29 September 2008
As both candidates demonstrated in last Friday’s debate, wearing a bracelet to commemorate a dead soldier is one way to show support for U.S. troops. Keeping promises to living soldiers and veterans would be a better one, especially if you intend to be president.
In August, 70 members of the nonpartisan Iraq Veterans Against the War marched to the Democratic and Republican national conventions to deliver letters and briefings to the campaigns of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.
In Denver, veterans in uniform led thousands of civilians on a four-mile march to the gates of the DNC, where IVAW petitioned the Democrats to discuss its main goals: immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq, full veterans benefits, and restored sovereignty and reparations for the Iraqi people. As hundreds of riot police faced off against them, the former soldiers and marines calmed the crowd by reaffirming their commitment to non-violence and their respect and sympathy for the police officers. Several police had tears streaming down their faces and one broke down, leaving his phalanx altogether.
In St. Paul, the formation of uniformed veterans was led by a former St. Paul police officer and retired Army First Sergeant, whose 28-year career in the military included a tour in Iraq, where his oldest child has also served. IVAW’s goal there was to deliver a briefing about veterans issues to Senator McCain.
At both conventions, representatives of IVAW succeeded in getting escorted past the police lines into the convention halls. The Obama campaign sent someone to meet with them; the McCain campaign did not.
When the Americans who have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan make it into the national consciousness, it is usually through war-glory tales of heroism and sacrifice or a laundry list of miseries and victimhood. The IVAW members who marched to the conventions may have been heroes, victims, pawns, or all three, but now they are activists, and they deserve more than a pat on the back or the head. Those who fought the war deserve to be part of the national conversation about ending it.
They are hardly a fringe element. Though the Democratic and Republican platforms are presented as representing the breadth of American opinion about the U.S. military presence in Iraq, it is the position of the GI resistance movement that is more closely aligned with that of the majority of Americans. A CNN poll taken at the time of the conventions found that about two-thirds of respondents opposed that war, a portion that has stayed consistent for nearly three years.
So what do these veterans want from the presidential candidates? Quite simply, they want accountability.
In this too they’re in the mainstream of American sentiment, but, having had a bellyful of double-talk about the war, they’re skeptical. Lies sent them into Iraq in the first place, sleight-of-hand has kept over 120,000 soldiers in uniform after they fulfilled their contract, and barren promises have left many thousands of veterans scrambling for physical and mental health care after they come home.
For Obama, accountability means that if he’s going to talk about ending the war, he commit to specific, timely measures that will accomplish that soon. It means removing all U.S. forces from Iraq, not just some “combat troops” – the definition is open to debate – and not accepting a lop-sided treaty that allows the U.S. to privatize the war while establishing long-term military bases there. And it means not reshuffling U.S. troops to shore up a failed military strategy in Afghanistan without a full reckoning of the political, economic and societal requirements of that war-weary country.
For McCain, accountability means that if he says he supports the troops, he vote to get them adequately funded medical care and facilities, expanded educational benefits, and reasonable breaks between deployments. He opposed all of these measures when they came up in the Senate, making it look as if the only veteran he supports is himself. Accountability means that success in Iraq is not defined as a month when “only” 359 Iraqi civilians are killed – still a level of upheaval and carnage no American would tolerate closer to home -- but as interrupted months for Iraqis to reconcile and to rebuild their country, free of foreign military intervention. And accountability recognizes that Iraqis – 72 percent by an early 2008 BBC poll -- don’t want U.S. troops to occupy their country any more than most soldier and marines want to be there.
Rather than using the legacy of veterans as jewelry to adorn hollow promises, both candidates can honor veterans and support the troops best by ending the war.
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Liam Madden is Co-chair of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War and a student at Northeastern University. Nan Levinson is the author of Outspoken: Free Speech Stories and teaches journalism at Tufts University.
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