Posted with permission of Professor Shari Stone-Mediatore.

Shari is an associate professor of philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University. The essay was just released in the March - April 2006 Edition of the Educational Journal. Faculty and College Students across the nation majoring in the Humanities read The Humanist.

As antiwar sentiments increase, so does diversity within the antiwar movement  (Read Article in PDF) 

Professor Stone-Mediatore’s starts by saying that Hannah Arendt notes in her 1964 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, that Hannah saw Adolph Eichmann’s involvement in Nazism not so much evil intent as his very ordinary refusal to think.

Arendt’s point is that thinking is vital to ethics or in other words ‘ethical behavior’ that is certainly lacking in our government today regarding the War in Iraq from its outset, Defense Spending, and overall leadership. This is nothing less than a continuation of the unethical behavior and mismanagement of our government (both political parties) during the Vietnam War, which eventually led to the loss of that war. 

Stone-Mediatore correctly notes that Arendt’s warning about the dangers of 'ignorance and thoughtlessness' are as relevant today as sound bites about “patriotism” and “pride” increasingly drowns out honest political discussion.

In these dark times, three individuals in the anti-Iraqinam war movement, each with a military background, spoke in April 2005 at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, offered refreshing glimpses of what it means for Americans today to lead examined lives. Theses representatives of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO): Mark Hartford, Teresa Fowler Dawson, and Bobby Hanafin, shared stories that revealed their courage. Not only as internal critics of military leadership and our government, but also as human beings trying to face honestly the truths that confound our beliefs and the difficulties of living up to professed values.

As a teenager, Mark Hartford fell into the army like many young people fall into summer jobs. “I didn’t have a serious thought in my head,” he told us. “I dropped out of college and had no other plans, so I joined the army.” Hartford sent to the “demilitarized zone” between North and South Korea where, for thirteen months, he served on guard duty, night ambush patrols, and search-and-destroy sweeps. When he returned to the United States, he was a nineteen-year-old alcoholic and adrenaline junkie. He overcame the alcoholism some forty years later but continues to struggle with the impact of those thirteen months in Korea. “War rewires your brain”, he says. Among other effects, the constant near-death and adrenaline-pumping experiences addict a person to risk.

Hartford’s first priority upon his return was to gain an education and to provide for his new wife and child. Soon thereafter, a friend proposed that Hartford join him in organizing VVAW chapters on

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 the west coast.  Hartford, knew the deep toll that combat takes on young men, was ripe for the job. Together they toured college campuses organizing veterans and providing them with counsel, often listening as young men relived memories of violence. In a defining moment for him Hartford recalls “holding a twenty-three-year-old vet in my arms as he lay crying over what he had become.”

Many people ignore the human fallout of war, choosing to keep homeless veterans out of their neighborhoods and to bury uncomfortable truths in “pride”; proceeding untroubled by our nation’s engagement in massive violence. Hartford, however, seems driven to face the shameful implications of what he calls “a militarized society” and to restore in his everyday life some of the humanity that militarism robs from us. “It helps fight the demons,” he says when asked about his devotion to antiwar activism. He “fights the demons” by advocating nonviolence and connecting with people, our society has forgotten. As a VVAW activist, for instance, he has participated in resistance to U.S.-sponsored wars in Central America as well as efforts to reduce the number of homeless in Columbus, Ohio, many of whom are veterans. Sensitive to the human complications of war, Hartford challenges us to face the realities of violence that exceed between-commercial newsflashes and the euphemistic reports of policymakers. Pundits may tout Iraqi elections as a sign of progress, for instance, but the experience of Vietnam should make us wary. Hartford recalls a New York Times article from September 4, 1967, which reported, “U.S. officials were surprised and heartened by the turnout in successful [Vietnam] elections”. However, “after this ‘successful’ election,’” says Hartford, “40,000 more U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese died”. The Iraq death toll has not yet approached these proportions, but Iraq has witnessed a similar upsurge of violence following national elections.

The death rate resembles that of the first years of Vietnam, and the overall U.S. military death count in Iraq has surpassed 2,000. Injuries, too, will haunt us long after treaties are signed. While many Vietnam veterans are marked by waist-down paralysis, as well as physical and psychological damage from exposure to Agent Orange, Hartford predicts the signature injury of the current war will be traumatic brain injury (TBI). “The new equipment is so good”, he explains, and “that soldiers can survive when a blast should have killed them, but they experience the equivalent of shaken baby syndrome. Their brain is shaken up inside their head . . . . The damage is invisible and emerges slowly, but it affects you for the rest of your life.” . Forty years later

Pursuing further this world beyond our television screens, Hartford

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reminds us “Iraq is not a war, it’s a country”. References to “military targets” and “collateral damage,” he says, allow us to forget that “enduring military installations have been built on the rubble of historic towns” and that “25,000 to 100,000 ordinary Iraqis—civilians—have been hurt by American military actions.” In response to a question from the audience about the appropriateness of democracy in Iraq, he answers that he “cannot say what is right for Iraq” but only that “democracy can’t be spread through the military.” “Pride” and simplistic slogans like “Support the Troops” may be generally more comforting than the concerns Hartford raises about the human costs of war and the limits of U.S. military power, but they gloss over policy contradictions—notably, the escalation of violence and the surge of anti-Americanism that has mounted in Iraq since the attempt to “bring democracy” to that country. Calls to “support the troops” also evade conflicts within the military.

In Vietnam, says Hartford, the soldiers’ resentment of officers was so severe that by 1969 GI anti-war magazines were advertising rewards for killing officers. According to Hartford, Weldon Honeycutt, the lieutenant colonel who led “the Battle of Hamburger Hill” (so named for the numerous bodies it ground up and its lack of purpose other than the colonel’s career advancement), “had a $10,000 bounty placed on his head, all the money collected from soldiers.” Notwithstanding his blunt criticism of U.S. military policy, Hartford still considers himself a patriot. Smiling, he recalled how once a counter-protester charged him with never risking his life for his country. “I informed him that I had risked my life for my country.” Turning more serious, he added that he would do so again. The university audience was stilled by his words, perhaps because none of us had ever offered our lives for something larger. In addition, perhaps because we could see that through his activism Hartford is, in fact, giving his life once again for his country.

Military Families Speak Out/Bring Them Home NOW Organization Bill Board in New Jersey.  

Teresa Fowler Dawson, daughter of a marine and the mother of 2 citizen soldiers, defies stereotypes of both mothers and military people. Her maternal ties drive her efforts to expose the truth behind the United States’ preemptive war in Iraq, while many Americans are content to leave political judgment to media pundits, Dawson—with a daughter in the coast guard and a National Guard son who was sent to Iraq—has “made it her business to know what this war was about.” Upon studying multiple government reports and comparing newspapers from around the world, she found that the evidence for going to war simply “didn’t add up” and determined that the administration was “inventing reasons as suited the occasion.” Having done her homework, Dawson isn’t afraid to speak out and has represented MFSO in educational forums throughout Ohio.

At the same time, like most military people, Dawson remains committed to her country and its defense. Patriotism for her, however, doesn’t mean relinquishing her 'critical thinking' and marching lockstep with every U.S. policy. “Some people tell me that criticizing our country in wartime is unpatriotic,” she told us. “I tell them that I had my flag out before 9/11.” If her patriotism runs deeper than a jingoistic sense of ethnic superiority, fueled by her activist sense of public service, for which she finds inspiration in the words of Theodore Roosevelt. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Presidential Criticism

Recently several people have written to asked the official Theodore Roosevelt Association about this viewpoint TR had on criticism of the presidency. This quote was part of an editorial he wrote for the "Kansas City Star" durning World War I.

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." "Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149 May 7, 1918

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/quotes.htm

Back to military mom Dawson.. As a military mom Teresa is particularly mindful of the way that individual soldiers pay the price of reckless military policy. She told the university audience the story of Kevin Benderman who “was ordered to shoot at young children throwing rocks. Young children.” And because he refused to shoot,” she adds, “his officer called him a coward.” Furthermore, because Benderman refused to return to Iraq, he now faces a sentence of up to nine years—“More time,” notes Dawson, “than anyone involved with Abu Ghraib,” the prison torture scandal. Both are cases of U.S. government foreign policy out of control and when something goes horrably WRONG the lowest common denominator or as Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush like to say, "a few bad apples." are the scapegoats. Nothing has changed with our disasterous and incompetent U.S. government policies since Vietnam. Where was the higer chain of command then or now? Off the hook while some Captain, Lieutenant or enlisted gomer takes the fall for idiots at the top getting their jollies toruturing people. If our government leaders would accept the responsiblity for what THEY teach our young troopers to do (the few bad apples) maybe more Americans would support torture as a means to win the War on Terror.

Dawson’s son remains in Iraq but he is troubled by his role there. Dawson told of a recent phone call that she had received from him as he was sitting poolside on a “rest and relaxation” break. “You’re always complaining about the heat,” Dawson told him. “Why don’t you go in the pool?” “Mom”, he responded, “There are kids on the other side of the fence drinking sewer water. I don’t feel right about going into a pool.”

Sensitive to the predicament of soldiers caught in the middle of an ill-defined war, Dawson is angered by people who turn “Support the Troops” into a feel-good slogan to stick on their car windows. “Those yellow ribbon magnets won’t keep my son safe from sniper bullets nor will they keep him cool in 120 degree heat. If you want to do something to support the troops, write to your senator and tell him to send the troops home.”

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Concluding on a more optimistic note, Dawson quoted Lyndon B. Johnson who said he “knew the [Vietnam] war was over” when he “saw 800,000 protestors in the streets.” Hartford also noted that Johnson made this statement in 1968, after which thousands more Americans died. Nonetheless, if the war in Iraq will be a long one, Dawson’s point remains that, with firm and collective effort, we can stem the violence. She finds hope for grassroots social change in young activists. Regarding “some of the students I met during lunch” at the university, she said, “I was thanking God they are thinkers and doers. It makes me feel better knowing there are other college students out there who, like my own college-student son, care very much about the future they will inherit.”

Members of MFSO and Veterans for Peace (VFP) hold rally in Beavercreek, Ohio near Wright-Patterson AFB. Photo taken by Bobby Hanafin

Bobby Hanafin—called “Army Dad”, in reference to his son who recently served two combat tours in Iraq—also served himself as a grunt during Vietnam and as an intelligence officer in the first Gulf War. He entered the army in 1969 under Robert McNamara’s Project 100,000. “The army lowered entry standards to accept high school dropouts, people with low IQs bordering on the mentally ill, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans who couldn’t speak English,” he told the audience. “The first place the army marched us when we went to boot camp was to a GED office where they gave us a few classes and handed us a rubber stamped high school equivalency certificate in order to be able to tell Congress that its standards weren’t lowered.” Having been shortchanged on education once, Hanafin later used GI education benefits to earn his college degree.

He stressed the importance of community colleges in enabling veterans to gain an affordable education. “Of course,” he adds, “we really had to do the work then, and learn.”

Hanafin “reluctantly” joined MFSO in 2004 when both major presidential candidates—Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry—failed to question reasons proffered for invading Iraq, to take seriously the war’s many costs, or to offer an exit strategy. Hanafin explained how he now engages in counter-recruitment activism but stressed that, “having spent thirty years in (and out of) uniform I could never take a straight anti-military approach”. Rather he informs potential recruits about the military’s “downside” and the Bush administration’s poor treatment of veterans—not in order to disparage the military but to provide a more balanced review. “The military had positives to offer [me],” he says, “but when military recruiters only present the positives, especially during wartime, that is unethical”.

Ironically, along with counter recruitment, Hanafin also was a member of a group called Americans for Self Sacrifice which advocates the draft. “Our approach to antiwar is probably the most unique in history,” he said. We are “an antiwar group proposing national conscription in order to wake the populace up to the dangers [of war] and to gain recruits for the overall antiwar movement”. The draft is crucial to the antiwar movement, he explained, because “the main ingredient missing in the current antiwar movement is the radical participation of our college campuses. . . . And our campuses will not get involved unless there is the serious and believable threat of the draft.”

An effective antiwar movement, Hanafin added, must also include (career) military people. He believes that too often “the peace movement is made up of the academic intelligentsia who can be easily discredited for not knowing about war.” Furthermore, he points out, (military retirees) veterans can lend legitimacy to the peace movement as well as help focus criticism on the current war, as opposed to targeting the military per se. Retaining respect for the military and military personnel is important to Hanafin, not only for broad appeal but also for ethical reasons. Thus, he takes care to distinguish his opposition to the current war from his feelings toward individual service members, many of whom have been pressured by what some call “the poverty draft”. And while he pursues counter recruitment his sympathy extends even to recruiters. “Well, they’re in the wrong line of work”, he told the audience, “but after spending nearly thirty years in uniform, I can tell you that, even in the best of times, military recruitment duty is not a voluntary assignment. . . .No one in his or her right mind wants that duty during an unpopular war.”

Underscoring his defiance of the “peacenik” stereotype, Hanafin declared he is (was) “a card-carrying Republican”. His views seem less determined by any party affiliation, however, than by his analysis of who pays and who profits by current policy. “Bottom line is that our tax dollars are going for tax cuts for the wealthiest minority among us, while we mortgage our children’s future to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . and the defense industry takes advantage of the situation to profit. . . . The only people in our society asked to truly sacrifice are military families who pay with their loved ones’ lives.” Hanafin balanced his strong antiwar views with a concern for plurality within the peace movement. “Mark Hartford is from the left wing and I’m from the right wing of the antiwar movement”, mused, adding that “people don’t realize it but there is a lot of diversity within the movement.”

Some progressives have expressed concern about such diversity, warning that a strong military presence could reduce the peace movement’s radical critique of militarism to mere demands for smarter military strategy. However, the diversity that Hanafin sees involves not only a divide between military and nonmilitary activists but also differences within each of these groups reflecting both issue based interests as well as individuals’ efforts to grapple with complicated historical situations and their refusal to be pegged to a label that reduces politics to ready-made positions.

What these “right-wing, left-wing,” and other contingents of the peace movement share, both Hanafin and Hartford stressed, is a commitment to ending unnecessary bloodshed, and they brought their diverse insights and experiences to bear on this project.

After returning home from the forum, I saw a reservist in uniform walk down my street. I cringed at the military presence in my neighborhood. But our speakers’ comments prevented me from easily categorizing him. I thought about how he may have entered the army through “the poverty