Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Dahr Jamail’s The Will To Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books). The testimonies below were collected at a national conference, "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," held by Iraq Veterans Against the War.
(New $50M Rehab Center Opens on Fort Sam Houston, CBS News, Jan 2007) Wheeled onto the jet leaving my town, another soldier whose pruned body echoes earth liberating itself from gravity. Inside the cave of his grey -hooded shirt he sweats as might a ghost or cello. As in another war when a baptism and […]
Parliament members are afraid to attend meetings. Iraq’s nascent economy is deteriorating. Hundreds of armed militias are ready to fight for their own interests. This is Iraq today.
Democracy is taking a beating. The Honduran military has sent its leftist president into exile. The Iranian government is suppressing the Green Revolution. China arrested prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo. And Governor Mark Sanford decided that he could best serve the interests of his South Carolinian constituents by hightailing it after his Argentinean mistress.
President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated Cairo speech reflected a significant shift away from the ideological framework of militarism and unilateralism that shaped the Bush administration’s war-based policy toward the Arab and Muslim worlds. His "not Bush" focus was perhaps most sharply evident in his public denunciation of the Iraq War as a "war of choice." Obama’s call for a "new beginning" based on "the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition" was followed by a move to shift the official U.S. discourse toward something closer to internationalism — particularly by pointing to parallels between historical (and some contemporary) grievances and treating them as equivalent. This included his reference to the U.S. "role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," along with Iran’s "role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians."
Suicide bombings are back in Iraq, signaling that the Iraq War is far from over. After a significant downturn, with only six suicide attacks between December 2008 and March 2009, there have been 25 suicide bombings in Iraq in the last two months, contributing to the worst spate of violence in Iraq in nearly a year. The bombers have revealed a new audacity and sophistication, striking in all parts of the country and against many seemingly highly secured targets.
Dear President Obama, You ask for patience we ask you “how much longer?” Iraq is still burning. Rosalie Yelen
“[W]hat lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes.” -Love and Living, by Thomas Merton
The Obama administration’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently withdrew in face of a concerted right-wing attack. Veteran diplomat Chas Freeman would not have had to face Senate confirmation. Instead, he had to face attacks in the right-wing press and blogosphere. His withdrawal was a victory for Bush-era neoconservatives and their allies regarding intelligence and broader Middle East Policy.
(Editor’s Note: This op-ed was originally published in the Baltimore Sun on February 10, 2009.)