A Message to Troops, Would-be Troops, and Other Youth

[Doug Millison]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11648

"[...] I might be like the youth who are going down to the recruiters now,
if I hadn't spent those four years in the Marine Corps. Most of the time my
unit trained to fight a war against peasants who dared to struggle against
"American interests" in their homelands -- specifically Nicaragua, El
Salvador, and Guatemala. I saw dire poverty in the Philippines; U.S.
government-sanctioned prostitution rings to service the U.S. armed forces
in South Korea; and unbridled racism towards the peoples of Okinawa and
Japan -- where the standard response to a child waving a "peace sign" at us
with his fingers was "yeaa, ha ha, two bombs little gook. [...] When the
U.S. launched the Gulf War, I realized that the world did not need or want
another U.S. troop. Although they did not look much like me, I found I had
more in common with the common peoples of the Middle East than I did with
those who were ordering me to kill them. My Battalion Commander's
reassurance that "if anything goes wrong we'll nuke the rag heads until
they all glow" was not reassuring.


Up against that, I publicly stated I would not be a pawn in America's power
plays for profits, oil, and domination of the Middle East. I pledged to
resist, and I pledged that if I were dragged out into the Saudi desert, I
would refuse to fight. A few weeks later, I sat down on the airstrip as
hundreds of Marines -- many of whom I had lived with for years -- filed
past me and boarded the plane. I fought the Gulf War from a military brig,
and after worldwide anti-war protesters helped spring me, we fought the war
in the streets.


But back then we failed to stop the war. Since 1990 over 1.5 million Iraqi
people have died -- not mainly from the massive U.S. bombing which
continues from the sky, but from a decade of economic sanctions. All the
while the U.S. government has coldly declared that these Iraqi deaths are
"worth it" in order to achieve strategic regional objectives. So today, as
the U.S. government demands the world mourn with us for our loss, we in
turn are expected to ignore the suffering that this nation produces.


Every time the U.S. war machine is kicked into high gear, acknowledgements
are made about past "mistakes": Gulf War sickness, Agent Orange and napalm
in Viet Nam, massacres of refugees in Korea, U.S. troops used as nuclear
exposure guinea pigs after World War II, concentration camps for
Japanese-Americans during World War II. And always: "Trust us, this time it
will be different." But it never is.


One need not be a pacifist, a communist, a Quaker, or a humanist to oppose
this war. However, it certainly helps to be an internationalist --
realizing that our collective future is bound up with the majority of
humanity, and not with those who are taking this horrific opportunity to
threaten war. For those woman and men now in uniform, you have a choice to
make. Silence is what your "superiors" expect of you, but the interests of
humanity require more. Think. Speak out. And if you make the choice to
resist, there are hundreds of thousands who will support you -- many of
whom have already taken to the streets to oppose this war. [...] I will not
wave the red, white and blue flag -- instead I'll wear a green ribbon in
solidarity with immigrants and Arab Americans facing increasing racist
attacks. Stop the War. Support the troops who refuse to fight.


Let's dedicate our lives to changing this situation.


On August 30, 1990, 22-year-old Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson refused to
board a military plane in Hawaii heading to Saudi Arabia. He was the first
active-duty military resister in the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. The photo of
Jeff sitting on the airstrip, defying orders to go fight in the Gulf War,
appeared on TV and in newspapers around the world. Later Jeff edited the
Anti-WARrior newsletter of military resistance to the Gulf War. Jeff
currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a member of Vietnam
Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist (www.oz.net/~vvawai). He can be
reached through VVAW-AI, or directly at EMAILJP at post.com.