The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (8 page)

President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law during the lame-duck session of Congress and was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” amid a flurry of fawning press reports. In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. history, and 2010 has seen the highest number of U.S. and NATO soldiers killed.

As of this writing, 497 of the reported 709 coalition fatalities in 2010 were U.S. soldiers. The website iCasualties.org has carefully tracked the names of these dead. There is no comprehensive list of the Afghans killed. But one thing is clear: Those 497 U.S. soldiers, under the command of the “Comeback Kid,” won’t be coming back.

On December 3, Commander in Chief Obama made a surprise visit to his troops in Afghanistan, greeting them and speaking at Bagram Air Base. Bagram is the air base built by the Soviet Union during that country’s failed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Now run by U.S. forces, it is also the site of a notorious detention facility. On December 10, 2002, almost eight years to the day before Obama spoke there, a young Afghan man named Dilawar was beaten to death at Bagram. The ordeal of his wrongful arrest, torture, and murder was documented in the Oscar-winning documentary by Alex Gibney,
Taxi to the Dark Side
. Dilawar was not the only one tortured and killed there by the U.S. military.

Obama told the troops: “We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re going on the offense, tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strongholds. Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control, and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future.”

Facts on the ground contradict his rosy assessment from many different directions. Maps made by the United Nations, showing the risk-level assessments of Afghanistan, were leaked to the
Wall Street Journal
. The maps described the risk to U.N. operations in every district of Afghanistan, rating them as “very high risk,” “high risk,” “medium risk,” and “low risk.” The
Journal
reported that, between March and October 2010, the U.N. found that southern Afghanistan remained at “very high risk,” while sixteen districts were upgraded to “high risk.” Areas deemed “low risk” shrank considerably.

And then there are the comments of NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Joseph Blotz: “There is no end to the fighting season. . . . We will see more violence in 2011.”

Long before WikiLeaks released the trove of U.S. diplomatic cables, two key documents were leaked to the
New York Times
. The “Eikenberry cables,” as they are known, were two memos from Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging a different approach to the Afghan War, with a focus on providing development aid instead of a troop surge. Eikenberry wrote of the risk that “we will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves, short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.”

A looming problem for the Obama administration, larger than a fraying international coalition, is the increasing opposition to the war among the public here at home. A recent
Washington Post
/ ABC News poll found that 60 percent believe the war has not been worth fighting, up from 41 percent in 2007. As Congress reconvenes, with knives sharpened to push for what will surely be controversial budget cuts, the close to $6 billion spent monthly on the war in Afghanistan will increasingly become the subject of debate.

As Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz repeatedly points out, the cost of war extends far beyond the immediate expenditures, with decades of decreased productivity among the many traumatized veterans, the care for the thousands of disabled veterans, and the families destroyed by the death or disability of loved ones. He says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion.

One of the main reasons Barack Obama is president today is that by openly opposing the U.S. war in Iraq, he won first the Democratic nomination and then the general election. If he took the same approach with the war in Afghanistan, by calling on U.S. troops to come back home, then he might truly become the “Comeback President” in 2012 as well.

May 4, 2011

Accomplish the Mission: Bring the Troops Home

On May 1, the U.S. president addressed the nation, announcing a military victory. May 1, 2003, that is, when President George W. Bush, in his form-fitting flight suit, strode onto the deck of the aircraft carrier USS
Lincoln
. Under the banner announcing “Mission Accomplished,” he declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

That was eight years to the day before President Barack Obama, without flight suit or swagger, made the surprise announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a U.S. military operation (in a wealthy suburb of Pakistan, notably, not Afghanistan).

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has become the longest war in U.S. history. News outlets now summarily report that “The Taliban have begun their annual spring offensive,” as if it were the release of a spring line of clothes. The fact is, this season has all the markings of the most violent of the war, or as the brave reporter Anand Gopal told me Tuesday from Kabul: “Every year has been more violent than the year before that, so it’s just continuing that trend. And I suspect the same to be said for the summer. It will likely be the most violent summer since 2001.”

Let’s go back to that fateful year. Just after the September 11 attacks, Congress voted to grant President Bush war authorization. The resolution passed the Senate 98–0, and passed the House 420–1. The sole vote against the invasion of Afghanistan was cast by California Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Her floor speech in opposition to House Joint Resolution 64 that September 14 should be required reading: “I rise today with a heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and loved ones who were killed and injured in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. . . . September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. . . . We must not rush to judgment. Far too many innocent people have already died. Our country is in mourning. If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children and other noncombatants will be caught in the crossfire. . . . As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ‘As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.’”

Ten years after her courageous speech, Lee, whose anti-war stance is increasingly becoming the new normal, wants a repeal of that war resolution: “That resolution was a blank check. . . . It was not targeted toward al-Qaida or any country. It said the president is authorized to use force against any nation, organization or individual he or she deems responsible or connected to 9/11. It wasn’t a declaration of war, yet we’ve been in the longest war in American history now, 10 years, and it’s open-ended.”

Lee acknowledges that Obama “did commit to begin a significant withdrawal in July.” But what does troop withdrawal mean with the presence of military contractors in war? Right now, the 100,000 contractors (called “mercenaries” by many) outnumber U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan.

Gopal says, “The U.S. is really a fundamental force for instability in Afghanistan . . . allying with local actors—warlords, commanders, government officials—who’ve really been creating a nightmare for Afghans, especially in the countryside, [and with] the night raids, breaking into people’s homes, airstrikes, just the daily life under occupation.”

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald has partnered with anti-war veterans to produce
Rethink Afghanistan
, a series of films about the war, online at RethinkAfghanistan.com. In response to bin Laden’s death, they have launched a new petition to press the White House to bring the troops home. Lee supports it: “I can’t overstate how important this is for our democracy—every poll has shown that over 65, 70 percent of the public now is war-weary. And they understand that we need to bring our young men and women out of harm’s way. They’ve performed valiantly and well. They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do, and now it’s time to bring them home.”

July 13, 2011

Soldier Suicides and the Politics of Presidential Condolences

President Barack Obama just announced a reversal of a longstanding policy that denied presidential condolence letters to the family members of soldiers who commit suicide. Relatives of soldiers killed in action receive letters from the president. Official silence, however, has long stigmatized those who die of self-inflicted wounds. The change marks a long-overdue shift in the recognition of the epidemic of soldier and veteran suicides in this country and the toll of the hidden wounds of war.

The denial of condolence letters was brought to national prominence when Gregg and Jannett Keesling spoke about the suicide of their son, Chancellor Keesling. Chance Keesling joined the Army in 2003. After active duty in Iraq, he moved to the Army Reserves, and was called back for a second deployment in April 2009. The years of war had taken a toll on the twenty-five-year-old. As his father, Gregg, told me: “He was trained for the rebuilding of Iraq. He was a combat engineer. He operated big equipment and loved to run the big equipment. Finally, he was retrained as a tactical gunner sitting on top of a Humvee. Because there was really very little rebuilding going on.”

When Chance came home, he sought mental-health treatment from Veterans Affairs. His marriage had failed, and he knew he needed to heal. He turned down the Army’s offer of a $27,000 bonus to redeploy. Ultimately, he was sent back to Iraq anyway. Two months after being redeployed there, Chance took his gun into a latrine and shot himself. The Pentagon reported his death was due to “a non-combat related incident.” Adding insult to the injury, the VA, five months after his death, sent Chance a letter that his parents received, asking him to complete his “Post Deployment Adjustment.”

Kevin and Joyce Lucey understand. Their son, Jeffrey, participated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Afterward, back home in Massachusetts, he showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He and his family found it next to impossible to get needed services from the VA. Jeffrey turned to self-medication with alcohol. He would dress in camouflage and walk the neighborhood, gun in hand. He totaled the family car. One night following his twenty-third birthday, Jeffrey curled up in his father’s lap, distraught. As Kevin recalled to me this week: “That night he asked if he could sit in my lap, and we rocked for about 45 minutes and then he went to his room. The following day on June 22, he once again was in my lap as I was cutting him down from the beams.” Jeffrey hanged himself in the Luceys’ basement. On his bed were the dog tags taken from Iraqi soldiers whom he said he had killed.

Since Jeffrey was technically a veteran and not active duty, his suicide is among the suspected thousands. Kevin Lucey summarized, in frustration: “The formal count of suicides that you hear is tremendously underestimated. . . . Jeff’s suicide is among the uncounted, the unknown, the unacknowledged. We have heard of presidential study commissions being established almost every year. How often do you have to study a suicide epidemic?”

There is no system for keeping track of veteran suicides. Some epidemiological studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others suggest that the suicide rate among veterans is seven to eight times higher than in the general population. One report, from 2005 and limited to sixteen states, found that veteran suicides comprised 20 percent of the total, an extraordinary finding given that veterans make up less than 1 percent of the population. PTSD is now thought to afflict up to 30 percent of close to 2 million active-duty soldiers and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Unemployment among young male veterans is now more than 22 percent.

Take one base: Fort Hood, Texas. Maj. Nidal Hasan faces the death penalty for allegedly murdering thirteen people there in November 2009, a horrific attack heavily spotlighted by the media. Less well known is the epidemic of suicides at the base. Twenty-two people took their own lives there in 2010 alone.

Neither the Luceys nor the Keeslings will get a presidential condolence letter, despite the policy change. The Keeslings won’t get it because the decision is not retroactive. The Luceys wouldn’t anyway because it narrowly applies only to those suicides by active-duty soldiers deployed in what is considered an active combat zone.

Sadly, those with PTSD can leave the war zone, but the war zone never leaves them. Some see suicide as their only escape. They, too, are casualties of war.

October 14, 2009

Lt. Choi Won’t Lie for His Country

Lt. Dan Choi doesn’t want to lie. Choi, an Iraq War veteran and a graduate of West Point, declared last March 19 on
The Rachel Maddow Show
, “I am gay.” Under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, those three words are enough to get Choi kicked out of the military. Choi has become a vocal advocate for repealing the policy, having spoken before tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their allies at last Sunday’s National Equality March in Washington, D.C.