Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) consists of families with loved ones who have or are currently serving in Iraq. MFSO is often mistakenly believed to be an anti-war organization yet many members are third and fourth generation military with a proud tradition in the ideals of serving their country and are deeply entrenched in military culture, dedicated to protecting their country and first and foremost, defending the constitution.
Now 3,400 families strong, MFSO arose a few months prior to the invasion of Iraq out of concern that their loved ones dedication and sacrifice were being misused. Families questioned the legality of invading a sovereign country, claims that Iraq was an imminent threat, and feared involvement put their loved ones at risk of violating that first oath to the constitution, committing war crimes or both.
Like any organization, MFSO has suffered growing pains with huge rifts formed over issues like whether the organization should support conscientious objectors or what policy to take regarding military recruiting. The single uniting issue is that our military, our loved ones, should never have been deployed to Iraq and we need to bring our troops home at all cost.
Recent revelations that intelligence claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat were deliberately, not just mistakenly, presented to the American people to incite a build up to war have deepened the resolve of MFSO and other groups like Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). These are our loved ones and our friends being sacrificed and misused and the sanctity of their oath defiled by deliberate factual manipulations and forgeries and we stand united to bring them home and take care of them when they get here.
Now another rift has formed splitting MFSO down the middle regarding the continued deployment and occupation of Afghanistan. MFSO has in general accepted that like World War II, Afghanistan was ‘the good war’. Lt Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq believing to do so would violate his first oath to the constitution, pleaded with his superiors to change his orders to Afghanistan so he could serve his country legally.
Our military completed their mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban were effectively run off, allowed to escape along with al Qaeda to Pakistan by our leaders, leaving our military in Afghanistan without a mission. MFSO members agree that a clear mission must be defined to honor their courage and show respect to the military serving in Afghanistan if they are to stay. Anything less is an immoral disregard for their safety.
The issue of Afghanistan has arisen again, in part because Senator Obama has suggested pulling our troops out of Iraq and refocusing upon the resurgent Taliban. Oregon MFSO, of which I am active, is amongst those chapters calling for the return of our troops, in particular our citizen soldiers, from Afghanistan.
We believe that the presence of American forces in Afghanistan depletes the already limited resources of our military and National Guard, subjects the men and women of our armed forces to unnecessary, severe attacks and serves as a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations. We believe that the continued occupation of Afghanistan threatens our national security, weakens our ability to respond to legitimate provocations and attacks and dishonors the brave service of our American forces in Afghanistan.
Oregon MFSO, IVAW and Veterans for Peace, with whom I proudly stand every Wednesday to remind people that we are at war and soldiers are dying, oppose putting more troops in harm’s way and call for a phased withdrawal of all forces in Afghanistan.

From the Washington Post

Former Marine Jon Turner began his presentation by ripping his service medals off his shirt and tossing them into the first row. He then narrated a series of graphic photographs showing bloody victims and destruction, bringing gasps from the audience. In a matter-of-fact voice, he described episodes in which he and fellow Marines shot people out of fear or retribution.

“I’m sorry for the hate and destruction I’ve inflicted upon innocent people,” Turner said. “Until people hear about what is happening in this war, it will continue.”

These are courageous young men and women and I know how it rips their hearts to tell these stories. As I have written before, it was ultimately the warriors themselves, refusing orders, individually and en mass that brought about the end to the Vietnam War.

UPDATE: More video coverage

One of the first conscientious objectors was Camilo Mejia who is now on the board of IVAW, Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has helped organize this Winter Soldier event because he feels it is his patriotic duty to defend the constitution.

Mejia was court martialed for refusing to redeploy to his unit after two weeks’ leave, and spent nine months in a military jail.

Now the chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), which has organized the four-day gathering, Mejia spoke of a groundswell of resistance within the US military to the war in Iraq, which will enter its sixth year later this month.

“Servicemen and women are refusing en masse to participate in this war. I have seen a rapid and inevitable growth of dissent within our ranks,” he said.

At the “Winter Soldier” event in Washington, some 200 soldiers like Coppa and Mejia will give eye-witness testimonies about what they lived through during their deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and afterwards.

This month from the 13th to the 16th hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will testify about what the war is really about.

This year, from March 13 to 16, about 300 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, gathering for a second Winter Soldier conference, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) it will make up the largest gathering ever of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Their mission? To tell the story of the war in the terms of those who have actually lived it.

“This is a moment when veterans won’t let anyone else speak for us,” said Aaron Hughes, an Iraq veteran who initiated the new Winter Soldier effort. “We hear from the pundits, we hear from the politicians, we hear from the generals, but we don’t hear from the soldiers who’ve walked the streets, who’ve been there and know what it’s about. We’re the ones who can bring out the cruelties and dehumanization in US foreign policy.”

The event, which will accommodate about 700 veteran advocates, social workers, support staff and members of the media in addition to veterans, will combine soldier testimonies and expert panels. The panels are intended to provide a factual context for the personal stories, according to Perry O’Brien, one of Winter Soldier’s organizers. Panels and testimony will be grouped into 12 categories, including killing and wounding noncombatants, mishandling of dead, torture and abuse, sexual assault, discrimination in the military, destruction of civilian property, veterans’ benefits issues and GI resistance.

Fort Hood soldiers are breaking the silence about the mission in Iraq

“The honest truth is that if the American people knew what was going on over there everyday, they would be raising their voices too. They would be saying, ‘Hey, bring those guys home,” Sgt. Selena Coppa said.

Coppa blames lawmakers in Washington for filtering the facts on the war in Iraq. She said there’s no real end in sight.

“There is a cost to this war. This war is being paid in American blood, in my soldier’s blood. And that is not okay,” Coppa said.

“We lost really good friends, really good leaders who died in Iraq. From my perspective, it didn’t make any sense, we didn’t
accomplish anything, and I talked to a lot of other soldiers who feel the same way,” Fort Hood soldier Casey Porter said.

He started the local branch of IVAW at Fort Hood.

Iraq Veterans Against the War is also planning an event in DC Winter Soldier, ‘08. It was the warrior who ultimately ended Vietnam and it will be the warrior who ends Iraq.

Porter is spending his numbered days in the U.S. passing out pamphlets before he is redeployed this summer.

He said he feels it’s his obligation to his fallen brothers to take action. Local IVAW members are trying to let other soldiers know it’s okay to do the same.

“This is well within the rights that service members have, but not many soldiers know that they do have,” Fort Hood soldier Ronn Cantu said.

It is crushing to read stories like this and to see what an ungrateful nation we really are. Worse, how we disregard our veterans is not recent occurence but has been a blemish on our history since the revolutionary war. Today, perhaps because of the evolution of wars and the advent of improvised explosive devices and repeated deployments, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are becoming homeless at a much faster rate than Vietnam era vets.

For as long as the United States has sent its young men — and later its young women — off to war, it has watched as a segment of them come home and lose the battle with their own memories, their own scars, and wind up without homes.

The Civil War produced thousands of wandering veterans. Frequently addicted to morphine, they were known as “tramps,” searching for jobs and, in many cases, literally still tending their wounds.

More than a decade after the end of World War I, the “Bonus Army” descended on Washington — demanding immediate payment on benefits that had been promised to them, but payable years later — and were routed by the U.S. military.

And, most publicly and perhaps most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens.

Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers.

The pattern of self-destructiveness that permeates combat veterans is much more understood now. Medically, it is recognized that high levels of stress hormones shrink the hippocampus and impair the veterans memory and ability to focus, both crucial to maintaining a job. Today, in addition to PTSD many veterans suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI) from IEDs which lead to many of the same behavioral and cognitive difficulties that complicate holding a job. Yet, it is happening again, just like other wars we are casting our veterans to the wind.

People who have studied postwar trauma say there is always a lengthy gap between coming home — the time of parades and backslaps and “The Boys Are Back in Town” on the local FM station — and the moments of utter darkness that leave some of them homeless.

In that time, usually a period of years, some veterans focus on the horrors they saw on the battlefield, or the friends they lost, or why on earth they themselves deserved to come home at all. They self-medicate, develop addictions, spiral down.

How — or perhaps the better question is why — is this happening again?

“I really wish I could answer that question,” says Anthony Belcher, an outreach supervisor at New Directions, which conducts monthly sweeps of Skid Row in Los Angeles, identifying homeless veterans and trying to help them get over addictions.

“It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself and everyone around me. I’m like, wait, wait, hold it, we did this before. I don’t know how our society can allow this to happen again.”

America should be ashamed of the way they treat their veterans and we should all be walking the river banks and offering to help them where we can. Read the whole article here