 | From The New York Times, 1/23/05:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/national/23vets.html
By NEELA BANERJEE
Sean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11
attacks and was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way"
when he deployed to Iraq 16 months later.
Unquestioning in his support of the invasion, he grew irritated when
his father, a former National Guardsman, expressed doubts about the
war.
Today, all that has changed.
Haunted by the civilian casualties he witnessed, Corporal Huze has
become one of a small but increasing number of Iraq veterans who have
formed or joined groups to oppose the war or to criticize the way it
is being fought.
The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which
Corporal Huze is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were
founded only last summer but are growing in membership and
sophistication.
The Internet has helped them spread their word and galvanize
like-minded people in ways unimaginable to activist veterans of
previous generations, who are also lending help.
"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said.
"By ourselves, we're lone voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda
out there. Combined, we can become a roar and have an impact on the
issues that we care about."
Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their
disillusionment, though their responses to the war vary:
Iraq Veterans seeks a quick withdrawal from Iraq; Operation Truth
focuses on the day-to-day issues affecting troops and veterans.
Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people,
now has more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq,
said Michael Hoffman, a former lance corporal in the Marines and a
co-founder of the group.
Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has
300, with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people.
Its Web site is a compendium of soldiers and veterans' stories, a
media digest on the war, and a rallying point on issues affecting
troops.
Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their
interests, given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian
Gulf war.
The older veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge and
compassion to help Iraq veterans avoid the mistakes they made.
It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect
on government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the
National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war
veterans.
Mr. Robinson said his group did not come into its own for about eight
years, despite help from Vietnam Veterans of America.
Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said
had already surpassed his operation in raising money.
For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in
fall 2003.
Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began to grapple
with the justification for the war, he said.
"By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.'s
weren't there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and
now I'm left with all that I'd experienced in Iraq and nothing to
balance it," Corporal Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as a
citizen, not as a marine.
"When I came to that conclusion, I felt this sense of betrayal. I was
full of rage and depression."
That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge,
La., who is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury.
With the consent of his commanding officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks
regularly to the media and others as a representative for Operation
Truth.
"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are
three very different men," Corporal Huze said.
"I don't think I can ever have the blind trust in the government like
I had before. I think that my being over in Iraq as an active
participant, I'm a bit more responsible than others for things there.
And I think by speaking out now, it's my amends."
He added, "I don't know if it will ever balance."
Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war.
David Chasteen of suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the
Third Infantry Division and a member of the group's board, said
Operation Truth hoped to stake out a nonpartisan position on aspects
of the war that could realistically be changed, as opposed to tackling
the administration's Middle East policy.
"Our attitude was 'Want to do something? Here's what you can do: get
body armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on
the ground, get people who know how to plan this stuff on the ground,'
" said Mr. Chasteen, who said his experience in Iraq as an expert on
unconventional weapons left him disillusioned about the war.
"Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe some of these things can
get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to some issues."
Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about
equipment shortages, the Web site's readers sent 3,400 e-mail messages
in 24 hours to members of Congress asking for hearings into the issue,
which are to be held in the next few months.
Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill
battle, older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed.
The first priority for many is resuming their lives.
And unlike most Vietnam veterans, many Iraq veterans have remained in
the military after returning, limiting their ability to participate in
groups critical of the government.
Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans
Against the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying the
government to address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq and
previous wars to be a high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder
among those who served in Iraq.
Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M.,
chapter of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more
intense version of the stresses they experienced: constant threats
inherent to guerrilla war, inability to distinguish friend from foe,
and profound despair that often accompanies taking a life, especially
a civilian's.
In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American soldiers
had reached Sgt. Rob Sarra's Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi town called
al-Shatra.
A short time later, soldiers saw an older woman walking toward them
with a small bundle.
The marines, fearing that she might be a bomber, called to her to
stop, but she kept walking.
"I was looking at her, and I thought 'I have to stop this woman,' "
Mr. Sarra said.
"So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired on her."
"When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag," he
said.
"She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, 'Was she a
grandmother? Was she a mother?' "
Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with
post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before
seeking counseling and help from other veterans.
Now he is one of the leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
"When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what they
went through to the forefront," Mr. Sarra said.
"I knew when I joined the Marines that if I was going to be there for
20 years, I'd face combat. But the question is, why did we go?"
A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003
left him without his right hand and shattered his legs.
Mr. Acosta, 21, spent months in hospitals surrounded by other young
amputees, watching news about government commissions concluding that
Iraq had no unconventional weapons.
He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially
Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe.
Last summer, his girlfriend heard Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of
Operation Truth, speak on the radio.
Mr. Acosta contacted him.
By the fall, Mr. Acosta had become the organization's public face,
appearing in a provocative television advertisement.
Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern California,
said he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the First Armored
Division into Operation Truth as they leave the Army, because they
might start to experience some of the problems he faced.
For instance, he said, he once used duct tape to hold his prosthesis
together because he could not get it repaired quickly at the local
Veterans Affairs hospital.
And people often asked about his injury.
"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' "
Mr. Acosta said.
"And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?' "
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