We Will Reclaim Our Armed Forces!
Speech by Stan Goff at the December 11 Public Meeting
and Speak Out in New York City
Reprinted from Bring Them Home Now
I want to thank the organizers for this very important defibrillation
of the anti-war and anti-empire work that was put on hold by the
recent elections. I want to thank my fellow speakers and presenters,
and I want to thank everyone who is here for your tireless and
stubborn refusal to confuse setbacks with defeats.
I tend to think of resistance politics these
days as if they were a Charles Dickens novel. There is always
a happy ending in the
last chapter, but every chapter leading up to that ending… is
sad.
I'm extremely honored to be here with Christian Parenti, whose
book Lockdown America I consider canonical in many ways, and which
should be required reading prior to entrance into any university.
I quoted Mr. Parenti extensively in a long analytical piece I did
in From The Wilderness that attempts to show how utterly connected
the incarceration industry in the United States is with the entire
system of late imperialism, and in particular why these most direct
and brutal forms of social control - including prison rape and
sexual humiliation, which are secretly sanctioned by the state
- draw a straight line from a place like Pelican Bay maximum security
to Abu Ghraib in Baghdad.
There is another book I want to recommend, while I'm at it, that
is not about Kabul or Baghdad, but about Southern California. It
is written by radical urban theorist Mike Davis, and it is entitled
Ecology of Fear. In it, Davis describes, among many other things,
how the development of high-end residential housing enclaves in
the suburban foothills of LA spread into the habitats of mountain
lions. Now, from time to time, explains Davis, a mountain lion
- described as a rogue, of course - eats Fluffy the Cocker Spaniel,
or encounters and attacks one of the yuppie joggers, demonstrating
how the feline diet can be diversified to include spandex.
This is extremely interesting, because these
encounters are referred to by the press and by members of these
communities as… a
mountain lion problem.
Obviously, the mountain lions are not getting equal time on the
nightly news at these Young Republican settlements, or the mountain
lions might explain that they were there first, and that from where
they stand, there is a people problem.
But the mountain lions don't have equal time, and this phrase
- mountain lion problem - this phrase and this concept stick, because
it is repeated over and over again until it is incorporated effortlessly
into casual conversation and folded into descriptive lists until
it becomes a single signifier. There is no longer a problem between
people and mountain lions. The mountain lions are the problem.
This is how the standpoint of selfish, clueless yuppies is enshrined
as an axiomatic premise that is out of reach of any critique, because
we simply breathe that premise like the air, and like the air,
we take it for granted.
This is one reason we are important to the movement not just against
the war, but the movement to overthrow a system that breeds war,
why veterans and military families and dissident soldiers are so
important in this crucial period. In this period when the old tricks
no longer work, and the depredations of this global system have
once again consumed the very bases of that system - its subordinated
people and its wrecked environment - the essence of that system,
its true essence, the gun and the bomb and the rape and the prison,
are being unmasked by the necessity to use these colonizers' tools
openly to preserve power.
George Bush didn't start this war. This war was waiting at the
end of a road that we stepped onto decades ago, and by continuing
to walk down that road we have inevitably encountered what is at
its end. How many Iraqis did Bill Clinton kill? Why did we not
want to hear during this last electoral folly that the anti-Bush
candidate selected for us by Wall Street and the DLC did not promise
to end the war, but to expand it?
The communities of the military are in a unique position - they
have a special standpoint - to say we were there. We were not on
CNN. We were not in the New York Times. We were there when you
rained dioxin on us 35 years ago as you killed 3 million Southeast
Asians, and we were there in our family hothouses when we carried
the dioxin and the death back into our living rooms, into our relationships,
in to our children who were the hostages of our pathologies. We
weren't in the swimming pool communities in the LA foothills. We
are the mountain lions, and now you have a veteran problem. Now
you have a military family problem. Now you have an I'm-awake-and-I'm
pissed-off-soldier problem.
Only we are not mountain lions, consigned by our own natural limitations
to helplessly watch our own destruction by this system.
We were there! We are there! We have a special capacity and a
special pedagogical responsibility to stop others from taking the
air for granted, because that air is contaminated. It is poisoned
by the criminality at the very genetic core of this whole system,
that needs Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium to enforce its will
on those it would dominate and those who refuse to surrender their
own humanity to this criminality.
Who we call statesmen are often as not thieves. Who we call statesmen
are often as not vandals. Who we call statesmen are often as not
mass murderers, and who better to out them for what they are than
those of us who have been held closest to their criminal hearts
in their time of need.
Our demands have a special force, and so we have a special responsibility.
The movement demanded that we not invade Afghanistan
to kill 4,000 civilians as vengeance for the 2,800 killed on
September 11th.
The movement demanded that we not invade Iraq - where our government
had already overseen the destruction of over a million human beings,
half of them not having reached the age of majority… and
Iraq has never been any kind of threat to the United States.
Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out held out in
the face of feint-hearted anti-Bush resistance and never listened
to the siren call of compromise and chauvinism that led many of
our allies to tell us to drop the word NOW from our campaign to
Bring Them Home NOW. We were clear about the system, and we knew
that the vandal that destroys your home is not the right person
to decide who will rebuild it.
We stuck to our demand, and time is proving us grimly correct.
We were correct to demand that this criminal class cease and desist.
Now the elections that put a mask of legitimacy on this system
are past, and we have to reiterate that demand.
Now we all know that demands are the glue that holds movements
together, whether or not the powerful meet them. One of our pedagogical
tasks in the next period, I think, is to educate the public about
the difference between a demand and an assertive request.
I already have my post-election bumper stickers to impeach. But
I also know that these little provocations, like that bumper sticker,
which is intended to be provocative, are useful mostly to further
polarize our society - which I think is a good thing, because as
long as we stay polite we never seem get to the point. A Congress
of the criminal class is not going to impeach a fellow criminal,
unless a scandal is so out of control that it threatens the whole
structure.
One thing I agree with Christian Parenti on is that I oppose the
criminal justice system as it is, but I think we will need prisons
for a long time.
I say that because while my bumper sticker
says impeach, what I really want to see - for these people who
are presiding over
yet another generation of our kids being sent abroad to do their
criminal wet work - what I really want to see is George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin and Condoleeza I-forgot-who-I-am,
Paul Wolfowitz, and cabinet members old and new… slammed
up against a wall, searched as roughly as an Iraqi detainee, put
in handcuffs, and their sorry asses thrown into a cell at Guantanamo
Bay… after we give it back to Cuba.
Our job is not to be conciliatory. We are not diplomats. Our job
is not to comfort the comfortable by reinforcing their denial.
Our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Because we were there. We know what these people have sent our
children to do, and what they have sent our children to become.
And I'm not whining about that. I'm not going
to cry about what was done to me, because the upside to it is
that I'm grateful to
the dominant class for my military career. I'm grateful for my
education. I'm grateful to be a soldier… I'm just not their
soldier any more.
On my 19th birthday, I left McCord Air Force
Base to begin my international studies program in northern Bin
Dinh Province. My
professors were a Black buck sergeant named Eaves, a professional
con-man named Westmorland, and the courageous and patriotic soldiers
of the NLF and NVA who taught me what it looks like to say NO.
I learned that a person can put one foot in front of the other
for a long time. I learned that mosquito clouds and thirst and
sleeping in the mud won't kill you. I learned to accept my own
mortality. I learned that what most of suburban America thinks
is extreme and exceptional hardship is the daily reality of most
of the world… and I began the process of learning that the
comfort of those suburbs comes at a price often paid by those we
never see and whose hardship we cannot comprehend.
What the Bushes and the Rumsfelds have failed to understand about
soldiers, old soldiers and new soldiers, and the families of soldiers
who learn these things from and with us, is that when we learn
that there are different experiences in the world, and when we
learn to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and when
we learn that we can survive extreme hardship, and when we learn
to accept our own mortality, and when we learn to recognize con-men,
and when and if we finally learn that everything they say is a
lie, and every mission is vandalism and murder, then what is left
behind is still a soldier, but he or she is not THEIR soldier any
more.
Those troops are OUR armed forces, and we have to reclaim them
no matter the cost.
Movements start with those who are not afraid, and they grow with
those who are only a little afraid. The veteran just back from
Iraq, and the veterans of past conflicts, who have snatched their
humanity back from this system are not going to fall for every
bullshit story. We are not going to fall for their appeals to criminality
cloaked in patriotism. We are not going to be intimidated by their
with-us-or-with-the-terrorists rhetoric.
I hope they are listening, and I expect they are.
George and Dick and Don, you are not going to shut up these veterans,
and these families, and these soldiers by shaking your Patriot
Act in our faces. Some of us worked pretty hard and risked everything
to fight for lies. Don't you know that we will fight harder against
you now that we know the truth?
Those troops are OUR armed forces, and we have to reclaim them
no matter the cost.
Patriot Act! We are the ones who have the responsibility to teach
the rest that the patriotism of someone defending their home is
not the same as the patriotism deployed to take our children away
from home. The patriotism of the invader is not the same as the
patriotism of the invaded.
We can teach that, because we went then, and we are going to witness
now.
Man, they hate witnesses, don't they? They hate witnesses the
way all criminals do.
And I've got something to say to those soldiers and veterans who
are not with us yet, but who are wandering in the wilderness of
post-combat shock. Witnessing will heal you. PTSD is not the outcome
of violence. PTSD is the recognition that you have been betrayed
and that you were helpless when it happened, because you couldn't
do any better or you didn't know any better. Do people know what
the single most common cause of PTSD in the United States is?
Rape.
Rape victims report that confronting their attackers - and not
just in court where the system tries to rape women again - but
confronting one's attacker with a support group and outing that
attacker are highly therapeutic. It is a way to recapture that
lost agency from a former state of helplessness and standing back
up in the world.
For combat veterans, we have a group right here for you, and we
will stand beside you when you out the authors of the crime by
describing what it really looked like. We know that some cling
to denial, that some are broken in body and spirit, that some rage,
and that some turn their anger in on themselves and crawl into
a needle or a bottle or the chamber of a pistol. But there's a
way out of that wilderness, and it's the path of the witness.
Imperialism has staked a claim on our children in uniform, and
that's why we will never relinquish our claim on them. We will
never surrender in the struggle for the souls of this and future
generations. Never.
Those troops are OUR armed forces, and we have to reclaim them
no matter the cost.
I'm a grandfather now. Those of you who are grandparents know
what I mean when I say, Dick Cheney don't put yourself between
me and my grandbaby and expect me to retreat.
We're not only not going anywhere, we are coming after all of
them. The veterans of this war are already organizing against it.
Troops in Iraq write to us. The whistleblowers are emerging from
within the service. The MFSO family list is growing. The number
of conscientious objectors is growing. The mutinies have already
begun. We are going to court with stop-loss suits, and to defend
military refugees in Canada. Soldiers in theater are setting up
blogs that bypass the Centcom censors. There is a Camilo Mejia
or a Mike Hoffman or a Kelly Dougherty in every squad waiting for
us to invite them into the light.
George Bush, we are going to fight you for every last one of them.
Those troops are OUR armed forces, and we have to reclaim them
no matter the cost.
To those troops who are not yet ready, we'll be there when you
are. We don't go away. We put one foot in front of the other. We
will never stop. When you decide that its time to see what's on
the other side of all those taboos, its us you'll find there. Veterans
and military families.
I made that Dantean journey you are on for two decades, separated
from the very people who most wanted to confirm my humanity when
I thought I had abandoned it along the road through eight conflict
areas as a servant of this Ivy League mafia. But when I made the
leap, they were there to catch me, and they catch me when I fall
to this day. This movement is your family, and the door to that
home will always be open.
If we're not home, look for us in the street.
That's where we're headed now. One foot in front of the other,
until we get where we gotta go, because those troops are OUR armed
forces, and we have to reclaim them no matter the cost. And those
people in Iraq are not our enemies, and they have to reclaim their
children no matter the cost, and we are reclaiming them from the
same criminal clique.
Look for us in the street, and don't think we are making requests
any more.
We are going to delegitimate this war and this system. And if
that's not enough, we will disobey. And if disobedience is not
enough, we will disrupt that system. We slept in the mud and did
their dirty work, and we brought their wars back into our homes
to be the burdens of our families. They made us soldiers, so that's
how we are going to act. We are not afraid of poverty. We are not
afraid of prison. We are not afraid of death. So now what are they
gonna do? Without our fear, they have no power, and in movements,
those who are not afraid will show those who are a little afraid
the way.
We are not making a request. We are making a demand.
That demand is to let the Iraqis be the architects of their own
future, and bring the troops home now. You want a compromise, turn
on Judge Judy. You want a retreat, go book a cabana in Hawaii.
You want a surrender, go visit Appomattox and read the plaques.
We ain't goin' nowhere.
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