Iraq Veterans Against the War Testify at the Winter Soldier Hearings

by Doug Rawlings

“We are in the presence of something holy. We ought metaphorically to take off our shoes because we are standing on holy ground” —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

How to convey the devastation of war? God knows, we’ve tried again and again to do so. I work at a small public university here in Maine, so I often try this tack: “Want to know what this war is costing?” I ask. Try $500,000 a minute. Or the hour that we’ll be together in this classroom, in Iraq War dollars, will pay for this campus’s operating budget for an entire year. Or how about this: imagine this campus emptied of all students— all classrooms bare, all resident halls vacant, no students anywhere. Fill it to capacity again with more students. And then empty it out once more. That’s how many American soldiers have died in the Iraq War to date. To imagine the number of Iraqis killed so far, we’d have to empty the entire state of Maine. Portland empty, Bangor empty, Lewiston, Farmington, Presque Isle. The smallest hamlet. Everyone gone.

But we all know how limiting the use of numbers can be, how mind-boggling it is to try and wrap our heads around such numbers. Want to know what this war is really costing us, just us, just Americans? If you had traveled down to Silver Springs, MD, between March 13-16, to to the National Labor College, and into the main lecture hall, you would have found out. In spades. Over 100 Afghan War and Iraq War veterans gathered in panels of ten, in front of as many as 700 witnesses. They wept, and we wept. They didn’t stop for four days. Panel after panel. Men and women oftentimes giving voice to the indescribable, to the “work” they did on our country’s behalf. Many of them spoke of love—they joined the military out of love for their country; they went through the hellish days of war shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers they had grown to love and had sworn to protect; they yearned for home, calling up images of their loved ones for whom they thought they were fighting. And all of this while dehumanizing Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children, and, as many of them realized, dehumanizing themselves. These are the men and women of Iraq Veterans Against the War. These are the soldiers who gave testimony to the war crimes they had committed. They spoke of the racism, the sexism, the homophobia they witnessed and participated in while serving in our nation’s uniform. Their motives for testifying? Therapy? Revenge against the mad machine that devoured their souls? Genuine moral acts to stop this war and bring their brothers and sisters back home? Probably a combination of these and more. But who cares? It is enough that they had mustered the courage to speak so eloquently of the unspeakable.

Archbishop Tutu’s words were spoken in reference to the work of his country’s Truth and Reconciliation Council. After years of apartheid and the horrific tortures that his people had undergone at the hands of South African racists, Tutu and others brought the torturers and the tortured together. The perpetrators of the most inhumane acts were compelled to sit and listen to the anguish of the people they tortured or the surviving families of those they had killed. The acts weren’t undone because of their testimonies, but the tears that were shed and the pain that was brought into the light of day by those who had suffered so long transformed a South African hall into a holy place.

So too for the Labor College’s lecture hall. I sensed (and I hope the testifiers sensed it as well) that their honesty and their raw vulnerability opened up a space within us all to accept their anguish into our hearts and, more importantly, to rekindle the energies we need to bring these wars to an immediate halt. For the Iraqi and Afghan people, for the soldiers fighting in these obscene wars, for their families, for us, for our children, for our grandchildren.

The beauty and genius of this testimony lay in its simplicity. Very few statistics were bandied about; no one spoke in abstractions; the testifiers were called upon to “tell their stories,” to bring the war home packaged in a single moment, from a single place, from a time and a place they suffered through, and will carry with them for the rest of their lives. The power of being on the receiving end of such testimony exhausted us. Again and again the young soldiers spoke of transforming moments, of epiphanies that spoke volumes to them. They knew then, mired in a war zone, what they were becoming, what they had become, and, more often than not, that they were powerless to fend off the brutality taking over their lives. Until now. In this lecture hall. Before us as their witnesses. It was especially heartening to witness these men and women growing before us, almost unfolding above their microphones, as they publicly struggled to regain more and more of their humanity. They had realized at some point that the military had stolen their moral autonomy. Now they were getting it back. And now they were going to use their experiences to throw a wrench into the military machine. I sensed that this is only the beginning of what these soldiers will bring to the peace movement. We will hear more from them. And we should listen.

At some point midway through the day’s testimony, a young man spoke of the great pride he had in his unit. He spoke of the love and admiration he had for his commanding officers and for the disciplined professionalism his unit had demonstrated throughout his tour in Iraq. Then his convoy was attacked. He was a driver for the commanding officer, who took a round to the neck, and, before they could get him back to base, died in this young man’s arms. The next day six Iraqis were brought into the camp as possible perpetrators of the ambush. This young soldier described in measured tones how the captives were bound with their hands behind their backs and hoods over their heads. He went to one of them, grabbed the captive’s head in his hands, and smashed the Iraqi’s face into a cement wall. Twice. Then as he fell to the ground, this young American soldier kicked him again and again. At this point in his testimony this young man looked up at us, his voice breaking, and apologized for what he had done. He apologized to the Iraqi people. He apologized to us. He was asking for forgiveness. His newfound compassion wove its way through the room. We forgave him. And found in ourselves renewed energies to work on his behalf, on behalf of those he and his brothers and sisters had brutalized while wearing our country’s uniform, on behalf of ourselves and our loved ones. Whether we knew it or not, we were on holy ground.