The Commission is a group of about 50 religion-affiliated activists -- and me -- concerned with the moral life of soldiers. (They kept asking whom I represented and I finally figured out that I represent skeptics of conscience.) The report coming out of our gathering last March in New York will be presented in Washington, DC this Veterans Day. Link to the commission site above & here's the schedule:
Nov. 10: 1:30-2:30 pm Press Conference, National Press Club
Nov. 11: 5-6:30 pm Testimonies and Conversations with Veterans
7-9 pm Interfaith Service for the Truth Commission
Nov. 12: 9 am-4 pm Protecting Moral Conscience: A Teach-In on Selective
Conscientious Objection
Monday, November 8, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Mass. family at center of suit: Class action alleges Prudential unfairly profited from death benefits
By Nan Levinson, Globe Correspondent | October 4, 2010
Kevin Lucey was at the wake for his son, Jeffrey, a Marine who had committed suicide at their Belchertown home in the summer of 2004, when military officers presented him with a stack of forms to sign.
“I never read them. I just signed,’’ he said. “I wanted to get back to Jeff.’’
Three weeks later, Lucey received a kit from Prudential Insurance, which provides life insurance benefits to veterans on behalf of the federal government. He had the option of receiving the $250,000 payment in a lump sum or 36 monthly installments. Like most people, Lucey opted for the lump sum, and Prudential explained it had set up an “Alliance Account’’ in his name.
Still reeling from Jeffrey’s death, he asked his wife, Joyce, what she wanted to do about the money.
“I didn’t want to hear it,’’ she recalled. “I said it was blood money.’’
They stashed the kit in a drawer.
Several months later, on the advice of a colleague, Kevin Lucey decided to withdraw the money and invest it more profit ably elsewhere. The paperwork had included what looked like a bank checkbook, so he wrote a draft for the balance. Prudential took nearly a month to send the money, he said.
Only much later did he learn that Prudential had never deposited any money in his account, instead investing it as part of its general account and passing on only a small portion of the interest earned, he said.
Kevin Lucey was at the wake for his son, Jeffrey, a Marine who had committed suicide at their Belchertown home in the summer of 2004, when military officers presented him with a stack of forms to sign.
“I never read them. I just signed,’’ he said. “I wanted to get back to Jeff.’’
Three weeks later, Lucey received a kit from Prudential Insurance, which provides life insurance benefits to veterans on behalf of the federal government. He had the option of receiving the $250,000 payment in a lump sum or 36 monthly installments. Like most people, Lucey opted for the lump sum, and Prudential explained it had set up an “Alliance Account’’ in his name.
Still reeling from Jeffrey’s death, he asked his wife, Joyce, what she wanted to do about the money.
“I didn’t want to hear it,’’ she recalled. “I said it was blood money.’’
They stashed the kit in a drawer.
Several months later, on the advice of a colleague, Kevin Lucey decided to withdraw the money and invest it more profit ably elsewhere. The paperwork had included what looked like a bank checkbook, so he wrote a draft for the balance. Prudential took nearly a month to send the money, he said.
Only much later did he learn that Prudential had never deposited any money in his account, instead investing it as part of its general account and passing on only a small portion of the interest earned, he said.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
I GOT THE ARMY STOP LOSSED ME AND STUCK ME IN JAIL BLUES
Imagine you’re a soldier in the United States Army. A stretch, probably, since less than two percent of Americans join the military, but try. You served with a combat unit in Iraq
The vast majority of soldiers suck it up and deploy, figuring that if they don’t go someone else will have to go in their place. Around 3,000 soldiers a year desert. Specialist Marc Hall composed a hardcore rap song titled “Stop lossed,” which ended up at the Pentagon. As a consequence, he spent over four months in jail awaiting court martial for what he considered his right to free expression.
Friday, April 16, 2010
WikiLeaks video -- ho hum
The Boston Globe published my letter today -- and got my name wrong.
It occasioned lively reader responses, though of the predictable sort. Still, it shows me (if not book editors) that readers still care about these endless, pointless wars.
Indiscriminate shooting of civilians in Iraq
April 16, 2010
THE GUNNING down of two Reuters employees and 10 Iraqi civilians from a US Army helicopter, as shown in a “graphic video’’ posted on WikiLeaks (“Video shows ’07 US air attack that killed news photographer, driver in Iraq,’’ Page A2, April 6), is being portrayed as both an anomaly and the cost of war. While it was the ultimate cost to the journalists, whose camera was mistaken for a weapon, and to the Iraqis who arrived to help the wounded after the first round of shots, the incident is unusual only in that it has come to the public’s attention.
When dozens of US veterans of the hostilities in Iraq testified in March 2008 at an event called Winter Soldier, they presented documented evidence that suggested the killing of unarmed civilians was frequent, systemic, pervasive, and a result of official policy. They also testified that the rules of engagement, which the soldiers in the leaked video apparently followed, were contradictory, often changed, and loosely enforced.
So it’s not surprising that the indiscriminate shooting of civilians sounds like just another day’s work. You can hear how routine it is in the voices of the gunship crew as they prepare to shoot and then survey their handiwork. The video comes with a warning that the images might be disturbing, but what is really disturbing is how distant and surgical — how commonplace — such actions have come to seem.
Nan Levinsonnan
Somerville
It occasioned lively reader responses, though of the predictable sort. Still, it shows me (if not book editors) that readers still care about these endless, pointless wars.
Indiscriminate shooting of civilians in Iraq
April 16, 2010
THE GUNNING down of two Reuters employees and 10 Iraqi civilians from a US Army helicopter, as shown in a “graphic video’’ posted on WikiLeaks (“Video shows ’07 US air attack that killed news photographer, driver in Iraq,’’ Page A2, April 6), is being portrayed as both an anomaly and the cost of war. While it was the ultimate cost to the journalists, whose camera was mistaken for a weapon, and to the Iraqis who arrived to help the wounded after the first round of shots, the incident is unusual only in that it has come to the public’s attention.
When dozens of US veterans of the hostilities in Iraq testified in March 2008 at an event called Winter Soldier, they presented documented evidence that suggested the killing of unarmed civilians was frequent, systemic, pervasive, and a result of official policy. They also testified that the rules of engagement, which the soldiers in the leaked video apparently followed, were contradictory, often changed, and loosely enforced.
So it’s not surprising that the indiscriminate shooting of civilians sounds like just another day’s work. You can hear how routine it is in the voices of the gunship crew as they prepare to shoot and then survey their handiwork. The video comes with a warning that the images might be disturbing, but what is really disturbing is how distant and surgical — how commonplace — such actions have come to seem.
Nan Levinsonnan
Somerville
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
response to Massachusetts election 1/19/10
Where do we go from here? I'm moving to a state of denial. (postal code: NO)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
You try to get out of the Army
Ever since Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood last month, the hunt has been on for a motive, preferably one the Army could have detected and thwarted and still be held harmless. It’s a long list, ranging from compassion fatigue to religious militancy, ineptitude to insanity, but it is clear that Hasan was desperate to avoid becoming one of the swarm of soldiers about to be sent to Afghanistan. This includes the possibility that he explored applying for conscientious objector, or CO, status, but Army officials counter that they have no record of any such attempt.
Of course they don’t.
Of course they don’t.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
War Is Not a Game
Prologue to War Is Not a Game
forthcoming book by Nan Levinson
forthcoming book by Nan Levinson
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
“We’re going over now. You ready?” A young veteran with a quicksilver smile and a soul patch asks a fellow vet grabbing a smoke outside the Holiday Inn in downtown St. Louis. They nod. The August heat wave, close to one-hundred degrees all week, has finally broken so that it’s no longer punishing to venture beyond air conditioning. The two veterans, one lanky, one solid as a door jamb, climb into a car where a few others wait and they all head down the street to the America’s Center and the Missouri Black Expo job fair, now in full swing.
The convention hall is big, echoing, over-lit and packed with job recruiters and seekers, but the clump of young men and women in black T-shirts with “Iraq Veterans Against the War” stenciled on the front are hard to miss as they make their way to a booth with “Go Army!” splayed across its canopy. Army recruiters and civilian employees stand behind a table laden with brochures and sign-up sheets, while teens and young men take turns playing America’s Army, a simulation game whose website proclaims it to be “The Only Game Based on the Experience of Real U.S. Army Soldiers.”
The buzz began the day before, when a handful of IVAW vets were hanging around the hotel lobby on a break from the panel sessions of their third annual meeting. There’s a job fair going on across the street, someone said, the Army’s got a recruiting booth, I saw them unloading a truck, we need to do something. They batted around ideas until someone, probably Steve Mortillo or Jabbar Magruder, suggested a sound off and it clicked. Quickly, the plan spread, a quiet signaling among the veterans. Now at the expo, they’re ready to act.
If you could take it with you...
At the turn of the millennium, The Women's Review of Books asked a bunch of its contributors what we would most want to bring from the past 1,000 years into the next. My contribution still holds:
A millennium? Most memorable, liberating, fun? What could empty my mind faster, except to ask my favorite anything? So, to winnow the task, I've taken a page from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese courtesan and fellow straddler of millennia, and made two lists of things that, for better or worse, arrived on the scene in the past thousand years. Feel free to add your own.
Things That Delight
The city of Florence. The idea of America: jazz, slang, public parks, public libraries, front porches. The toss-away grace of Fred Astaire, the arch wit of Oscar Wilde, Baryshnikov leaping, "A Lark Ascending," a Yeats poem, costume jewelry. The great clowns: Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin, Tati, Fo, the Marxes, Allen (Gracie), Ball (Lucy), Mary and Rhoda. Ice cream.
Things That Changed the Way We see
Sunglasses, Galileo, street lamps, Mercator, plastic, Henry the Navigator, carbon paper, photography. The stroboscope, the silicon chip, the printing press, daylight savings time. Hollywood, neon and limelight. Brunelleschi and Alberti. Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Political cartoons, LSD, wallpaper, picture postcards, glass mirrors, the minute hand on a watch, x-rays. Maya Lin's Vietnam memorial and Frank Gehry's Guggenheim. Anna Akhmatova who, waiting month after month outside a Leningrad prison where her son was held during a terror-laced time, was asked, "Can you describe this?" "I can," she answered. And then she did.
3-15-2003: before the war begins
The day begins with an email from a soldier in Kuwait. “I have no problem fighting off an oppressive government,” he writes. “I have no problem blowing someones head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family.” The problem he does have is the collusion between government and big business using the army for unconstitutional and economic gains. On and one he goes with so much anger against what he calls “our new oilnationstate.” His is not the first such rancor I’ve encountered from soldiers preparing for war.
A few hours later, a friend and I gather with others, hard to tell how many, lining Mass. Ave. about a mile west of Harvard Square with antiwar signs, many clever & pointed. My favorite is two kids with a boombox and a sign saying, “Dance for peace.” They do.
A woman next to us gives us her extra sign to hold and I bounce “NO WAR” up and down as cars pass and flash us the peace sign. “Cambridge,” my friend scoffs. It’s colder than I expected, so I’m not dressed warmly enough, but for a short time it feels like solidarity and that feels good.
We march to Harvard Square, those behind us chanting, “What do we want?”
“Peace”
“When do we want it?”
“Now.”
I’ve been yelling the same words for over half of my life and they’re wrong. I wanted peace yesterday and I want it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and goddamn, but I’m not going to get it, all this solidarity and voice-of-the-people aside. Today, I don’t yet know how easily my government will ignore the public outcry against this misbegotten war that hasn’t yet begun, though it’s clear to us all that it’s a forgone conclusion.
Late afternoon, I read from the pile of news stories my oldest friend has sent me about her father, Max Zera, who became, kind of by default, the press attache par excellence for the Army’s 1st division during WWII. The longest piece is a report from the Battle of the Bulge, written by a war correspondent I’ve never heard of: Iris Carpenter. It’s fine journalism and a horrific story. So much slaughter and misery. My friend says Max saw it as politically motivated. This is “the greatest generation,” mostly dead or dying, their greatness repackaged as all valor (which was real) and no horror.
“Your guy in Kuwait would be at the front of the battle if he were in that war,” my husband observes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I try to figure out at what point one country’s army should try to stop another’s. I fall asleep before I understand.
A few hours later, a friend and I gather with others, hard to tell how many, lining Mass. Ave. about a mile west of Harvard Square with antiwar signs, many clever & pointed. My favorite is two kids with a boombox and a sign saying, “Dance for peace.” They do.
A woman next to us gives us her extra sign to hold and I bounce “NO WAR” up and down as cars pass and flash us the peace sign. “Cambridge,” my friend scoffs. It’s colder than I expected, so I’m not dressed warmly enough, but for a short time it feels like solidarity and that feels good.
We march to Harvard Square, those behind us chanting, “What do we want?”
“Peace”
“When do we want it?”
“Now.”
I’ve been yelling the same words for over half of my life and they’re wrong. I wanted peace yesterday and I want it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and goddamn, but I’m not going to get it, all this solidarity and voice-of-the-people aside. Today, I don’t yet know how easily my government will ignore the public outcry against this misbegotten war that hasn’t yet begun, though it’s clear to us all that it’s a forgone conclusion.
Late afternoon, I read from the pile of news stories my oldest friend has sent me about her father, Max Zera, who became, kind of by default, the press attache par excellence for the Army’s 1st division during WWII. The longest piece is a report from the Battle of the Bulge, written by a war correspondent I’ve never heard of: Iris Carpenter. It’s fine journalism and a horrific story. So much slaughter and misery. My friend says Max saw it as politically motivated. This is “the greatest generation,” mostly dead or dying, their greatness repackaged as all valor (which was real) and no horror.
“Your guy in Kuwait would be at the front of the battle if he were in that war,” my husband observes. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I try to figure out at what point one country’s army should try to stop another’s. I fall asleep before I understand.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Gates Open to Sending More Troops to Afghanistan
How's that for a double entendre headline?
(in the Boston Globe, LA Times and other papers)
Saturday, August 29, 2009
communal conversation
I've reached the age of communal conversation in which enough people trying to remember together eventually come up with the word none of us can think of alone.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
exerpt from War is Not a Game: David Wilson's story
David Wilson, former Army sergeant & resister of sorts....
by Nan Levinson
Regardless of the official response, nearly all applicants for Conscientious Objection describe being ostracized by their peers and their chain of command and isolated at a particularly stressful time of their lives. David Wilson, an Army sergeant stationed in Kuwait before the invasion, emailed me after he turned in his CO packet that “people in my unit won’t look at me or they give me the evil eye.”
Wilson’s story is his alone, but it follows a familiar trajectory for soldiers who applied for conscientious objection early in the war, from his solo navigation of the process without the knowledgeable guidance of counselors who might have made it easier, to the Army’s maze of obstacles, to the disdain he came to have for the military mission in Iraq and the politicians who created it.
He grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father taught at the Citadel, his mother was a vocational high school principal, and his family worshiped at the Baptist church. (His faith is now in mountain biking.) Looking for money to pay off debt and to return to school, he enlisted in the Army in 2000 at the relatively late age of thirty. He was self-reliant, fit, and sure of himself, so he had no problem holding his own with the other, much younger enlistees. By the time he was sent to Kuwait in February 2003, he had risen to sergeant and was assigned to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command as an electronic warfare technician.
Wilson and I were introduced by another soldier in his unit, who had gotten out as a CO before the invasion. We exchanged emails in March and April of 2003 and resumed emailing, his preferred mode of communication, six years later. We didn’t know each other and, as with all these exchanges, he had nothing to gain by answering my questions, but answer he did, diligently, promptly and fully, even when his personal time was limited on the Army's computers in Kuwait.
Six weeks after he arrived there and one week before the invasion of Iraq, he wrote: “My position on going to war with Iraq is difficult to describe. I have no problem fighting off an oppressive govt. I have no problem blowing someone’s head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family. I do have a problem with a govt that uses its army to achieve those goals. I have a problem with a govt. that does not pay attention to actions it is taking that harm the Constitution that I was sworn to defend.”
A month later, still in Kuwait, it was a different story, as he wrote on drunkcyclist, a friend’s blog. “I hear missiles flying overhead and I get interviewed by CNN as they do a documentary. I feel relief when the A10s hit the persistent launcher in Basra with a missile. Then I get real angry. I wish bad things on those who do what they think is right for America.”
by Nan Levinson
Regardless of the official response, nearly all applicants for Conscientious Objection describe being ostracized by their peers and their chain of command and isolated at a particularly stressful time of their lives. David Wilson, an Army sergeant stationed in Kuwait before the invasion, emailed me after he turned in his CO packet that “people in my unit won’t look at me or they give me the evil eye.”
Wilson’s story is his alone, but it follows a familiar trajectory for soldiers who applied for conscientious objection early in the war, from his solo navigation of the process without the knowledgeable guidance of counselors who might have made it easier, to the Army’s maze of obstacles, to the disdain he came to have for the military mission in Iraq and the politicians who created it.
He grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father taught at the Citadel, his mother was a vocational high school principal, and his family worshiped at the Baptist church. (His faith is now in mountain biking.) Looking for money to pay off debt and to return to school, he enlisted in the Army in 2000 at the relatively late age of thirty. He was self-reliant, fit, and sure of himself, so he had no problem holding his own with the other, much younger enlistees. By the time he was sent to Kuwait in February 2003, he had risen to sergeant and was assigned to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command as an electronic warfare technician.
Wilson and I were introduced by another soldier in his unit, who had gotten out as a CO before the invasion. We exchanged emails in March and April of 2003 and resumed emailing, his preferred mode of communication, six years later. We didn’t know each other and, as with all these exchanges, he had nothing to gain by answering my questions, but answer he did, diligently, promptly and fully, even when his personal time was limited on the Army's computers in Kuwait.
Six weeks after he arrived there and one week before the invasion of Iraq, he wrote: “My position on going to war with Iraq is difficult to describe. I have no problem fighting off an oppressive govt. I have no problem blowing someone’s head off if they are trying to rob my house or harm my family. I do have a problem with a govt that uses its army to achieve those goals. I have a problem with a govt. that does not pay attention to actions it is taking that harm the Constitution that I was sworn to defend.”
A month later, still in Kuwait, it was a different story, as he wrote on drunkcyclist, a friend’s blog. “I hear missiles flying overhead and I get interviewed by CNN as they do a documentary. I feel relief when the A10s hit the persistent launcher in Basra with a missile. Then I get real angry. I wish bad things on those who do what they think is right for America.”
Friday, August 7, 2009
Can you kill one troop?
The appeal of using the word troops to stand in for soldiers, marines, sea- and airmen and women, not to mention the coast guard, which no one does, is demonstrated in this sentence. Journalists need to write succinctly (note to the publicity-conscious: if you want to show up in news reports, get a job title that's shorter than 4 words) and at the same time be inclusive of all manner and gender of military personnel -- another awkward term. So we get "Three U.S. troops killed in Iraq's Basra" from Reuters, and "Pentagon Plans to Send More Than 12,000 Additional Troops to Afghanistan" from US News and World Report to cite just 2 of hundreds of similar headlines. (With 4430 U.S. soldiers, marines, etc. killed in Iraq and 773 in Afghanistan as of today, and nearly 200,000 stationed in those countries, we have many occasions for the phrasing.)
"Troops killed" is short, nasty and brutish -- which is the problem. The collective noun erases the individual and smooths over the specificity of the lives interrupted and the deaths that have resulted from the wars. Troops don't seem like people -- maybe not to them either.
Journalism stylebooks say that troop used in the singular means a group of people, while the plural, troops, means several groups. They give their blessing to using troops to describe a large number of individuals -- it's understood to mean individuals, they say -- but what constitutes a large number isn't specified. AP and the New York Times stylebooks, industry standards, note that "Three troops were killed" is a no-no. Apparently a lot of headline writers and reporters didn't get the memo.
I'm not sure what a useful alternative would be. The dead get turned into casualties, the deployed into battalions or brigades (and, yes, Iraqis and Afghans are enemies when alive and have beeen dismissed as collateral damage when we've killed them, but that's a rant for another occasion). That's how the language works and we understand, don't we? But the collective term also dehumanizes the people we're talking about, making it easier for the vast majority of Americans who have nothing to do with anyone currently in the military to forget that these are mostly young, often unformed, sometimes bored, usually scared men and women and maybe making it easier for them to become dehumanized when they're sent into misbegotten fights that baffle and outrage them.
"Troops killed" is short, nasty and brutish -- which is the problem. The collective noun erases the individual and smooths over the specificity of the lives interrupted and the deaths that have resulted from the wars. Troops don't seem like people -- maybe not to them either.
Journalism stylebooks say that troop used in the singular means a group of people, while the plural, troops, means several groups. They give their blessing to using troops to describe a large number of individuals -- it's understood to mean individuals, they say -- but what constitutes a large number isn't specified. AP and the New York Times stylebooks, industry standards, note that "Three troops were killed" is a no-no. Apparently a lot of headline writers and reporters didn't get the memo.
I'm not sure what a useful alternative would be. The dead get turned into casualties, the deployed into battalions or brigades (and, yes, Iraqis and Afghans are enemies when alive and have beeen dismissed as collateral damage when we've killed them, but that's a rant for another occasion). That's how the language works and we understand, don't we? But the collective term also dehumanizes the people we're talking about, making it easier for the vast majority of Americans who have nothing to do with anyone currently in the military to forget that these are mostly young, often unformed, sometimes bored, usually scared men and women and maybe making it easier for them to become dehumanized when they're sent into misbegotten fights that baffle and outrage them.
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