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Feb 2, 2005
I am a soldier, and I served in Iraq.
I spent the last year riding in an unarmored humvee with no doors, open to the whims of the enemy and the splashes of sewage from the wheels. I have cursed the generals in their plush palaces and air conditioned SUV's. I have shivered with Dengue Fever, sweated in the 130 degree heat, and gotten violently ill an average of twice a week courtesy of the mess hall. I have cursed when an RPG was fired at me, only to laugh when it failed to explode because Hadji forgot to pull the pin. I am all too familiar with the buzz a bullet makes as it passes.
If you are an Iraqi, I will shake your hand, kiss the side of your face, drink your tea, share a meal together, and play with your children. I will count you as a friend. I do not care if you are Sunni, Shia, or Christian. I will fix your sewer. I will make sure you have food and clean water. I will give you the freedom to speak your mind without the threat of summary execution. I will shake my head in frustration when you ask, "What have you done for me lately?" I will not hesitate to put you down for good when I see you planting an improvised bomb on the sidewalk.
DEAR AMERICA...
I will never be the same, and I want to scrub my mind with steel wool to remove the memories. I have watched the light fade from the eyes of another human being and known that I could not save him. I have seen animals carrying body parts. I have been told the words that cut directly to the center of an officer's heart: "Sergeant G's been hit, and it's bad." I have had to choose whether to kill a teenager for pointing a weapon at me. I have pulled the trigger when he turned his weapon toward one of my soldiers. I have drifted off to a fitful sleep with the smell of dead humans on my uniform.
The media will try to jolt you with narratives and images of increasing violence. In reply, pundits and talking heads will trumpet our successes, progress, and the enemy corpse count. Does it matter which side is right? Not really. The only thing that matters is that, right now, over one hundred and thirty thousand men and women in our armed forces are sweating, bleeding, and dying in the desert. They deserve the attention and respect that they have earned with their courage and purchased with their lives.
Jason N. Thelen
Jason Thelen served as a Captain in the US Army Reserve during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is the first in a series of columns he will be writing for Veterans for Common Sense.
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.cfm?Page=Article&id=2765&NoMenu=1
Ancient Democracy
Not many of our citizens seem to be aware of our fragile form of government, called a democracy. Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748-1813) wrote a remarkable book “The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic”. Tyler wrote about ancient democracy long before our own American experience with democracy had been fully tested. Do not forget that our democracy recently counted a 200th birthday, the average age of great civilizations.
Tyler wrote; “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from great courage to abundance,
from abundance to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependency,
from dependency back into bondage.”
Note: This article appeared in “Growth Stock Outlook” & was submitted by Lynn DeGrow of Charlevoix, MI to the Petoskey News-Review which printed it on page 4 (Opinion Page) on April 30, 1991
John B. Whitmore Jan. 7, 2004
John Whitmore is a WWII veteran, grandfather, retired engineer, teacher, troubleshooter, inventor, and product developer specializing in value analysis and cost reduction. His experience includes technical management in the production of ballistic missile systems, re-entry space vehicles, transportation equipment, and solar space heating systems.
Progress
The term “progress” was the major topic of discussion at the Socrates Café philosophy group on Wednesday, August 7, 2002, and the perceptions expressed by participants were many & varied, even after consulting the dictionary. To provide additional insight regarding the term, I offer the following brief summary of the last chapter (titled: “Is Progress Real?”) of the book “Lessons of History” by Will & Ariel Durant.
Chapter XIII: Is Progress Real?
Against the panorama of the rising & falling of nations, morals, & religion, the authors find the idea of progress in dubious shape; they ask if progress is not merely the traditional boast of each “modern” generation. They remind us that since no substantial change in man’s nature has occurred in historic times, all technological advances must be written off as merely new means for achieving old ends… the acquisition of goods, the pursuit of sex, the overcoming of competition, & the fighting of wars. They consider the past century “disillusioning” because science is neutral, killing for us as readily as it heals.
The authors point to our “frolicking” in our emancipation from theology & ask if we have developed moral codes independent of religion, sufficiently strong to avoid debasing civilization mired in greed, crime, & promiscuity. They ask; have we given ourselves more freedom than our intelligence can digest?
Questioned also are our advances in manners, music, art, & whether progress in philosophy since Descartes has been a mistake through its failure to recognize the role of myth in the consolation & control of man. The “progress” in architecture is also in question, as we compare our modern works with those of the ancients.
The authors pointedly ask what progress means to us. If it means increased happiness, they consider progress unreliable. They offer: “Our problem is whether the average man has increased his ability to control the conditions of his life”. Mention is made of a mortician’s convention where concern was expressed about the threat to their industry caused by increased life expectancies. Here, the authors suggest that if undertakers are miserable, then progress is real.
The authors seem to conclude that “richness of heritage” is a valid measure of progress, but the true all-encompassing meaning of progress appears evasive.
End
Note: This last chapter of the book, like all the other chapters, is richly written & offers great insight & much food for further thought. The book contains only 117 pages, but I value it as an important reference regarding many of life’s questions.
John B. Whitmore
John Whitmore is a WWII veteran, grandfather, retired engineer, teacher, troubleshooter, inventor, and product developer specializing in value analysis and cost reduction. His experience includes technical management in the production of ballistic missile systems, re-entry space vehicles, transportation equipment, and solar space heating systems.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/debclark.php?articleid=6822
The Conviction of Kevin Benderman
by Debbie Clark
I stood outside the courthouse at Fort Stewart, Ga., with Camilo Mejia, his mother Maritza, Aiden Delgado, other supporters, news reporters, cameramen, and military police as we waited for Sgt. Kevin Benderman to be escorted out of the courthouse and into a van waiting to transport him to jail after he was sentenced by a military judge to 15 months confinement for violation of Art. 87 of the UCMJ, "Missing Movement by Design."
It struck me that this is what the Iraq war had all come down to at that moment in time – locking up an honorable soldier and man of conscience for declaring that he would participate in the insanity of war no more.
Since at least January of this year, Sgt. Kevin Benderman has been telling the press and public audiences what he saw and experienced in Iraq that led to his decision to file a request for conscientious objector status, which he began researching and working on in July 2004. Among other things, he has openly written and stated several times to the news media and public audiences that while serving in Iraq, his then-commander told members of his unit to shoot Iraqi children who had been throwing small pebbles at the American soldiers from a wall if they started doing so again.
Now I have never claimed to be a crack Army detective – though I was indeed an Army detective – but I do believe that shooting small children for throwing pebbles at grown men would constitute a war crime. Where is the investigation?
Sgt. Benderman's 10 years of honorable military service apparently gave him no credibility in the eyes of the military in telling about the atrocities of war and an illegal order to shoot children for throwing pebbles.
I can relate to this lack of credibility. My own eight years of prior military service in the '70s and '80s serving in the Military Police and CID gave me no particular credibility – nor power to do anything – when I publicly proclaimed at a military veterans' protest against the war, held across from the White House in Washington, D.C., in March 2003, that George Bush is a war criminal.
Where is the investigation into the violations committed by the Bush administration in initiating and waging this illegal war?
A uniformed military policeman was standing outside the courtroom dangling a pair of handcuffs in his hands, as though waiting for Sgt. Benderman to come out to handcuff him.
Where are the handcuffs waiting for George Bush and his accomplices?
My eight years of prior military service in the Military Police and CID not only gave me no credibility or credentials in alleging that George Bush is a war criminal for initiating a war of aggression against a crippled nation that had not attacked, it has also provided me with no credentials to stop the U.S. Army court system from locking up an honorable man of conscience for standing up and declaring his refusal to participate in war any further.
As Camilo Mejia – who was court-martialed in the very same courtroom in May 2004, receiving a sentence of 12 months confinement – wrote in his article on the Benderman court martial of July 28, 2005, the focus of this trial was on a 45-minute meeting between Kevin Benderman and his battalion sergeant major on Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, as his unit was about to redeploy to Iraq. Kevin testified that at the end of that meeting, the battalion sergeant major had released him for the weekend to go home and work on his conscientious objector packet. The battalion sergeant major disputed this and testified that he had told Kevin to go home and eat dinner with his wife and report back for deployment to Iraq in one hour.
It was brought out by the defense that some of the details that the battalion sergeant major had testified to had changed from one hearing to the next; however, to the best of what I could tell, this was apparently considered to be either irrelevant, or was simply overridden by the prosecution's argument that after spending 10 years in the Army, Sgt. Benderman should have known that the battalion sergeant major had no authority to release him from deployment to Iraq – that could only have come from his company commander. And the company commander testified that everyone in the unit was ordered to deploy to Iraq unless they were specifically told through their proper chain of command that they were released from such deployment. Perhaps to the judge, that was the clincher, along with the questioning of Kevin's wife, Monica, about the title of an article written by Kevin, "Why I Refused a Second Deployment to Iraq," which is linked to on their own Web site.
Yet the content of the aforementioned article was not discussed in the court martial, which included, in addition to witnessing some tragic effects of war, seeing "command elements ordering the unit to perform all types of actions that are considered unsafe to soldiers" and the order to shoot small Iraqi children if they went back up on the wall and started throwing pebbles at them again. There were several other things that I noted were not explored or covered in the court martial:
1. Kevin's sincerity as a conscientious objector, evidence of which is widely available, including in the form of a videotape of a speech that he gave at Georgia Tech in Atlanta on May 7, 2005.
2. The failure on the part of Sgt. Benderman's company commander to follow the Army regulation in handling Sgt. Benderman's request for conscientious objector status (indeed, Kevin's commander openly admitted at an earlier hearing that he was not even familiar with the Army regulation covering conscientious objection).
3. The amicus brief filed on behalf of Kevin Benderman that concludes that the new United States military doctrine of preemptive war is a war crime under the Nuremberg Principles and requires the court to consider whether objection to "crime against peace" or aggressive war is a defense in this case.
4. Testimony on behalf of Sgt. Benderman by an additional witness who wished to testify during the pre-sentencing, but was still en route to Georgia from Nevada at the time of the court martial.
All of the above, combined with my own memories of being a soldier and CID special agent stationed at Ft. Stewart, Ga., so many years ago, were jumbled together in my mind as I stood outside the courthouse waiting for Kevin to come out.
In my memories of military service, I directly associate the location of Ft. Stewart with my former role as a CID special agent, as that's where I was sent after completing CID school, and it was my last duty station prior to leaving the military to be a full-time mother at home. I also associate Ft. Stewart with the pain of suffering the murder of my best friend – also a CID agent – by her husband, who was the commander of an infantry unit there. With these memories close to the surface of my consciousness, I stood surveying this whole situation of Kevin Benderman about to be hauled off to jail – my vision of peace and justice clear and steady, but my insides wrenching.
Kevin walked out of the courthouse – amazingly, not handcuffed (a credit to whomever was placed in supervision over him) – and stoically climbed into the van waiting to transport him to jail.
Still in a daze over the harsh sentence meted out, cell phone in hand with Eric Garris of Antiwar.com on the line (not quite sure what I had all said to him), I felt very much at a loss. I had the urge to scream at Kevin's escorts, "Stop! CID! Up against the wall!" Of course, I wasn't quite so nuts as to think that would work. I found myself calling out to Kevin instead, "We love you, Kevin!" Other supporters immediately followed with their own words of support and encouragement, and the last voice I heard came from beside me – a clear, strong female voice resonating out, "I love you, Kevin," just as the van doors were about to close. I turned around and found Kevin's wife, Monica, standing beside me. She had come out of the courthouse with Kevin. I hugged her and told her I was sorry – knowing it could never be enough – as the van carrying her husband drove away.
The press conference with Monica was to commence shortly thereafter and Camilo Mejia and I left for the Savannah airport to pick up retired Col. James "Bo" Gritz, who had flown in from Nevada at his own expense, expecting to testify on behalf of Kevin during the pre-sentencing, which had previously been thought would be held the next day. When Camilo and I met Col. Bo at the airport and broke the news to him that the court martial was already over and Kevin was sentenced to 15 months confinement, he was… a little upset.
During the drive back to Hinesville, Col. Bo – who I had learned is the nation's most highly decorated Special Forces soldier – told Camilo and me that he had given one of his Legion of Merit medals that he had earned in the military to Michael New, an American soldier who had refused military orders to put on the uniform of the United Nations based on his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and his belief in the sovereignty of the United States. Col. Bo said he supposed he would give his other Legion of Merit to Kevin.
I read in a news article the next day that Cpt. Gary Rowley, the handsome but stern and sneering company commander who had been flown in from Iraq to testify against Kevin, was quoted as saying, "He got what he deserved. He's doing 15 months in prison. We're serving 12 months in Iraq.
"I have to admit that Cpt. Rowley does have a point there and, in that respect, Kevin has definitely got the sweeter deal. How much better to serve 15 months in prison as a free man of conscience than to serve 12 months in Iraq fighting an illegal war.
Bring them home.
They Lied to Me, Too
By James Glaser
I saw a bumper sticker the other day which said "Bush Lied and Our Soldiers Died." I thought back to when I realized that my government had lied to me and that the lives of the 58,000+ Americans killed in Vietnam were lost because of lies.
It didn’t happen right away. I came home from the war and I looked at the peace movement with anger. I was, you might say, still in the jungle. I still knew lots of guys who were counting down their days and I couldn’t believe that young Americans were not joining up to "fight the good fight."
When I got back to the States I still thought we were trying to save the South Vietnamese from the terror of Communism and that if we could get a few good Generals, it would be over in months.
I never realized that Washington wasn’t trying to win the war, nor did I know the whole thing was started by a President lying to the American people about an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that never happened.
It is hard to believe that our leaders in Washington could sit there and watch as thousands and thousands of Americans were getting killed and wounded every month. I remember in Da Nang, seeing body bags in rows next to the runway. Almost every day over there I saw somebody’s blood, be them American or Vietnamese.
That first summer home I would wonder why the killing went on and on. In my mind, I was still a Marine and Semper fi, I had to back what the Marine Corps was doing. I just knew the Marines would never waste one of their own.
I guess it was harder to convince me that the war was wrong, because I had too much invested in it. That is why to this day there are thousands of Vietnam Vets, who think the war was worth the effort. They just can’t admit that they were "had" by Washington and that all those deaths and wounds were for nothing, but that is a fact, jack.
We look at Vietnam today and wonder what the war was all about. We LOST. I will say that again for all my brothers in arms, America lost that war. Washington sent us there on a lie and watched as we bled and bled and only with the effort of millions of Americans was the war brought to an end.
Today, Vietnam is an American trading partner. Thousands of Americans go there as tourists. Vietnam is not trying to hurt us, they are trying to increase trade with us. We were told we were fighting them to protect America…that was another lie.
Many people will tell you many reasons that the war ended, but the real reason to pull our troops out and stop fighting, is that politicians could see if they didn’t stop the war, they would not get reelected.
Washington is all about money and power. If a politician loses an election, he loses his power and his chance to get more money. Right now many politicians are starting to hedge their bets with little quips about what is wrong with Bush’s War in Iraq. The war they voted to start.
Many thought by giving up their Congressional power to declare war, they would be held innocent and all blame would fall on Bush. Now they see that too many Americans are coming home in boxes or on stretchers. There has been enough American blood spilled in Iraq, so that every Congressional District has been splattered and politicians are starting to worry.
George isn’t helping things with talk of staying the course and Rumsfeld saying Americans might be dieing in Iraq for a dozen more years hurts everyone’s poll numbers. Things are heating up in Afghanistan too and after holding up that country to the voters as a success, new American deaths do not sound right.
Soon a majority of American voters will know that they have been "had" too, just as we were back in the 60s. They will see that this war is about making billions for a few of the powerful in Washington. They will see that those in Congress are willing to watch our sons and daughters bleed and die as long as their political future seems safe, but once those in Washington get scared about losing power, this war will end fast.
That bumper sticker should have read, "Washington Lied and Our Soldiers Died." I am sure there are many powerful people in Washington who are now ready to pull the plug on this war. They have their 30 pieces of silver and more.
July 7, 2005
Jim Glaser [send him mail: jimmytwoshoes@hotmail.com], a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran and Commander of VFW Post 3869, works to educate the American public on the consequences of war. His personal website is JamesGlaser.org.
True To His Oath
Sgt. Kevin Benderman, right, and his attorney
Bill Cassara walk into a pretrial hearing
Friday July 22, 2005 at Fort Stewart, Ga.
(AP Photo/Stephen Morton)
Sgt. Kevin Benderman Sentenced To 15 Months
[Thanks to PB who sent this in. He points out that 15 months is a victory, not a defeat. He's right. The
early Vietnam anti-war soldiers got 5 and 10 year prison terms.]
July 28, 2005 By Russ Bynum, Associated Press & Eric Garris
An Army mechanic who refused to go to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status was acquitted of desertion Thursday but found guilty of a lesser charge and sentenced to 15 months behind bars.
Judge Wright threw out the bogus charge of larceny (for receiving the wrong pay grade) earlier in the week.
Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, also was given a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to E1 private -- on the charge of missing movement. If he had been found guilty of desertion, he could have faced five years in prison.
Benderman failed to deploy with his 3rd Infantry Division unit in January, 10 days after he told Fort Stewart commanders he was seeking a discharge as a conscientious objector. He has previously said he refused to deploy to Iraq after his first combat tour during the 2003 invasion made him opposed to war.
Attorneys on both sides wrapped up their cases within three hours after Bendermans court-martial began Thursday.
Benderman said during the sentencing phase that he didnt mean for his actions to hurt his comrades.
I am not against soldiers, he said. I dont care what anyone says. Though some might take my actions as being against soldiers, I want everyone to be home and safe and raising their families. I dont want anyone to be hurt in a combat zone.
Military police immediately took Sgt. Benderman into custody.
MORE:
~Thanks to D for asking the letter below be reprinted, in honor of Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who, by his courage and dedication to duty, has earned the thanks of a grateful nation. The comments preceding the letter originally appeared with Sgt. Bendermans letter in GI Special 3A11~
http://www.militaryproject.org/article.asp?id=439
George Bush:
A Domestic Enemy Of The United States
When the history of the movement that finally stopped the war in Iraq is written, this letter will have a very special place. Coming from a serving soldier, and a Sgt., it is a declaration of principle and allegiance to the liberties of the people of the United States in the spirit of Tom Paine and Patrick Henry.
[Read it with loving care, consider carefully what it means, carry it with you, and draw strength from it. And if you come across one or some of our troops, have spare copies to pass along. T]
November 20, 2004
To: George W. Bush
From: SGT Kevin M. Benderman
When are you going to tell the truth to the people of the United States?
Why don't you tell them why you want to be in Iraq so bad?
I was there for six months and I did not see the first weapon of mass destruction. I did receive orders from the company commander to shoot children if they threw small rocks at us and that was when I figured out that the entire thing was way over the line.
Over 1200 soldiers have died in Iraq so that you can have a couple billion more dollars, that should make you feel very good about yourself.
The soldiers that have died for this sham that you have put over on the American people are so much more deserving than that. You are not worth the dust off of their boots.
If you truly had respect for the military and the people that serve then you would not continue to kill them in your war.
I joined the Army to protect my country and not to be a mercenary for a political despot.
If you wish to put me in prison because of my views then you should make room for about 75% of the military.
And while you are at make some room for yourself and about half of your administration. You are responsible for what happened at Abu Gharaib and you are shirking your responsibility.
The commander in chief is not above the UCMJ, as you would like to believe.
I want to fulfill my contract that says I joined the Army to protect my country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and as far as I am concerned you are a domestic enemy of the United States.
You care nothing for this country; you just care about the profits that are to be made from the oil in Iraq. That much is evident to me from the way the contracts were passed out to Halliburton and KBR. It must be nice to have the deck stacked in your favor by the president of the USA.
Since your are raising the debt ceiling of America so that we can pay the bills that you have run up, why don't you forgive the debts of every one in the armed forces since they are the ones that are making it possible for you to make billions from the oil from Iraq.
Sincerely,
SGT Kevin M. Benderman
Protecting The Children
by James Glaser
We as a society have a responsibility for the generation that comes after us, just as our parents did for us. Sometimes people think when their children make it to the drinking or smoking age, they are on their own, and can decide for themselves what is right.
Close knit families, some might say, Christian families, seem to extend that period of responsibility longer. Many parents would be surprised by how much some of their older children still want their advice.
Somehow our government has decided that they have a right to send salesmen into our high schools. Military recruiters can have a shot at vulnerable young adults, some as young as thirteen. In our local school, which has all grades in one building, every child gets to see this "nice Army man." These recruiters wear dashing new uniforms, with medals and ribbons, or they come looking ready for combat in their desert fatigues. One way or the other, they are going to impress a wide segment of the student body.
The only thing between those recruiters and a student signing on the dotted line, is the child’s parents.
Today, because Washington is so desperate for bodies, children are allowed to go to Boot Camp between junior and senior year. Then when they finish their senior year, they are all ready locked in to go.
The new "No Child Left Behind" education program has a clause in it that will cut a school’s funding if they try and protect their children, by having recruiters stay out of the school.
Many parents are taking their responsibility seriously and are counseling their children to not "sign up." They are giving them alternatives, like college or vocational school. These are not as exciting as the television ad that portrays life in the Marines as fighting dragons, or the adventure of dropping out of a helicopter into the ocean as seen in an Army ad.
Parents have a lot to compete with, but many children in America today are trusting those parents, who they know love them. Eric Schmitt, writes in the New York Times, July 24, 2005, that LT. General Franklin L. Hagenbeck, "The Army’s top personnel officer acknowledged this week that the service will probably miss its recruiting goal this year, the first admission by a senior Army official and a stark reminder of the Iraq war’s impact on enlistment." It is also a reminder of how powerful a parent’s loving advice can be.
Brad Edmonds, writing for LewRockwell.com, reminds us, "Note that children of Congressmen, military officers, and corporate executives rarely are killed in these wars."
It is a sad fact that many parents in this country do not have alternatives to offer to their children, and just because of the family’s economic situation, military service can be enticing. Today the thousands of tax dollars used to bribe a young man or woman into signing up could be more money than that family has ever seen in one chunk. The children signing their name, can relate to a fine athlete, signing that bonus contract with a professional sports team. After watching some of the television ads about life in the military and hearing the lies of recruiters who are looking for promotions based on numbers of recruits signed up, who could blame a child for that fantasy?
It is up to the parents to see through all the hype and sort out what is true and what is false about a military career, so that their child has an honest chance of making an informed decision about whether or not "joining up" is in their best interest.
July 27, 2005
Jim Glaser [send him mail: jimmytwoshoes@hotmail.com], a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran and Commander of VFW Post 3869, works to educate the American public on the consequences of war. His personal website is JamesGlaser.org.
