Where war meets peace: Winter Soldiers challenge America with the truth about Iraq

[babylonsister]

Where war meets peace: Winter Soldiers challenge America with the truth about Iraq
by Robert C. Koehler | March 20, 2008


"I trained my weapon on him," Kristopher Goldsmith said. It was a little boy, 6 years old maybe, standing on a roof, menacing the soldiers with a stick. "I was thinking, I hate these Iraqis who throw rocks. I could kill this kid."

OK, America, let's look through the sights of Goldsmith's rifle for a long, long half-minute or so, draw a bead on the boy's heart, fondle the trigger -- what to do? The soldier's decision is our decision.

This is occupied Iraq: the uncensored version, presented to us with relentless, at times unbearable honesty over four intense days last week in a historic gathering outside Washington, D.C., of returning vets, many of them broken and bitter about what they were forced to do, and what's been done to them, in sometimes two, three, four tours of duty in the biggest mistake in American history.

"These are the times that try men's souls," Thomas Paine wrote in 1776. "The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

The vets who told their stories last week, in an event at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., sponsored by Iraq Vets Against the War, are the "winter soldiers" of the war on terror, standing in service to their country by bearing the truth to it, just as Vietnam vets held the first Winter Soldier gathering 37 years ago in Detroit, in the wake of the My Lai massacre revelations, to let the American public know that that massacre wasn't an aberration but, rather, the logical result of our brutal, official policy there.

Once again, the crisis we are in is the result of an official policy that has dehumanized an entire country, an entire people. Once again, we are waging a war that can only be "won" when the American people themselves demand an end to it. The men and women who spoke last week brought not just the truth but an imperative as urgent as a live grenade:

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[FirstLight]

1. Kick & Rec!

This is an amazing movement. I wish I could have been there to offer support to these brave men and their truthtelling.
I was moved, shocked, and sickened...more than ever, I wish there was a way to FINISH this travesty.

Thanks for posting this, Let's keep the conversation going

THIS WAR is the ONLY thing we should be discussing through the primaries and GE - it is the reason for myself and many others dealing with poverty and collapse in our own country, it is an atrocity on the Iraqis, and it has severly damaged us as a country, in word & deed...