STOP THESE WARS

by Frida Berrigan | March 16, 2012, 1:44 pm

Graffiti on Jeju Island, via savejejuisland.org.

Graffiti on Jeju Island, via savejejuisland.org.

These guys are no joke. Tarak Kauff was a paratrooper in U.S. Army. Elliott Adams was in the infantry as a paratrooper in Vietnam, Japan, Korea and Alaska. Mike Hastie was an Army medic in Vietnam. Now they are all members of Veterans for Peace, and they just got kicked out of Jeju Island in South Korea.

The issue is no joke either. The United States and South Korea have teamed up to build a huge naval base on the beautiful, pristine island of Jeju — a bio-region so unique that UNESCO has identified nine different geological sites there as “Global Geoparks.” In the midst of this natural wonderland, the two military powerhouses want a deep-water harbor for the nuclear-armed Aegis destroyer and other ships that can menace China and protect Washington and Seoul’s strategic interests in the region.

As Tarak Kauff, one of the Vets, wrote in a reflection en route to Jeju last week:

The base will be part of the ever expanding U.S. military/economic global hegemonic plans to have a potent strike force directly off the coast of China. The U.S. has been an occupying force in South Korea since WWII, consequently imposing it’s political/economic/cultural and military will on the Korean people, this being just one more example of that. To get an idea of how violent and aggressive this is, imagine China or Russia building a naval base complete with missile carrying destroyers, say in Bermuda or Puerto Rico.

The resistance has been strong for seven years, ever since local people learned of the plans to build a port large enough for 20 battleships in their backyard. But international attention has been focused on the village of Ganjeong recently because, on March 7, 2012, the South Korean navy and Samsung started blasting out rock foundations along the coastline. This work is expected to last for the next five months and use 43 tons of explosives. Jeju Governor Woo Keun-min issued an official request to the South Korean navy to halt the blast of the sacred Gureombi volcanic coastline on Jeju Island, but he has been ignored.

The day after the blasting started, hundreds of people arrived on the island to engage in nonviolent resistance against the navy’s blasting. Activists have been lying in the road to stop construction vehicles, protesting peacefully and pressing their local and national legislators. There have been many arrests and activists have been handed heavy fines.

Tarak and the other Veterans for Peace did not get even that far. Immigration officials met the three of them on their plane when it landed on Jeju from Shanghai, China. They were detained, told they could not enter Jeju and put back on a plane to China.

“I am disappointed,” Tarak admitted. “The activists on Jeju were expecting us and looking forward to us coming. They have a high level of nonviolent resistance and I was really eager to be a part of it. I felt like my heart was already there.”

While activist military veterans like Colonel Ann Wright and Bruce Gagnon have been to Jeju before, this March delegation of Veterans for Peace marked the beginning of a new concerted effort by U.S. veterans to work in active and nonviolent solidarity. “This was to be the first project of our newly formed Veterans Peace Team,” said Tarak, “which we are organizing to bring veterans to confront and expose state and police violence domestically and around the world.” The mission statement for Veterans Peace Team reads, in part:

[We] stand in solidarity with … all peoples worldwide, who are standing up courageously, leading and often dying in the struggle for equality and justice as they are exposed to massive state run police and military violence.

In fact, the Peace Team is so new that their first training took place just a week before in Woodstock, NY. Longtime nonviolence trainer Joanne Sheehan, who heads the War Resisters League’s New England office (and is my mother-in-law) helped develop and facilitate the training, which will be used as a model for similar trainings around the country. This is a new kind of training, according to Joanne:

What touched me as a trainer was how aware the veterans were of stepping into harm’s way. We use that rhetoric in training and we role play hassle lines and other confrontations as a way of preparing people for the possibility of nonviolently encountering violence. But this was a room full of people planning to stand in front of police batons and say, “No, this is wrong,” and to use their position in society as veterans to absorb and expose the brutality of the state.

The show of force that the Peace Team was up against in Jeju has been extreme. In preparation for blasting to begin, South Korea sent hundreds of extra police to the island. Local activists estimate that between the indigenous police force and the mainland forces, there are now about 1,500 heavily equipped police in the village of Ganjeong — making a ratio of one officer for every villager.

Elliott Adams, former president of Veterans for Peace, was struck by the irony of the situation. “This is gratitude? I served in Korea with the 2nd Infantry Division defending the people from North Korea; I come back to again defend the people and I am pushed off into no-man’s-land.”

Reached by phone on Thursday morning, back in New York, Tarak Kauff told me about what it was like getting on the plane back to China:

The Chinese people on the plane were hostile and disrespectful towards us. They had been kept waiting for three Americans, they thought we were spies or something. It went on for a while and finally one guy was just totally offensive. I turned and explained to him that we were American military veterans, trying to get to Jeju to protest the U.S. and South Korean Naval Base being constructed there — abase that will be a threat to China. Well, everything changed and they were respectful and nice to us the rest of the way.

Back in the Shanghai airport, immigration officials held on to their passports and got them on an American Airlines flight back to Los Angeles. In the course of all of this it became clear that American was going to charge them $280 each to change their tickets. “Well, this would have added insult to injury,” Tarak says. “I explained to the supervisor — a Chinese woman — why we were forced to change our flight, and she waived the fees.” They did not get where the wanted to go, but they were able to reach out to lots of ordinary Chinese people with this message of international solidarity. It was likely the first time the Chinese had encountered U.S. peace activists.

The three Americans were not alone. The day before the veterans made their forced U-turn, Angie Zelter of the United Kingdom and Benjamin Monnet of France were deported from South Korea. Adams wrote in an email that Monnet “was forcefully dragged by about 10 immigration officers and left for the Hwaseong Immigration office that has a foreigners’ prison, in front of my and lawyer’s eyes.” According to theYonhap News Agency:

Angie Zelter is accused of breaking into the construction site in Gangjeong Village on the southern tip of the resort island Friday evening after cutting down barbed-wire fences. … Meanwhile, French activist Benjamin Monnet allegedly trespassed onto the site and climbed a crane on the same day.

The South Korean military and police forces went to great lengths and considerable expense to prevent U.S. veterans from standing side-by-side with priests and nuns, villagers, students, monks and other international activists on Jeju. “U.S military veterans resisting the naval base obviously has significance,” says Tarak.

The veterans are now back in the United States, jet-lagged and exhausted after their ordeal, but they are not giving up. They protested at the South Korean Consulate (335 East 45th Street, between First and Second Avenues) in New York City on Friday, March 16 at 12:30. If you couldn’t join them there, consider calling the South Korean embassy in Washington DC 202-939-5692 or 202-939-5600 to lodge a strong complaint about the denial of entry of three VFP members entry to Jeju Island. For information on upcoming Peace Team trainings, email Elliott Adams.

Veterans Peace Teams to Stand With Occupy Movement

People of color, including Native Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, and working class communities in America have long been on the receiving end of police brutality.

Now with the recent police violence directed toward the Occupy movement, the country at large is waking up to the unpleasant reality that the violence of the system can and will target anyone who stands up for justice and opposes the exploitation of the 99 percent by the 1 percent.

The Veterans For Peace mission statement states that we pledge to work for peaceful conflict resolution and the elimination of war—the ultimate violence. As veterans of conscience, we are compelled to take a stand against police violence toward the national Occupy movement.

Veterans For Peace will establish Veterans Peace Teams to be made available as we can, to those Occupy sites where the local general assemblies feel our participation would be helpful.  We propose that these nonviolent Veterans Peace Teams act as a buffer between Occupy protesters and police violence and ask any and all military/law enforcement veterans to join us in this endeavor.

As veterans, we stand with the Occupy movement as members of the 99 percent and oppose any and all use of force by police against peaceful protesters exercising their right to peaceably assemble to seek redress of grievances as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

We also stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters worldwide, standing up courageously, leading and often dying in the struggle for equality and justice as they are exposed to massive state-run police and military violence. We recognize that our common enemy is the wealthy power elite, those who control, ravage and exploit.

Excessive use of force by police toward those in the Occupy movement has led to arbitrary arrests, a fractured skull for one veteran and a ruptured spleen for another, near-asphyxiation and trampling of peaceful protesters and pepper-spraying of students sitting peacefully on a sidewalk obstructing nothing at all, among many abuses and injuries. Pepper spray, tear gas, bean bag projectiles, rubber bullets, tasers and other weapons—all of which can cause grave injury and death—have all been deployed against peaceful U.S. citizens.

As veterans and as non-veteran citizens standing in solidarity with us, we implore individual officers, police agencies, elected officials and government agencies to use restraint, negotiation and common sense when dealing with peaceful protesters. We will continue our efforts to convince law enforcement to avoid excessive force, brutality and injury to all involved. We also oppose the increased militarization of police agencies.

We seek to prevent deaths and additional injuries in domestic protests of governmental policies. We realize that those employed in law enforcement are part of the 99 percent, and we call upon all police personnel not to be a domestic front line force for the 1 percent—but to honor and perform their duty to serve and protect the people.

Our mission in short, as veterans and allies, is to challenge, confront and expose the inherent or actual violence of those institutions that would use violence to impose their will on others.

Veterans For Peace

Contact: veteranspeaceteam@gmail.com

Police almost trample protesters sitting in the road at Quantico Marine base.

350 activists rallied and marched and 31 were arrested at the U.S. Marine Base at Quantico in Virginia March 20 demanding freedom for PVC Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking secret U.S. government documents to the WikiLeaks website. Manning has been held in solitary confinement for nine months; recently, even his underwear has been taken away at night because authorities claim he might hurt himself. He presents himself outside his cell for inspection each morning unclothed.

Click here for the complete story in pictures.

Photos by Irina Ivanova

Video by Eddie Becker

The demonstrators, including many U.S. military veterans, wanted to put flowers on a replica of the Iwo Jima memorial that sits outside the entrance to the base, but the base authorities closed access to the statue, which is normally open to the public. A deal had been negotiated to allow six of the demonstrators, accompanied by a videographer and a photographer, to lay flowers on the memorial, but they weren’t even allowed to go up to the statue, instead having to throw the flowers over a barrier about 10 feet away. The rest of the demonstrators were enclosed in a pen across the road from the site. After the flowers were left, three of the six–Dan Ellsberg, Elaine Brower, and Ret. Col. Ann Wright–sat in the middle of Route 1 and were soon joined by other demonstrators, who broke out of the barricades.

The Virginia State Police handled some of the protesters quite roughly, including pulling people to their feet by their heads and necks and pushing standing protesters on top of those sitting next to them.

Some nine different police agencies were on hand to deal with the nonviolent protest, including military police, Prince County Mounted Police, Quantico town police, and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan police.

Watermelon Slim of Vietnam Veterans Against the War is taken into custody March 19 at the White House. Photo by Ellen Davidson

More pictures by Ellen Davidson

Pictures of March 19 by Irina Ivanova

Pictures of March 18 benefit at Busboys & Poets by Irina Ivanova

Some 1500 activists rallied in Lafayette Park and marched to the White House fence today, where 113 were arrested. Chanting “Stop the wars, expose the lies, free Bradley Manning!” the protesters marked the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The action was sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and March Forward!

Speakers at the rally included Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader, and Ret. Col. Ann Wright.

The activists plan to follow up March 20 with a rally at the Marine base at Quantico, where Private First Class Bradley Manning, accused of releasing classified government information to the WikiLeaks website, has been held in solitary confinement for nine months.

• Friday, March 18–Pre-Action Gathering at Busboys and Poets
• Saturday, March 19–Rally and Civil Resistance at the White House
• Saturday, March 19–Dinner, Discussion and Music
• Sunday, March 20–Rally and March to Quantico for Bradley Manning
• Cheap hotels in the Washington, D.C., area
• Ride Board–Offer or request rides to Washington

A rally at noon, March 19, in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, will feature Daniel Ellsberg; Ralph Nader; Ann Wright, retired Army colonel and diplomat who resigned over the 2003 Iraq invasion; writer Chris Hedges and representatives of four national antiwar veterans organizations.

Immediately following the rally and a short march, the military veterans will lead peace activists in a nonviolent civil resistance action, similar to one in December when 131 people were arrested at the White House fence.

The demonstrators make three demands of the Obama administration: Stop the wars, expose the lies and free Bradley Manning.

Mike Ferner, former Veterans For Peace president and Navy corpsman, said, “Since 2003, U.S. taxpayers have spent over 780 billion dollars to kill more than a million Iraqis, leaving the survivors considerably worse off than before; killing 4,439 U.S. troops and wounding many thousands more. At every level our economy is bankrupt, while state budget crises prove that maintaining an Empire kills people abroad and turns our people and cities into ‘collateral damage.’ Our infrastructure isn’t bombed, it simply rots from neglect.”

Bill Homans, a U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, said Vietnam Veterans Against the War will be at the White House “to tell President Obama that a further combat role in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply unacceptable. We must stop making new combat veterans every day and treat the ones we have now with fairness and respect. Bring our brothers and sisters home now!”

Garett Reppenhagen, an Army Infantry combat veteran of the Iraq War and chair of the Iraq Veterans Against the War Board of Directors, said, “The one person who’s done the most to tell us the truth, PFC Bradley Manning, is now treated like a criminal by the same government that led us into war. In 2004, I deployed to Iraq as a sniper and since then we’ve learned the war was based on lies: We found no weapons of mass destruction, nor was Saddam Hussein connected with the 9/11 attacks. We’ve given the people of the Middle East plenty of ‘shock and awe’ but little democracy or stability.”

Mike Prysner, co-founder of March Forward! and an Army combat veteran of the Iraq War, said, “In March 2003, I landed in Iraq as a 19 year-old soldier in the U.S. Army. Little did I know that my life would never be the same again — nor would the lives of millions of others. That war was based on willful lies and deceptions from Washington and the Pentagon—just like the war in Afghanistan. While over $700 million a day is spent on these criminal wars, unions, education and social services are slashed. We can change this, but we have to stand up and fight back.”

Organizations endorsing the White House civil resistance action include: ANSWER, Black Is Back, CodePink, Courage to Resist, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Say NO, March Forward!, National Assembly to End the U.S. Wars and Occupations, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace Action Montgomery, Peace of the Action, United for Peace and Justice, United National Anti-War Committee, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Voices for Creative Non-Violence, Voters for Peace, War Resisters League, Washington Peace Center, World Can’t Wait.

On Sunday, March 20, members of many of these groups will go to Quantico, Va., for a 2 pm rally to support Bradley Manning.

The imperial wars rage on. U.S. drones rain missiles down on innocents in Pakistan; hundreds of children die daily in Afghanistan because of the war; contrary to what the President says, the occupation in Iraq continues. The devastation and misery caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq has not even begun to be addressed. The United States, rather than bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, has destroyed their country—perhaps beyond repair.

On March 19, 2011, a broad coalition of U.S. military veterans consisting of members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, March Forward!, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace will gather at the White House in solidarity to demand peace. The veteran-led action will be supported by a large array of activist groups including ­ANSWER, Fellow­ship of Reconciliation, ­CODEPINK, Voters for Peace, United for Peace and ­Justice, World Can’t Wait, Peace Action, United National Antiwar Committee, and the War Resisters League.

Veterans will gather to support Bradley Manning, who should be venerated as a hero instead of being incarcerated under conditions amounting, literally (and legally) to torture. We call for an immediate end to the cruel, inhuman, and ­degrading treatment of PFC Bradley Manning during his military ­confinement.

Records and videos allegedly downloaded by Manning revealed horrendous war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, widespread torture by Iraqi authorities with full knowledge of the U.S. military, previously unknown estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed at U.S. military checkpoints, and the massive Iraqi civilian death toll caused by the U.S. invasion.

As veterans, we well understand and cherish the obligation of military personnel to refuse illegal orders and beyond that to prevent and expose war crimes. We know there is no excuse for following, either actively or passively, illegal orders.

We understand the need for justice. Our demand is clear, straightforward, and undeniable. Bring to justice those who committed war crimes, not those who report them—who heroically refuse to be a part of state-inspired mayhem and murder.
Veterans and others will gather en masse at the White House as we did on December 16, 2010, and again refuse to move. We have three clear demands for the President. End these wars and occupations. Expose the Lies. Free Bradley ­Manning.

“The speeches were over. There was a mournful harmonica rendition of taps. The 500 protesters fell silent. One hundred and thirty-one men and women, many of them military veterans wearing old fatigues, formed a single, silent line. Under a heavy snowfall and to the slow beat of a drum, they walked to the White House fence. They stood there until they were arrested.”—Chris Hedges

“We have become a killer nation and our economy is addicted to endless war spending. The ­Congress and the White House have been taken over by the corporate oligarchy and they have drowned ­democracy.”—Bruce Gagnon

America’s corporate rulers understand that their power depends upon a subdued, sedated and ­manipulated public—a public fed lies and fantasies that can, when needed, be manipulated by fear or coercion. But as the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt show us, the people can triumph over entrenched power, lies, fear, and coercion.
Forty-four years ago at Riverside Church in New York City Martin Luther King said, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
On March 19—the anniversary of the brutal invasion of Iraq, where over a million Iraqis and almost 5,000 U.S. soldiers died with thousands more grievously injured—as the occupation of Iraq and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan continue unabated, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, March Forward! and Veterans For Peace will bring the largest ever veteran-led nonviolent public civil resistance to the White House.
Our resistance will grow in numbers and strength; and like a hungry lion, our resistance will not abate, will not cease, until our appetite for peace is ­sated.

Download a two-sided flyer with this statement: Color or Black & White

By Tarak Kauff

“Somehow this madness must cease.” That’s what Martin Luther King said in his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in April 1967.

Almost 44 years later madmen are still running the asylum. Last December 16, many of us were at the White House fence, where we were taking a stand for peace. We were opposing that same entity that Martin Luther King called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

Violence in Iraq continues as more than 50,000 U.S. troops and mercenaries continue to occupy that war-devastated country. In Afghanistan, 850 children are dying daily, some directly from U.S. bombs, many from illness and starvation, all this, byproducts of the evils of war.

But it is not just that these wars and occupations for empire are evil; they are endemic of an insane corruption of the human condition.

To sane human beings, war, not to mention permanent war, is madness. But to the madmen who control America, wars that reap massive profits are normal. Madmen do not pity the suffering, do not empathize with others’ pain that they cause. Cold to the misery of others, immune to reason and conscience, they are a strange lot, these dispensers of death.

James Connolly, the Irish socialist leader who was executed by the British in 1916, said:

It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare,’ of the ‘rules of civilized warfare,’ and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress. What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.

Over time, this “mad ruling class” loses the very qualities of love, kindness and empathy that make us human. Like inhuman monsters they become, these executors and guardians of an equally inhumane system of corporate capitalism, destroying all that humanity holds dear and sacred.

Those who are mad with power will never voluntarily relinquish, nor surrender to even the most eloquent and passionate appeals. They are like drunken drivers whose license must be revoked. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”—Frederick Douglass

The system and those in power recognize that the source of their power is a subdued, sedated and manipulated public, a public fed lies and fantasies that can, when needed, be manipulated by fear or coercion. They play all the angles. But as the uprisings in Tunisia and now Egypt show us, lies, fear and coercion can be resisted.

Here in the United States, war profiteers are thriving while people are losing homes and jobs. We don’t have adequate health care or decent education for our children, and civil services are cut while the Pentagon budget grows exponentially.

During the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964, Mario Savio said, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”

Join veterans, many of whom have seen the madness and horror of war firsthand, as we march again to the White House, refusing to move, demanding the end of U.S. wars and occupations, as well as an end to U.S. military support and aid for oppressive right-wing client states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and $3 billion-plus-a-year partners in crime like Israel.

March 19, 2011. Help make this the largest veteran-led civil resistance to the war machine in recent history. E-mail StopTheseWars@gmail.com and we’ll keep you posted.

As Martin Luther King said 44 years ago, “Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”

For more information on participating in the March 19, 2011, veteran-led civil resistance to the war machine, email stopthesewars@gmail.com.

December 16, Washington, DC, the White House — “The speeches were over. There was a mournful harmonica rendition of taps. The 500 protesters fell silent. One hundred and thirty-one men and women, many of them military veterans wearing old fatigues, formed a single, silent line. Under a heavy snowfall and to the slow beat of a drum, they walked to the White House fence. They stood there until they were arrested.”—Chris Hedges from “Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail.”

The wars and the occupation of Iraq still rage. We read almost daily of new atrocities spawned by our corporate government’s ruthless militarism. People in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, as well as our own soldiers, experience these things firsthand.

When soldiers, wounded and maimed, both in body and soul, come home, do they find relief from the horror of war and killing, or does it haunt them, affecting their families, friends and communities? Do they find accessible medical care? Do they find support from the very military they served or are they cast off like so many no longer useful tools? Do they readily find gainful employment or a steadily deteriorating economy and job market for the poor and middle classes while Wall Street thrives?

What about the people in the countries the war machine is still destroying, supposedly to bring them democracy and freedom? Can we imagine what their lives are like?

What about the planet we live on? Are we aware that the U.S. war machine is the greatest polluter on earth?

Hedges says, “War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and, finally, physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems, economic, social, environmental and political, that sustain us as human beings.”

On March 19—the anniversary of the brutal invasion of Iraq, where over a million Iraqis and almost 5,000 U.S. soldiers died with thousands more grievously injured—as the occupation of Iraq and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan continue unabated, Veterans For Peace is calling for increased veteran-led nonviolent civil resistance at the White House.

As these words are written, men, women, and children are dying because of our government’s deadly policy of war. Yet the state of endless war threatens to achieve normalcy in this country. We cannot let this happen. There is no justification for these wars, but there is a desperate and urgent need to show the United States and the world that nonviolent resistance will continue to grow in strength and numbers until these wars end.

There are two critical ways that you can help build resistance here in the United States.

Most important, put your body on the line for peace and join us on March 19!

If you can’t do that, or even if you can, please support this effort with your donation. With your support and participation we’ll be at the White House March 19, resisting the war machine with numbers far surpassing our effort in December.

Resist the War Machine!

For more information on participating in the March 19, 2011, veteran-led civil resistance to the war machine, email stopthesewars@gmail.com.