Gulf Coverup Radicalizes Vets
By Tod Ensign

"The burden of proof is on the vets. They’ve been totally dumped. I can assure you it’s going to affect the willingness of future young people to fight for our country."

MANY VIETNAM-ERA PEACE ACTIVISTS saw military veterans as beer-swilling Angry White Males, ranting about the glories of combat in their VFW barrooms. Today’s analogue is a short-haired militia member preparing for the day when he’ll have to shoot it out with the Satanic forces of World Government.

Like most stereotypes, those would fit a small percentage of veterans. But progressive anti-militarists should know that important changes have occurred in the thinking of many ex-GIs, especially those who served in the Persian Gulf. A new wave of resistance to U.S. policies is evolving, spurred in part by the now-acknowledged Gulf War Syndrome, and in part by the Pentagon’s attempt to conceal the range of toxins it exposed its own GIs to in the Gulf.

A Military Divided
As many pacifists know, opposition to U.S. military intervention in the Gulf was widespread among active-duty GIs and reservists. Although the media tried to portray a nation that was united behind President Bush and his war plans, thousands of GIs facing deployment to the Gulf swamped WRL, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Citizen Soldier and other counseling groups in search of information on avoiding duty there. Resisters like Pvt. Jeff Patterson, Cpl. Eric Larsen, and Capt. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, M.D., received broad publicity and support, and inspired hundreds of other GIs, when they took principled stands against Operation Desert Shield/Storm in various ways, including filing applications for CO status.

Had the combat lasted longer, and had American casualties begun to reach Vietnam War levels, we might have seen the rebellion and resistance spread throughout the military. It may have been the commanders’ fear of such a melt-down that drove them to crush Iraq under the most intensive air assault in world history.

Waking up Sick
It’s not surprising that many Gulf troops quickly became ill, given the array of toxins to which they were exposed. Shortly after the conflict, in October of 1991, a U.N. inspection team, including two chemical experts from the U.S. military, found remnants of chemical weapon stockpiles at a depot in Kamisiyah, Iraq, that Army engineers had blown up during the war; the team estimated that two tons of deadly Sarin gas had been stored at the site.

But it took five years of stonewalling before the Pentagon finally admitted last August that more than 20, 000 GIs could have been harmed during the demolition. The Pentagon’s long denial that its troops were exposed, in the face of such eyewitness accounts, fueled a deep distrust among many Gulf vets that continues to this day. Late this past January, former Gulf commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf testified at a Senate hearing that "nobody was more surprised than me" to learn of the Army’s destruction of the Kamisiyah weapons dump. Whether the general is a liar or a totally incompetent military leader, the hazards involved in destroying such lethal weapons should have been obvious.

Other veterans didn’t begin to experience health problems until after they had returned home and were discharged. The most common reported symptoms include chronic fatigue, severe headaches, muscle and joint pain, skin rashes, memory and/or concentration loss, sleep disturbance, respiratory problems and chest pains.

When those vets first began to seek medical exams and treatment at military and Veterans Administration hospitals in 1992, they usually received cursory exams and little or no treatment. When the press began to inquire about their complaints, VA and Department of Defense health officials dismissed their problems as mostly psychological.

President Clinton’s blue-ribbon advisory committee on Gulf war illness finally issued a deeply flawed final report this past January, which one Gulf activist predicts it will become "the next Warren Commission report." Although the committee concluded that numerous toxins used in the Gulf were "not causally linked" to Gulf War illnesses, it nevertheless delegated further study on chemical weapons exposure to a group "independent of the [Department of Defense]."

A Movement Comes to Life
Two Gulf veterans, Paul Sullivan and Charles Sheenan-Miles met while seeking treatment at a VA hospital in Atlanta and began comparing notes about their shoddy medical evaluations. They decided to launch a grass-roots effort to fight for the needs of ailing Gulf vets.

"Our approach was different from that of the traditional veteran groups, " Sullivan recalls. "First, we wanted to work in a non-hierarchical way and on the basis of consensus. Second, we stressed inclusiveness. That’s why we’ve had a lot of participation by women and minority vets. Third, we’ve kept our focus strictly o fighting for health care and compensation for those suffering from Gulf War illness."

Soon, their fledgling Gulf War Vets of Georgia spawned the formation of similar groups in Arkansas, Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and New York. During the same period, other groups of veterans, some of whom had served together and were now sick, began to go public. Vets from traditionally conservative and pro-military states like Mississippi and Alabama often led the attack against government coverup and indifference.

As the first groups of Gulf vets began to receive media attention, others, including Dean Lundholm and Dan Fahey, began to organize in the key state of California. Fahey had served aboard the USS Arkansas as a missile officer in the Persian Gulf and had subsequently been discharged from the Navy as a conscientious objector. Although Fahey had been trained on the Navy’s Phalanx gun, which uses depleted uranium in its shells, he was told nothing about potential health risks from radioactive DU.

Early in 1993, while working for Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco veterans’ advocacy group, Fahey began to counsel Gulf war vets who came in complaining of chronic health problems. After spending months educating himself on the issues of Gulf illness, Fahey helped form the National Gulf War Resource Center. His CO discharge, which would have alienated many Vietnam-era vets, hasn’t prevented him from playing an effective role as a national veterans’ leader.

Paul Sullivan is quick to credit the assistance his group received from "atomic" and Vietnam vet activist groups like Vietnam Veterans of America. He believes that in the early days their advice was crucial in helping Gulf War Vets of Georgia deal with the press and maneuver around the Pentagon’s parries and thrusts.

Fahey is proud of the fact that four COs played active roles in the Resource Center’s first national conference in Dallas, TX in March, 1995. He recalls that when Marine resister Eric Larsen was introduced, he received a solid round of applause.

The Role of the "Big Three"
The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veteran have traditionally dominated veteran politics at the national level. With a combined membership of six million, the "big three" have long enjoyed considerable clout on Capitol Hill and within the Veterans Administration. However, the advent of the all-volunteer military has meant that fewer legislators and public officials have served in the military. Combined with a declining number of veteran voters, that decrease has tended to erode support for veterans’ concerns.

The American Legion has been willing to publicly criticize the Pentagon and Veterans Administration for their policies toward Gulf War vets, while the VFW and DAV have been much less vocal. The Legion’s leadership however, remains deeply conservative. (One of their legislative priorities continues to be the passage of a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.)

Fahey serves as commander of a maverick, pro-peace VFW post in Santa Cruz, CA, which in the 1980s (before he was involved) waged a successful defense of its charter against the national VFW organization. Fahey believes that many Gulf war vets are skeptical that the major veterans’ groups will fight for them, and he doubts the Legion’s claim to have enrolled 50, 000 Gulf vets as new members. As a delegate to the VFW’s convention last summer, he was able to get a national resolution adopted that endorses whole-body radiation measurement forGulf vets potentially harmed by exposure to depleted uranium. He was disappointed, however, not to meet any other VFW delegates who were Gulf vets. Fahey has also become active in the work of the Depleted Uranium Network, a coalition working for a worldwide ban on DU weapons.

Vets on the Net
Each of the vet leaders interviewed for this article stressed the importance of the Internet in their organizing efforts. Gulf War vets can tap into the Internet and instantly receive updates and current information on a verity of issues related to Gulf War illness. Two veterans, Jeff Beer in Arkansas and Grant Szabo in Chicago, have teamed up to create a Web site for the National Gulf War Resource Center.

Fahey summarized the strengths and weaknesses of World Wide Web: "On one hand, it allows us to communicate immediately with hundreds of activists who are spread all over the country. The downside is that there’s nothing to stop folks from dumping misinformation and ‘bad’ science into the system as well."

The Right Fights Back
While most Gulf vets groups have a policy of inclusiveness, which embodies (compared to Vietnam-era veterans) a refreshing lack of red-baiting, some far-right groups such as the American Gulf War Veterans have been attempting to project themselves as leaders of the Gulf veterans movement. This Texas-based group is led by Joyce Riley, who served as a nurse in the Gulf. She appeared as a featured speaker at "Preparedness Expo ‘96" in Indianapolis last September, sharing the dais with such conservative luminaries as Colonel "Bo" Gritz, a former Green Beret who works with militia groups in the West, Mark Koernke, short-wave radio talk show host and head of the Michigan Militia (whose meetings Timothy McVeigh attended), and Don McAlvany, publisher of the far-right McAlvany Intelligence Advisor. It’s unclear exactly what the conservatives’ agenda is, but it’s likely that they want to counter what they perceive as a left-ward and anti-militarist drift among many Gulf war vets.

On the other hand, it seems certain that the Pentagon will use even more toxic weapons in its future wars. Subsequent operations in Somalia and Bosnia demonstrate that today’s Congress and White House will tolerate very few U.S. military casualties in foreign expeditions; whatever else they do, high-tech weapons of mass destruction result in fewer battlefield casualties than conventional ground combat operations do, that is, fewer for the side that uses them. But the high-tech weapons, the long-term health effects of which are still only dimly perceived, will likely lead to new "syndromes" and another round of struggles for America’s military veterans.

Dan Fahey is optimistic about the future of the Gulf vets movement, "I’ve seen a real turnaround in awareness among Gulf vets in the last few years, "he says. "The Gulf War syndrome has great value as a counter-recruitment argument. Peace advocates should reach out to Gulf war vets. You can be pro-peace and pro-vet."

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
March-April 1997: [Gulf Coverup Radicalizes Vets] [A Simple, Basic Right] [What is a Good Enough Life?] [Postcards from Belgrade] [Activist News] [War Facts]

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