Steve Russell : Unfriendly Fire at Fort Hood

Police car outside judicial hearing at Fort Hood, Texas, July 9, 2013. Photo by Tony Gutierrez / AP.

Workplace violence:
Unfriendly fire at Fort Hood, Texas

I am gobsmacked by a particular elevation of form over substance being practiced before our eyes by the Army.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / July 16, 2013

The Rag Blog's Steve Russell -- a Texas trial judge by assignment and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma -- will hold a book signing event at Austin's Black Star Co-op Brewpub, Thursday, July 18, 2013, from 4:30-7:30 p.m. He will sign his three books -- Sequoyah Rising: Problems in Post-Colonial Tribal Governance, Wicked Dew, and Ceremonies of Innocence: Essays from the Indian Wars -- and all three books will be available for purchase. The Black Star Co-op is located at 7020 Easy Wind Drive, Austin, Texas.

Meanings vary when people repeat that things can be done “the right way, the wrong way, or the Army way.” “The Army way” may represent teamwork so instinctive that orders are not necessary. For most GIs, “the Army way” is elevation of form over substance.

I am gobsmacked by a particular elevation of form over substance being practiced before our eyes by the Army. The substance began on November 5, 2009. My son was due back from his second tour in Iraq any day and the question in the family was whether he would be home for the holidays.

Ft. Hood is covered by local media in Austin, so when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opened fire, I was probably paying attention before the firing stopped. Where was Paul? Iraq? Kuwait? Or was he in SRP, though which every soldier passes being deployed or coming home?

My son was not in SRP, but of those who were, 13 died. The victims were soldiers ranging in age from 21 to 56 and in rank from PFC to Lt. Colonel, as well as one civilian, 62 year old Michael Cahill, who died trying to stop the shooter. The youngest soldier killed, PFC Francheska Velez, was pregnant, and the fetus also died. Another 31 soldiers were wounded by gunfire, along with civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was wounded while exchanging gunfire with the shooter.

The shooter was seriously wounded in the gunfight with civilian police. While waiting for him to recover so he could be put on trial for mass murder, we learned that Maj. Hasan admired the teachings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico born imam who had presided at his father’s funeral. Hasan and al-Awlaki had substantial email communication before the killings at Ft. Hood.

In March 2010, al-Awlaki released a statement complaining that the Obama administration was failing to credit him properly, saying in part:

Until this moment the administration is refusing to release the e-mails exchanged between myself and Nidal. And after the operation of our brother Umar Farouk the initial comments coming from the administration were looking the same -- another attempt at covering up the truth. But Al Qaeda cut off Obama from deceiving the world again by issuing their statement claiming responsibility for the operation.

The “brother” referred to was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab AKA “the underwear bomber” because he was inspired by al-Awlaki to attempt blowing up an airliner but succeeded only in lighting up his tidy whities.

A month later, to a chorus of criticism, Obama placed al-Awaki on the CIA “kill list.” His father filed a lawsuit to get him removed from the “kill list” on due process grounds, but the case was thrown out because the father lacked standing. al-Awaki himself would, of course, have had standing, but if he came to court, the reason he was on the list would disappear.

When al-Awaki was not directly counseling on how to kill Americans, he was overseeing the editing of Inspire, Al Qaeda’s English language organ where the Boston Marathon bombers allegedly read, “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” The criticism of Obama fired up again when a CIA drone strike nailed al-Awaki in September of 2011.

At the time of the drone strike, al-Awaki was hiding in the lawless areas of Yemen and a Yemeni court had issued a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges. Obama is supposed to have violated his rights by putting him on the “kill list,” but the way I read the law, a violent felon who poses a continuing danger and cannot be arrested can be killed.

This is the case without regard to citizenship and across national borders in the sense that a violation of state sovereignty is a beef between governments, not between the U.S. government and the individual targeted. Further, the standard for deciding the fact of the matter -- that he’s a continuing danger and can’t be taken into custody -- is not “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s “probable cause,” or what a reasonable person would believe about the facts as they sit. If the target wants more facts developed and the reasonable doubt standard met, then he can come to court, where more process is due.

Therefore, the only reason there’s any more legal or moral problem with the drone strikes than with the cops shooting a fleeing robber or rapist is the secrecy. You can’t turn yourself in if you don’t know you are wanted. But secrecy was not an issue in al-Awaki’s case. I’m sure he considered himself a soldier who died on an active battlefield, which is highly ironic given that the whole argument about the unlawfulness of drone strikes turns on claiming there was no active battlefield where he was killed and therefore he was simply assassinated.

But I digress.

After Hasan became physically able to come to court, the first military judge assigned to the case elevated form over function by engaging in a six-month battle with a dead man over shaving his full fundamentalist Muslim beard.

Nidal Hasan is a dead man rolling, since he can no longer walk as a result of his gunshot wounds. Apparently proud of his “accomplishment, “ he wished to plead guilty, but the Army won’t allow a guilty plea in a capital case and the prosecutors won’t waive the death penalty.

Those of us who oppose the death penalty can’t make an exception for Hasan like most of us did for Osama bin Laden, because Hasan would not be a hostage magnet if allowed to live in custody. But the posture of the case is what it is, and if you want to attack the death penalty, Nidal Hasan is not your poster child.

Since there is no question that Hasan did the shooting, the lawyers tasked with defending him must bring forward evidence of his mental state -- a complete defense if he’s legally insane or a mitigating circumstance if he’s sane. Understandably, Hasan does not wish to litigate his mental state, so he fired his lawyers.

Hasan informed the new and more goal-directed judge that he wishes to argue that his conduct was justified as “defense of third parties.” What third parties? Mullah Omar and the rest of the Taliban.

This will not fly because the soldiers murdered were not about to harm Mullah Omar, among many other reasons. One of the more interesting reasons is that a defender of a third party can have no more right to use deadly force than the third party would have had. Nidal Hasan is stretching for some way to put the Afghanistan war on trial, since the force he was allegedly defending against would have to be “unlawful.”

U.S. soldiers are taught that they must refuse unlawful orders, and I remember no war in my lifetime when somebody did not refuse deployment for the purpose of making a court rule on the legality. They lost, but they got to make the argument. I don’t think you can raise that argument as a justification for shooting fellow soldiers.

I understand why we generally don’t let people plead guilty in a death penalty case. We want to see the evidence. We don’t want innocent persons executed even if they volunteer to save guilty persons. In the Hasan case, that can’t happen.

Not accepting his guilty plea turns the “trial” into a slow motion guilty plea and a political circus. I’m OK with the political circus part, having been the ringmaster of several. It’s the nature of our system that trials are political, even though many of us try to pretend otherwise. But I am offended by a slow motion guilty plea.

Meanwhile, the Army has categorized the shootings as “workplace violence” rather than terrorism. There are substantial benefits for the families of soldiers killed or wounded in combat. These benefits are not available to the soldiers who signed up to fight the “war on terror” and then got shot by a turncoat whose stated purpose was to protect the enemy from his fellow soldiers on the instructions of a radical imam who repeatedly called killing Americans a religious duty.

Had my son been in the SRP that day, I would have to sue the Army for the good of my daughter in law and my grandchildren. Because he wasn’t, I’m just another opinion from the cheap seats when I say that respect for the law is the right way, but denying benefits to the victims’ families is the wrong way, and this entire process is making a mockery of the Army way.

[Steve Russell lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the sixties and seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve, who belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is also a columnist for Indian Country Today. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu. Read more articles by Steve Russell on The Rag Blog.]

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Alice Embree / Terry DuBose : Defend the Soldiers' Right to Heal

Under the Hood contingent at Veterans Day Parade, Killeen, Texas, Saturday, November 10, 2012. Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.
Defend the right to heal:
Veterans’ Day parade in Killeen

As the deployments wind down from this decade of combat, service members are finding that their access to medical care is restricted, denied, delayed, and stigmatized.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / November 15, 2012

See story by Terry J. DuBose and photos by Alice Embree and Susan Van Haitsma, Below.

Malachi Muncy’s vision was obscured, but he could hear a boy’s voice saying: “It’s a soldier in a pill bottle. Break out! Break out!”
The boy, a spectator along the Veterans Day parade route in Killeen, Texas, got it. So did most of those who saw Under the Hood’s message on Saturday, November 10.

Under the Hood (UtH) is a GI coffeehouse that opened in 2009 in Killeen, a mile from Fort Hood, the largest U.S. military post in the world. The UtH contingent marched for the second time in Killeen’s Veterans’ Day event. Three veterans led the march with this banner: “Honor All Who Served: Defend Service Members’ and Veterans’ Right to Heal.”

Behind the banner, on the bed of a pickup truck, was Malachi Muncy, a veteran of two Iraq deployments, a writer and an artist. Malachi had produced the pill bottle image as a print on paper made of combat uniforms. For the parade he took his art large, constructing a six-foot tall orange pill bottle with a white cap. Malachi, in uniform, stood inside the bottle, occasionally reaching his hands above him into the air. The prescription read: “RX: We Deserve Better.”

Although Malachi’s vision was somewhat limited by the orange acetate he was behind, he could hear the crowd’s response. Those seated along the parade route would begin asking each other what was on the truck, then talk amongst themselves as they realized it was a soldier in a pill bottle. There was occasional laughter, even applause. Some spectators made comments about the medicines they were on.

Along the route, UtH supporters handed out leaflets supporting soldiers’ right to heal -- for real treatment beyond pills for the hidden injuries that are now so prevalent -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Military Sexual Trauma, and Traumatic Brain Injury.

Supporters also carried signs with the grim markers of this decade of war. “A veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. Stop the cycle!” “There were 154 service member suicides in the first 155 days of this year. 154 suicides vs. 134 combat deaths.”

In an October 23 article, the Austin American-Statesman dug deep into the Texas face of these statistics: “Special Report: Uncounted Casualties,” reporting on the recent Texas veterans who have died of overdoses, suicide, and vehicle crashes.

As the deployments wind down from this decade of combat, service members are finding that their access to medical care is restricted, denied, delayed, and stigmatized. An appeal to Congress for redress for service members’ and Veterans’ right to heal can be found at www.RighttoHeal.org. You are urged to sign this petition and to continue to support Under the Hood -- a space for free speech, peer support, and decompression.

[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist, organizer, and member of the Texas State Employees Union. A former staff member of underground papers The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement, she is now active with CodePink Austin and Under the Hood Café. Embree is a contributing editor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project. Read more articles by Alice Embree on The Rag Blog.]

"Trapped." Print by Malachi Muncy on paper made from old combat uniform.

Malachi Muncy: A veteran artist

Malachi Muncy, a veteran of two deployments to Iraq, uses art and theater to express his frustration, situation, and anger. Two of his prints, “Trapped” and “Escape,” carry strong messages in this era of record suicide rates among troops and veterans.

Malachi prints on paper made from his combat uniforms. As guerrilla theater for the Veterans’ Day Parade in Killeen, Malachi designed and built a giant pill bottle. Standing in uniform in the bottle on the back of a pickup truck his art reached hundreds along the parade route.

Malachi served in the Texas Army National Guard as a motor vehicle operator from 2003 to 2009, with service in Iraq from 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. He has a BA in journalism form Texas State University (TSU) and is currently pursuing a BA in English.

Malachi’s writing has appeared in the Copperas Cove Leader Press, SKUNK Magazine, and at RawStory.com. His poetry and prose have been included in the Warrior Writers anthologies. Malachi’s print and papermaking artwork has been exhibited at The National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago.

Malachi has volunteered as arts coordinator at Under the Hood Café, a GI Outreach Center in Killeen. He has conducted workshops there on making “combat paper” from uniforms -- transforming war experiences into art. In December he will become the new manager of Under the Hood.

-- Terry J. DuBose / The Rag Blog

[Terry J. DuBose, who was an organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Texas, is an Associate Professor Emeritus of Diagnostic Medical Sonography at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.]

"Escape." Print by Malachi Muncy.

Photo Gallery: Under the Hood at Veterans Day Parade

Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.

Photo by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog.
Find more photos of Under the Hood and the Veterans Day parade by Alice Embree and Susan Van Haitsma.

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Ray Reece : The Hard Landing of a Radical in Austin, 1967

Image from McMaster University Digital Collection.
Desecration of the Violet Crown:
The hard landing of a radical in Austin, 1967

By Ray Reece / The Rag Blog / January 4, 2011

A few months ago, editor Thorne Dreyer invited us Rag Blogsters to submit sketches of our adventures in the political movements of the 60's and 70's. I offer herewith an excerpt from “Almost No Apologies: The Desecration of the Violet Crown,” an essay of mine that was published in No Apologies: Texas Radicals Celebrate the ‘60s, a book released by Eakin Press in 1991 as a tribute to the late Michael Eakin, co-founder of the Austin Sun in 1974 and former editor of the UT/Austin Daily Texan. My essay concerns not only my political radicalization in the 1960’s but also my take on the destruction of Austin in the 1980’s by a corporate “development” boom that continues to ravage the city and its environs today.

Through the fall and winter of 1966, I continued to write my stories and explore the city that had stolen my heart. I was still oblivious, by and large, to the growing clamor of opposition to the war in Vietnam.

By the early summer of 1967 -- the Summer of Love and "Sergeant Pepper" -- I had enrolled for the fall semester in the UT English Department, planning to work on a Ph.D. I had also made friends with two Austin characters, in particular, who were going to have an enormous influence on my evolution as a political being.

One was Mark Parsons, a gentle giant from far west Texas who introduced me to Bob Dylan's music, the magic of cannabis and a passionate reverence for living things -- especially nonhuman living things -- that I had never encountered before. The second character was Ran Moran, a native Texan who had lived for years in New York City and there had become a fervently committed Marxist revolutionary, a fellow traveler with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.

It was Ran's influence that moved me first. He was in Austin for just a few months to abet the efforts of the SWP in an organizing drive against the Vietnam War, and he caught me, frankly, in his eloquent web. I found myself sitting beneath the live oaks at Scholz’s beer garden, listening to Ran discuss the prospects for world revolution against the tyranny of the capitalist state.

He cited the teachings not only of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky, but of Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh, Benito Juarez, Ché Guevara, and Malcolm X. He drew a graphic parallel between the exploitation of U.S. workers by the ruling class -- especially workers who were black and Hispanic -- and the exploitation of Third World nations like Mexico, Bolivia, and Vietnam.

He portrayed American fighting men as corporate pawns in a war for new markets in Southeast Asia. Since half of those soldiers were black and Hispanic, the capitalist rulers in effect were using the domestic victims of a racist America to slaughter and subjugate millions of foreign nonwhite victims. Meanwhile, the rulers themselves and their privileged sons relaxed in the comfort of corporate boardrooms and country estates.

Ran's analysis touched me deeply. It gave me a coherent, systematic framework in which to place my own indignation at racial oppression in the United States. It added the element of class oppression, thus to make me a budding Marxist. And finally, inexorably, his arguments drove my anger to the point where I was ready to join the revolution. Or thought I was.

My friend Moran awoke me one morning with a predawn phone call, breathlessly urgent, to insist that I join a hurried demonstration at Central Texas College in Killeen. This was a campus that had just been established across the highway from Fort Hood, a major Army training base.

LBJ shows his scar. Political cartoon by David Levine / New York Review of Books.
Ran and his comrades had somehow discovered that Lyndon Johnson, the president, was due to address the student body at 10 a.m. He informed me that I had to come, indeed in my car, since he and the others needed a ride. And quick, he said -- the campus was 70 miles north. "Shit," I groused to my ladyfriend. This would mean losing a morning of pay at the book wholesaler where I worked part-time. It could mean something worse, I feared, but Genie suggested I do it anyway. So I did. And I was correct in my intuition of pending disaster.

Six of us raced in my old blue Falcon up 1-35 to Killeen. We reached the campus at about 9:30 and there observed, from the safety of the car, a massive contingent of uniformed soldiers milling around in anticipation of the president's speech. Obviously, the brass at Fort Hood had mobilized the troops and sent them over to welcome Mr. Johnson to Central Texas.

I had not expected this. Neither had Ran and the other cadres, all of whom, save the accountant, were frumpy intellectuals with facial hair. I questioned the wisdom of pressing on. Ran just smiled, his brown eyes fierce through rimless glasses, and climbed from the car with a hand-painted sign: "U.S. Troops Out of Vietnam!" The others followed, each with a message certain to inflame. I was given my own crude sign, and I had little choice, it seemed to me, except to march forth to my first demonstration against the war.

It lasted as long as it took our party to reach the perimeter of the crowd. The first of the soldiers to spot us coming let out a whoop of immense displeasure. This attracted an instant mob of other soldiers, half of them black and Hispanic, of course, who set upon us with curses and fists.

I was struck on the side of the face, my glasses dislodged, my sign ripped away and torn to shreds. I retreated at once, having lost sight of my comrades, and staggered to the car on legs that threatened to buckle with terror -- a nasty feeling that I would experience many times in the years to come. I gasped and trembled as I waited in the car, thanking God I wasn't dead.

Soon I was joined by two of the other demonstrators. One was bleeding at the corner of his mouth, the second nursing a swollen cheek. They told me the others had been arrested. Then we noticed a pack of soldiers headed noisily and very rapidly in our direction. We rolled up the windows in the August heat, and I prayed for deliverance as I hit the ignition.

The Falcon often failed to start. But today she sang, and we broke away to the open road as one of the soldiers bounced a rock off the trunk of the car. We were back in Austin by noon, with Ran and the others back by four -- I don't recall how or in what condition, except that no one was permanently maimed.

Thus had I been christened by GI fists into the maelstrom of the antiwar movement: I was a radical, though I had no card, and though it would be another two months before I challenged authority again. Not long after the aborted demonstration, in fact, Ran moved back to New York City -- suggesting I come to visit him there -- while I accompanied my friend Mark Parsons on a five-day foray into the rugged Devil's River country, 300 miles west of Austin.

Mark was employed as an archaeologist by the Texas Memorial Museum. He had invited me to come have a look at an ancient Indian pictograph site, and I had agreed, thinking I could use a vacation prior to the start of my doctoral program at the university. The trip was to prove as formative an experience, in its quiet way, as the hours I had spent in Marxist tutelage with Ran Moran.

Summer of Love, 1967. Photo by Robert Altman / summeroflove.org.
During our drive through the stunning wilds of the Texas Trans-Pecos, and then as we pored over Indian paintings on the walls of caves and rock shelters, Mark explained a cosmology to me -- a view of the world in its universe -- that he had derived in part from his studies of primitive Texas Indian cultures.

It was based primarily on the notion that Earth and her systems of natural life are unified and sacrosanct. Her sky and seasons, her soil and water, plants and trees, her fish, her insects, birds and animals all are united in a provident whole. It is this whole, an organic totality of interlocked parts, that constitutes existence itself -- the ground of being and consciousness.

The whole of Earth is therefore inviolable. No one part can be torn from the whole and deemed more perfect than another part. The humblest beetle on a blade of grass is no less valuable than the human being who crushes that beetle.

There are laws, moreover, that govern this arrangement -- natural laws that must be obeyed on penalty of death, including the death of the planetary whole. The ancient Texas Indian cultures understood and obeyed these laws. For thousands of years, they lived in a state of unity and peace with the natural world. Indeed, they worshiped as gods the natural systems that sustained their lives -- the sun and rain, the moon and wind, the corn and bison and boulders of flint. They took from the earth no more than they needed for simple subsistence, and when they took, they prayed in thanksgiving and hope for renewal of what had been lost.

As Mark explained these things to me, it became clear that he believed them as profoundly as the ancient Indians had. He shared a spiritual bond with the Indians that was almost alarming in its intensity. He was angry and sick with grief at what the Europeans had done to them, at the brute extermination of tribe after tribe of deeply reverent Indian souls.

He viewed the rise of the modern techno-industrial state -- with its sprawling cities and automobiles, its asphalt deserts and obsessive consumption and carbon-spewing infrastructure -- as a gross compounding of the massive crime against the Indians themselves. He viewed this pillage as a reckless violation of the laws of nature and therefore of God, a violation born of hubris, of men so consumed with crude self-interest and egotism that they are willing to torture the planet to achieve their ends.

Mark confessed more than once to me his somber conviction that the human race was doomed to perish for its modern crimes. "The sooner the better," I believe I heard him say.

It would take years, unfortunately, for me to connect what I had learned at the Devil's River with what I had felt on Mount Bonnell in Austin, when I first witnessed the violet crown. I had been changed by both experiences. I had been radicalized by them no less than by the teachings of Ran Moran.

But once I returned to Austin that fall, I was so swept up in the quickening tide of the anti­war movement, on top of my work at the university, that I wasn't able to assimilate the meaning of what I had learned at the canyon with Mark. I failed, therefore, to apply that lesson to the task of fighting the approaching devastation of my own community. I failed to notice the approaching devastation.

It never occurred to me, amidst my growing political vigilance, to investigate the structure of political power in Austin itself or to ask hard questions regarding the future of the Hill Country -- a lapse I find appalling in retrospect.

[Ray Reece is affiliated with the World Coalition for Local and Regional Self-Reliance. He is a former columnist for The Budapest Sun and author of The Sun Betrayed: A Report on the Corporate Seizure of U.S. Solar Energy Development, among other published works. His most recent book is Abigail in Gangland, a novel. He is a former resident of Austin currently based in Cagli, Italy. The entire essay from which this article was excerpted can be found on Ray's website.]

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Alice Embree : Making the War Personal at Under the Hood

Under the Hood GI Coffeehouse, Killeen, Texas. Photo from Under the Hood photostream / Flickr.
We can’t give you anything...
Making the war personal

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / November 14, 2010

We can’t give you anything but war, buddy
That’s the only thing we’ll hire you for, buddy...

These lyrics, to the tune of “I can’t give you anything but love, baby," were on my mind as several of us made a now familiar drive to Killeen, Texas, last weekend. The words were written by Vernell Pratt of the 70s-era Soeur Queens. They have a relevant ring in this recession.

Attend the 'Hoodstock Flashback' benefit for Under the Hood at Jovita's in Austin, Sunday, November 14, 2010, 6-11 p.m. See details below.

I probably wouldn’t have known anyone in our current “volunteer” army if I hadn’t gotten involved with the coffeehouse Under the Hood in Killeen, Texas. Comparisons are often made to the Vietnam-era GI resistance, particularly because Under the Hood’s predecessor, the Oleo Strut, was well known in that resistance.

Yes, there was a Vietnam-era draft that made the war personal for a generation. You could avoid mucking through the jungles in the boot-steps of French colonialists if you were privileged. George W. Bush is certainly an example. But what was markedly different was the economic landscape. This recession has provided a perfect storm for military recruitment. Piled onto the jobless landscape, you have escalating college, health care, and housing costs.

The soldiers entering the military in the post-911 atmosphere do so for reasons of patriotism and pocketbook. They are lured by lies about Iraq’s relationship to the Twin Towers and never told about the previous U.S. relationship with jihadists in Afghanistan while the Russians were there. But the lure of steady pay, bonuses, and benefits is almost a no-brainer given the devastated job market.

Monthly paychecks, housing subsidies, recruitment bonuses, deployment bonuses, medical and dental care for soldiers and their dependents, post-discharge VA care, and assistance for education. It is no accident that soldiers refer to their “job” and their “contract” all the time. It is no accident that any soldier who resists a deployment is forced to make a careful calculus of the monetary cost. An “Other Than Honorable” discharge often means re-paying a bonus, losing healthcare, and losing access to college assistance.

The Baby Boomers who were in Austin remember college with $70 rents, tuition of $50 a semester, coffee for seven cents in the Chuck Wagon. Not so, in this environment where college graduation means the “commencement” of daunting loan payoff.

Meanwhile we veer through the current political landscape with blinders. Does anyone, besides Michael Moore, ever speak about the relationship of mounting deficits and endless war? Does anyone really believe that continuing tax cuts for the wealthy has a relationship to job creation? Haven’t the tax cuts been in place? How’s that been working out for job creation?

We are in one of the best run shill games ever. Stagnant wage growth, transfer of wealth to the wealthiest, a ransacked job market, global companies packing manufacturing jobs off to the lowest bidders on the planet. The “housing bubble” was a Wall Street con man’s paradise with average folks piling on debt and Wall Street trading derivatives of that debt until the house of cards fell down and they got bailed out with taxpayer dollars.

Meanwhile, back at Fort Hood in Killeen, suicides are continuing their record-breaking pace. Multiple deployments with no end in sight have taken their toll with outright casualties and walking casualties, with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We hear about it on Veteran’s Day and then almost everyone tunes it out.

Please don’t tune out an alternative this Sunday. Support Under the Hood’s mission to provide a free speech zone, a pro-soldier, anti-war presence a mile from the gates of the largest military base in the country, Fort Hood. Sunday, November 14th, 6-11, Jovita’s in Austin, $10 dollars. If you can't attend, you can support Under the Hood through its website, here.

[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist and organizer, a former staff member of The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement. She is active with CodePink Austin and Under the Hood Café. Embree is a contributing editor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project.]

Also see:

• Jim Turpin : Military Suicides, PTSD at All-Time High / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2010
• Alice Embree : The War is Over / The Rag Blog / September 10, 2010

And listen to:

• Thorne Dreyer's interview with peace activist and writer Alice Embree on Rag Radio / October 26, 2010

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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Jim Turpin : Military Suicides, PTSD at All-Time High

Under the Hood Café near Ft. Hood in Killeen Texas is a place where active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan can discuss the debilitating effects of war. Photo from Under the Hood / Flickr.
Texas' Fort Hood sets the pace:
PTSD and suicides in the military
are at an all-time high

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2010

KILLEEN, Texas -- Even with the spin from the current administration that the “war is over” in Iraq, it is well known that 50,000 combat-ready troops remain in the country. Add to that a recent deployment of 2,000 troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Hood in Texas. At present almost 100,000 troops remain in Afghanistan.

With the total number of U.S. military personnel cycling through both Afghanistan and Iraq at almost 1.8 million, and with the RAND corporation estimating that 18% have PTSD (which is deemed low by some experts), this would put the returning numbers with PTSD at 324,000.

A recent article in The New York Times confirms what the organizers of the Killeen-based GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café have been battling at Fort Hood for the last year and a half: suicides are at the highest point since 2008, with 14 confirmed suicides since the beginning of 2010. In one recent weekend, there were three suicides and one murder-suicide at Fort Hood.

With the population at Fort Hood ranging from 46,000 to 50,000 soldiers at any given time, the rate of suicide is four times the national average, based on Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates of 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people.

The repeated deployment of military personnel who suffer from both physical and psychological wounds has led to these all-time high suicide rates. A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health studied 2,500 New Jersey National Guardsmen and determined “deployed soldiers were more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for post traumatic stress disorder.”

Despite these staggering statistics, the Fort Hood command continues to find ways to deny soldiers their right to receive necessary mental health services. Several soldiers have come forward recently with reports of harassment, undue punishment, and interference when seeking these necessary services.

A number of examples include:

• The imprisonment of SPC. Eric Jasinski in March 2010. Jasinski, who was suffering from PTSD, refused redeployment to Iraq based on this condition. It was feared that Jasinski's confinement could interfere with his ability to receive his prescribed medications. Eric's attorney James Branum stated, "He was seeing a psychiatrist for his condition and prescribed Zoloft for depression and Trazadone to get to sleep, and they handed him his gun and told him to go back to Iraq."


• The deployment of 50 soldiers from Ft. Hood with physical (knee, back, and shoulder issues due to bomb blasts) and psychological (PTSD/TBI) issues in June 2010 to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, California. Combat training for those soldiers with verified PTSD and other anxiety disorders runs counterintuitive to generally accepted psychiatric practices.


• Recent reports from soldiers at Ft. Hood suffering from PTSD and substance abuse who are being given extra work loads or are being kept from dealing with additional personal crises at home. Issues they are confronted with include being given medication only (instead of counseling) or being ignored by the chain of command when they request assistance.

Veteran deaths also surge after discharge from the military and are often the result of vehicle accidents, motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses, or other causes. An article this month in The New York Times discusses the huge number of veteran deaths attributed to destructive, risky, and lethal behaviors:

“The data show that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were two and a half times as likely to commit suicide as Californians of the same age with no military service. They were twice as likely to die in a vehicle accident and five and a half times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident. These numbers are truly alarming and should wake up the whole country,” said United States Representative Bob Filner, Democrat of San Diego, who is the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“They show a failure of our policy.”

The Under the Hood Café and Outreach Center, the GI coffeehouse located near Ft. Hood, Texas, the largest military base in the U.S., offers GIs a free speech zone. It provides a non-military environment that allows active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to discuss the debilitating effects of war. Under the Hood offers free referrals for medical and psychological services and legal assistance for those soldiers who are resisting redeployment to war zones.

To benefit its ongoing efforts in support of GIs, veterans, and military families, Under the Hood is having a “Hoodstock Flashback” concert (see graphic below) on Sunday, November 14, from 6-11 p.m. at Jovita’s in Austin. Admission is $10 at the door and includes such artists as Barbara K, Karen Abrahams, Will T. Massey, and Richard Bowden.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

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Alice Embree : The War is Over

Dude. The War is over. President Obama visits with Iraq war veterans and their families at Fort Bliss, Texas, August 31. Photo from AFP.
(But don't tell the GI's at Fort Hood)
THE WAR IS OVER!

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / September 1, 2010

So do your duty, boys and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over

-- Phil Ochs, 1966

See photos, Below.

KILLEEN, Texas -- As Barack Obama declares the end of “combat operations” in Iraq, the haunting refrains of Phil Ochs’ “The War is Over,” reverberate through my psyche. Isn’t this the second time a U.S. president has said the Iraq war is over?

We are seven years into the Second Bush Iraq War. Fifty thousand troops and that many contractors remain in Iraq. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR), a combat regiment, just deployed from Fort Hood to Iraq. The war’s not over.

It’s not over until the troops are home and the contractors' checks can’t be cashed. The war’s not over for the Iraqi people until depleted uranium no longer poses a neonatal threat. It’s not over until Iraqi hospitals, electricity, and water are at least back to the levels of operation under Saddam Hussein, or better, back to the levels of operation prior to sanctions. The war’s not over until the five million displaced Iraqis can return home. It’s never over for the families of one million Iraqi dead.

The war’s not over for the U.S. soldiers returning with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), or those who have lost limbs or the use of their limbs. It’s not over for the families of the more than 5,000 U.S. military men and women who died in Iraq.

On Sunday afternoon, August 29th, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi spoke to a packed crowd at the Texas State Employee Union’s meeting hall about the human catastrophe of U.S. policy in Iraq. As an Iraqi-American, she speaks with eloquence about her father’s place of birth. With her medical background, she brings disturbing details to the discussion of civilian casualties. She minces no words in describing the occupation.

Under the façade of liberation and democracy, U.S. troops seized the country, securing the oil fields, the Ministry of Oil, the Interior Ministry (CIA), and taking the lives of thousands of people. Iraq’s rich culture, history, and valuable assets were left vulnerable to stealth and destruction. In the years since [March 19, 2003], the lack of security, jobs, electricity, and potable water have made life for Iraqis unbearable... Our obligation to the people of Iraq, to the people of America, and to the rest of the world is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops and mercenaries from Iraq.

Go to www.liberatethis.com for more on Dr. Dahlia Wasfi.

On Monday morning, August 30th, a press conference in Killeen, Texas countered the claim that the Iraq war is over. Killeen is the home of Fort Hood, the nation’s largest military base. Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth joined Dr. Dahlia Wasfi and representatives from Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Texas Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, CodePink Austin, and the Peace and Justice Support Network of the Mennonite Church at Killeen’s Under the Hood Café.

The common message was that the war continues. Rep. Lon Burnam got directly to the point highlighting the costs of the Iraq debacle.

The Killeen Daily Herald noted, in extensive coverage of the event, that

Burnam said he was tired of officials using the "financial back of us working folks" to fund conflicts, and quoted a 1953 speech by President Dwight Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

In 1966 when Phil Ochs wrote his song, the Vietnam War was not over. In fact, it was far from over. In 2010, despite pronouncements from the Oval Office, the Iraq war is not over. The families of Fort Hood’s 3rd ACR can attest to that. And there is still another war raging in Afghanistan.

[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist and organizer, a former staff member of The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement. She is active with CodePink Austin and Under the Hood Café. Embree is a contributing editor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project.]

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi speaking on the Humanitarian Catastrophe of U.S. Policy in Iraq, Austin, August 29, 2010, Texas State Employees Union. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi addresses media at Under the Hood press conference, August 30, 2010. Photo by Heidi Turpin / The Rag Blog.
Texas Rep. Lon Burnam of Ft. Worth at Under the Hood press conference. Photo by Heidi Turpin / The Rag Blog.
Under the Hood Press Conference. Seated (l-r): Dr. Dahlia Wasfi (Iraqi-American peace activist), Larry Egly (Mennonite Church), Leslie Cunningham (Texas Labor Against the War); Standing, Jim Turpin (CodePink Austin), Jack Prince (Veterans for Peace), Alice Embree (The Rag Blog), Jasmyne Thomas (Fort Hood military family member), Jeff Gernant (Iraq Veterans Against the War). Photos by Heidi Turpin / The Rag Blog.
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Alice Embree : Protesters Block Fort Hood Troop Deployment

Participants in the blockade action at Fort Hood, Texas, on August 23, 2010. Left to right: Iraq Veterans Bobby Whittenberg-James and Crystal Colon, Jeff Grant, Military Spouse Cynthia Thomas and Afghanistan Veteran Matthis Chiroux. Photo from Fort Hood Disobeys.

Protesters at Fort Hood in Killeen
Block buses deploying troops to Iraq

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / August 23, 2010

KILLEEN, Texas -- Under darkness at about 4 a.m. this morning, buses carrying the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) to planes were stopped by a group of five protesters that included two Iraq veterans, one Afghanistan veteran, and one military spouse whose husband had been deployed to Iraq three times.

The Fort Hood Disobeys group clambered down from a highway overpass where supporters held banners and signs. Holding banners that said, “Occupation is a Crime” and “Please Don’t Make the Same Mistake We Did. RESIST NOW,” the protesters spread across Clarke Road. Police with automatic weapons and dogs beat them out of the roadway. They were not arrested.

Deployments are usually scheduled for the afternoon with family members present as soldiers board the buses. Whether this deployment left in the dead of night because of planned protests is unknown, but averting media attention was undoubtedly part of the Army calculus.

As the corporate media heralds the “end of combat missions,” the truth about the troops deploying to Iraq has not made mainstream news. Two more deployments of the 3rd ACR, a combat regiment, are scheduled this week. The total 3rd ACR troop deployment to Iraq from Fort Hood will be about 3,000. These will be added to the 50,000 troops remaining.

“Operation New Dawn” is the new brand for the U.S. occupation in Iraq. As combat deployments continue, it rings as hollow as George Bush’s proclamation of “Mission Accomplished.”

Two more upcoming events are aimed at peeling back the mass deception surrounding the “end of combat operations.”

Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi-American doctor, will speak next Sunday in Austin about the U.S. Policy in Iraq: A Humanitarian Disaster. The event is co-sponsored by Texas Labor Against the War and CodePink Austin and will take place at the Texas State Employees Union meeting hall, 5 p.m., Sunday, August 29, 1700 South First, Austin.

The following morning, there will be a press conference at Under the Hood GI Cafe in Killeen that will highlight many facets of the Iraq debacle, including the impact on soldiers, military families, Iraqis, and funding to meet domestic needs. Dahlia Wasfi will speak at this press conference and will be joined by Rep. Lon Burnam from Fort Worth, Texas. Representatives from several groups including Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, CodePink, and Texas Labor Against the War will be present. The press conference will take place at 10 a.m., Monday, August 30, Under the Hood, 17 South College, Killeen, Texas.

[Alice Embree is a long-time Austin activist and organizer, a former staff member of The Rag in Austin and RAT in New York, and a veteran of SDS and the women's liberation movement. She is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog and is treasurer of the New Journalism Project.]

Following are personal statements from four of the participants in the action:

Bobby Whittenberg-James:

I am a Marine veteran of the war against the people of Iraq, a Purple Heart recipient, and a third generation military service member. I joined the Marines in June of 2003, believing the lies about weapons of mass destruction and an imminent threat to our safety. I have since come to learn that these wars and occupations do not keep the people of the United States or the Middle East safe, but instead serve the interests of politicians, capitalists, and corporations: the ruling elite.

These unjust wars and occupations rob the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen of their dignity and their right to self-determination and serve to make the people of both the Middle East and the United States less safe. They also serve to further destabilize a region that has suffered under the boot-heel of western colonialism for over a century. The U.S. Empire also supports both financially and militarily the brutal apartheid regime that occupies Palestine. All of this is done in our name with our money, and I am here to say "Not in my name!"

The recent information leaks about the U.S. Empire's wars lay bare their war crimes and crimes against humanity. We must face the truth, even if it makes us uncomfortable or shows us something about ourselves that we don't want to see. When we find the truth, we must respond accordingly. I will not be complicit in the killing of people. Since I do not believe that the government or the capitalists will end these wars, I will vote with my body.

Bobby Whittenberg-James
Disobedient

Crystal Colon:

I was a sergeant in the Army for five years, stationed at Fort Hood the entire time, save two deployments to Iraq totaling 26 months. I was a Signal Support Systems Noncommissioned Officer, coordinating communications for various commands. I was honorably discharged in Jan., 2010, and have been organizing in the veterans peace movement ever since.

I first began to question the war in Iraq during my first deployment in '05-'06. After my friend Robbie was killed, I was very deeply affected. I started questioning why we were in Iraq. It felt like he had died for nothing. After returning from Iraq, I planned to leave the military. I was stop-lossed and forced to return to Iraq for 15 months, in total held beyond the length of my enlistment more than 450 days. Since leaving the military, I have been active with the veterans peace movement, speaking out about my experiences and supporting troops who refuse to fight.

I am doing this today because I can't allow this war in which I have fought to continue. I can't allow other soldiers to make the same mistake I did, deploying in support of a war crime. As a veteran of Iraq, how could I not do this today? For the people I helped occupy, for the friends I lost and stilI have over there, for the soldiers on those buses. How could I not do this today? I should have disobeyed. I should have never boarded those buses to Iraq. I wish someone had tried to stop me.

Crystal Colon
Disobedient

Matthis Chiroux:

I am a former Army sergeant and war resister. I was press-ganged into the Army by the Alabama Juvenile "Justice" System in 2002. While in the military, I occupied the nations of Japan and Germany for more than four years, with shorter tours in the Philippines and Afghanistan. I was a Public Affairs noncommissioned officer specializing in strategic communications. In reality, I was a propaganda artist. I was discharged honorably to the Individual Ready Reserve in 2007.

While I have always been against the war in Iraq, I began resisting it actively in 2008, after I received mobilization orders for a year-long deployment to Iraq. I refused those orders in Congress in May of 2008, calling my orders illegal and unconstitutional. I believed appealing to Congress would end the war. When 13 Members signed a letter of support for my decision and sent it to Bush, I thought we had won a victory for peace. This was more than two years ago. The president has changed, and the wars and destruction drag on.

Today, I am blocking the deployment of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment with my fellow vets and military family members because the wars will continue to victimize our communities until we halt this bloody machine from within. I am putting my body on the line in solidarity with the people of the Middle East, whose bodies have been shot, burned, tortured, raped, and violated by our men and women in and out of uniform. I cannot willfully allow Americans in uniform to put their lives and the lives of Iraqis in jeopardy for a crime. We are here because we have a responsibility to ourselves as veterans and as humans of the world. I will not rest until my people, ALL PEOPLE, are free.

In Struggle and Solidarity,

Matthis Chiroux
Disobedient

Cynthia Thomas:

I have been an Army wife for 18 years. My husband has been deployed three times since the wars began. During his second deployment, he was severely wounded and medevaced to Walter Reed Army Hospital on life support. Even though he had posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury,and suffered three fractures in his back, three fractures on his pelvis, and countless other injuries, the Army deployed him a third time. This was devastating to our two daughters, our step-son and to me.

Three months after my husband deployed for the third time, our stepson called to inform me he was joining the Marines. That was the exact moment I realized that our children would be fighting these endless wars. I decided that I needed to start resisting.

The reason I am doing this today is because for the past three years that I have been speaking out and advocating for Soldiers, things have only gotten worse. I have heard countless stories from vets and activevduty soldiers that give people nightmares. I have heard stories from family members that would shock people awake if they would just listen! Our military community is being destroyed!

If these wars are destroying our soldiers and military families with 12 to 15-month, often repeat deployments, how do you think the Iraqi and Afghan people doing? They have been living these wars 24/7, 365 days a year for nearly a decade! My youngest daughter is an Operation Iraqi Freedom baby. She was less than one-year-old when her father left to invade Iraq. I look at her, and I see an Iraqi or Afghan child having to live in constant fear with no end in sight! I am doing this for our community, for my girls, for my husband and our Marine. I am doing this for the Iraqi and Afghan People. Enough is enough. If soldiers really want to go fight, they'll have to go through me.

Cynthia Thomas
Disobedient

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Clare Bayard : Soldiers Charge Troops Unprepared for Deployment

Troops in Afghanistan: How prepared are they? Photo by Brennan Linsley /AP.
Army Weak:
Reserve members facing deployment
Charge their company not fit for battle

By Clare Bayard / The Rag Blog / August 12, 2010

See 'A call to action at Fort Hood,' Below.

Army Reserve members facing imminent deployment to Afghanistan are publicly charging that their company is not properly trained or mentally fit for battle. Several members of the Indiana-based 656th Transportation Company, which is due to activate August 22nd, are requesting a Congressional inquiry into the unit’s lack of readiness. Alejandro Villatoro, a sergeant in the company, is amongst those coming forward.

Sergeant Villatoro says,

The main reason I am doing this is that I want people to know the lack of training and education our soldier have been receiving, and the focus on the mission is just not adequate to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. All I am asking is more time to reevaluate the training and mental health of these soldiers before sending them into war.

At risk to themselves, these soldiers are going public with first hand experiences of failures in military training, mental health care, and leadership, which many veterans charge are problems endemic to the military. This comes as the Afghanistan War falls under increased scrutiny in the wake of the Wikileaked “War Logs” information.

Untrained and unsupported

Three members of this company, Sgt. Villatoro and two reservists who wish to remain anonymous (referred to here as Private First Class A and Specialist B), have come forward to expose a crisis.

They tell of inadequate mental health care, scant and inappropriate training, and incompetent leadership distrusted by the rank and file.

Troops set to deploy to Afghanistan are given only a rudimentary briefing on Iraq -- not Afghanistan. This transportation company has not even been trained on the vehicles and weapons their assignment depends upon, according to these servicemembers. Some mentally ill soldiers are able to keep their diagnoses secret from the military, which is not screening before deployment, while those with known mental illnesses are deployed regardless.

The 656th has been assigned to convoy security operations in Afghanistan. Yet, only 10% of its soldiers qualified on the .50 caliber guns that will be their primary weapon. Most have not learned to operate the heavy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAPs) vehicles they will be driving in Afghanistan, and Villatoro fears a repeat of his experience invading Iraq in 2003, with gun truck drivers who had never learned to drive a stick shift.

The company's mandatory trainings have been cut from the required 40 hours down to two-hour PowerPoint presentations. Officers told the soldiers that funding cuts were the reason that their recent two-week training at Indiana's Camp Atterbury, scheduled to be run by a privately contracted company, was reduced to some hastily improvised sessions with almost none of the equipment necessary for training.

“We're part-time soldiers, we only train once a month, and when we do actually have trainings that are supposed to last any significant amount of time, we don't do anything that seems useful.” says Private A, a 21 year-old reservist.

Training inadequacies go beyond the issue of equipment. According to Private A,

Most of the things we're being taught are being applied specifically from Iraq and from Iraq vets. Afghanistan is a whole different ballgame. The only thing that's the same is IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. The language, the landscape, the situation... everything is different

While U.S. and European diplomats have recently admitted they are floundering in the immensely complex social and political landscape of Afghanistan, Private A describes the level of preparation his company was offered: a single cultural awareness class focused, again, on Iraq rather than Afghanistan.

Everything they mentioned pertained to Iraq, so people were asking, "Well, in Afghanistan, what's this like?" And they'd say, well, we can't really tell you. Or just make up facts. It's not making me feel any more comfortable about my first time deploying.

'I fear that my chain of command will fail me'

The company has experienced numerous changes in leadership, including the transfer of their first sergeant after the disastrous Camp Atterbury training, where morale plummeted to a new low and one servicemember attempted suicide. Months of changing leadership have created insecurity and instability for members of the company, who have not had time to train together or build trust with the leadership they'll be serving under in Afghanistan.

Even some top military brass acknowledge that poor mental health in the ranks is compounded by failures of leadership. Suicide is at “crisis level” in the military, declared Navy Adm. Mike Mullen in an August 2nd speech to the National Guard Family Program Volunteer Workshop in New Orleans. Mullen said, “A big part of the solution is tied to leadership and how we do the training.”

"Without stable enlisted leadership, unit commanders are unable to properly assess the training, mental health, and personal needs of their troops or effectively implement their training plans. This leaves soldiers vulnerable to inadequate training and pre-deployment preparation which could lead to disastrous outcomes on the battlefield.” wrote Iraq War veteran Aaron Hughes, in a July letter on behalf of the 656th arguing to delay deployment.

Specialist B, a 20 year-old from Indiana, says

I would like to believe that I'm fully prepared to go to war, but that is just not the case. I don't know what my mission will be, I feel as if I have to defend my very close battle buddies and not my chain of command. I fear that my chain of command will fail me in the ultimate end and as a result my life will be on the line, or one of my buddies' lives will pay the price for the lack of leadership.

Willful negligence?

Two weeks out from their activation date, Sgt Villatoro explains “It's just not possible to be sufficiently trained in this time frame, let alone broadly enough for not knowing what our mission will be.”

“It just doesn't make sense. And it's dangerous. I just don't understand why they'd put us in that much danger, to the point where it doesn't make sense cause we're unprepared for anything.” says Private A.

Clearly, the 656th cannot be prepared to successfully complete a mission it has not been trained for. But the question of inadequate training cannot be divorced from context. In every branch of the military, service members continue to question the legitimacy of the mission, and whether they can in good conscience participate in these projects.

Sgt. Villatoro says,

That's the part I struggle with, that we don't have to do this. It's kind of hard to convince a soldier that they do have a choice. That the mission we were given, we believe it's not effective.

Sit down and look at the effectiveness of trying to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Sending 30,000 more soldiers with weapons doesn't make sense to me. We don't know anything about the culture, diplomacy; they train us on how to conduct traffic checkpoints.

These servicemembers also express concern about the effects on the Afghan people of deploying unprepared soldiers, untrained on their weaponry and equipment, and many in need of mental health support.

Sgt. Villatoro says:

What I'm afraid is that the rules of engagement might go out the window. That's what happened when I went [to Iraq], they told us that as soon as you feel threatened you're able to shoot. I'm afraid soldiers are going to forget the rules of engagement, go by their emotions, their anger and frustration, and take matters into their own hands.

Unfit for deployment

Lack of training on guns and vehicles makes soldiers a danger to themselves as well as others. The 656th will be operating top-heavy MRAP vehicles on Afghanistan's difficult terrain, without having practiced driving these rollover-prone trucks even on Indiana's flat roads.

“Whether we run off the road and kill somebody, or it's somebody who snaps... If you don't get mental help, that's what is probably going to happen. And when you don't have prepared soldiers, you're going to have accidents.” says Private. A.

Many soldiers diagnosed with a mental illness by a civilian doctor don't report their diagnosis to the Army. They fear that they will be either immediately discharged, or deployed without treatment and possibly barred from carrying weapons. Private A was diagnosed as bipolar 3 years ago and has kept this information secret.

“Mental health screening is a little embarrassing on the Army's part -- the fact that they haven't done it,” says Private A. “There are several people here who I know of including myself with a diagnosed mental illness and the Army hasn't caught it or done anything about it.”

During the Camp Atterbury training, a young servicemember slit his wrists with a number of others present. The military's minimal response didn't include mental health screening for the witnesses, the friends who intervened in the suicide attempt, or other company members shaken by the incident. Villatoro explains that the only mental health screening offered to this unit has been an anonymous online survey.

“The lack of screening could be a good thing to keep our numbers up as a unit,” says Private A, who has learned to manage his stability without medication over the last two years, after losing health insurance. “But God forbid something happens to those people or for some reason they can't get medication over there. That could be the last time they see home. Any of those people could turn a gun on us or themselves.”

The experiences of these servicemembers reflect the escalating mental health crisis in the military, with rising deployments and redeployments of soldiers suffering from trauma, mental illnesses, and physical wounds. A third of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan report mental problems, according to a study by the RAND corporation. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), military sexual assault (MST), depression, and anxiety disorders have carved holes in the ranks.

Army suicide attempts peaked this past June. The Army reports that in the last year, 239 soldiers killed themselves, (including 160 on active duty) and 1,713 people attempted suicide. Studies that include veterans in their statistics show even more horrifying numbers, like a CBS News study of state-by-state data in 2007 that revealed about 120 veteran suicides a week. The military does not acknowledge responsibility for many post-service suicides by veterans, who are two to four times more likely to commit suicide than civilians of the same age.

“It's not enough for Obama to say that it's not weak to ask for help, “ says Maggie Martin, an organizer with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who works on issues of stopping deployment of soldiers with trauma and mental health needs. “We have to create a community where people know that. What the 656th is doing, in trying to delay the deployment and call attention to these issues -- that is really important in helping soldiers know that they have to stand up for themselves and let people know what's happening,”

Sgt. Alejandro Villatoro. Photo from Facebook.
Soldiers fill the leadership gap

Alejandro Villatoro enlisted as a high school senior in 2000 for economic reasons. Six months ago, he told his command he was applying for conscientious objector status. He avoided thinking about his participation in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 until entering non-commissioned officer training three years later.

As a leader, I wanted to take initiative and learn more about the war... It took me about two years to learn and decide what we were doing was ineffective and immoral.

When Sgt. Villatoro learned that his unit was slated to deploy to Afghanistan this fall, he decided to drop the conscientious objector application to go through deployment with his soldiers. “I wanted to be with them to educate them about the wars, what's worth fighting for, what it really is to be a soldier.”

“They know my situation, that I wanted to get out and am only doing this for them” says Sgt. Villatoro. In conversations with soldiers in his unit, Villatoro found that many soldiers shared these concerns, and some felt ready to risk speaking out. Even more have indicated their agreement through informal surveys made by Villatoro, but stay quiet for fear of retribution.

Specialist B says “I have too many concerns with the 656th deploying to Afghanistan,” echoing the basic sentiment of many others in the company. Private A says “If we can't even get little stuff like trainings scheduled, how are we supposed to nail down a complex mission in Afghanistan?”

Others appear comfortable or even enthusiastic about deployment. Villatoro says, “There's a lack of knowledge; the motivation is money or medals, coming back with ribbons and hoping to have war stories. It's not about the Afghan people, or thinking this will end the war. They don't think that's going to happen.”

“You have a bunch of people who want to go just for the experience and for the money. I think that a lot of it is the money. That's the only thing that's keeping me from saying OK, thanks and goodbye; there's not a lot of jobs out there.” says Private A, who is from a small farming town and enlisted at 17.

The only thing that's making me go is that I need the money. When I get back, I want to start school again and didn't have money to do that before. That's essentially the only thing that's keeping me there.

Sgt. Villatoro says he feels a sense of responsibility to help younger soldiers to recognize where they may need more experience to understand of their own lack of preparation.

You can ask some of these soldiers if they're satisfied with the training so far, and they'll say yes. But you ask, Is it sufficient for you to conduct a mission in Afghanistan? That's where the confusion sets in.

After his own experiences in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Sgt. Villatoro names a key fear of sending out young, unprepared soldiers, many on their first deployment, without clarity about what they are expected to do and how they're going to survive.

“As a young soldier, there's a lot of insecurity,” he says. “You're scared, you're not going to remember the rules of engagement or what you're supposed to do. You just want to get through the firefight.”

Private A sums it up: “It just doesn't make sense to send an unprepared soldier into battle. It's like brushing your teeth without toothpaste.”

Fending for themselves

After his command denied him an audience (and declined to comment for this article), Sgt. Villatoro and an increasing number of servicemembers from the 656th are looking to elected officials for assistance. Villatoro visited the office of Chicago's Rep. Luis Gutierrez to underline the need for soldiers to be properly trained and mentally fit before deploying; Gutierrez has acknowledged the severity of these concerns and is taking the matter under advisement. Sgt. Villatoro was accompanied by allies including veterans of the Navy, Marines, Army and Illinois National Guard, representing service in Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Sgt Villatoro and several soldiers from his unit met last week to discuss the matter with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), an advocate for mental health care for soldiers and veterans. Durbin's office offered to forward a letter from Sgt Villatoro to the military liason in Congress. Yesterday, Sgt. Villatoro filed an official request with his office to open a Congressional inquiry into the 656th's unfitness for deployment.

With only a couple weeks left before their activation date, these soldiers are taking multiple courses of action to address this situation. On why he decided to speak out, Private A says, “I just want future soldiers to realize you have to take this stuff into your own hands.”

More and more soldiers are stepping up to join Sgt. Villatoro in speaking up about the concealed chaos of the 656th. Their perspectives, politics, and hopes span a wide range; they unify behind lack of faith in their company's preparation and leadership, and a common belief that the Afghanistan war is only getting worse.

An unwinnable mission

“I ask soldiers: what do you hope, do you really think this last push will end this war? A lot of them say no, because they know they're not there to help the Afghan people.” says Sgt. Villatoro.

Private A says,

No, absolutely not. There's no reason we're even there. I'm going overseas to fight people where I have no idea that they did anything wrong. We're not even fighting al-Qaeda, we're just over there picking a fight, driving around and seeing who shoots at us, then shooting them. I don't even understand the reason we're over there.

“The mission as a whole in Afghanistan has lost its purpose,” says Specialist B. “The government can say whatever and do whatever and get away with it, with very little justice to the American people.”

Over 150 soldiers have publicly refused orders or deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. There is precedent for a unit to successfully delay its deployment, as another National Guard unit and family members managed to do in 2007. Servicemembers, families, allies, and groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War organize resistance both publicly and under the radar.

The Under the Hood G.I. Coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas held a march to publicize opposition to the deployment of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) from Fort Hood, scheduled for August. Soldiers, military families and civilian organizers demanded an end to the occupations, cancellation of this deployment, and for an end to the 3rd ACR's policy of deploying traumatized soldiers.

"There is a strong history in this country of G.I.s taking a stand, confronting and exposing unjust and illegal military practices,” says Sarah Lazare, an Illinois-based organizer with the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, a group of non-veterans supporting and collaborating with servicemembers and veterans who resist orders and wars they view as unjust and illegal.

By courageously speaking out about the problems with their unit, soldiers in the 656th are strengthening the movement of servicemembers taking stands of conscience against military actions they oppose.

Despite his principled objection to the Afghanistan War, Sgt. Villatoro is prepared to deploy with the soldiers in his charge if they are unable to delay the 656th's activation.

I ask myself why I feel so responsible. I put a lot of blame on myself because of mistakes I made as a young naïve soldier, and I don't want to do it again or see other young soldiers make those mistakes.

Sgt. Villatoro says, “This war has never ended for me. I feel bad a lot about the soldiers, how they keep re-enlisting. My war, my fight will never end until every soldier is home.”

Call to action at Fort Hood

This is a nation-wide call to action! Come to Fort Hood, Texas, Aug. 22 to participate in peaceful actions with veterans and anti-war leaders opposing the deployment of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s 5,000 Soldiers to Iraq...

Despite President Obama’s fallacious claims that the war in Iraq is winding down, the 3rd ACR is gearing up for yet another deployment! Furthermore, many Soldiers facing deployment are known to be unfit for combat due to injuries sustained in prior tours. The Peace Movement must not let this stand!...

This will be a RADICAL demonstration, with optional direct action elements and possible legal implications. While all are welcome to participate at whatever level they are comfortable, we value greatly those willing to put their bodies on the line...

Our message is that wounded warriors should never be forced to deploy. Our message is that the people of Iraq should not suffer at the hands of American troops. We will make this message clear with our voices, wills and bodies. We welcome our brothers and sisters from any social justice movement and their chosen messages of solidarity. We stand united as citizens of the world opposed to U.S. Empire.

We invite all who plan to participate to attend a brief planning meeting Aug. 21st at 5 p.m. We will be discussing plans for the following day’s actions, as well eating, drinking and enjoying each others’ company, before rallying at Fort Hood the following day.

Contact us now at forthooddisobeys@hushmail.com to RSVP, learn the location of the Aug. 21st meeting and stay up to date as more becomes available. Please send us your name, contact information and a brief bio of you as an activist, and we will be in touch. We are moving forward rapidly and look forward to welcoming you to beautiful Killeen, Texas!

In Solidarity,

The Disobedient

The Rag Blog

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