There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Dec 2009
Truth in Recruiting - "Don't Believe the Hype!"
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Dec 2009
(scroll down for details about any story)
Lead Story from the past month's news:
Lone Gunman, A Rogue Soldier: 12 Dead in Ft. Hood Shooting, 31 Wounded
--Army psychiatrist driven crazy by Army goes on shooting spree in hysteric outburst on Army base in Texas
page 1
'DEPLOY OR LEAVE': New U.S. policy makes it easier to separate from the Army killing machine
--The Army is phasing out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program (involuntary mobilization, involuntary deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan). The new "Early Separation Program" applies to Regular Army enlisted soldiers who have at least 36 months of active service, but no more than 71 months of total service (the 71-month rule ensures they do not qualify for "separation pay"). Similar rules apply to members of the National Guard.
facts & figures:
The "Early Separation Program" applies to 9,120 soldiers, who are serving with deployed units beyond their contracted service end dates.
file under: the militarization of civilian life
The Pentagon's Long-Term Plan to Get Back on College Campuses
--so-called "Reserve Officer Training" makes rank-and-file recruits out of college students
facts & figures:
Since the endless war began in late 2001, the military budget for recruitment has more than doubled (from the already inflated $3.4 billion in 2004 to $7.7 billion in 2008), and many service branches still cannot meet their quotas.
Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'
--Peace Gathering in Hood River calls for end of Drone Warfare.
City Council Says No to Drone Attacks in Afghanistan
--Berkeley dipped into U.S. foreign policy
page 2
U.S. soldier from Norman, Oklahoma, found guilty of abusing subordinates in Iraq
--Sgt. Jarrett Taylor convicted of cruelty and maltreatment of subordinates
The Ft. Carson Murder Spree
Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?
Police: GI shot himself to avoid deployment
--A Fort Carson soldier set to return to Afghanistan intentionally shot himself in the shoulder to avoid deployment
Veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid Iraq
--Army veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid deployment to Iraq, collect benefits
Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
--U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan
backpage
featured op/ed piece
An American ex-Soldier/Diplomat and a British ex-Soldier Tell Their Leaders They Have No Clothes
--military veterans say "No" to the strategy of prolonging the Afghanistan Occupation
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
“Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss.”
~Norman Mailer, d.2007
lead story
Army psychiatrist driven crazy by Army goes on shooting spree in hysteric outburst on Army base
Lone Gunman: 12 Dead in Ft. Hood Shooting, 31 Wounded
Doctor Held in Shooting Was to Be Deployed to Afghanistan
by Jason Ditz, Nov 05, 2009
In the deadliest shooting ever on a domestic American military base, a military doctor, Virginia-born Major Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on troops in a crowded building in the middle of Fort Hood, America’s largest military base, killing 12 and wounding 31 others.
Maj. Hasan was initially reported as slain in the ensuing gunfight, but Gen. Cone later conceded that Hasan was alive and in stable condition despite having been shot several times. Though officials say it was a single gunman shooting, a second “person of interest” was captured on a golf course shortly after the incident.
Details about Hasan are still emerging, but he was born in Virginia of Jordanian descent, educated at Virginia Tech and had been serving as a psychiatrist on the base, helping returning soldiers to cope with difficulties related to combat stress.
Maj. Hasan was reportedly an outspoken critic of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and was said by CNN to have been disillusioned that President Obama did not withdraw forces from Iraq as he had promised. He had also been seeking a discharge from the Army for years, citing harrassment he received as a Muslim.
Officials had reportedly probed the major over comments he had made on the internet, but they say they had never conducted an actual investigation into them.
The situation appears to have come to a head, however, when Hasan recently learned that he would soon be deployed to Iraq. Before the shooting he reportedly gave away his copies of the Qu’ran and all of his furniture.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/05/12-killed-in-fort-hood-shooting/
More coverage:
Hasan, 39, is a graduate of Virginia Tech and a psychiatrist licensed in Virginia who was practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, according to military and professional records. Previously, he worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In June, Fort Hood's commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, told CNN that he was trying to ease the kind of stresses soldiers face. He has pushed for soldiers working a day schedule to return home for dinner by 6 p.m., and required his personal authorization for anyone working weekends. At the time, two soldiers stationed there had committed suicide in 2009 -- a rate well below those of other posts.
Nearby Killeen was the scene of one of the most deadly shootings in American history 18 years ago when George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20.
Hennard's spree lasted 14 minutes. He eventually took his own life.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/05/texas.fort.hood.shootings/index.html
From the archives:
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.
In a court-martial, it is rare for defendants to be acquitted on grounds of insanity, said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/us/16defend.html?_r=1&ref=us
Facts & Figures:
The Army has 408 psychiatrists--military, civilian and contractors--serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world
analysis:
The media's silly Fort Hood coverage
-- the real story is the failure of Army medicine
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/11/12/hasan_coverage/index.html
follow up on rash of suicides in the Army
After Fort Hood: Count All the Dead, including Suicides
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/06-4
facts & figures
In January 2009, more American soldiers committed suicide than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, but none of these deaths are listed in the official casualty count.
According to the VA, 1,000 soldiers attempt to commit suicide every month. Some 18 per day succeed.
source: Veterans' Administration
During Vietnam, 58,000 soldiers lost their lives; after Vietnam, 170,000 veterans committed suicide.
source: Veterans' Administration
Featured radio interview, on Armistice Day, Nov 11th 2009:
Independent journalist Dahr Jamail discusses the Ft. Hood massacre
--repeated deployments that are breaking military morale, and causing high veteran suicide rates
--on demand streaming audio: http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/11/12/dahr-jamail-13/
Featured op/ed
The fog of war envelops Fort Hood
http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/06/greene.fort.hood.killings/ind...
page 1
'DEPLOY OR LEAVE': New U.S. policy makes it easier to separate from the Army killing machine
The Army is phasing out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program (involuntary mobilization, involuntary deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan).
By Jim Tice - The Army Times
Nov 29, 2009
Some Regular Army enlisted soldiers soon will be told to either deploy or leave service as the Army phases out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program.
Soldiers who do not re-enlist or extend will be subject to the rules of a new program approved by Army leaders in mid-November. Under the Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program, in some cases soldiers may be involuntarily separated before their expiration term of service, or ETS.
The elimination of stop-loss across the Army’s three components began Aug. 1 for deploying Army Reserve units, and Sept. 1 for the Army National Guard.
The new "Early Separation Program" applies to Regular Army enlisted soldiers who have at least 36 months of active service, but no more than 71 months of total service (the 71-month rule ensures they do not qualify for "separation pay").
Soldiers who are already involuntarily deployed will remain under stop-loss until they return to home station or are demobilized. Some units will units will continue to deploy under stop-loss until Dec. 31, 2009. As announced last spring, stop-loss restrictions will not apply to active-component units that deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan and other contingency areas after Jan. 1., 2010.
The "Early Separation Program" applies to 372 Army Reserve, 3,930 National Guard and 4,818 Regular Army members, for a total of 9,120 soldiers, who are serving with deployed units beyond their contracted service end dates.
full details, including provisions for veterans' entitlements through socialized medicine known as the V.A. system, are available online:
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/army_deploy_or_leave_112809w/
The Pentagon's Long-Term Plan to Get Back on Campus
By Michael Schwartz, AlterNet
Nov 13 2009
A highly visible presence on college campuses (especially at high prestige campuses), the Pentagon hopes, will provide the opportunity for the military to integrate itself into campus life and therefore gain routine access to rank-and file students, who can potentially be encouraged to enlist as non-officers, where the real shortage lies. An especially attractive group is the students who are struggling in school, academically or financially. The daily access to them is a golden opportunity to siphon them off into the military, either as an alternative to school or as a temporary detour.
The pressure for new ROTC chapters originates in the military itself, a part of their extremely expensive and not-very-successful campaign to overcome the chronic shortages of soldiers.
Reasons why ROTC might not be welcome on campus:
* ROTC programs on campus allow the military to burnish its image while presenting its distinctly biases point of view about national and global issues to the campus. The most outrageous aspect of this is that the university gives students credit toward their degrees for learning military discipline and absorbing military propaganda, but the military's self promotion extends well beyond their formal classrooms. Officers are given "tours of duty" on the campus -- with all the rights and privileges (however meager) attendant with faculty status -- where they serve as instructors of for-credit classes, participate in campus intellectual and social life, and present viewpoints dictated by the Department of Defense. The DoD's advocacy of ROTC rests on ulterior motives. They want to use officer training as a way of penetrating college campuses, where they can market the military to college students while diffusing their view of the world into a difficult-to-influence sector of American society
* ROTC is the only program on university campuses that gives credit for courses that are not designed by qualified scholars and not taught by qualified scholars, and whose instructors are selected by an outside organization who also pays them and controls their lives. The instructors are under orders to teach specific content that has never been validated through any scholarly process and which would fail any such test. And the students subjected to this indoctrination are told by the University that this content is co-equal to other courses and given credit for taking them. And, unlike other courses of study, they are honored for completing this alien curriculum with high profile ceremonies on the campus which are attended and validated by the top officials of the University.
* When ROTC arrives on a campus, it seeks to saturate campus culture with its bloated and distorted version of military reality. A large part of this effort is the creation of a set of acceptable "narratives" about trajectory and experience of military service that are consistent with the goal of recruiting soldiers on the campus. Veterans, who have actual experience in the military, are fully aware of the mismatch between image and reality. As they begin to exit from the armed forces, student veterans face the incredibly complex and often very difficult transition to civilian life, that includes varying degrees of alienation, bitterness, and overt hostility to their armed forces. Public or even private display of these attitudes and issues can become highly visible contradictions to the accepted military narratives. These critical voices are stymied on campus by ROTC recruitment centers. Instead of a "safe rear area" where they can find themselves and make necessary adjustments that often include explicit criticism of their military experience, the campus becomes yet another location where they are required to play their appointed military role.
* ROTC does not serve student veterans, it is a training tool and a front-end recruitment device -- and it will inevitably seek to mold student veterans to advance these goals. With all its aggressive self-promotion and censorship of criticism of the military, ROTC exacerbates, rather than alleviates, the transition to civilian life, the back-end of most military careers. ROTC makes campuses less friendly to veterans, poisoning the waters for needed veterans' services, such as psychological counseling for shell shock. High-profile veterans' services on campus, such as treatment for PTSD or bureaucratic help with extracting benefits from the Veterans Administration, are inconsistent with the accepted narratives and can therefore become targets of reprisals from the military officers who inhabit the campus.
* Government scholarships, even with the strings attached, can be offered with no ROTC presence on the campus. If our government wants to give full scholarships to certain worthy students, no one would oppose such a program, though many would say that there should be no strings (i.e., four years of service in the military) attached. But offering such scholarships should not be used as blackmail to force campuses to integrate the Department of Defense into campus life.
* ROTC is part of the poverty draft, targeting college students who are struggling, academically or financially. The daily access to them on campus is a golden opportunity for military predators to siphon them off into the military, either as an alternative to completing college or at minimum as a temporary detour from a useful career in a civilian profession with a college degree. A ROTC presence on campus, contrary to the program's name (a kind of doublespeak) is intended to gain routine access to rank-and file students, who can potentially be encouraged to enlist as non-officers, where the real shortage lies. It is not true that ROTC programs are specifically intended to create officers ("leaders") out of the recruits they manage to indoctrinate; most ROTC so-called "graduates" are wanted for rank-and-file soldiering.
* Moving ROTC back onto elite campuses will result in a minute increase in the number of officers -- and besides the officer shortage is not where the big problem lies. In fact, the military regularly sends large numbers of already commissioned officers to universities for advanced degrees. These military-affiliated graduate students do not perform any military duties on the campus; they commute to nearby bases to fulfill these obligations. This is a sensible and economical way for the military to obtain the educational human capital that universities have to offer.
* Since the endless war began in late 2001, the military budget for recruitment has more than doubled (from the already inflated $3.4 billion in 2004 to $7.7 billion in 2008), and many service branches still cannot meet their quotas. ROTC chapters on campus do not make training more accessible for cadets or less expensive for the military.
[In a recent article, the New York Times] failed to interview faculty who oppose ROTC, students who oppose ROTC, and veterans who oppose ROTC. What kind of reporting is that?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/143947
Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'
Peace Gathering in Hood River calls for end of Drone Warfare.
by Tim King, for Salem-News
Nov-13-2009
HOOD RIVER, Ore. - Anti-war Veterans and other activists gathering for a special event Friday in Hood River, Oregon, say the new form of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq involves death being delivered by remote control from thousands of miles away.
Gordon Sturrock, co-founder of VeteransAgainstTorture.com, believes this death-from-beyond concept removes all signs of humanity from the process. He says for the pro-war set, "it is a new form of justice, It's a trial by Hellfire missile, quick and cheap. No need for expensive time consuming trials. No risk at all to American lives."
"Being a 'suspect', or sitting next to one, is all the reason needed to murder anyone our government has designated as a terrorist." He says the killing will become as easy, "as a push button video game".
Sturrock says the current generation is already desensitized to violence by years of exposure to violent video games and obscenely violent TV shows. He believes that there is a plan to greatly escalate this new form of warfare and death by proxy.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november132009/drones_tk.php
More information:
Recent article sent out by Hood River organizer Linda Short posted here, this article does well explaining the urgency of stopping drone production and use: veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=5
US drone strikes may break international law: UN veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=34
City Council Says 'No!' to Drone Attacks in Afghanistan
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Oct 29, 2009
Berkeley once again dipped into U.S. foreign policy Tuesday when its City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the Obama administration to withdraw troops and private armed contractors from Afghanistan and cease drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The issue proved to be the liveliest of the evening, with members of the public protesting when councilmembers Susan Wengraf and Linda Maio suggested postponing the item to correct ambiguous wording in the resolution.
Melody Ermachild Chavis, author of Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, said that Afghanistan’s perception of the United States had taken a turn for the worse since the U.S. occupied Afghanistan in 2001.
“Afghanistan was welcoming us before—if only everything had been different,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to say that that U.S. contribution in Afghanistan has been negative. We have bombed weddings, the children playing along the banks every day for eight years. If there are three things I could tell President Obama, it would be stop killing Afghanis, stop killing Afghanis, stop killing Afghanis.”
Code Pink’s Zanne Joi said it was important for Berkeley to step up because it was the “anti-war voice for the nation.”
“We are the peace voice for the nation,” she said. “There’s nothing we are doing in Afghanistan that’s moral.”
Peace and Justice commissioner Bob Meola, who wrote the agenda item, said that if the council didn’t pass it Tuesday, it might be too late.
“We can quibble over the wordsmithing, but I believe the train will leave the station,” agreed Councilmember Max Anderson. “We will miss an opportunity to weigh in on this if we leave foreign policy to others. We have troops in 140 countries around the world and presidents taking part in war crimes. Yes, we ought to get out of there rapidly, even if you think we are fighting the Taliban, even if you think we are fighting al Qaeda or propping up Pakistan. This is not the way to do it.”
The council’s resolution also supports a bill by U.S. Rep Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), which seeks to cease funding of the war in Afghanistan and calls for an exit strategy and withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
“Congresswoman Lee has a very good strategy—no more troops, no more money,” Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said. “Rather than us telling the president how he should do his job, we should just tell him not to expand the war.”
Councilmember Kriss Worthington said that Berkeley’s resolution was not meant to be a slap at Lee or Obama.
“Having a resolution like this will make it easier for her (Lee) to negotiate,” he said.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-10-29/article/33998?h...
more coverage:
As our Predator and Reaper drones scan the Afghan terrain below, launching missiles to decapitate terrorists while unintentionally taking innocents with them, we console ourselves by offering aid to the Afghans to help them improve or rebuild their country. As it happens, though, when the enemy hydra loses a head, another simply grows in its place, while collateral damage only leads to a new generation of vengeance-seekers. Meanwhile, promised aid gets funneled to multinational corporations or siphoned off by corrupt government officials, leaving little for Afghan peasants, certainly not enough to win their allegiance, let alone their “hearts and minds.”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/10/11/apocalypse-then-a...
page 2
U.S. soldier found guilty of abusing subordinates in Iraq
By Joe Sterling, CNN
Nov 21, 2009
CNN -- A U.S. military court demoted and jailed a soldier for mistreating troops in Iraq, behavior discovered during the investigation of another soldier's suicide.
Sgt. Jarrett Taylor, 23, of Edmond, Oklahoma, was convicted at a special court martial at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, that ended on Friday, the military said.
He was found guilty of making false official statements and cruelty and maltreatment of subordinates.
The soldier was reduced to the rank of private, sentenced to 180 days in confinement and ordered to forfeit $933 in pay for the next six months, the military said.
Taylor was among four Multi-National Division South soldiers who were charged with cruelty and maltreatment of soldiers in their platoon, Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, MNF-South spokesman in Basra, told CNN in an email Saturday. All were from the 13th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Bliss, Texas.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/21/iraq.soldier.convicted/in...
The Fort Carson Murder Spree
Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?
L. Christopher Smith
Nov 06, 2009
Three soldiers were responsible for a string of violent crimes that year in the area surrounding Fort Carson, Colorado.
In the six years since combat operations began in Iraq, Fort Carson — the country's third-largest Army base, with 22,000 active soldiers on duty — has become its own kind of killing field.
All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.
Spurred by public outrage, the Army conducted a six-month study into the Fort Carson killings, examining the medical and combat histories of the 14 accused soldiers. Like Bressler, nine of the vets served in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, which suffered a casualty rate in Iraq eight times higher than other Fort Carson units. The Army's 126-page report, released in July, marked the first time the military has ever acknowledged the significance of combat in the behavior of returning veterans. There is, according to the report, a "possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson...
Police: G.I. shot himself to avoid deployment
Associated Press
Oct 29, 2009
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Fort Carson soldier set to return to Afghanistan intentionally shot himself in the shoulder to avoid deployment, Colorado Springs police said.
Sgt. Robert Murchison, 26, and his girlfriend found a parking spot near Penrose-St. Francis main hospital on Wednesday night and then he shot himself in the car, police said.
Murchison and Chasaity Peoples, 28, first told police that they had stopped to help a stranded motorist and that the driver shot him.
Sgt. Jim Meyers said officers were suspicious and continued to question the couple, and Peoples finally confessed to what happened.
Murchison is expected to remain hospitalized for the next few days but should recover. He and his girlfriend could be charged with false reporting.
Murchison is with the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The 4th Brigade has lost 10 soldiers this month in Afghanistan, including eight killed in a single battle Oct. 3.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/ap_deployment_shoot_102909/
Veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid Iraq
--Army veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid deployment to Iraq, collect benefits
Jim Suhr, AP News
Nov 06, 2009
An Army veteran admitted in federal court Friday to plotting with his wife to bilk the U.S. government by faking paralysis after a car wreck to get disability benefits and avoid being deployed to Iraq.
Jeffrey Rush, 27, also pleaded guilty to fraud charges tied to his product-liability lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. and a seat-belt maker over the 2004 rollover accident he claimed led to his becoming a paraplegic.
Federal prosecutors alleged Rush, now of Nashville, Tenn., and wife Amy Rush, 25, stood to get millions of dollars in their scam, much of it in the Ford lawsuit that eventually was dropped by their attorney when he figured out he was being duped by the couple.
As part of the scheme, court records show, Rush received $107,857 in benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs and scammed $28,730 from the Social Security Administration. Court documents and discussions offered no details on how Rush perpetuated the scheme.
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/11/06/veteran-admits-faking-paralysis-...
Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
--U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan
Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.
Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.
According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland.
However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realised she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister.
Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.
Currently, Hutchinson is scheduled to fly to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court martial, where she then faces up to one year in jail.
Hutchinson’s civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, told IPS, “The core issue is that they are asking her to make an inhumane choice. She did not have a complete family care plan, meaning she did not find someone to provide long-term care for her child. She’s required to have a complete family care plan, and was told she’d have an extension, but then they changed it on her.”
Sussman told IPS that the Army’s JAG attorney, Captain Ed Whitford, “told me they thought her chain of command thought she was trying to get out of her deployment by using her child as an excuse.” ‘
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/army-sends-infant-to-protective-services-...
follow up:
Mother Refuses Deployment
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 16, 2009
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — An Army cook and single mother is under investigation and confined to her post after skipping her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her son while she was overseas.
The woman, Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, 21, said she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only relative who could care for her 10-month-old son, her mother, was overwhelmed by the task and already caring for three other relatives with health problems.
Her civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said one of Specialist Hutchinson’s superiors told her she would have to go anyway and put the child in foster care.
“For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,’ ” Ms. Sussman said. “She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17soldier.html?ref=us
featured op/ed piece
An American Diplomat and a British Soldier Tell Their Leaders They Have No Clothes : "No" to the Afghanistan War Strategy
by Ann Wright
Oct 28, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
British Army Lance Corporal Joe Glenton faces court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan. He defied a direct order by his commanding officer to not participate in the in the Saturday, October 24, 2009, Stop the War march in London.
Challenging his military command, Glenton told the 10,000 gathered for the march: "I expected to go to war but I also expected that the need to defend this country's interests would be legal and justifiable. I don't think this is too much to ask. It's now apparent that the conflict is neither of these and that's why I must make this stand.
"It is distressing to disobey orders, but when Britain follows America in continuing to wage war against one of the world's poorest countries, I feel I have no choice. Politicians have abused the trust of the army and the soldiers who serve, that's why I am compelled and proud to march with the Stop The War Coalition today." (http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1561/1/)
On the day that the United States suffered the greatest number of deaths in its 8 year war in Afghanistan and in the month with the most casualties, an American diplomat assigned in Afghanistan resigned. As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned in March, 2009 in opposition to the Iraq war (http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103wright.htm), I had been wondering how long the next resignation from the U.S. government over war policies would take.
Six weeks ago, on September 10, 2009, U.S. diplomat Matthew Hoh sent a letter of resignation to the Director General of the State Department over his concern about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Hoh had served six years in the U.S. Marine Corps and had one combat tour in Iraq as a Marine Corps Captain and a second tour in Iraq as a Department of Defense civilian.
Hoh, who had been in Afghanistan five months as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. government is Zabal province, questioned "why and to what end" the United States is in Afghanistan. Hoh said that "Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state while encouraging and an ideology and government unknown and unwanted by its people."... "The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led by non-Pashtun soldiers and police provide an occupation force against which an insurgency is justified." "The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan contributes greatly to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency."
Hoh described the Afghan government as corrupt and said "Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our nation's own internal peace, against an insurgency we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology."
He commented that the US support "for the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the people from their government. The Afghan government's failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars appear legion and metastatic:
--Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
--A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
--A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and power brokers allied with the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation, and;
--The recent electoral process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government's military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.p...)
Senior officials in the State Department including US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke tried to get Hoh to stay in the State Department arguing that if he "wanted to affect policy then he should be inside the state Department, not outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact." Holbrook even said that he "agreed with much of Hoh's analysis, although not his conclusion that the war wasn't worth the fight."
On Friday, October 23, Hoh decided not to remain in the State Department and made his resignation effective on that date saying he had decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/27/matthew-hoh-afghanistan...) Hoh's resignation became public with the Washington Post article on October 27, 2009 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2...)
I was in Afghanistan three weeks ago, returning for the first time since I helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001. Eight years ago I had hopes that a short term United States presence might help the Afghan people out of the cycle of violence and that roads, schools and clinics could be built quickly before our "welcome" was worn out. The Bush administration's diversion to invade and occupy Iraq short-circuited those hopes.
Now eight years later, there is little security in the country, despite 100,000 international troops, including 68,000 U.S. military, plus 90,000 U.S. trained Afghan soldiers. According to a senior Army logistics officer, Afghanistan's roads are mined by insurgents forcing 180 U.S. military outposts to be resupplied by helicopters. "We don't have freedom of movement on the ground," a senior Army logistics officer says. "We're resupplying between 30% and 40% of our forward operating bases by air because we just can't get to them on the ground." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091027/us_time/08599193238600)
In the three weeks since I left Afghanistan, on October 8, a suicide bomber drove unimpeded on the "secure" road in front of the Indian Embassy and exploded the car killing 17 and wounding 76. In July, 2008, another car bomber killed 41 and injured 139 at the gates of Indian Embassy.
Today, on October 28, 2009, Taliban gunmen dressed in old police uniforms came into a United Nations guest house in Kabul and killed six UN staff and wounded nine other UN employees. Six Afghans including three attackers were killed. Also, today, rockets hit the Serena hotel used by many international visitors in Kabul and the Presidential Palace, but no casualties have been reported. On September 17, 2009, a suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians on one of Kabul's main roadways. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091028/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan)
When senior policy makers will not be honest with decision makers, sometimes it's the more junior government employees who have the strength of character and courage to tell their Presidents and Prime Ministers when they and their policies have no clothes.
Matthew Hoh and Lance Corporal Joe Glenton have proven to be voices of conscience for us all.
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who
The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for Dec 2009
(scroll down for details about any story)
Lead Story from the past month's news:
Lone Gunman, A Rogue Soldier: 12 Dead in Ft. Hood Shooting, 31 Wounded
--Army psychiatrist driven crazy by Army goes on shooting spree in hysteric outburst on Army base in Texas
page 1
'DEPLOY OR LEAVE': New U.S. policy makes it easier to separate from the Army killing machine
--The Army is phasing out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program (involuntary mobilization, involuntary deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan). The new "Early Separation Program" applies to Regular Army enlisted soldiers who have at least 36 months of active service, but no more than 71 months of total service (the 71-month rule ensures they do not qualify for "separation pay"). Similar rules apply to members of the National Guard.
facts & figures:
The "Early Separation Program" applies to 9,120 soldiers, who are serving with deployed units beyond their contracted service end dates.
file under: the militarization of civilian life
The Pentagon's Long-Term Plan to Get Back on College Campuses
--so-called "Reserve Officer Training" makes rank-and-file recruits out of college students
facts & figures:
Since the endless war began in late 2001, the military budget for recruitment has more than doubled (from the already inflated $3.4 billion in 2004 to $7.7 billion in 2008), and many service branches still cannot meet their quotas.
Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'
--Peace Gathering in Hood River calls for end of Drone Warfare.
City Council Says No to Drone Attacks in Afghanistan
--Berkeley dipped into U.S. foreign policy
page 2
U.S. soldier from Norman, Oklahoma, found guilty of abusing subordinates in Iraq
--Sgt. Jarrett Taylor convicted of cruelty and maltreatment of subordinates
The Ft. Carson Murder Spree
Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?
Police: GI shot himself to avoid deployment
--A Fort Carson soldier set to return to Afghanistan intentionally shot himself in the shoulder to avoid deployment
Veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid Iraq
--Army veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid deployment to Iraq, collect benefits
Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
--U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan
backpage
featured op/ed piece
An American ex-Soldier/Diplomat and a British ex-Soldier Tell Their Leaders They Have No Clothes
--military veterans say "No" to the strategy of prolonging the Afghanistan Occupation
epitaph for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"
“Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss.”
~Norman Mailer, d.2007
lead story
Army psychiatrist driven crazy by Army goes on shooting spree in hysteric outburst on Army base
Lone Gunman: 12 Dead in Ft. Hood Shooting, 31 Wounded
Doctor Held in Shooting Was to Be Deployed to Afghanistan
by Jason Ditz, Nov 05, 2009
In the deadliest shooting ever on a domestic American military base, a military doctor, Virginia-born Major Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on troops in a crowded building in the middle of Fort Hood, America’s largest military base, killing 12 and wounding 31 others.
Maj. Hasan was initially reported as slain in the ensuing gunfight, but Gen. Cone later conceded that Hasan was alive and in stable condition despite having been shot several times. Though officials say it was a single gunman shooting, a second “person of interest” was captured on a golf course shortly after the incident.
Details about Hasan are still emerging, but he was born in Virginia of Jordanian descent, educated at Virginia Tech and had been serving as a psychiatrist on the base, helping returning soldiers to cope with difficulties related to combat stress.
Maj. Hasan was reportedly an outspoken critic of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and was said by CNN to have been disillusioned that President Obama did not withdraw forces from Iraq as he had promised. He had also been seeking a discharge from the Army for years, citing harrassment he received as a Muslim.
Officials had reportedly probed the major over comments he had made on the internet, but they say they had never conducted an actual investigation into them.
The situation appears to have come to a head, however, when Hasan recently learned that he would soon be deployed to Iraq. Before the shooting he reportedly gave away his copies of the Qu’ran and all of his furniture.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/05/12-killed-in-fort-hood-shooting/
More coverage:
Hasan, 39, is a graduate of Virginia Tech and a psychiatrist licensed in Virginia who was practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, according to military and professional records. Previously, he worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
In June, Fort Hood's commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, told CNN that he was trying to ease the kind of stresses soldiers face. He has pushed for soldiers working a day schedule to return home for dinner by 6 p.m., and required his personal authorization for anyone working weekends. At the time, two soldiers stationed there had committed suicide in 2009 -- a rate well below those of other posts.
Nearby Killeen was the scene of one of the most deadly shootings in American history 18 years ago when George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20.
Hennard's spree lasted 14 minutes. He eventually took his own life.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/05/texas.fort.hood.shootings/index.html
From the archives:
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.
In a court-martial, it is rare for defendants to be acquitted on grounds of insanity, said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/us/16defend.html?_r=1&ref=us
Facts & Figures:
The Army has 408 psychiatrists--military, civilian and contractors--serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world
analysis:
The media's silly Fort Hood coverage
-- the real story is the failure of Army medicine
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/11/12/hasan_coverage/index.html
follow up on rash of suicides in the Army
After Fort Hood: Count All the Dead, including Suicides
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/06-4
facts & figures
In January 2009, more American soldiers committed suicide than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, but none of these deaths are listed in the official casualty count.
According to the VA, 1,000 soldiers attempt to commit suicide every month. Some 18 per day succeed.
source: Veterans' Administration
During Vietnam, 58,000 soldiers lost their lives; after Vietnam, 170,000 veterans committed suicide.
source: Veterans' Administration
Featured radio interview, on Armistice Day, Nov 11th 2009:
Independent journalist Dahr Jamail discusses the Ft. Hood massacre
--repeated deployments that are breaking military morale, and causing high veteran suicide rates
--on demand streaming audio: http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/11/12/dahr-jamail-13/
Featured op/ed
The fog of war envelops Fort Hood
http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/06/greene.fort.hood.killings/ind...
page 1
'DEPLOY OR LEAVE': New U.S. policy makes it easier to separate from the Army killing machine
The Army is phasing out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program (involuntary mobilization, involuntary deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan).
By Jim Tice - The Army Times
Nov 29, 2009
Some Regular Army enlisted soldiers soon will be told to either deploy or leave service as the Army phases out the controversial and unpopular stop-loss program.
Soldiers who do not re-enlist or extend will be subject to the rules of a new program approved by Army leaders in mid-November. Under the Enlisted Involuntary Early Separation Program, in some cases soldiers may be involuntarily separated before their expiration term of service, or ETS.
The elimination of stop-loss across the Army’s three components began Aug. 1 for deploying Army Reserve units, and Sept. 1 for the Army National Guard.
The new "Early Separation Program" applies to Regular Army enlisted soldiers who have at least 36 months of active service, but no more than 71 months of total service (the 71-month rule ensures they do not qualify for "separation pay").
Soldiers who are already involuntarily deployed will remain under stop-loss until they return to home station or are demobilized. Some units will units will continue to deploy under stop-loss until Dec. 31, 2009. As announced last spring, stop-loss restrictions will not apply to active-component units that deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan and other contingency areas after Jan. 1., 2010.
The "Early Separation Program" applies to 372 Army Reserve, 3,930 National Guard and 4,818 Regular Army members, for a total of 9,120 soldiers, who are serving with deployed units beyond their contracted service end dates.
full details, including provisions for veterans' entitlements through socialized medicine known as the V.A. system, are available online:
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/army_deploy_or_leave_112809w/
The Pentagon's Long-Term Plan to Get Back on Campus
By Michael Schwartz, AlterNet
Nov 13 2009
A highly visible presence on college campuses (especially at high prestige campuses), the Pentagon hopes, will provide the opportunity for the military to integrate itself into campus life and therefore gain routine access to rank-and file students, who can potentially be encouraged to enlist as non-officers, where the real shortage lies. An especially attractive group is the students who are struggling in school, academically or financially. The daily access to them is a golden opportunity to siphon them off into the military, either as an alternative to school or as a temporary detour.
The pressure for new ROTC chapters originates in the military itself, a part of their extremely expensive and not-very-successful campaign to overcome the chronic shortages of soldiers.
Reasons why ROTC might not be welcome on campus:
* ROTC programs on campus allow the military to burnish its image while presenting its distinctly biases point of view about national and global issues to the campus. The most outrageous aspect of this is that the university gives students credit toward their degrees for learning military discipline and absorbing military propaganda, but the military's self promotion extends well beyond their formal classrooms. Officers are given "tours of duty" on the campus -- with all the rights and privileges (however meager) attendant with faculty status -- where they serve as instructors of for-credit classes, participate in campus intellectual and social life, and present viewpoints dictated by the Department of Defense. The DoD's advocacy of ROTC rests on ulterior motives. They want to use officer training as a way of penetrating college campuses, where they can market the military to college students while diffusing their view of the world into a difficult-to-influence sector of American society
* ROTC is the only program on university campuses that gives credit for courses that are not designed by qualified scholars and not taught by qualified scholars, and whose instructors are selected by an outside organization who also pays them and controls their lives. The instructors are under orders to teach specific content that has never been validated through any scholarly process and which would fail any such test. And the students subjected to this indoctrination are told by the University that this content is co-equal to other courses and given credit for taking them. And, unlike other courses of study, they are honored for completing this alien curriculum with high profile ceremonies on the campus which are attended and validated by the top officials of the University.
* When ROTC arrives on a campus, it seeks to saturate campus culture with its bloated and distorted version of military reality. A large part of this effort is the creation of a set of acceptable "narratives" about trajectory and experience of military service that are consistent with the goal of recruiting soldiers on the campus. Veterans, who have actual experience in the military, are fully aware of the mismatch between image and reality. As they begin to exit from the armed forces, student veterans face the incredibly complex and often very difficult transition to civilian life, that includes varying degrees of alienation, bitterness, and overt hostility to their armed forces. Public or even private display of these attitudes and issues can become highly visible contradictions to the accepted military narratives. These critical voices are stymied on campus by ROTC recruitment centers. Instead of a "safe rear area" where they can find themselves and make necessary adjustments that often include explicit criticism of their military experience, the campus becomes yet another location where they are required to play their appointed military role.
* ROTC does not serve student veterans, it is a training tool and a front-end recruitment device -- and it will inevitably seek to mold student veterans to advance these goals. With all its aggressive self-promotion and censorship of criticism of the military, ROTC exacerbates, rather than alleviates, the transition to civilian life, the back-end of most military careers. ROTC makes campuses less friendly to veterans, poisoning the waters for needed veterans' services, such as psychological counseling for shell shock. High-profile veterans' services on campus, such as treatment for PTSD or bureaucratic help with extracting benefits from the Veterans Administration, are inconsistent with the accepted narratives and can therefore become targets of reprisals from the military officers who inhabit the campus.
* Government scholarships, even with the strings attached, can be offered with no ROTC presence on the campus. If our government wants to give full scholarships to certain worthy students, no one would oppose such a program, though many would say that there should be no strings (i.e., four years of service in the military) attached. But offering such scholarships should not be used as blackmail to force campuses to integrate the Department of Defense into campus life.
* ROTC is part of the poverty draft, targeting college students who are struggling, academically or financially. The daily access to them on campus is a golden opportunity for military predators to siphon them off into the military, either as an alternative to completing college or at minimum as a temporary detour from a useful career in a civilian profession with a college degree. A ROTC presence on campus, contrary to the program's name (a kind of doublespeak) is intended to gain routine access to rank-and file students, who can potentially be encouraged to enlist as non-officers, where the real shortage lies. It is not true that ROTC programs are specifically intended to create officers ("leaders") out of the recruits they manage to indoctrinate; most ROTC so-called "graduates" are wanted for rank-and-file soldiering.
* Moving ROTC back onto elite campuses will result in a minute increase in the number of officers -- and besides the officer shortage is not where the big problem lies. In fact, the military regularly sends large numbers of already commissioned officers to universities for advanced degrees. These military-affiliated graduate students do not perform any military duties on the campus; they commute to nearby bases to fulfill these obligations. This is a sensible and economical way for the military to obtain the educational human capital that universities have to offer.
* Since the endless war began in late 2001, the military budget for recruitment has more than doubled (from the already inflated $3.4 billion in 2004 to $7.7 billion in 2008), and many service branches still cannot meet their quotas. ROTC chapters on campus do not make training more accessible for cadets or less expensive for the military.
[In a recent article, the New York Times] failed to interview faculty who oppose ROTC, students who oppose ROTC, and veterans who oppose ROTC. What kind of reporting is that?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/143947
Veterans Gather in Protest of 'Death by Remote Control'
Peace Gathering in Hood River calls for end of Drone Warfare.
by Tim King, for Salem-News
Nov-13-2009
HOOD RIVER, Ore. - Anti-war Veterans and other activists gathering for a special event Friday in Hood River, Oregon, say the new form of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq involves death being delivered by remote control from thousands of miles away.
Gordon Sturrock, co-founder of VeteransAgainstTorture.com, believes this death-from-beyond concept removes all signs of humanity from the process. He says for the pro-war set, "it is a new form of justice, It's a trial by Hellfire missile, quick and cheap. No need for expensive time consuming trials. No risk at all to American lives."
"Being a 'suspect', or sitting next to one, is all the reason needed to murder anyone our government has designated as a terrorist." He says the killing will become as easy, "as a push button video game".
Sturrock says the current generation is already desensitized to violence by years of exposure to violent video games and obscenely violent TV shows. He believes that there is a plan to greatly escalate this new form of warfare and death by proxy.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november132009/drones_tk.php
More information:
Recent article sent out by Hood River organizer Linda Short posted here, this article does well explaining the urgency of stopping drone production and use: veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=5
US drone strikes may break international law: UN veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=34
City Council Says 'No!' to Drone Attacks in Afghanistan
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Oct 29, 2009
Berkeley once again dipped into U.S. foreign policy Tuesday when its City Council unanimously passed a resolution asking the Obama administration to withdraw troops and private armed contractors from Afghanistan and cease drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The issue proved to be the liveliest of the evening, with members of the public protesting when councilmembers Susan Wengraf and Linda Maio suggested postponing the item to correct ambiguous wording in the resolution.
Melody Ermachild Chavis, author of Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, said that Afghanistan’s perception of the United States had taken a turn for the worse since the U.S. occupied Afghanistan in 2001.
“Afghanistan was welcoming us before—if only everything had been different,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to say that that U.S. contribution in Afghanistan has been negative. We have bombed weddings, the children playing along the banks every day for eight years. If there are three things I could tell President Obama, it would be stop killing Afghanis, stop killing Afghanis, stop killing Afghanis.”
Code Pink’s Zanne Joi said it was important for Berkeley to step up because it was the “anti-war voice for the nation.”
“We are the peace voice for the nation,” she said. “There’s nothing we are doing in Afghanistan that’s moral.”
Peace and Justice commissioner Bob Meola, who wrote the agenda item, said that if the council didn’t pass it Tuesday, it might be too late.
“We can quibble over the wordsmithing, but I believe the train will leave the station,” agreed Councilmember Max Anderson. “We will miss an opportunity to weigh in on this if we leave foreign policy to others. We have troops in 140 countries around the world and presidents taking part in war crimes. Yes, we ought to get out of there rapidly, even if you think we are fighting the Taliban, even if you think we are fighting al Qaeda or propping up Pakistan. This is not the way to do it.”
The council’s resolution also supports a bill by U.S. Rep Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), which seeks to cease funding of the war in Afghanistan and calls for an exit strategy and withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.
“Congresswoman Lee has a very good strategy—no more troops, no more money,” Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said. “Rather than us telling the president how he should do his job, we should just tell him not to expand the war.”
Councilmember Kriss Worthington said that Berkeley’s resolution was not meant to be a slap at Lee or Obama.
“Having a resolution like this will make it easier for her (Lee) to negotiate,” he said.
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-10-29/article/33998?h...
more coverage:
As our Predator and Reaper drones scan the Afghan terrain below, launching missiles to decapitate terrorists while unintentionally taking innocents with them, we console ourselves by offering aid to the Afghans to help them improve or rebuild their country. As it happens, though, when the enemy hydra loses a head, another simply grows in its place, while collateral damage only leads to a new generation of vengeance-seekers. Meanwhile, promised aid gets funneled to multinational corporations or siphoned off by corrupt government officials, leaving little for Afghan peasants, certainly not enough to win their allegiance, let alone their “hearts and minds.”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/10/11/apocalypse-then-a...
page 2
U.S. soldier found guilty of abusing subordinates in Iraq
By Joe Sterling, CNN
Nov 21, 2009
CNN -- A U.S. military court demoted and jailed a soldier for mistreating troops in Iraq, behavior discovered during the investigation of another soldier's suicide.
Sgt. Jarrett Taylor, 23, of Edmond, Oklahoma, was convicted at a special court martial at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, that ended on Friday, the military said.
He was found guilty of making false official statements and cruelty and maltreatment of subordinates.
The soldier was reduced to the rank of private, sentenced to 180 days in confinement and ordered to forfeit $933 in pay for the next six months, the military said.
Taylor was among four Multi-National Division South soldiers who were charged with cruelty and maltreatment of soldiers in their platoon, Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, MNF-South spokesman in Basra, told CNN in an email Saturday. All were from the 13th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Bliss, Texas.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/21/iraq.soldier.convicted/in...
The Fort Carson Murder Spree
Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?
L. Christopher Smith
Nov 06, 2009
Three soldiers were responsible for a string of violent crimes that year in the area surrounding Fort Carson, Colorado.
In the six years since combat operations began in Iraq, Fort Carson — the country's third-largest Army base, with 22,000 active soldiers on duty — has become its own kind of killing field.
All told, the military acknowledged this summer, 14 soldiers from the base have been charged or convicted in at least 11 slayings since 2005 — the largest killing spree involving soldiers at a single U.S. military installation in modern history.
Spurred by public outrage, the Army conducted a six-month study into the Fort Carson killings, examining the medical and combat histories of the 14 accused soldiers. Like Bressler, nine of the vets served in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, which suffered a casualty rate in Iraq eight times higher than other Fort Carson units. The Army's 126-page report, released in July, marked the first time the military has ever acknowledged the significance of combat in the behavior of returning veterans. There is, according to the report, a "possible association between increasing levels of combat exposure and risk for negative behavioral outcomes."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson...
Police: G.I. shot himself to avoid deployment
Associated Press
Oct 29, 2009
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Fort Carson soldier set to return to Afghanistan intentionally shot himself in the shoulder to avoid deployment, Colorado Springs police said.
Sgt. Robert Murchison, 26, and his girlfriend found a parking spot near Penrose-St. Francis main hospital on Wednesday night and then he shot himself in the car, police said.
Murchison and Chasaity Peoples, 28, first told police that they had stopped to help a stranded motorist and that the driver shot him.
Sgt. Jim Meyers said officers were suspicious and continued to question the couple, and Peoples finally confessed to what happened.
Murchison is expected to remain hospitalized for the next few days but should recover. He and his girlfriend could be charged with false reporting.
Murchison is with the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The 4th Brigade has lost 10 soldiers this month in Afghanistan, including eight killed in a single battle Oct. 3.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/ap_deployment_shoot_102909/
Veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid Iraq
--Army veteran admits faking paralysis to avoid deployment to Iraq, collect benefits
Jim Suhr, AP News
Nov 06, 2009
An Army veteran admitted in federal court Friday to plotting with his wife to bilk the U.S. government by faking paralysis after a car wreck to get disability benefits and avoid being deployed to Iraq.
Jeffrey Rush, 27, also pleaded guilty to fraud charges tied to his product-liability lawsuit against Ford Motor Co. and a seat-belt maker over the 2004 rollover accident he claimed led to his becoming a paraplegic.
Federal prosecutors alleged Rush, now of Nashville, Tenn., and wife Amy Rush, 25, stood to get millions of dollars in their scam, much of it in the Ford lawsuit that eventually was dropped by their attorney when he figured out he was being duped by the couple.
As part of the scheme, court records show, Rush received $107,857 in benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs and scammed $28,730 from the Social Security Administration. Court documents and discussions offered no details on how Rush perpetuated the scheme.
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/11/06/veteran-admits-faking-paralysis-...
Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan
--U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan
Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.
Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.
According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland.
However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realised she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister.
Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.
Currently, Hutchinson is scheduled to fly to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court martial, where she then faces up to one year in jail.
Hutchinson’s civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, told IPS, “The core issue is that they are asking her to make an inhumane choice. She did not have a complete family care plan, meaning she did not find someone to provide long-term care for her child. She’s required to have a complete family care plan, and was told she’d have an extension, but then they changed it on her.”
Sussman told IPS that the Army’s JAG attorney, Captain Ed Whitford, “told me they thought her chain of command thought she was trying to get out of her deployment by using her child as an excuse.” ‘
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/army-sends-infant-to-protective-services-...
follow up:
Mother Refuses Deployment
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 16, 2009
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — An Army cook and single mother is under investigation and confined to her post after skipping her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her son while she was overseas.
The woman, Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, 21, said she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only relative who could care for her 10-month-old son, her mother, was overwhelmed by the task and already caring for three other relatives with health problems.
Her civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said one of Specialist Hutchinson’s superiors told her she would have to go anyway and put the child in foster care.
“For her it was like, ‘I couldn’t abandon my child,’ ” Ms. Sussman said. “She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17soldier.html?ref=us
featured op/ed piece
An American Diplomat and a British Soldier Tell Their Leaders They Have No Clothes : "No" to the Afghanistan War Strategy
by Ann Wright
Oct 28, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
British Army Lance Corporal Joe Glenton faces court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan. He defied a direct order by his commanding officer to not participate in the in the Saturday, October 24, 2009, Stop the War march in London.
Challenging his military command, Glenton told the 10,000 gathered for the march: "I expected to go to war but I also expected that the need to defend this country's interests would be legal and justifiable. I don't think this is too much to ask. It's now apparent that the conflict is neither of these and that's why I must make this stand.
"It is distressing to disobey orders, but when Britain follows America in continuing to wage war against one of the world's poorest countries, I feel I have no choice. Politicians have abused the trust of the army and the soldiers who serve, that's why I am compelled and proud to march with the Stop The War Coalition today." (http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1561/1/)
On the day that the United States suffered the greatest number of deaths in its 8 year war in Afghanistan and in the month with the most casualties, an American diplomat assigned in Afghanistan resigned. As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned in March, 2009 in opposition to the Iraq war (http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0303/032103wright.htm), I had been wondering how long the next resignation from the U.S. government over war policies would take.
Six weeks ago, on September 10, 2009, U.S. diplomat Matthew Hoh sent a letter of resignation to the Director General of the State Department over his concern about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Hoh had served six years in the U.S. Marine Corps and had one combat tour in Iraq as a Marine Corps Captain and a second tour in Iraq as a Department of Defense civilian.
Hoh, who had been in Afghanistan five months as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. government is Zabal province, questioned "why and to what end" the United States is in Afghanistan. Hoh said that "Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state while encouraging and an ideology and government unknown and unwanted by its people."... "The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led by non-Pashtun soldiers and police provide an occupation force against which an insurgency is justified." "The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan contributes greatly to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency."
Hoh described the Afghan government as corrupt and said "Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency's true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our nation's own internal peace, against an insurgency we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology."
He commented that the US support "for the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the people from their government. The Afghan government's failings, particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars appear legion and metastatic:
--Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
--A President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
--A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and power brokers allied with the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation, and;
--The recent electoral process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government's military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/ResignationLetter.p...)
Senior officials in the State Department including US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke tried to get Hoh to stay in the State Department arguing that if he "wanted to affect policy then he should be inside the state Department, not outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact." Holbrook even said that he "agreed with much of Hoh's analysis, although not his conclusion that the war wasn't worth the fight."
On Friday, October 23, Hoh decided not to remain in the State Department and made his resignation effective on that date saying he had decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/27/matthew-hoh-afghanistan...) Hoh's resignation became public with the Washington Post article on October 27, 2009 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2...)
I was in Afghanistan three weeks ago, returning for the first time since I helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001. Eight years ago I had hopes that a short term United States presence might help the Afghan people out of the cycle of violence and that roads, schools and clinics could be built quickly before our "welcome" was worn out. The Bush administration's diversion to invade and occupy Iraq short-circuited those hopes.
Now eight years later, there is little security in the country, despite 100,000 international troops, including 68,000 U.S. military, plus 90,000 U.S. trained Afghan soldiers. According to a senior Army logistics officer, Afghanistan's roads are mined by insurgents forcing 180 U.S. military outposts to be resupplied by helicopters. "We don't have freedom of movement on the ground," a senior Army logistics officer says. "We're resupplying between 30% and 40% of our forward operating bases by air because we just can't get to them on the ground." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091027/us_time/08599193238600)
In the three weeks since I left Afghanistan, on October 8, a suicide bomber drove unimpeded on the "secure" road in front of the Indian Embassy and exploded the car killing 17 and wounding 76. In July, 2008, another car bomber killed 41 and injured 139 at the gates of Indian Embassy.
Today, on October 28, 2009, Taliban gunmen dressed in old police uniforms came into a United Nations guest house in Kabul and killed six UN staff and wounded nine other UN employees. Six Afghans including three attackers were killed. Also, today, rockets hit the Serena hotel used by many international visitors in Kabul and the Presidential Palace, but no casualties have been reported. On September 17, 2009, a suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians on one of Kabul's main roadways. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091028/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan)
When senior policy makers will not be honest with decision makers, sometimes it's the more junior government employees who have the strength of character and courage to tell their Presidents and Prime Ministers when they and their policies have no clothes.
Matthew Hoh and Lance Corporal Joe Glenton have proven to be voices of conscience for us all.
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who
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