God, the Army, and PTSD

God, the Army, and PTSD

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.6/mckelvey.php

Is religion an obstacle to treatment?

Tara McKelvey
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

When Roger Benimoff arrived at the psychiatric building of the
Coatesville, Pennsylvania veterans' hospital, he was greeted by a
message carved into a nearby tree stump: "Welcome Home." It was a
reminder that things had not turned out as he had expected.

In Faith Under Fire, a memoir about Benimoff's life as an Army
chaplain in Iraq, Benimoff and co-author Eve Conant describe his
return from Iraq to his family in Colorado and subsequent assignment
to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He retreated deep into himself,
spending hours on the computer and racking up ten thousand dollars in
debt on eBay. Above all, he was angry and jittery, scared even of his
young sons, and barely able to make it through the day. He was
eventually admitted to Coatesville's "Psych Ward." For a while the
lock-down facility was his home. He wondered where God was in all of
this, and was not alone in that bewilderment and pain.

In a 2004 study of approximately 1,400 Vietnam veterans, almost 90
percent Christian, researchers at Yale found that nearly one-third
said the war had shaken their faith in God and that their religion no
longer provided comfort for them. The Yale study found that these
soldiers were more likely than others to seek mental health treatment
through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home.
It was not that these veterans had unusually high confidence in
government or especially good information about services at VA
hospitals. Instead, they had fallen into a spiritual abyss and were
desperate to find a way out. The trauma of war seems to be especially
acute for men and women whose faith in a benevolent God is challenged
by the carnage they have witnessed.

Of course, not all veterans with mental health concerns are led to VA
hospitals by a loss of faith: many simply want to get a night's sleep
without being terrorized by nightmares. Whatever kind of assistance
they are seeking, it has been in increasingly short supply. The
decline in resources for veterans' mental health services started in
the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric
patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient
psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late '80s to 3,000 by 2008.

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans
experienced in getting psychiatric care­greater than before­was not a
product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration
officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face
psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in
faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for
the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not
authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking
officials believed that "Jesus fixes everything." Benimoff and the
others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a
faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans' hospitals, chaplains
were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.

The story of the mistreatment of returning veterans from Iraq is well
known and shocking. But the role of religious ideology in that
mistreatment­how, inside the government, it was a potent tool in the
betrayal of an overwhelmingly Christian Army­is much less known.

"I couldn't stand to hear that phrase any longer­'God was watching
over me,'" Benimoff wrote.

He wasn't watching over the good men I knew in Iraq. Faith was the
center of my life yet it failed to explain why I came home and those
soldiers did not. The phrase was a Christian nicety, a cliché that
when put to the test didn't fit reality.

• • •

Things had already begun to change dramatically at the VA by early
2005, shortly after Roger Benimoff left for his second deployment to
Iraq. Many appointees at the agency were disturbed that so many Iraq
veterans showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In
part the concern grew from skepticism about the diagnosis itself,
which some believed to be a legacy of the Vietnam-era anti-war
movement. Whatever the merits of the diagnosis, it was clearly
widespread and, moreover, staggeringly expensive to treat. In 2008
the RAND Corporation put a number on the problem, reporting that one
in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has suffered
some form of mental illness, mostly PTSD and depression.

"God doesn't like ugly," one political appointee told Paul Sullivan,
an analyst in the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy
attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized
veterans. "You need to make the numbers lower." Sullivan left the VA
in 2006 and became head of Veterans for Common Sense, a group that
filed a class-action lawsuit against the secretary of the VA for the
shoddy treatment of veterans. It was dismissed in 2008 and is now
being appealed.

PTSD, along with its diagnosis and treatment, has been a charged
subject in the United States since the term was introduced nearly
three decades ago. Studying returning veterans and working with a
group of psychiatrists and others in the 1970s, former Air Force
psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton pushed to create an entry for
"post-traumatic stress disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official manual of the American
Psychiatric Association. Lifton and his colleagues believed that the
kind of horror induced by the experience of war and other comparably
catastrophic shocks needed a special category that would distinguish
it from lesser kinds of trauma. A definition appeared in the DSM-III
in 1980. The DSM-IV, published in 1994, included revised diagnostic
criteria that reduced the severity of the external shock required to
induce PTSD. From the start, conservatives charged that the disorder
was created by anti-war activists with a political agenda. The debate
about it has been marked by passion, rhetoric, politics, and
religion, all of which have only made things worse for the
individuals who have suffered from the disorder.

Tens of thousands of soldiers, including Benimoff, have been
diagnosed with PTSD, which occurs when an individual responds to a
traumatic event with "intense fear" and feelings of helplessness. For
PTSD sufferers, that experience is followed by horrifying nightmares,
hyper-vigilance, sleeplessness, and other potentially debilitating
symptoms. Some of those diagnosed with the disorder never recover,
and for this reason skeptics say that the DSM definition has turned
ordinary men and women into chronic sufferers, dependent on
government assistance and relieved of responsibility for their own
lives. It is true that some Iraq veterans with full-blown PTSD
diagnoses have been granted government benefits­usually between $200
and $2,600 per month­even though they might be able to support
themselves. (I have met several of them while traveling across the
country.) Nonetheless, far more suffer either with poor care or no
care at all.

• • •

One soldier I spoke with, Army Specialist Bill Haynes, had grown up
attending Highland Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky, and was
awarded a Bronze Star for his courage during a March 2005 battle in
Iraq. When he came home, he was plagued with a recurring nightmare.
"At first, it was the same thing over and over and over," he told me.
"It was the March 20 attack. Then one time in my dream, we didn't
have any guns at all, and I knew we were all going to get captured
and tortured and killed. This dream was so damn real."

Haynes saw a therapist at the VA and, like so many veterans who
sought help, was given a prescription for trazodone, an
antidepressant. He was also sent to group therapy, but the sessions
were filled with civilians. "They're like, 'I was working in a
warehouse, and a piling fell on my head,'" as he recalls. His
nightmares centered around the bloodshed he had witnessed on a
highway near Salman Pak, an Iraqi city near Baghdad.

Haynes had a hard time relating to the problems the other patients in
the therapy sessions described, so he stopped going. He took the
antidepressant and drank a lot of bourbon in an attempt to quiet his
mind. Neither method worked particularly well, so he tried to shoot
himself with a handgun. His wife stopped him, and over time the
intensity of the nightmare seemed to fade. "You know, it comes and
goes," he says. Several years after the battle, he sometimes takes
over-the-counter painkillers before going to bed so he will not be
haunted by the dream.

The treatment for PTSD varies widely; there is little agreement on
the best method. However, most experts believe that treatment should
be determined by a careful case-by-case analysis, and will most
likely include a combination of therapy and medication and, in some
cases, a spiritual dimension. Some veterans do well when they receive
only counseling, in either group or individual sessions.

Medication alone rarely works, as the family of Derek Henderson,
another Iraq veteran, discovered after he returned from the war in
2003. Henderson suffered from psychotic episodes and terrorized the
people around him. He carried a knife and other weapons and once
tried to run over his mother with a car. She tried repeatedly to get
him admitted to the VA hospital in Kentucky for proper care, but
nobody was willing to take responsibility for him. Instead, he was
admitted for short stints and given prescriptions for a variety of
antipsychotic medications. Finally, in June 2007, he jumped off a
bridge over the Ohio River and drowned. In this and in other cases,
the veterans were not getting a course of treatment tailored for
them. All too often they were given a handful of prescriptions and
sent on their way. Bruce S. McEwen, a neuroscientist at The
Rockefeller University who has spent decades studying post-traumatic
stress, told me, "The simple pharmaceutical solutions are just
that­oversimplified." Veterans' advocates say the pared-down
treatment and the over-reliance on drugs is a result of government
skepticism about PTSD, and the desire to cut costs.

• • •

Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits
Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a
meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused
man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office.
Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise
in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and
Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. "That's too many,"
McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. "They are too young"
to be filing claims, and they are doing it "too soon." He hit the
table again. The claims, he said, are "costing us too much money,"
and if the veterans "believed in God and country . . . they would not
come home with PTSD." At that point, he slammed his palm against the
table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.

"I was a little bit surprised," Sullivan said, recalling the
incident. "In that one comment, he appeared to be a religious
fundamentalist." For Sullivan, McLendon's remarks reflected the views
of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind
their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of
claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme
psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for
decisions on their requests.

When I asked him years later about the meeting, McLendon laughed.
Then his face darkened in anger. "Anybody who knows me knows I
wouldn't talk that way."

Nevertheless, McLendon was open about the skepticism he felt toward
the diagnosis of PTSD, calling it "a made-up term," which has "taken
on a life of its own." As he spoke about the diagnosis, he pounded
the table with the side of his hand more than ten times, hitting it
so hard that the wooden surface shook. "Do I think they have a mental
illness and should be stigmatized for the rest of their life?" he
asked. "What gives a psychiatrist the right to do that?"

Later, in an email about our conversation, he wrote:

[PTSD] is not a diagnosis based on empirical evidence, but rather .
. . it is an artificial construct erected by a vote of selected
psychiatrists. This does not mean that there are not problems that
certain individuals do have [and] issues that need to be addressed.
But rather, it means that we have created policies and programs that
have not served veterans well.

He recommended several books on the subject, including The Selling of
DSM, whose authors, Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins, show a deep
mistrust about the disorder and the scientific rhetoric surrounding
the diagnosis. McLendon's outlook seems to have had a significant
impact on the way veterans are treated upon their return from war.

McLendon and many of the other high-level officials at the VA shared
political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of
PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric
services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and
free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based
organizations. The secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs,
R. James Nicholson, had previously served as chairman of the
Republican National Committee and as ambassador to the Vatican.
McLendon's politics closely mirror his boss's, and under Nicholson's
watch, veterans had increasing difficulty in obtaining adequate
psychological care.

When a 2006 Government Accountability Office report raised questions
about whether soldiers were getting the psychiatric help they needed,
an assistant secretary of defense disputed the report's findings,
pointing to the fact that soldiers were being referred to chaplains.
During this time contracts for veterans' services were increasingly
parceled out to leaders of faith-based organizations rather than to
secular ones, even though veterans' advocates opposed any bias toward
faith-based treatment and argued that replacing empirically proven,
nonsectarian programs with faith-based ones was a mistake.

The religious programs grew, despite concerns. At the VA Healthcare
Network in upstate New York, chaplains compiled spirituality
assessments of patients within twenty-four hours of their arrival.
The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System gave patients a
questionnaire that stated one of the System's goals as helping
veterans "Maintain Optimal Spiritual Health." In Coatesville,
patients in the psychiatric ward had a daily, thirty-minute block of
time scheduled for "SPIRITUAL UPLIFTING." Meanwhile Benimoff
wondered, "what kind of God would allow people to sink to the depths
we here in this ward had sunk?"

• • •

For spiritual uplift, many soldiers and veterans depend heavily on
pop-Christian books, especially Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven
Life, and themes of divine purpose and devotion to God. As a chaplain
in Iraq, Benimoff himself used the book to cope with the mayhem. He
also relied on it to help the troubled soldiers he knew, and he
appreciated that the book emphasized helping other people, while
other spiritual self-help books tended to promote selfishness. But
even a book like The Purpose Driven Life could not solve the problems
he faced. Over time, he began to wonder about his own purpose in Iraq
and about the government's, and he felt uncertain and scared.

We had gone to Iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction
stockpiled across the country, yet those weapons were never found and
may never have existed. I had gone to Iraq thinking that was the
cause. But if the cause had been wrong, what did that say about our
role there, and mine?

As Benimoff and other soldiers eventually discovered, The Purpose
Driven Life was not helpful, especially as the war's own purpose grew
less clear. Since Vietnam we have learned that PTSD tends to hit
people especially hard when they fight in wars of choice. Bobby
Muller, the head of Veterans for America, told me it was difficult
for soldiers to talk about the war in Vietnam after they came home;
years later, though:

I would get in touch with some of these guys, and they all had to
come to the realization, 'This is bullshit.' It's not just the horror
of killing, but its context. . . . If you're fighting a necessary
war, it's awful. But it's kind of what you got to do. Let's take a
war that turns out to have been unnecessary. And in fact your
leadership betrayed you. That willingness to serve was betrayed by a
leadership that lied and squandered that trust. The very moral fabric
of your life gets ripped apart.

Despite its limitations, The Purpose Driven Life is still used in the
military to inspire soldiers and ease doubts about their mission.
Nobody forces soldiers or veterans to read The Purpose Driven Life,
of course, but it is extremely popular. Paperback copies are passed
around among soldiers, and one edition of the book was published with
a camouflage cover, a savvy move by the publisher that helped tap
into the military market.

In May Harper's magazine reported that at a mandatory 2008
suicide-prevention assembly of 1,000 aviators at a U.S. Air Force
base in Lakenheath, England, a chaplain relied on the book for his
presentation. Warren's inspirational messages did not always take
hold, though, and one soldier, LaVena Johnson, who ended up killing
herself in Iraq, according to military documents, had a copy of The
Purpose Driven Life.

Many soldiers turned to the book for solace once they came home. One
Kentucky veteran who had been wounded in a 2005 battle in Iraq kept
the book in his basement apartment, but nevertheless tried to shoot
himself and was admitted to a lock-down psychiatric ward in a VA
hospital. Nobody believes that the book itself drove him and others
to suicide or attempts to end their own lives, but its popularity is
yet another indication of the existential despair that many soldiers
and veterans feel after serving in combat and the desperation with
which they seek help. Military culture places high value on
self-reliance, so a spiritual self-help book made sense for Johnson
and fellow fighters. But their stories show that, when faced with the
immense task of coming to terms with the horror of war, an
inspirational book such as The Purpose Driven Life, or a prescription
for antidepressants, or any other simplistic approach to the problem,
is inadequate.

• • •

The 2010 budget proposed by President Obama includes the largest
funding increase for veterans in the past thirty years, and much of
it is devoted to treatment of PTSD. The new secretary of the
Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, a retired general who
was injured in Vietnam (and fought with Rumsfeld over the size of the
force needed in Iraq), has shown a strong commitment to the care of
veterans. Unfortunately, bureaucracies are slow to respond. After
years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have
nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency. VA
officials say that, technically, it is not a backlog, because
thousands of claims are resolved each month, and thousands more are
added. But none can deny that the situation is enormously frustrating
for suffering veterans.

The political fallout from the Iraq war and the government's failure
to care for its veterans has been far-reaching. Shortly before
Benimoff resumed his chaplaincy­now at Walter Reed­stories describing
inadequate treatment at the hospital appeared in The Washington Post,
appalling the public. "I was walking into an institutional crisis,"
he wrote. "I'll speak for myself when I say it felt like everything
was broken. If the system was broken, so was I­a broken healer for
broken soldiers in a broken system. God save us all.

.

How to Make Trouble and Influence People

Activists lost the war - but won the last battle

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/activists-lost-the-war--but-won-the-last-battle-20091216-kxla.html

DAVE BURGESS
December 17, 2009

Looking for a worldwide audience? Again this week, activists hijacked
Australia's most iconic building to spread a message. In a new book,
the anti-war activist Dave Burgess reflects on his 2003 brush with
infamy on the sails of the Opera House.
--

I don't think that the justice system ever fully believed us, but it
came about very haphazardly. It began with Will Saunders telling me
that he had a tin of paint which he wanted to paint an anti-war
message with somewhere. He asked where the most effective place to
put it would be. I jokingly said, "Well, the most effective place
would be on the sail of the Sydney Opera House." Almost to my horror,
I guess, I saw him scientifically calculating the possibilities.

The logistics were first planned at a pub, on a photo of the Opera
House which was on a cigarette machine. We could roughly plot an
angle which might be possible to climb up.

We ended up climbing it just as George Bush was addressing the
American people on television, in the same 25-minute window. That was
a fluke on our part. We postponed it for two days running - one
because we thought we might need some shoes like Dunlop Volleys, with
a better grip, and two because of a rain event. So it was just random
that we happened to go up there that day. By the time the rescue
squad got up there, they had to use one of the hatchways further down
the roof because we had padlocked and shut the two at the top. The
first words they said were, "It's water-based, isn't it?" I just
shook my head and they said, "Oh, you are in trouble."

It was paving paint, which is paint that you apply to concrete and
other surfaces. It was a mix of choosing the right paint for the
surface and a hippyish, amateurish decision. By then we were all very
tired from climbing and painting. We took a minute to look at the
view and then we headed down inside the sail.

While coming down through the sail with the police, there was a
moment where we actually crossed the Concert Hall catwalk and the
full sounds of an orchestral rehearsal hit us.

By the time we'd got down to the paddy wagons, a number of Opera
House staff and orchestra [members] had stood in a line by the paddy
wagon. They applauded us in. That was done behind closed doors. The
reaction publicly from the Opera House management was a lot more
hostile and we found it a lot more difficult to engage with them as
the court case progressed.

Initially, rather than remove it, they added an additional layer of
white paint to it to prevent it from drying. There was a big report
produced about the clean-up. It did appear that the initial reasons
for covering the message in white was not to remove it, but to cover
it up while they came up with a plan to remove it. We weren't allowed
near the building so we weren't allowed to go and see what was
happening as it was being removed, but I've seen various photos of
the paint running down the sail as they applied high-pressure hoses
to it. However, there are also references in the report to it being
there two weeks later. For four hours it was quite readable.

I'm often asked about what we wanted to achieve and really the most
important thing was that we wanted the message to be seen on a
building that was immediately recognisable as Australian and for it
to be seen by a Middle Eastern audience. The Australian Government
had just joined part of a coalition that was about to go and attack
another country for reasons that were untrue and fraudulent.

The action also had a whole lot of other impacts. One of the things
was the disbelief from some that we'd have done that to what was seen
by some as a holy monument. At the same time, the paint washed off.
What's a holy monument in Australia compared with the treasures -
apart from the human life - that were destroyed in Iraq? There was a
bit of a challenge there for people to deal with.

After being sentenced, we were put in a special category and were
there with the disgraced businessman Rene Rivkin on weekend
detention. It was called RAMP, which is Risk Assessment Management
Program. It's applied when you are considered a risk prisoner. In our
case that was on the basis of media exposure.

There was a fair bit of intrigue. Certainly when I arrived everyone
knew we were coming. We were in separate jails, mainly because of
where we lived. I lived in the Hunter Valley and Will lived in Sydney.

There were people waiting to hit you with a verbal barrage to see how
you reacted. The first night I was in there I went to watch
television for a bit and I came back and my sheets had been strung up
in the shape of the sail of the Opera House with No War written on
them, in tomato sauce. I took that as a compliment and went on from
there. Like in the outside world, there were those who were for and
against the action. Generally we had a good laugh about it. Once the
gates are closed there you are, all in the same boat.

We were a bit shocked at the amount of compensation we had to pay. We
figured it would be high. We understood that it did require abseilers
and a fair bit of logistical work getting it off. At the same time,
it did come off. We were concerned that they had added another
material over the top of what we'd done. They were seemingly more
intent on hiding the message that was there rather than removing the
paint in the most efficient way.

The total was $151,000. Initially it was $166,000, including GST,
until we pointed out to the court that the Opera House, being a
government body, doesn't pay GST. The money was raised by everything
from a person on the pension sending us $5 right through to creating
our own versions of awfully tacky Opera House souvenirs. We had art
shows and benefit concerts. Slowly it all came together via a
combination of things that would rarely be in a handbook of
fund-raising! It really spoke volumes for how people responded to
that action, with their hearts.

Just when we thought it was all over we received a notice that the
police had applied to destroy our paint brushes and pot on the
grounds that we might sell them and make a profit. In one sense we
might have just let them do it, but in another sense, it was like a
red rag to a bull. They had done everything else to us that they
could and now they wanted to destroy our paint pot too!

We applied to have it back. After a series of bungles over getting
the date right, we finally went to court early in 2006 and the police
applied to have the pot destroyed.

We were armed with letters from a couple of museums asking what would
happen if you destroyed the Eureka Flag or Ned Kelly's armour or some
other rebellious relic? They pointed out that it wouldn't be a very
interesting country.

After an adjournment we found that the police prosecutor had been
replaced by a Department of Public Prosecutions lawyer so they were
obviously taking it very seriously. Will spoke well and made a very
clear case for giving us the pot back.

We were prepared to make an assurance that we were not going to
profit from it and we thought we could find a home for it so that it
could, at least, live on as some small part of protest history in Australia.

Interestingly, there were two paint pots. I had put mine in the
rubbish and the paint brush in a juice bottle!

Another one had been auctioned, but it was an imposter pot. We knew
nothing about it. It was auctioned for some cause, somewhere down the
South Coast of NSW. It definitely wasn't the pot. The pot is safe and
we think we have finally found a home for it.

It was quite an incredible thing.

After all that defeat of not stopping the war, of losing a court case
and then an appeal case only to see the final battle won with us
asserting the right of the paint pot to exist.
--

This is an edited extract from How to Make Trouble and Influence
People: Pranks, Hoaxes, Graffiti and Political Mischief-Making from
Across Australia by Iain McIntyre (Breakdown Press).

.

Grinding Down the U.S. Army

[See URL for numerous embedded links.]

Tomgram: William Astore, Grinding Down the U.S. Army

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175178/tomgram:_william_astore,_grinding_down_the_u.s._army/

December 15, 2009.

Last week, the U.S. Army released its suicide figures for
November. Twelve soldiers on active duty were classified as
"potential suicides" for the month, bringing the yearly suicide total
to 147, 19 more than for all of 2008, and the fifth year in a row the
rate has risen. In the same week, a Rand Corporation study was
released which found, not surprisingly, "that children in military
families were more likely to report anxiety than children in the
general population. The researchers also found that the longer a
parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the more likely
their children were to have difficulties in school and at home."

In fact, you didn't have to look far that week to see signs of
trouble in the military. It's true that Major Nadil Malik Hasan, the
psychiatrist who murdered 12 military personnel and one civilian,
while wounding 29, at Fort Hood, Texas, had at least briefly faded
from the news. In Grant County, Oregon, however, a judge sentenced
27-year-old Jessie Bratcher, an Iraq veteran, to a state psychiatric
hospital in a murder case in which he had shot an unarmed civilian
during what was claimed to be a post-traumatic stress
disorder-induced "war flashback."

Meanwhile, in Boise, Idaho, George Nickel Jr., another Iraq War
veteran, armed with a handgun and wearing "a tactical vest with as
many as 90 rounds of ammunition," and "accused of shooting into two
locked apartments before getting into an armed confrontation with
Boise police officers this summer," pleaded guilty to "the unlawful
discharge of a firearm into an occupied dwelling." Nickel, whose year
in Iraq was spent disarming IEDs, "suffered a broken leg and shrapnel
in his face in a roadside bomb explosion that killed three Idaho
soldiers." He is "diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and
post-traumatic stress disorder." He faces up to 15 years in prison.

Last week, across the continent, 20-year old Joshua Hunter, a
military policeman accused of stabbing "his two Army buddies" to
death in the apartment they shared near Fort Drum in New York state,
was arraigned on second-degree murder charges. All three men had
served in Iraq. Hunter's last message at MySpace included this: "I
will not be stopped until I get my revenge." According to the
Associated Press, Hunter's wife said "that her husband was outgoing
before he went to war, but when he returned stateside, he was an
emotional wreck. 'He wasn't in any good mental shape at all… I tried
to get him to go to therapy. They prescribed him medicine and stuff,
but it just wasn't enough.'"

Unlike the week when Hasan struck at Ft. Hood and media attention was
overwhelming, stories like these are small-scale and generally local
in nature, yet they have now become a regular feature of the American
landscape. Most of us may only half-notice, and yet something is
happening here, even if we don't know what it is, Mr.
Jones. Certainly, William Astore, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and
TomDispatch regular, has a strong sense of where it may lead. Tom
--

"They're Wasted"
The Price of Pushing Our Troops Too Far
By William Astore

When I was on active duty in the military, an Army friend used to
remind me: "Any day you're not being shot at is a good Army
day." Today's troops, especially if they're "boots on the ground" in
Iraq and Afghanistan, don't have enough good Army days. Many of them
are on their fourth or fifth deployments to a combat zone. They're
stressed out and tired; they miss their spouses and families. And
often they've seen things they wish they'd never seen.

But you'd hardly have known this listening to the debate over
President Obama's decision to escalate yet again in Afghanistan. Its
tone was remarkably antiseptic. I can't help recalling old wargames
I played as a kid in which deploying infantry brigades to faraway
places was as simple as picking up a few cardboard counters, tossing
the dice, and pinning my troops to a new spot on the map. No gore
splattered on my face when I rolled snake eyes after pushing my
grunts too far into the Fulda Gap while playing MechWar '77.

As we roll the dice again in Central Asia, it's clear that we're
pushing our Army and Marines too far. Naturally, our troops, notably
the brass, will deny this. For them, it's "Army Strong" or "Semper
Fi"; only losers whine or bellyache. Well, we Americans need to
recognize the limits on our troops, even if they refuse to do so.

So let me be blunt: We're wearing them out.

Our "Wasted" Troops

Quietly, almost imperceptibly, our Army is hollowing out. Such is
the predictable result of eight years of ceaseless deployments in
support of ill-advised wars. Remarkably, the Army has, so far,
managed to maintain its combat effectiveness, in part by its recourse
to a "Stop Loss" policy -- essentially a backdoor draft (only
recently curtailed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) that
involuntarily extended the enlistments of 60,000 troops. It has also
relied heavily on the use and reuse of the Reserves and the National
Guard. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania noted last month on Meet
the Press that "our troops are tired and worn out. [With respect to
the] Pennsylvania National Guard, most of our guardsmen have been to
either Iraq [or] Afghanistan, over 85 percent, and many of them have
gone three or four times and they're wasted."

Signs of severe strain, of being "wasted," are often not visible to
the American public. Nevertheless, they are ominous and
growing. Suicides have hit record highs in the Army. Cases of
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression, having reached
an alarming 300,000 in 2008, according to Invisible Wounds of War, a
RAND study, continue to escalate, constituting a mental health crisis
for the Army. Traumatic brain injuries from IEDs and other explosive
shocks in our war zones, difficult to diagnose and even more
difficult to treat, may already exceed 300,000, another health crisis
exacerbated by a lack of treatment available to veterans. Divorce
rates among active duty troops continue to climb. An epidemic of
domestic violence and crime has been linked to returning veterans and
to the difficulty of readjusting to "normal" life after months, or
years, in combat zones. These are just five of the better documented
signs of an Army that's struggling to cope with wars of unprecedented
length and still uncertain outcomes.

To maintain its force structure, given these kinds of symptomatic
pressures, the Army has taken several questionable steps. It has
boosted the maximum age of enlistment from age 35 to age 42 at a time
when its operational tempo is burning out far younger men and
women. It has authorized enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 for new
soldiers, and reenlistment bonuses to select soldiers, also for up to
$40,000. As the Army attempts to entice enlistees with big-money
bonuses and benefits, it's also accepting more recruits who lack high
school diplomas; the rate of new recruits with high school diplomas
declined to 71% in 2008, a 25-year low. Counterinsurgency (COIN)
campaigns -- the sort of wars promoted by Centcom commander General
David Petraeus and Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal --
theoretically demand restraint, tact, and flexibility exercised at
the squad level by so-called strategic corporals. What's the
likelihood that enough of today's recruits will develop the
sophistication, the so-called "soft" yet decidedly hard-won "people
skills" they need to succeed as strategic corporals?

Within the officer ranks, the Army has been boosting the success rate
of those promoted to major (a point at which weaker officers are
typically winnowed out) to better than 95%. In the past, it hovered
around 80%. As Colonel Paul Aswell, chief of the Army's Officer
Personnel Policy Division notes, "Every [Army promotion] board is
going to select every officer that they can to [the rank of] major
for as far as I can see right now."

Because so many seasoned but stressed-out captains are choosing to
leave the Army after their initial service commitment is up, the
selection rate for major will likely remain above 90% for years to
come. "[W]e really don't think that's healthy," concludes
Aswell. Plans to add 65,000 new recruits to the Army over the next
few years only exacerbate the problem; an expanded Army necessitates
even more field-grade billets. Many of these new billets are likely
to remain vacant, since it takes 10 years to develop the "Iron
Majors," who, along with mid-level NCOs, form the core of the Army.

Instead of a stable pyramid, then, think of an expanded yet still
exhausted service taking on a more unstable, hourglass shape: heavy
at the top with long-serving colonels and generals, heavy at the
bottom with "green" privates and lieutenants, but corseted at its
essential core due to shortages of experienced platoon sergeants and
battle-hardened company and battalion commanders.

In the military, leaders are supposed to be promoted based on
demonstrated potential to fulfill the expanded responsibilities
inherent in a higher grade, but here the Army is trapped in a
Catch-22 situation: It has to promote virtually every eligible
captain to major (and quickly) precisely because so many captains are
leaving the military.

Whether at the company or field-grade level, the simple fact is that
the Army is bleeding experienced officers. Ever larger numbers of
promising lieutenant colonels, for instance, are now taking
earlier-than-expected retirements, opening further "must-fill" rungs
on the promotion ladder. I know of two highly qualified Army
lieutenant colonels who, as outstanding battalion commanders, could
easily have reached colonel and might perhaps even have ended up with
a general's star. Tired of repeat deployments, constant stress, and
extraordinary burdens placed on their spouses and children, they
chose instead to retire from active duty.

As we bleed experienced officers and promote marginally qualified
ones almost automatically, it's sobering to consider another modern
drain on the military -- the vast pay disparities that exist between
those serving in the All Volunteer Army and civilian contractors
often operating beside them in the same combat zone. Whereas an
unmarried Army sergeant makes roughly $85 a day and a married captain
roughly double that, a "protective security specialist" employed by
Blackwater (now Xe) makes 14 times the pay of our sergeant. Of
course, no one joins the Army to get rich, but such dramatic
inequities are hardly conducive either to high morale or to retaining
experienced military specialists who know they can sell their skills
at top value elsewhere.

Indeed, the Army (and so the American taxpayer) is being forced to
compete with Xe, Triple Canopy, DynCorp International, and similar
private security outfits for the services of experienced
non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Even a reenlistment bonus of
$40,000 for a staff sergeant with interpreter/translator experience
may be unpersuasive when such an NCO could double or triple his
take-home pay -- and perhaps decrease his stress level as well -- by
hiring on with a paramilitary contractor.

So what, you may ask? Well, despite what Napoleon said, an Army
doesn't march on its stomach. It marches because experienced NCOs
boot it in the butt and get it moving in the right direction. NCOs
are the backbone of any effective army. Lose too many and you're done for.

"Decades More" of Dread and Death

It's this under-compensated, over-stressed Army that we're sending
into Afghanistan to accomplish what could only be termed a herculean
task. It's not only supposed to defeat the Taliban insurgency by
force of arms -- something its troops are, at least, trained for --
but build a nation by negotiating a complex "human terrain." That's
Army jargon for the reality that roughly 80% of so-called
nation-building operations basically add up to armed social
work. Simultaneously, our troops are being tasked with training an
Afghan army that, despite years of effort, exists more on paper than
in the field.

By all appearances, that Afghan army is hollow. Making it solid and
reliable in a few short years is truly a bridge too far for our trainers.

And if that's an overly imposing task, no less imposing are the
literal mountains of Afghanistan. One can hardly overstate the
mind-numbing fatigue suffered by troops fighting at high
altitude. Our soldiers typically carry nearly 100 pounds of
equipment, including body armor, weaponry, helmet, ammunition, water,
radio, extra batteries, night vision goggles, GPS receiver -- the
list goes on. Now, think of hauling yourself and 100 pounds of gear
up goat paths at altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet. Think about
fighting a lightly-armed, lightly dressed, fleet-footed enemy with
better knowledge of the harsh terrain, and with physiologies
acclimated to the thinner, drier air.

I asked an Army battalion commander to put the plight of our troops
and the challenge of COIN in terms the average American could
understand. His reply was sobering:

"Dread is the term most soldiers apply to their emotions in the six
months leading to deployment. Not dread of the enemy, but dread of
the prison-like conditions of their service [overseas]. There are no
leave breaks in Paris or at the canteen. Even coming home for
mid-tour leave is stressful as hell.

"Then of course you add the mental grind of constant exposure to
[the] lethal threat of roadside bombs and sniper fire and hotter
engagements. Or the converse that many times absolutely nothing
happens for these soldiers other than traveling to, securing, and
returning from endless marginally productive meetings with local
leaders. [Add to that] the separation from family, the enforced
celibacy and enforced sobriety and uncorrectable disruption of social lives.

"Imagine working without a break in your current job with no
weekends… no social events, no wife, no bars, no permanent buildings,
no funding. That's what the grind is… Putting up with those
conditions and heading out the gate every day… and grinding away at
those armed social-working tasks is the new criterion of valor.

"The cost of winning an insurgency is staying at it for years,
decades. In a fundamentally flawed operating environment like
Afghanistan, we could be there at or above our current level of
commitment for decades more."

Decades more: So much for an 18-month timeline for our latest Afghan
surge and withdrawal.

The Horrifying Legacies of War

By sending up to 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we're further
stressing a military that, if not entirely "wasted," is nevertheless
showing serious signs of strain. This shouldn't be surprising. Our
Army, after all, isn't made up of rootless, robotic "universal
soldiers," but men and women who are deeply rooted within our
communities. Indeed, that very rootedness may help explain their
remarkable staying power over the last eight years. Sooner or later,
however, such roots will be cut if we continue to send them on lost causes.

Consider our latest "surge": What will happen to our Army if its
augmented presence only alienates Afghans further? What if it ends
up strengthening Taliban recruitment efforts and prolonging the war
instead of shortening it? What if our enemies simply choose to wait
us out? Are we truly prepared to stay for a decade, or even decades, more?

Prolonging a stalemated war will, in fact, only mean more hurt for
both Afghans and Americans. The hurt to Afghans will undoubtedly be
worse, for their homes are the battlefield, but our own hurt
shouldn't be underestimated. More broken bodies and shattered
minds. More echoes of the horrifying violence that accompanies war.

To paraphrase William Faulkner on history's relationship to the past:
Even when war is officially declared over, it's not dead. It's not
even past. The horrors of war endure in the hearts and minds of the
people who experience them, and they dwell, to some degree, in the
collective consciousness of us all.

Are we willing, then, to sit and watch as our military strives to
endure what may ultimately prove unendurable? Do we really want to
risk returning to the hollow army of the mid-1970s, reeling from
defeat in Vietnam, that judged the American public numb to its
service and sacrifices?

What if, upon returning to the American "homeland," whether in 2012
or 2052, an exhausted, embittered, and demoralized army again judges
us and finds us even more wanting? What if, as in the 1970s, some
alienated soldiers come to see the public as treacherous
backstabbers, with all the potential dangers that entails?

As we embrace policies and strategies that erode our army, we risk
more than a weakened military; we risk breeding resentments and
recriminations that could lead to a future domestic surge of militant
nationalism of our very own, conceivably imperiling the foundations
of our democracy.

And that's a peril -- and a price -- too terrible to contemplate.
--

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught
cadets at the Air Force Academy, officers at the Naval Postgraduate
School, and applauded thousands of troops as they crossed the stage
to graduate from the Defense Language Institute. A TomDispatch
regular, he currently teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of
Technology. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.

.

Obama's First Year: What Comes Next For the Anti-War Forces?

OBAMA'S FIRST YEAR:
What Comes Next For the Anti-War Forces?

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8277

by Bill Weinberg
Jan. 22, 2010

In assessing how our position has changed one year into the Barack
Obama administration, the anti-war forces must avoid twin errors:
that of relaxing our vigilance and opposition to the continuing
permanent war, and that of denying the de-escalations in the global
and domestic situation that have in fact taken place. The prior error
will defeat the very purpose of our movements, while the latter will
relegate us to further marginalization. Only a distanced
consideration of exactly what has changed since the Bush years can
provide an accurate assessment of the empire's new posture­and the
correct way to respond to it.

Orwellian Nobel Peace Prize
Obama's election was a repudiation of the "neocons"­and their
hubristic program of endless "regime change" throughout the Middle
East (and eventually the rest of the world)­by both the US electorate
and political elite.

Citing a more "hopeful state of world affairs" brought about in part
by the new administration in Washington, the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists in January announced that it was moving the minute hand of
its famous Doomsday Clock one minute back­to six minutes of midnight.
The decision echoes the findings of the Nobel Peace Prize committee
that Obama has significantly ratcheted down global tensions.

Yet Obama's Nobel acceptance speech was an open defense of the two
wars that he is waging­the one in Iraq winding down but still
involving some 130,000 US troops (and many more private contractors);
the one in Afghanistan rapidly escalating, with the 100,000 US troops
there slated to rise this year to higher than Iraq levels (in
addition to private contractors and a 30,000-strong international force).

According to a Jan. 13 Associated Press report, Obama will ask
Congress for an additional $33 billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq
wars­on top of what promises to be a record-breaking $708 billion for
the Pentagon next year. It is a grim comment on our times that a
president elected on an anti-war platform, and still perceived as a
peace-maker, will be the first to boost the Defense Department budget
over $700 billion.

Obama's Pentagon is now viewing Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single
"Af-Pak" theater. Obama has actually escalated US drone strikes
against presumed al-Qaeda targets in Pakistani territory­over the
open objections of the Islamabad government, Washington's supposed
ally. The drone strikes­now coming every few days­reportedly killed
some 700 in 2009, overwhelmingly noncombatants. This
counter-productive strategy only fuels the Taliban insurgency that
now threatens to destabilize Pakistan entirely.

Dismantling the Torture Regime­Maybe
Obama has not met his deadline, announced in an executive order last
January, to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay within a
year, and officials admit the camp may remain open until 2011 to
allow an Illinois prison time to prepare for the arrival of the
detainees. Even at the Thomson Correctional Center, the detainees
will still remain under Pentagon administrative control, not that of
the civilian authorities.

Of the 775 detainees that have passed through Guantánamo since it was
opened in the aftermath of 9-11, less than 200 remain­but their fate
is uncertain. The Obama administration has decided to try some in the
civilian courts­the five charged in the 9-11 conspiracy­but has gone
ahead with military tribunals for others. The tribunals are
ostensibly proceeding with greater standards for due process,
following a reform of the Military Commissions Act. Of course, the
right adamantly opposes any transfer of the Guantánamo detainees to US soil.

The administration has also taken measures to dismantle the secret
network of clandestine prisons launched by the Pentagon and CIA under
the Bush administration, which held many thousands around the world.
The most significant hub in this global gulag, the prison at
Afghanistan's Bagram air base, has been moved off the base in
preparation for its transfer to Afghan authorities. This will not
necessarily mean an improvement in the human rights situation faced
by the detainees there, but hopefully it will at least become a
traditional prison rather than an extra-legal one. Obama has
continued the Bush policy of denying any recognition of the habeas
corpus rights of detainees held by the US overseas.

The passing of Obama's deadline for the closure of Guantánamo means
that now there is no longer any firm timeline for shutting the prison
camp. And disturbingly, the Obama administration is calling for
dismissal of the pending suit against Bush administration attorney
John Yoo, author of the notorious "torture memos" that authorized
human rights abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.

Slowing the Trajectory Towards a Police State­Tentatively
On the domestic front, Obama has called a halt to the Bush
administration's aggressive and brutal coast-to-coast raids on
factories, workplaces and neighborhoods by the Homeland Security
Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Instead, ICE
is sending employers written notice that they may face civil fines if
they are found to be using unauthorized workers. Obama's Justice
Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Sheriff Joe
Arpaio in Arizona's Maricopa County­who has run a local
anti-immigrant police state complete with detainment camps­and ICE
has revoked his authority to enforce federal immigration law. (Arpaio
has vowed to defy the federal order, but so far hasn't.)

But a New York Times report of Jan. 9 (based on data procured through
the Freedom of Information Act) revealed that the Obama
administration has continued to conceal the facts of concerning more
than 100 deaths in ICE detention facilities since 2003. And while
Obama has thus far resisted calls to mobilize army troops to the
Mexican border, he has not halted construction of the border wall
launched by the Bush administration.

Following the attempted Christmas Day jetliner terror attack,
Homeland Security has instated new airline passenger screening
measures based on country of origin that rights groups are assailing
as unconstitutional.

New Quagmires Beckon
Since the attempted Christmas attack, Yemen has emerged as the next
country to be targeted for a US-directed counter-insurgency­although
even before the attempt, there were reports of US warplanes carrying
out bombing raids in Yemeni territory. The multiple insurgencies in
Yemen (waged by both Sunni and Shi'ite militants) could draw the US
into yet a third military quagmire.

With the change of administration in Washington, the likelihood of US
aggression against Iran has greatly diminished. So too have the odds
of the CIA and State Department attempting to groom the opposition
there as proxies, following the neocon playbook­which is the last
thing Iran's pro-democracy movement needs. However, if Israel
launches air-strikes against Iran, Obama will be faced with the
choice of whether to back Tel Aviv up, either politically or militarily.

Obama has not removed the Special Forces troops sent by Bush as
military advisors to West Africa, with little public notice. The
growing presence of the self-declared "al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb" means greater risk of US troops being drawn into combat in
Mali, Niger or Mauritania.

US Special Forces and Marines continue to hold joint manoeuvres with
Philippine troops in the southern island of Mindanao, wracked by a
Muslim insurgency. Under Bush, US Special Forces were briefly drawn
into combat in Mindanao, and there are reports that there have been
such incidents under the new administration as well.

There are other opportunities for Washington to be sucked into
military adventures by circumstance. The Pentagon rescue mission to
earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince appears as a moral necessity, but
could be the beginning of a new US occupation of Haiti­especially if
the situation in the destroyed city turns violent.

Hemispheric Militarization Advances
There is little evidence that Obama's CIA was involved in last
summer's coup d'etat in Honduras, but Washington's supposed isolation
of the de facto regime has in fact been full of loopholes­even
Pentagon training of Honduran military officers apparently continued.
Washington's intent to normalize relations with Honduras after the
transfer of power to a new government on Jan. 27­following an
election rejected as illegitimate by the popular resistance
movement­will place Obama at odds with much of the rest of the hemisphere.

Although the US media have barely noted it, Obama is going ahead with
plans launched under Bush to establish permanent military bases in
Colombia­which remains both the top US aid recipient and worst human
rights abuser in the western hemisphere. The leftist government of
Hugo Chávez in neighboring Venezuela openly views establishment of
the bases as a springboard for intervention, and the issue has
greatly escalated tensions along the already militarized border.

Obama is also replicating the "Plan Colombia" model in Mexico, where
drug-related violence is escalating to nearly the level of a civil
war. The $1.4 billion "Merida Initiative" of military aid packages to
Mexico and the Central American republics is directly modeled on the
Colombian experience, although it stops short of actually committing
US military advisors (which would be deemed an affront to Mexican
nationalism).

The Obama administration has taken some measures to de-escalate the
War on Drugs, which has been a disaster for civil and human rights
both at home and abroad. Obama's Justice Department has pledged to
respect California's medical marijuana law, and call off the raids
that were standard practice under Bush (and continued through Obama's
first year). But federal prosecutors will, in fact, still have
autonomy to enforce the US drug laws even where they clash with state
law. And this retreat is but a small step towards the general
decriminalization that will be needed to undercut the ultra-violent
cartels, to break the trajectory towards a domestic police state
north of the border and entropic war in Mexico.

The Thunder on the Right
Of course, the most organized and angry opposition to Obama is coming
from the right, and it is imperative to recognize that many of the
grievances fueling this opposition are absolutely legitimate. The
"Tea-baggers" are foremost furious at the massive tax-payer rip-off
represented by last year's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)­the
notorious $700 billion Wall Street bail-out. Unfortunately, this rage
has become mixed up with racism and xenophobia, paranoid opposition
to a public health care system, and the anti-choice position on
reproductive freedom.

This movement employs paradoxical anti-fascist rhetoric. Even the
National Review's Jonah Goldberg has launched a blog baiting Obama
with the oxymoron of "Liberal Fascism." But fascism in its incipient
phases always exploits populism­only to utterly betray it once power
has been achieved. If more radical and openly racist elements
consolidate leadership, the potential is real for the anti-Obama
backlash to bring about a genuine fascist movement. Armed resistance
on the right, or the taking of the White House by a right-wing
populist such as Sarah Palin in 2012 are ominous possibilities.

On the other hand, a principled alliance with grassroots
conservatives is possible around issues of civil liberties, economic
justice and perhaps even the war(s). The prerequisites for such an
alliance are, first of all, knowing our own politics and being
explicit about where they differ from those of the grassroots right.
We can openly disagree with Libertarians on economic issues and still
make a tactical alliance with them around protecting constitutional
rights, for instance. We can even coalesce with those we disagree
with on abortion and immigration­if there is absolute clarity about
those disagreements, and if they are not the ones actually leading
the charge against reproductive freedom and immigrants' rights.

Such alliances can not only raise the effectiveness of our demands,
but hold the potential to spark a much-needed cross-grassroots
dialogue and woo elements of the populist conservative opposition
away from the hardcore racists­although if leftists attempt to impose
their leadership, it will surely backfire.

There are, however, lines that cannot be crossed in alliance-building
or even in dialogue. Embracing racists (even of the veiled variety
today typical), or failing to make clear our differences with
coalition partners, can play into the hands of the building fascist
backlash­and help make a rope for our own necks. This grave error has
already been displayed in Ralph Nader's uncritical embrace of Pat
Buchanan, and the growing popularity of right-wing conspiracy theory
on the ostensible "left."

The Post-GWOT Era?
Although the US military remains massively overstretched, there are
indications that since Obama's election, we have entered the
post-GWOT era. The nomenclature, at least, has changed. The Obama
administration has formally abandoned the Bush-era phrase "Global War
on Terrorism." The new term is the dryly clinical and antiseptic
"Overseas Contingency Operation." Is this an improvement­or a switch
from a hubristic and bellicose rallying cry to an Orwellian
euphemism? A normalization of permanent war?

In either case, the anti-war forces need to rethink the errors that
have led to the decline of our movement even as the US escalates the
unpopular Afghanistan war. Those who have relaxed their vigilance,
failing to protest the Afghan "surge" because it is now a liberal
Democrat's war, represent one such erroneous tendency. And those who
deny the de-escalations that have in fact taken place in other
spheres paradoxically fuel this tendency.

Linked to this error is the hard left's growing embrace of some of
the ugliest exponents of global reaction. Supposed Marxists bizarrely
look to the deeply reactionary forces of political Islam as the
heroic "resistance" in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. The so-called
"9-11 Truth" movement similarly denies the realities of al-Qaeda and
its allied forces, and increasingly embraces professional conspiracy
hucksters of the right-wing and xenophobic variety (e.g. Alex Jones).

The Challenge of Solidarity
The secular civil resistance in the countries under imperial
assault­groups such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, the Iraq
Freedom Congress, and Iraq's independent trade unions­have no such
illusions about political Islam. They view political Islam and US
imperialism as "twin poles of terrorism."

The besieged civil opposition in Iraq­under threat of repression and
assassination from the collaborationist and insurgent forces alike­is
fighting to keep alive elementary freedoms for women, leading labor
struggles against Halliburton and other US contractors, opposing
privatization of the country's oil and resources, and demanding a
secular future for their nation. These­not the jihadists who seek to
exterminate them­are our natural allies in Iraq.

It is from these voices that we must seek leadership. Building active
human-to-human solidarity with these forces­and giving them a vocal
role in our own organizing efforts­will both keen our own analysis,
and undercut the false perception that secular and democratic forces
in Afghanistan and Iraq support the occupations.

Back to the Grassroots
The greatest challenge is to understand that no anti-war opposition
is now likely to be successful unless it recognizes the inexorable
implications of an anti-war position for a far greater process of
social change. Neither the fact that Obama is a liberal Democrat nor
the fact that the insurgents the US faces in Afghanistan and Iraq are
deeply reactionary alter the fundamental political economy of the
global military crusade. This remains a struggle, both with rival
powers and insurgent movements, to assure continued US global primacy
through control of oil.

The architects of this global crusade in the Bush administration were
an alliance of ideological neocons and figures such as Bush and
Cheney who themselves emerged from the oil industry, and afforded its
captains unprecedented access to policy-making. Obama has repudiated
neocon strategies, and his administration lacks such organic ties to
the oil industry. But he has inherited the crusade, and is propelled
by its dynamics.

US global hegemony protects the uniquely privileged position of the
US ruling class, which is predicated on the grossly disproportionate
consumption of the planet's hydrocarbon resources. Despite the
conventional wisdom of the "national security" paradigm, which holds
that US access to global oil is good for consumers on the lower
levels of the social pyramid, in fact the tax-payers have borne the
burdens of imperial overreach just as the sons and daughters of the
working class bear its grim human costs on the battlefields. The
effort to bring the Earth's most critical oil resources under
imperial control­especially via the Iraq adventure, although the
Afghan campaign is also linked to encirclement of the Caspian
Basin­has meant a hemorrhage of the national wealth of the world's
biggest economy, and contributed to the financial cataclysm. An
effective anti-war opposition therefore necessarily involves issues
of economic justice and the planetary ecological crisis.

A year ago, when it seemed global capitalism really teetered at the
brink of collapse, there may have been a moment of possibility for
Obama to rise to greatness in spite of his limitations in the manner
of his role models Lincoln and FDR­to take the kinds of dramatic
measures at home that would permit the military leviathan to withdraw
its tentacles abroad. While Lincoln and FDR were war presidents, a
marshalling of public power such as they effected could have been
mustered in the interests of peace­a harnessing or even seizure of
Detroit's industrial apparatus and Wall Street's financial machinery
to instate a "Green New Deal" based on a crash conversion from the
fossil fuel economy, concomitant with at least a degree of social leveling.

This opportunity is almost certainly lost. Obama has taken limited
measures to impose discipline on the corporate
petro-oligarchy­conditioning the Detroit bailout on retooling the
industry, tightening auto emissions and smog standards, instating
more restrictive rules for drilling leases on public lands and
offshore waters. But his policy on the climate crisis centers on the
technocratic pseudo-solution of carbon-trading. Ironically, it was
TARP's success in stabilizing the system (at tax-payer expense) that
has removed any imperatives on Obama for systemic reform.

This lost opportunity shifts the responsibilities for addressing the
global crisis even more firmly to the grassroots. Obama still
represents, at least, an imperial adjustment to a new world situation
that includes some hopeful signs­the shift to the left nearly
throughout Latin America, the past year's strikes and uprisings in
Europe, growing planet-wide struggles by indigenous peoples to
protect their lands from corporate plunder. If we are to regain lost
ground, our challenge is to remain intransigently oppositional in
this period of adjustment­but in a more intelligent way, which
recognizes what has changed, and to what degree.
----

Bill Weinberg is editor of the online World War 4 Report and author
of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso
Books, 2000). This article will appear in German in the upcoming
issue of the Berlin-based magazine Phase 2. It also appeared in
English Jan. 25 on AlterNet.

.

Damaged and discharged, a soldier on edge

[2 articles]

Damaged and discharged, a soldier on edge

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/143556

September 17, 2009
by Julia O'Malley

John Mayo had mayhem etched in his skin. I noticed it when I first
saw him in the lobby of the Daily News. Sleeve tattoos. Black skulls,
explosions and flames. Demon drill sergeants. A rifle made to look
like a deadly cartoon.

He introduced himself and his wife, Ellie. He carried their baby,
Cason, in a car seat. I showed them into a room where we could talk.
Mayo limped when he walked and held his shoulders tight, his T-shirt
flagging over muscle and bone.

I asked them to come by after speaking with his mother-in-law. She
had called asking for help. She told me he had been kicked out of the
Army for committing a crime he didn't remember.

It was late August. It had been about a month since he'd left the
Army. He was discharged for shoplifting at the Base Exchange. Now
they were broke. Neither he nor Ellie had a job. They were halfway
homeless, camped out in a house under construction in Wasilla.

Mayo pushed a piece of paper across the table. It was written by the
defense attorney at his military discharge proceeding. It summarized
his record as a soldier. He deployed to Iraq from Fort Richardson in
2006 with about 3,500 others in the 4th Brigade Combat Team
(Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. He was in Iraq for more than a year.

The document said Mayo had never been in serious trouble before. On
the day in April he was accused of shoplifting, the document said, he
was heavily medicated for post-traumatic stress disorder and a knee
injury. He had Army-written prescriptions for painkillers,
anti-depressants, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety drugs and
anti-psychotic medications.

"Mayo has no recollection of committing the larceny," his lawyer wrote.

Mayo told me he had been having periods of amnesia since he started
taking medications in Iraq. His attorney told him there wasn't enough
evidence to convince a judge he didn't steal on purpose. So instead
of going through with a court-martial trial and risking jail time,
Mayo agreed to an "Other Than Honorable" discharge.

The decision cost him his job, his medical care, his home and,
potentially, future benefits from the Veterans Administration. Now he
regretted it. He said he wished he'd fought the Army.

Mayo's voice stayed steady until he started describing his family's
eviction from their house on Fort Richardson. A housing supervisor
surprised them just before dinner, he said. Spaghetti was in the
crock pot. Cason was in his highchair. All three were ordered out
into the yard.

I looked at him from across the table. His face was whittled sharp. I
asked how old he was.

"Twenty-two, ma'am," he answered.

He said he quit taking all the medication. But he was still having
nightmares. Ellie asked him to show me his arms. He turned his palms
up. Pink slash marks sliced his tattoos. Once he knew he was leaving
the Army, he said, he cut himself.

He said he thought he might be worth more to his family dead.

INVISIBLE SCARS OF WAR

I gave them phone numbers for people I knew at social service
agencies. They promised they would call. I wasn't sure what to make
of their story. I've heard a lot of shocking stories from people in
the lobby at the Daily News. And I have dealt with plenty of people
convicted of crimes. Most had a story about being wrongly accused,
but when I started looking at the facts the stories unraveled.

I reached Mayo's military lawyer and the Army public affairs office,
but neither would give me more information than I had. The
prosecuting attorney sent an e-mail saying Mayo was "charged with
committing larceny of items of a value of more than $500.00 on 16
April 2009. The charges alleged that he stole assorted items from the
Elmendorf Base Exchange, including an iPod, an MP3 player, and a
bucket of kitty litter, among other items." There were no details
about how he was caught or whether he was medicated at the time.

I needed more facts. Was this a simple case of a soldier who got
caught shoplifting who now was facing the consequences? Or was it
more complicated than that? Is it possible that someone could do
something like that and not remember it? I started doing some
research on post-traumatic stress disorder.

I called Jenne Beathe, a clinical psychologist who specializes in
PTSD and has worked with traumatized veterans in Anchorage. I told
her Mayo's story. She said it sounded familiar.

"Certainly not every traumatized soldier comes back and commits
crimes, but it's not uncommon after returning from a war environment
that some can get into legal trouble," she said. "You see most
commonly substance-abuse related crimes, mistakes while intoxicated.
It can be violence at home, violence in the community, DUIs, other
drug-related activity."

Being traumatized hurts soldiers' coping abilities, she said. And
when they can't cope, they may turn to alcohol or other drugs. If
they're taking additional prescribed medications at the same time,
the picture gets very complex, she said. Poverty and isolation make
everything worse.

I asked her if it was possible Mayo didn't remember. She said it was.
Soldiers with PTSD and brain injuries can report periods of impaired
memory even when they aren't on medication, she said. Medication and
alcohol can potentially exacerbate those problems.

Traumatized soldiers come back with complex mental health issues that
make it hard to go back to an ordered life after living in the chaos
of a war zone, she said. They can't calm down. They can't
concentrate. They are flooded with memories. They have nightmares and
flashbacks, depression, anxiety and paranoia. Some "check out,"
disassociating from reality, doing things they don't remember later.
It can be disabling, she said.

"I've had veterans say to me, 'I feel contaminated,' and I think
that's a good description," she said. "It's like, don't get too close
to me because my suffering will spill over onto you."

Some recover. For others, like those still dealing with PTSD 40 years
after the Vietnam War, the condition can be chronic, causing an
inability to work, to parent, to engage in relationships. It can ruin a life.

I looked for statistics on PTSD and came across a 2008 study from the
Rand Corp. It said almost 20 percent of those returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan still reported signs of PTSD or depression. Twenty
percent of the Anchorage-based soldiers who deployed to Iraq with
Mayo would be 700.

"These people are married and they have kids," Beathe told me. "The
effects in the community are exponential."

BOMB BLASTS AND BODY BAGS

From the outside, the house where Mayo and Ellie now live in Wasilla
seemed like all of the other large, well-kept homes on their street.
It was three stories with a sloping roof and wide face of windows.
But when I looked closer, I could see it was hollow. Plastic poked
around the window frames.

Ellie's father is a carpenter, and he has been working on the house
all summer, living with her mother in a small shed on the property.

Mayo and Ellie led me and photographer Erik Hill through the main
room. It was round and full of light, with a grand staircase. Our
footsteps echoed. I could see some shampoo bottles lined up in the
tub of a partially finished bathroom on the second floor. It was
about a week after they'd come to my office.

I followed them up the staircase, past a cat curled on the landing,
and then up another narrow set of stairs to the top floor. They
pushed aside a camouflage sleeping bag that hung across a doorway.
There was a mat covered with blankets, a portable crib, a small
plug-in heater, a microwave and a television.

Mayo had found a job with a contractor and had some calls back from a
couple of big-box stores where he had applied. Ellie had signed up
for classes to become a nursing assistant. They'd called some of the
numbers I gave them. But they were still broke. Cason stared at me
through the mesh of the crib with wide eyes the color of silt.

I asked Mayo to tell me about Iraq. It was the first of several
conversations we had about his time there. Each time the dates and
locations were vague, but his descriptions of what he said he did and
saw came in detail. Much of it was backed up in a pile of documents
he kept with him in a green backpack.

He told me he worked on convoys based mostly out of Fallujah. They
carried supplies and prisoners in trucks over Iraqi streets and
highways. Sometimes, he was a gunner with a 50-caliber machine gun in
a turret on a Humvee. On the roads, they were automatic targets.
People called them "rolling coffins," he said.

He would stay up for 48 hours, drinking energy drinks to keep alert,
he said. He still won't drive over potholes. That's where insurgents
used to hide explosives. Notes in his health records said blasts hit
his convoy at least eight times. He told me he lost count.

He saw soldiers shot and blown up, he told me. Once, he said, he saw
an Iraqi who had been beheaded inside a car. He said he got brain
matter on his boots in an explosion that killed a soldier he knew. He
loaded body bags into trucks. In his dreams, all of it mixes
together, a long string of gory scenes, he said. It's been almost two
years, but he still wakes up screaming. In the dark, Ellie repeats,
"You're in Anchorage," until he starts saying it back.

WEDDING WHILE ON LEAVE

When I asked her to tell me about the last few years, Ellie's voice
went raw with fatigue. She is 23. She's in charge of the paperwork.
She organizes child care and stays on guard against his mood swings.
Recently she started pulling night shifts at a bar to make extra money.

She has a tough love attitude about PTSD, she told me.

"I try to stay joking about it," she said. "Because if I start
freaking out, he's going to freak out worse."

But sometimes if it's really bad, if he's panicked, she'll lie with
him until he calms down.

When Ellie met Mayo, she said, she liked him right away. He told me
it was on his 18th birthday. His friends took him to Fantasies on
5th, an under-21 strip club. She was dancing there. He was confident,
she said. He had a Southern accent. He didn't give her too much
attention like some of the customers at the club. The second time she
saw him, she put her number in his phone. Eventually he called. They
went on a few dates. A few months passed. He deployed.

"I told him not to expect me to wait for him," Ellie told me. "But I
accidentally waited for him."

He gave her a ring before he left, she said. And over the months of
worrying about him and waiting for him to call, what had been a
casual relationship recalibrated. She told him she would marry him
over the telephone. They had a simple wedding while he was on leave
and ate dinner with her family at the Moose's Tooth Pub. He'd only
been in Iraq six months, but he was already edgy and uncomfortable
with crowds, she said.

"He was tore up," she told me. "I thought once he got back home and
saw me, it was going to change."

But it never really changed, she said.

'I LOST MY SON'

I called his mother, Cathy Mayo, at her house in Byram, Miss.,
outside Jackson. She told me she raised him and his brother alone.
She worked in the telecommunications business, she said. But now
she's on disability. She took me through a list of illnesses that
cause her chronic pain.

Mayo was a good boy, she told me. Smart. But when he became a
teenager he got rebellious. He dropped out of high school. Totaled
his car. She drove him to the recruiter. She said she signed papers
for him to enter the Army when he was 17. He didn't want to go, but
eventually he told her he liked it, she said.

I asked him about it later. He said the Army was good for him.

"Mississippi, there's nothing but trouble," he said. "There was no
other options. I got no education other than a GED. I'm not working
at McDonald's."

I asked Cathy if her son had changed while he was in Iraq. She said
it made him quiet and too nervous to read. I asked if she regretted
encouraging him to join. She said she did. She felt he'd been broken
by it, then abandoned.

"What they did to him, you don't do it to a dog," she said. "I lost my son."

She told me he called her while he was cutting himself in his house
on Fort Richardson after the discharge in July. She said he told her
he loved her and that he was bleeding and wanted to die. I asked her
if she called the authorities. She started to weep over the telephone.

"I didn't know who to call," she said in a tiny voice.

Mayo told later me he didn't remember talking to her.

'THINGS JUST WENT BERSERK-O'

Mayo's closest Army friend is Tom Schoettler, who goes by the
nickname "Shooter." I met him one afternoon at the Starbucks in the
Northway Mall Carrs-Safeway. He and Mayo became friends at Fort
Richardson before they went to Iraq. They'd been through a lot
together. He told me they were both in a convoy when another Fort
Richardson soldier, Sgt. Shawn Adams, was killed.

Schoettler is 27. Unlike Mayo, he attended some college. He described
himself as a "squared away" soldier. But when he got back from Iraq,
"things just went berserk-o," he said.

Schoettler said he couldn't relax once he got home. He lay awake
obsessing about situations where people were killed. He had seizures
related to a head injury. Depression weighed on him. He started
drinking, he said, which wasn't like him.

Schoettler's mother, who is a doctor in San Francisco, and a
politically connected aunt worked with Sen. Lisa Murkowski's office
to get him into an inpatient treatment program for PTSD in
California, he said. He spent nine months there. Now he's on his way
to getting a medical discharge from the Army in December.

"I see a lot of people literally going through the struggles I'm
going through and not getting the help I got," he said.

In California, a doctor prescribed Schoettler marijuana to help with
his anxiety and PTSD symptoms. It worked, he said. He quit taking the
handful of pills he'd been prescribed. But when he got back to
Anchorage, he was disciplined and demoted for failing a drug test, he said.

Schoettler was warm and frank, but the more we talked, something felt
a little off. At one point I asked him when he thought he'd be out of
the military. He pulled out a little notebook and flipped though it.
Then he read a date out loud.

"But that's today," I said.

He apologized, a little embarrassed. He went back to the notebook for
a minute and then gave up. About then I noticed his pupils were blown
wide. I asked what he was taking. He listed his medications. An
anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety pills, anti-seizure meds, drugs for
attention deficit disorder. He couldn't smoke pot, but there he was,
trying to function on what was prescribed by military doctors,
sitting in Safeway with no idea what day it was.

Schoettler told me he showed up when the Army kicked Mayo and Ellie
out of their house. He was there with Ellie the night Mayo tried to
kill himself. Mayo was mentally ill, combat made him that way, and
now there was nothing for him, Schoettler said. It wasn't fair, he
told me. There should have been more help for Mayo, he said.

"The Army pretty much said, 'Thank you, goodbye, you're out of the
club,' " he said.

HEADED FOR ANOTHER DEPLOYMENT

I wrote a lot of stories about Alaska-based soldiers who deployed to
Iraq with Mayo and Schoettler but didn't make it back. I read their
MySpace pages and talked to their mothers and sat in living rooms
with their wives and children. But I never thought about how their
deaths rolled through the rest of the Army, about the scars they left
on the minds of the witnesses. The 4th Brigade lost 53 soldiers
during that deployment. I wondered how many more came back like
Schoettler and Mayo, alive but not the same. Now the brigade is in Afghanistan.

Mayo told me he felt himself change in Iraq. First, he couldn't
sleep. Noises made him jumpy. It was involuntary, he said. Like a
reflex. Ellie said she heard it in his voice. He was given a number
of medications, including a sleeping pill, he said, that put him into
such a stupor he once slept through it when a building nearby was
blown up by a mortar.

His behavior toward Ellie became erratic.

"He would call me and he would cuss me out and be screaming at me,"
she said. "Then 10 minutes later he would call and be like, 'Hey,
babe, what's up?' "

He told her he was leaving her, they got back together and then he
broke it off again.

One night in Iraq, he had a strange incident, almost like
sleepwalking except he was awake. He gathered the weapons from other
soldiers' rooms. They found him in his bed in a daze, surrounded by
the guns, he said.

He re-enlisted. That's the thing about the Army, he told me. It
messed him up, "but I still loved it."

When he came back to Anchorage, he learned he'd been diagnosed with
PTSD, he said. He started drinking to calm his mind before bed. He
kept a gun with him at all times, he said. Ellie, who was pregnant,
told me she was constantly watchful of things that might set him off.
People coming up from behind him. Women with their heads covered.
While he was driving, sometimes he went into another world, she said.
He'd grip the wheel and sit up straight in the driver's seat, his
body tense. A few times, she said, he woke up fighting.

Cason was born last September. Mayo started having panic attacks.
Ellie made him go to counseling. He was given more sleeping pills,
anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants. He was ordered to get rid of
his guns. Despite all that, he was headed for another yearlong
deployment to Afghanistan with 3,500 other Fort Richardson soldiers.
But then he quit showing up for work and was moved to the Warrior
Transition Unit for soldiers recovering from injuries.

Mayo landed wrong on a training parachute jump and injured his knee.
That's when he started filling prescriptions for narcotic pain
medicines. He soon began taking more than he needed, he said.
Swallowing pills didn't seem to have an effect. He told me he tried
snorting OxyContin. He told me Cason cried whenever he came near.

Weeks before the shoplifting incident in April, he filled
prescriptions for the painkiller Percocet, the antidepressant Effexor
and the sleeping pill Ambien, according to medical records. He said
he was also taking Valium for anxiety. He said lawyers played a video
of him stealing things inside the BX. He said he didn't recognize his own face.

'FOR THE GOOD OF THE ARMY'

Mayo and Ellie keep half a dozen folders in the old green backpack.
Health records. Pages of doodling. Articles about suicide. Pay stubs.
Evaluations from his sergeants. Copies of certificates for military honors.

Going through it, I found a list of the things he had stolen: one
iPod, two Zune mp3 players, a computer battery charger, a DVD player,
a container of cat litter. Total: $1,031.18. It was stuff anyone would want.

Maybe he took it on purpose and was using his illness as an excuse.
Maybe he was too depressed to care. Would he have done it had he not
been to Iraq?

I couldn't answer that.

I talked to him and Ellie a dozen times over the past several weeks.
The last time was Wednesday. Ellie was sleeping off a night shift
into the afternoon, waiting for school to start in two weeks. John
was still working his construction job even though he has trouble
walking on his bad knee. He didn't have a solid plan for what he was
going to do once the snow flies. They were still living in the
half-built house.

I keep thinking about the end of my visit with them in late August,
at the house in Wasilla, when Ellie showed me a picture of Mayo in
Cason's baby book. He'd sent it from Iraq. He was tan and young and
confident, smiling in his uniform. Then I looked at him sitting on a
blanket that night, 30 pounds lighter, his thin tattooed arms across
his knees. I could barely see the resemblance.

Mayo was wearing his Army jacket. I asked him why he still wore it
now that he wasn't in the military. It was a good jacket, he said. He
didn't have another one. He touched the olive fabric, ran his hand
over the fuzzy spot on his chest where there used to be a patch that
showed his rank. Specialist.

"They told me I was discharged for the good of the Army," he said.

I watched his face go blank, then fill with anger.

"I gave you good," he said, talking to someone who wasn't there.

--------

Our view: Broken soldier

http://www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/941533.html

GI damaged in combat deserves health care to fix the problems

September 19th, 2009

Soldier John Mayo came home from the war in Iraq mentally ill with
post-traumatic stress disorder, and was heavily medicated with
sleeping pills, anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants. He's had
nightmares, panic attacks, erratic and explosive behavior on the
phone to his wife. He tenses up while driving, is set off by normal
events like someone coming up behind him, or noises. He sometimes
doesn't remember what's happened to him. He once cut his arms,
thinking his family would be better off with him dead.

In that terribly mixed-up mental state, he got caught shoplifting
from the Elmendorf Base Exchange.

He doesn't even remember doing it.

But he took a plea bargain, got a less-than-honorable discharge and
lost his military medical benefits. He has been dumped onto the
street, with no treatment for the mental wounds he suffered while
serving in Iraq.

That's not right. Mayo got PTSD while in service to his country --
harrowing duty in which he saw soldiers shot and blown up, and faced
death himself working on convoys carrying supplies and prisoners. The
country should help him get back to health.

The punishment -- loss of his job, his home, his military health
coverage, possibly all of his benefits as a veteran -- is out of
proportion to the crime.

Mayo, a 22-year-old with a wife and son, was in the Warrior
Transition Unit for soldiers recovering from injuries at the time of
the shoplifting. Obviously, the treatment wasn't working for him.

The military justice system didn't seem to seriously consider whether
it's fair to hold him fully responsible for his minor crime, given
his mental state.

Instead, he was pushed out the door and left to fend for himself with
his service-related medical problems.

For members of the Warrior Transition Unit in line for honorable
discharges, the Department of Veterans' Affairs rolls out the red
carpet. A program advocate begins meeting with soldiers before they
are discharged to let them know about their veterans benefits.

Once a soldier has an honorable discharge in hand, VA health benefits
could start the same day, says Marcia Hoffman-DeVoe, public affairs
officer for the Alaska VA Healthcare System.

But a mentally wounded warrior with less than an honorable discharge
has to fight for any benefits, and they are not guaranteed. No red
carpet treatment. Just lots of paperwork and lots of waiting.

Patrick Kelley, benefits manager for the Veterans Service Center
here, couldn't say how long the average case takes. All he could say
is that it would be more than a month because the agency has to wait
30 days to give applicants a chance to comment.

He couldn't say exactly how the agency decides whether it's
appropriate to restore the benefits for the veteran. It depends on
service and medical records and any mitigating circumstances, said Kelley.

A Rand Corp. study quoted in the Daily News article on this young man
estimates that nearly one out of five of those returning from Iraq
and Afghanistan report signs of PTSD or depression.

It's not good for the country, and it's not good for communities, to
have soldiers or ex-soldiers with PTSD living out their nightmares
with no treatment. And it is not fair to the men and women who served
their country -- even if they made a mistake along the way.

BOTTOM LINE: This veteran of the Iraq war isn't getting the health
care he needs and deserves -- even if he did commit a minor crime.

.

Ex-soldier's sordid book on Iraq

[2 articles]

Court-martial records confirm key claims in ex-soldier's sordid book on Iraq

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/update_court-martial_records_c.html

By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
December 09, 2009

Court-martial records produced this morning by the U.S. Army confirm
crucial claims in a new book by Port Sulphur native Beau Lejeune that
he attempted to destroy stolen weapons while serving in Iraq.

While military officials confirmed some of the basic claims in
Lejeune's tell-all memoir "Desert Dons: The Truth Behind the Young
Soldiers who Turned Iraq from Chaos to Cartel," arrest records
relating to the missing weapons were not available in time for a
story in today's Times-Picayune.

The newspaper story relied on Lejeune's claims in the book that he,
after being punished for insubordination and other non-judicial
infractions, found himself tied in with three other trouble-makers
who had taken weapons from a U.S. armory. He goes on to claim that he
destroyed one of the weapons in an attempted cover-up, then got off
scott-free when two of the three other soldiers declined to implicate
him and a friend of his that worked with the prosecutors vouched for him.

Military records show that Lejeune was never formally charged with a
crime and, although he was demoted from specialist rank to a private,
he was allowed to serve out his time in the Louisiana National Guard
and received an honorable discharge.

But this morning, the Army sent the newspaper court-martial orders of
the three soldiers who were found guilty, and they back up Lejeune's
claims. The court-martial order of Spc. Alon J.C. Leeper, whom
Lejeune calls "The Rat" in the book, shows that Leeper pleaded guilty
to helping "Specialist B.L." damage a missing M-4 rifle, recover the
disposed parts and hiding them.

Leeper pleaded guilty to several other charges, including larceny of
six M-4 weapons, possession of ecstacy with intent to sell the
illicit drug and possession of cocaine at Camp Anaconda, near Balad
Air Base, north of Baghdad. He was sentenced to three years
confinement and a dishonorable discharge.

But the court-martial records show that his two accomplices did not
implicate Lejeune. Spc. Dusty Allemand and Spc. Ricky M. Valure,
members of the Mississippi National Guard at the time, pleaded guilty
to conspiring with Leeper to take the weapons.

Valure, whom Lejeune called "Richy" in the book, pleaded innocent to
charges that Lejeune was part of the conspiracy, admitting only that
he talked to Lejeune about taking the weapons. He was sentenced to
eight months confinement and a bad-conduct discharge.

The court-martial papers for Allemand, known as "Almond" in Lejeune's
book, didn't mention Lejeune at all. He was sentenced to three years
confinement and a bad-conduct discharge.

In an interview, Lejeune said he's matured since his days in Iraq and
he's sorry for what he did. He said he wants to give at least 10
percent of the proceeds of his book sales to a fund for the families
of fallen soldiers. He said that despite the havoc he wreaked on his
unit, other units functioned well and many other soldiers, including
officers in his unit, took great pride in their readiness.

To read the full story about Lejeune's bootlegging ring and other
misdeeds he admits in "Desert Dons," click here. [See below.]

--------

Book by Port Sulphur native paints sordid picture of U.S. soldiers in Iraq

http://www.nola.com/military/index.ssf/2009/12/book_by_port_sulphur_native_pa.html

By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
December 08, 2009

If Beau Lejeune wanted to make a splash by writing his first book, he
picked a potentially self-destructive way to do it.

The 26-year-old Port Sulphur native has written a self-published
tell-all claiming that he was a crooked soldier during his tour of
duty in Iraq, an uncontrollable punk who ran a lucrative alcohol
ring, abused drugs and engaged in rampant sex with female soldiers on
a U.S. military base, right under the noses of either complicit or
incompetent commanders, and got away with it.

He also admits he tried to cover up a felony weapons heist by fellow
soldiers and got away with that, too.

"Desert Dons: The Truth Behind the Young Soldiers Who Turned Iraq
from Chaos to Cartel" has some earmarks of a publicity stunt or even
a hoax. Except for himself, Lejeune uses aliases for everyone else in the book.

But military officials in Louisiana and Washington have confirmed
several of the book's central claims, including that Lejeune served
as a medic in the Louisiana National Guard's 1-244th Aviation
Battalion, was deployed to Iraq, was cited several times as an
insubordinate troublemaker and was eventually arrested for his role
in the theft of weapons from a U.S. armory on Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad.

"He was insubordinate, violated his general orders, he didn't live up
to Army values and had several Article 15s (non-judicial
punishments)," said Lt. Col. Michael Kazmierzak, spokesman for the
Louisiana Guard. "He had numerous things he was in trouble for and
was demoted from a specialist to a private prior to being turned over
to active duty headquarters in relation to the case of the missing weapons."

What's unclear is whether Lejeune has taken license with some of the
raw details of his life as a soldier, in which he contends that he
and other lower-level soldiers ran amok, made a mockery of their
commanders, used illicit drugs, were often drunk, paid for sex on
base and weren't prepared to fight.

He claims to have founded a gang of soldiers that called themselves
Vive La Anarchy, or VLA, and in the book Lejeune says the VLA
leaders' orders carried more weight than the commanders'. He became
known as the "Godfather," he wrote in the book.

Even when he was caught, he escaped punishment. The climax of "Desert
Dons" comes in October 2004, when Lejeune finds himself held in a
tent with three drug pushers, helicopter mechanics who, as it turns
out, also had stolen some weapons.

Lejeune said he stupidly got wrapped up in the weapons case when he
found out that one of the mechanics had followed him to the tent of
Nepali contractors ­ civilians who worked in the mess halls and other
menial jobs and ran alcohol to the Iraqis for Lejeune ­ and planted
the stolen weapons there. Lejeune said he retrieved the weapons out
of concern for his Nepali friends, then in a fit of panic, tried to
destroy and dispose of them.

At least two of the mechanics were arrested and court-martialed, Lejeune said.

Lejeune was in shackles and about to stand trial when, to his
amazement, he was let go.

Criminal Investigations spokesman Chris Grey was able to confirm that
Lejeune was involved in a missing weapons case, but could offer
little more without an official arrest record.

Lejeune said he got off because a member of the judge advocate
general's corps, Sgt. Mark Leger, was his "inside man on the prosecution."

In an interview, Leger said he was a paralegal who helped the command
with administrative issues. He admitted stepping in to clear Lejeune
of the stolen weapons charges.

"I'm 100 percent in my rights to tell the commander that I didn't
think he was involved," Leger said. "I don't think the command can
say they didn't know everything going on over there. They just didn't
look into everything because they were busy."

When the weapons went missing, Leger said his commanders told him to
just make sure they hadn't fallen into enemy hands. So, he didn't his
friend should have to suffer any consequence, since the weapons were recovered.

"Beau asked me for help and I helped him. I wiped the weapons clean
and returned them," Leger said.

Lejeune says the criminal charges against him were dropped and
reduced to a nonjudicial punishment. When he was returned to his unit
in Louisiana, a colonel who liked him held his disciplinary hearing
and let him off scot-free. Then he coasted to the end of his six-year
guard stint in December 2006 and got an honorable discharge.

"They told me to stay away from the unit," he said in an interview.
"I'd show up for a drill and they'd say, 'Sign in and head back to
your house.' It became, 'What are we going to do with you? You don't
have any more rank to take away.' So, that's how I finished out my time."

Lejeune says he's matured in the past five years and, with hindsight,
understands that he could have been locked up for what he did. He
says he wants the book to sell a lot of copies because he's donating
at least 10 percent to a fund for the families of fallen soldiers,
but he also says a publicity campaign was his sister's idea, not his.

For this and some of the book's claims, some members of his unit are
calling him a liar on Internet chat groups. Grey said Lejeune's
description of rampant drug and alcohol abuse by soldiers in Iraq is
an exaggeration.

"The idea that it's rampant is not supported by fact or the number of
investigations that we've done," Grey said.

But Leger said he can vouch for the book's accuracy in general and
says the naysayers are just embarrassed.

"The military doesn't want people to know what's going on over
there," Leger said. "There's a lot of downtime in Iraq and a lot of
people don't know what to do with it. You also don't know if it's
going to be your last day. So, that's why some of them figure, live a little."
--

David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.

--------

No personal stake, little interest in war

No personal stake, little interest in war

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.rodricks13dec13,0,7845077.column

Dan Rodricks
December 13, 2009

I have had a couple of telephone conversations with a Maryland native
who arrived in Afghanistan a year ago today - U.S. Army Capt. Jason
Wingeart, who grew up in the Hereford Zone of Baltimore County. He's
commander of Company B, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain
Division, stationed at an outpost in the volatile Charkh district of
Logar province, south of Kabul. His unit's mission is to support the
local government, train the Afghan police - a particularly daunting
challenge - and to protect villagers and the district center from
insurgent attacks.

The phone conversations with Captain Wingeart, a bright and
thoughtful commander who also served in Iraq, were remarkable for
their technical quality; the young captain sounded like he was
calling from a farm in Hereford, not an outpost 7,000 miles away,
where soldiers have died in recent action.

I found some irony in that: Technological advances in communications
bring the war close to home, yet for most Americans, this war has
become, eight years after Sept. 11, a remote and nebulous concept:
Who are we fighting? What's the mission? How long before the mission
is considered accomplished?

President Barack Obama has delivered two eloquent and rational
speeches in argument for another troop surge. Members of Congress,
including some from his own party, questioned and criticized the
president's ambition to escalate the troop commitment in Afghanistan,
but it doesn't appear there's going to be much of a fight over this.
Barack Obama, like George W. Bush, will get his way.

It might be because all those lawmakers in Washington have other
things to tend to - the health insurance overhaul, for one thing - or
perhaps they believe the current president deserves a chance to
finish something his predecessor started. And few members of Congress
ever want to vehemently oppose a war while troops, like Captain
Wingeart, are putting their lives on the line.

(The 3rd Brigade Combat Team has seen 24 soldiers killed in the past
year, and 221 soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort
Drum, have been killed in Afghanistan or Iraq since 2001, according
to published reports.)

There's one other reason why members of Congress who complained about
Mr. Obama's strategy have moved on to other business: They just don't
hear much from the folks back in their districts.

Americans might not have a lot of confidence in the war, but few of
us are personally invested in it. We don't have a son or daughter in
the fight. In the age of the all-volunteer military, any president,
Republican or Democrat, can do almost whatever he wishes when it
comes to combat operations. Without a draft in place, and millions of
young Americans facing the prospect of being called to serve, the
president and the generals can go a long time - deep into any
strategy they conceive - without fear of a surge of public opinion to
counter it.

We haven't really been asked to sacrifice much when it comes to
winning the war on terrorism. A Democratic congressman from
Pennsylvania suggested a surtax to finance the Afghanistan
escalation, starting in 2011, and it was pretty much declared
dead-on-arrival by the speaker of the House. We've spent about $1
trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, and the monthly bill for
Afghanistan will rise to an estimated $8 billion.

Meanwhile, the military remains stressed, despite reaching its
recruitment goals for the first time in years. Several years of
repeated deployments have taken a heavy toll. Both the Army and the
Marine Corps have been hit with rising rates of depression, divorce
and suicide. "Guard and reserve components also have deployed at
levels not envisioned when the all-volunteer force was introduced,"
Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, the Navy secretary during the Reagan
administration, wrote recently. "We are in uncharted territory in
terms of the long-term effects these deployments are having ..."

And there's hardly a peep among military and political leaders in
this country that a draft might be needed to meet the nation's ambitions.

The men and women who volunteered for the military, and their
families, are carrying this load for the rest of us.

So, when I hear politicians and pundits speak in the first person
plural - "We have to do this," and "We have to do that" - my
reactions now range from amusement to anger because there's really
not much "we" about this.

.