered a threatening note on his windshield. “Back off or you and your family will pay!!” it read, in careful, black ink cursive. Weeks later, thieves broke into the home of a veterans’ organizer who worked closely with Luther, taking nothing but the files of the soldiers they were assisting.

The sergeant, characteristically, is undaunted. “This is the right path for me,” he says, his voice resolute. “I got to be there for these other soldiers. I’m not the only one who needs help.”

A bill in the House of Representatives, H.R. 5015, would require the administration provide a timetable for ending the disastrous, costly Afghanistan war. Unfortunately, Members of Congress have told us they aren’t hearing from their constituents about Afghanistan. You can change that. Please send your congressperson a message that you want them to co-sponsor H.R. 5015. Sign the letter here – http://rethinkafghanistan.com

[Schell] talked about this doctrine of credibility where policymakers in the 1960s all agreed that this Vietnam War was a loser, that our policy was wrong, but they were all worried about saving face. So they continued the war for several years before they ended it, probably on the same terms they could have ended it in the 1960s. But it was all about saving face and all about credibility…. I don’t want to here 10 years from now, having this conversation, and having all of us say, “We could have done this ten years ago.”

So, it is time to contact a congressperson and let them know that in order for the Obama administration to receive any of its additional war funding, there has to be a timetable for withdrawal.  The war is unwinnable and the sooner we face this the fewer men and women will be lost and the more our money can be used to build schools in Afghanistan (funding one soldier for a year = 30 new schools in Afghanistan!!!) and fund social programs here and abroad.

DEMAND AN AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL STRATEGY

Published on Monday, April 26, 2010 by the Nation

by Katrina vanden Heuvel
Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern, Republican Congressman Walter Jones, and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold have introduced legislation demanding an exit strategy and timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. The bill reads, “Military operations in Afghanistan have cost American taxpayers more than $200,000,000,000 in deficit spending since 2001.” Over 1000 American soldiers have been killed and more than 5,600 wounded. In 2009 alone, 2400 Afghan civilians were killed according to the UN, and tens of thousands have lost their lives since the war began.

The Senate and House bills–S. 3197 and HR 5015 , respectively–would require President Obama to provide a plan and a timetable for withdrawal of all US forces and military contractors, and identify any contingencies that might require changes to that timetable. It would demand an exit strategy–long overdue–from a war that has already cost us too much in treasure and lives, and isn’t in the interest of US national security.

“Basically, what the bill is is a rejection of an open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan,” said Rep. McGovern, on a conference call with NGOs, activists, and media organized by Peace Action last week. “This bill is a signal to the President that we want him to come up with an exit strategy, and we want the details.”

Last year, McGovern introduced a similar amendment to an Afghanistan war-funding bill that also called for an exit strategy. It garnered more than 100 cosponsors and received 138 votes. He hopes the current legislation will be attached to an upcoming Afghanistan supplemental–within as soon as two weeks–and that it will hopefully receive even greater support. The House bill already has 36 cosponsors, including Republican Congressmen Jones, John Duncan of Tennessee, and Tim Johnson of Illinois; also Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, and Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner.

“This is an incredibly important time,” said McGovern. “The more cosponsors we can get in the next couple of weeks–the more we’re going to be able to exert some pressure when the supplemental comes up, [and] the more we’re going to send a signal to the Administration that they need to pay attention to those of us who are saying that we need to rethink Afghanistan. What we want to make clear is that the concern about our involvement in Afghanistan is increasing, that it is deep, that a lot of people and members of Congress from all the over country–have a concern about this. So, it’s important that all of us work to try to get members of Congress as cosponsors .”

While McGovern notes that Obama has said he will begin redeploying troops in July of next year–a statement which immediately received some pushback from Defense Secretary Gates–that’s insufficient.

“It’s not only important to know when the first soldier is to be redeployed or brought home,” he said, “it’s important to know when the last soldier is as well.”

McGovern–who served as a staffer to Congressman Joe Moakley for 14 years prior to his election to Congress in 1997–said that phone calls, emails, and letters are all important to members.

“I have to tell you as a former staffer and as a member of Congress– pressure works, grassroots pressure works. It really makes a difference here,” he said. “And when many people do it it’s a movement. And what we need to create here in a very short period of time is a movement to try to change course on Afghanistan.”

He suggested that people ask their representatives for a written response to “force them to think about what you discuss with them and see whether you can influence their position.”

For McGovern, the reasons we need to withdraw from Afghanistan are clear. And it begins with the mission itself.

“This mission–whatever it is–is not clear,” he said. “And I don’t think by any measure it is something that we should be investing so much in terms of human life and American taxpayer dollars.”

He noted that the war began as a response to those responsible for 9-11, but those perpetrators are no longer there. Al Qaeda, too, is establishing itself in other parts of the world like Yemen, not in Afghanistan . In fact, focusing so many resources on Afghanistan hinders our ability to fight Al Qaeda.

“Now we’re engaged in this prolonged nation-building–get rid of the Taliban mission–that is not clearly defined, and quite frankly, is not working,” he said. “If you go to war, you should have a clearly defined mission–a beginning, middle, transition period, and an end. I don’t know what that is here. I can’t tell you what success in Afghanistan means. I don’t think the Administration can either.”

McGovern says one of the biggest obstacles advocates for this bill face is the “fear” legislators have that they will be vulnerable to the charge that they are “soft” on terrorism. But he argues that this war isn’t making the country safer.

“I believe it’s having the opposite effect,” he said. “We’re draining our Treasury. We’re putting our young men and women in uniform’s lives at risk defending a corrupt leader. With each civilian casualty, more and more resentment grows towards the American forces and the Allied Forces that are there.”

The Congressman spoke of his August visit to Afghanistan and the “widespread outrage” among US government representatives on the ground who were “horrified over the way Karzai conducted the election.”

“But that outrage did not translate to our policy makers here in Washington,” he said. “Basically we’ve given Karzai a pass. Supporting corrupt, incompetent governments–that’s not the way US policy should proceed. I’ve seen this movie before–and you have too–it doesn’t have a happy ending.”

But McGovern is also quick to point out that he isn’t advocating that the US abandon Afghanistan, “nor should anybody.” He said some of most successful development in Afghanistan has occurred without a significant military footprint.

“Maybe we should learn from that,” he said. “The cost of one American soldier for one year in Afghanistan is equal to the cost of building thirty schools in Afghanistan. If you want to win the hearts and minds I think thirty schools is a pretty big deal. Helping the people of Afghanistan–in a way that makes a real difference to them–is a fraction of the cost of what we’re doing right now.”

And that cost of continuing this war isn’t lost on McGovern or other advocates of this legislation. (In fact, if this legislation shortens the war in Afghanistan by a year, that would pay the two-year cost of the Local Jobs for America Act .

“The hundreds of billions of dollars we spend over there on war…. All that–mostly borrowed money–means that we’re not investing at home. It means our roads and our bridges aren’t being fixed. It means our schools aren’t being fixed. It means we’re not investing in healthcare, and a whole range of other things that we need to do to get our economy back on track,” he said. “When we talk about national security, that definition needs to be enhanced to include jobs, and the quality of education that we offer our people, and healthcare, and infrastructure, and roads and bridges, and the purity of our environment. All those things are a part of our national security.”

McGovern also draws from history to inform his thinking–something too rare among our representatives. Referring to Time of Illusion, by The Nation’s peace and disarmament correspondent Jonathan Schell, he said: “[Schell] talked about this doctrine of credibility where policymakers in the 1960s all agreed that this Vietnam War was a loser, that our policy was wrong, but they were all worried about saving face. So they continued the war for several years before they ended it, probably on the same terms they could have ended it in the 1960s. But it was all about saving face and all about credibility…. I don’t want to here 10 years from now, having this conversation, and having all of us say ‘We could have done this ten years ago.’”

History also serves as a guide when it comes to the challenge we face in trying to get Congress and this Administration to rethink Afghanistan and change course.

“Lyndon Johnson had a great line after he left the White House,” said McGovern. “He said, ‘It’s easy to get into war. It’s hard as hell to get out of war.’ Even when you know that war is wrong, or we need to readjust our policy. This is not an easy thing for this Administration to do. The only way things are going to change is through grassroots pressure–people working their members of Congress, getting him or her on HR 5015 , and making the case that they take a leadership role in trying to change our policy.”

McGovern called the task at hand “politically delicate”, but that “at some point I think doing what’s right has to prevail.”

This is the time for all of us to do what’s right. A vote could come up in the next two weeks. Contact your Representative and Senators –whether Democrat or Republican–and tell them now is the time for them to cosponsor this bill.

Copyright © 2010 The Nation
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation .

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion/124-human-rights/1521-america-and-dictators-diem-to-karzai

And here’s the article:

By Alfred W. McCoy, Asia Times Online