Harry Targ, The Rag Blog | November 6, 2011
He served in the Marines
from 2003 until 2005 stationed in California, Kuwait, and Iraq. His eight month
deployment in Iraq involved him in street patrols, looking for snipers and land
mines, “along with shooting at innocent civilians, destroying their property
and beating up prisoners.”
While in Iraq the fascination with war that he had acquired as a kid playing
video games dissipated. His father sent him reading material — Noam Chomsky,
Gore Vidal, Hunter Thompson, The Nation — and he and friends began to
reflect on what they were doing in Iraq. He came to the view that the war was
“illegal, immoral, unjustified, and unneeded.” He was not spreading “democracy”
or “peace” and the U.S. war effort was not winning the “hearts and minds” of
the Iraqi people.
After returning to the
U.S., Emanuele joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, has been organizing vets
in Indiana and Illinois, created a weekly radio show called “Veterans Unplugged”
which is available online, and has become a prominent activist for social,
economic, and political justice in the heartland of America while finishing an
undergraduate political science degree.
Emanuele recently spoke
on a panel organized by the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition. He elaborated on
the current plight of veterans, particularly veterans who served in the two
longest wars in U.S. history, Afghanistan and Iraq.
While acknowledging that
the current military force has chosen to enlist in regular army or reserve
units, the 21st century enticement to serve is really an “economic draft.” With
declining incomes, wages, job opportunities, and rising educational costs, more
and more men and women, he said, have seen military service as the only escape
from lives of economic marginalization.
He spoke of the culture
of militarization to which every new recruit is exposed: a process of
dehumanization; the spread of racism, particularly targeting stereotypes of
Muslims; sexism; and homophobia. In reality the military experience of young
people, Emanuele said, involves placing raw, uneducated, teenagers in a war
zone, with weapons and a license to kill. The victims of the actions of these
raw recruits, schooled in video games and super-patriotism, were the millions
of Iraqi and Afghan citizens who most fervently wanted the young foreigners off
their land.
Emanuele presented some
figures on the impacts of military service on returning veterans. (According to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2010 there were 20.2 million men and 1.8
million women who had served in the military). In 2011, Emanuele reported:
§ Rates
of unemployment of returning veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq are higher than
in the non-veteran population, both men and women;
§ African-American
vets experience double the unemployment rate of white vets;
§ 80,000
returning veterans are currently homeless (56 % of homeless vets are African
American or Latinos);
§ 20% to
50% of 21st century returning veterans suffer some form of Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome (an estimated 350,000 to 1 million vets);
§ 1,000
returning vets attempt suicide each month.
Emanuele, connected the
plight of returning veterans to the military-industrial complex and imperial
wars. As a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, he highlighted the long
tradition of soldiers resisting participation in unjust wars:
§ In 1781
the Pennsylvania militia mutinied against war profiteers and for food;
§ Between
the 1870s and the 1890s, National Guard soldiers often refused to fire on
striking workers;
§ In 1919
unknown numbers of U.S. soldiers refused orders to go fight against the Bolsheviks
who had come to power in Russia;
§ Thousands of World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, assembled in Washington D.C. in 1932 to demand back pay due them from their active duty experience;
. From 1964-75 a massive GI anti-Vietnam war resistance movement emerged with over 300 GI antiwar newspapers produced, 10 % of all Vietnam era soldiers going AWOL or deserting, and a broad array of other forms of antiwar resistance and opposition to military recruiting.
Emanuele stressed the
commonality of experience and vision that is shared by most veterans with the
Occupy Movement. He suggested that peace and justice activists must understand
that returning veterans are a vital part of the 99% movement committed to
radically restructure American society.
He argued that the 99%,
including vets, must see the vital connections between the global capitalist
system, the military-industrial complex, and the pain and suffering that have
generated war and economic insecurity in the 21st century.
Emanuele ended his talk
with reference to the frank admission of General Smedley Butler who oversaw the
effort to crush the army of Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua in the early 1930s.
Butler admitted that he, as a Marine General, had served as an instrumentality
of Wall Street, putting down popular rebellions in the service of profit.
************************************************************
Vince Emanuele
Face Book
November 10, 2020
Today is the 245th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. As a former marine, I'm extremely uncomfortable with the glorification of militarism and war. At this point, I'm not sure what to say because I've said it all before. The wars continue. Veterans kill themselves in record numbers. Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Libyans, Somalis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and countless others across the globe continue to endure the brutal, horrific, and murderous legacy of U.S. militarism.
In typical contradictory fashion, it's also worth noting that my time in the USMC was both the best and worst thing that's ever happened to me. For years, I was resentful. These days, however, I'm grateful, not only for navigating my time in the military with as much dignity as possible but for coming home and doing something positive with my life and for the friends and family who made that possible.
So many of our brothers and sisters are no longer with us. Some died overseas, some took their lives after returning home. For the people on the opposite end of Uncle Sam's whip, life is difficult beyond imagination. Those of us who served have a responsibility to speak the truth about U.S. foreign policy.
The future of the species and planet depends on our ability to develop alternatives to war and meta-violence. It's our only hope. It won't be easy, nor is success guaranteed, yet persist we must.
As Oliver Stone once wrote, "Those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know, and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life."
PFC Vincent Emanuele, 1st
Battalion, 7th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, 1st Squad, 3rd Fire Team
Emanuele writes for several outlets including Telesur and Counterpunch. He currently works for PARCMedia. PARCMedia is a news and media project founded by two USMC veterans, Sergio Kochergin & Vince Emanuele. They give a working-class take on issues surrounding politics, ecology, community organizing, war, culture, and philosophy.
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