July-August 2005:
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Bring Them Home Now — Or Not?

By Ellen Barfield

t’s hardly surprising that the U.S. public at large doesn’t agree on whether the Pentagon should bring the troops home from Iraq immediately. What’s intriguing is that even segments of the antiwar movement disagree on that question.

Among the opponents of the Bush administration’s war, there are those who believe that the United States has essentially shattered Iraq and must stay there until the country is repaired. Others, including much of the long-time peace movement, believe—as opponents of war have usually held—that the United States and its troops are the least likely to be able to repair broken Iraq.

The controversy came to a head during the March 19 anniversary of two years of war and occupation, when the protests—especially the demonstrations in the highly militarized community of Fayettteville, NC (NVA, April)—became the lightning rod for arguments among various factions of the community challenging the Bush administration on the occupation of Iraq. Sadly (but predictably, given the common frustration over how to change government policy), a lot of energy was used up arguing instead of focusing on the demand for a clear exit strategy, and a plan to take care of the troops—in Iraq and when they get back.

Bring Them Home
Grassroots demonstrators who had concentrated on anti-Bush electoral work all through 2004 had gotten back together for locally organized, nationally endorsed antiwar rallies on and near the two-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion. United for Peace and Justice, an endorser (but not the organizer) of many of the protests, embraced a local focus that generated at least 765 rallies in 50 states.

The Fayetteville, NC, rally drew approximately four times more people than the same town had drawn for the one-year protest in 2004. Organizers of this year’s event included Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and the Bring Them Home Now campaign. The Bring Them Home Now coalition was formed before the United States attacked Iraq in March 2003, and has always called for immediate troop withdrawal. Veterans for Peace helped facilitate the founding of both Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War and works closely with them in Bring Them Home Now. Also in the coalition is the new Gold Star Families for Peace, made up of family members of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq.

But days before the March 19 events, a veterans’ group and several policy organizations condemned the Fayetteville rally and its “Bring Them Home Now” focus. Operation Truth, a self-proclaimed veterans’ organization that seeks to “amplify the soldiers’ voice in the American Dialogue,” declared that demonstrating in Fayetteville (home of Fort Bragg) “blames the warriors for the war.” Operation Truth Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff said, “If you support the troops, don’t protest them in their backyards.” Two DC-based groups, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center and Veterans for Common Sense, echoed the criticism and called the Bring Them Home Now focus “pulling U.S. forces and abandoning the Iraqi people.”

Antiwar veteran activists tried to repair the breach. VFP’s Woody Powell began a dialogue with Erik Gustafson of Education for Peace in Iraq before the Fayetteville demo even took place, pointing out in an e-mail that, “… a real commitment to withdraw U.S. troops in the very near future, coupled with a commitment to provide real economic and humanitarian aid, without strings attached, will lessen, not increase violence; especially if we turn over the running of Iraqi infrastructure to qualified Iraqis and remove the exploitive presence of companies like Bechtel and Halliburton.”

Powell went on, “When we ask the administration to bring the troops home now, we are applying pressure in simplistic terms. It is a tactic. I don’t think we can either stay there and produce stability, nor leave Iraq perfectly stable. But by leaving, I do believe we can move the process ahead by removing at least one major reason for the insurgents to be. (Not that leaving alone will do it. We definitely need to carry out our responsibility to get that nation back on its feet — but not with military boots on the ground.) We are putting brute pressure on the administration to get out of Iraq. They have to be pushed. We are pushing.”

Confronting Criticism
Once the hard work of the Fayetteville demonstration was finished, the Bring Them Home Now campaign spent the majority of its energy responding to these criticisms. Stan Goff of Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out and an outspoken former Army Special Forces soldier, said, “The U.S. military is not in Iraq to do a damned thing for the Iraqi people. What particular brand of cheap magical-mystery acid does someone take when he implies that Pizarro should be nominated to help the Incas with reconstruction? … I am not going to be diplomatic with Paul Rieckhoff and his ilk, when they misrepresent the action in Fayetteville as somehow being directed against those bewildered, economically caged-in workers in uniform we call ‘the troops.’”

In response to the idea that we “broke” Iraq and need to “fix” it, Patrick Resta of Iraq Veterans Against the War says,”If you break something in a store, you don’t keep breaking things. You give them a check and get out of there.”

More diplomatically, the Bring Them Home Now campaign wrote in an open letter to Rieckhoff, “We acknowledge that Mr. Rieckhoff’s organization, Operation Truth, has done incredibly valuable work by getting the stories of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to the general public. In no way do we seek to diminish the importance of the past work of Operation Truth …

“In the spirit of moving forward together, we would like to see Mr. Rieckhoff publicly repudiate his prior comments regarding the March 19 event in Fayetteville. We would like him to publicly acknowledge that this event was … assembled primarily by local veterans’ and military families’ groups. We would also like him to acknowledge … [that] we are in no way protesting the troops themselves nor lessening their sacrifice, regardless of Mr. Rieckhoff’s personal or organizational position on the legitimacy of the Iraq war and occupation.”

Soldier Advocates
In response to charges that Bring Them Home Now is abandoning U.S. troops, the campaign’s member groups have been quick to point out that their very existence is to support and help U.S. troops. Patrick Resta spoke recently at a VFP-sponsored round of counter-recruiting talks in a Baltimore high school. In relating his experiences as an Army Reserve medic in Iraq to several hundred high school students, Resta answered the Operaton Truth challenges by criticizing the poor training and equipping of the troops in Iraq. He described being fed nothing but plastic-packaged Meals Ready to Eat for months on end and being issued less than half the bullets he should have received before entering Iraq for a 500-mile trip to his base. Since his unit was 1,100 people short before deployment, unfit troops were dragged in, resulting in two heart attacks and one death. He took out a loan before he was deployed, to buy the $1,500 body armor he was not issued before he went. When he finally did receive body armor in Iraq, he hung the extra set on his vehicle doors, which were “armored” with nothing but half-inch plywood.

Patrick also debunked the benefits his recruiter mentioned when he joined. He is receiving only about a third of the college money he was promised, and it will end when he is discharged. As a Reservist he will only have six months of Veterans Administration health care, regardless of the health damage he now has or may later discover. He already has a bad knee and back injuries from lifting injured troops, but as a Reservist he cannot get ongoing medical coverage.

Justice for Veterans
Along similar lines, when VFP President David Cline testified recently at hearings about the threatened closure of the Manhattan Veterans Administration Hospital, he said, “The Veterans for Peace Statement of Purpose has a plank which reads, ‘to seek justice for veterans and victims of war,’ and that is what I am asking for today—just treatment for those who have served in defense of this country, and now need health care …

“It is no secret that when we talk about health care the crucial issues are quality and accessibility. Moving any existing services out of Manhattan or Brooklyn will create major problems for many.

“The Veterans Administration health-care system has been in a crisis nationwide for the last decade. Federal budgets have never provided the funds and staffing necessary for first-class medical care. The budget for next year is grossly under-funded while money for foreign wars sucks us dry.

“The current administration has no problem creating a new generation of veterans. What kind of treatment will the government give them when they come home, and what about those who served in the past? … Bring our troops home now, and treat them right when they get back.”

Not Far Apart
Much energy went into debates about small differences of focus. EPIC’s Erik Gustafson wrote to VFP’s Woody Powell, “The only responsible way out of Iraq is through Iraqi-led nation building. The sooner we all get serious about that, the sooner U.S. forces can withdraw.” And Charles Sheehan Miles, of Veterans for Common Sense, wrote to VFP’s David Cline, “There are no good options in Iraq. To continue our current policy of occupation and attempting to dominate the future of the country presents Iraq, the region, and ultimately the United States with a disaster.”

Even Operation Truth’s Paul Rieckhoff has said, “If we are to make real progress in supporting and protecting our troops we should hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire for the decisions they make.” Bring Them Home Now and its member organizations can certainly agree with these statements.

The difference is between the idea that the U.S. military can fix Iraq and the view that the United States needs to get out so the rest of the world can help, as it will when the United States steps aside. Socialist writer and editor Anthony Arnove, who resigned from EPIC’s Speakers Bureau in dismay at the condemnation of the Fayetteville action, wrote, “I believe we should be calling for reparations, debt elimination, and international solidarity for Iraq, as well as an immediate end to the occupation, not for ‘stabilizing Iraq’ through the U.S. military. The United States is a root cause of instability in Iraq, not the solution to it.”

After former presidential candidate Howard Dean advocated continued U.S. presence in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Families for Peace wrote to him, “The Iraqi people are not feeble-minded. To think that the Iraqi citizens need our military presence there to rebuild their country is arrogant and even racist. I think the $81 billion appropriations bill that the misguided and foolish Congress just passed would be better off being a reparations bill.”

New Veterans for Peace Executive Director Michael McPhearson, himself the father of a soldier in Iraq, said, “I don’t want my son undertrained and ill-supplied, but that is not counter to Bring Them Home Now. They want you to pick a side, but it’s not that way. I don’t want anyone else to die.”

Ellen Barfield is a U.S. Army veteran, a member of the board of Veterans for Peace and a member of WRL’s National Committee.