Harry Targ
Thursday, December 1, 2011
“I
grew up in Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Working-class family, father was a
Union Ironworker…mother was a stay at home Mom.” Vince Emanuele joined the
Marines after graduating from high school. “I came out of boot camp a
hard chargin’ Devil Dog.” 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, began
organizing vets in Indiana and Illinois, created a weekly radio show called
“Veterans Unplugged” which was available on-line, and became a prominent
activist for social, economic, and political justice in the heartland of
America while finishing an undergraduate political science degree.
Emanuele
spoke on a panel organized by the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition in November,
2011. He elaborated on the 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 chose to enlist in
regular army or reserve units, the 21st century enticement to serve was 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 was 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. He
referred to patterns of resistance to war running throughout U.S. history:
-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 anti-war newspapers produced, 10 % of all Vietnam era soldiers going AWOL or
deserting, and a broad array of other forms of anti-war 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 twenty-first 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. To learn more about Veterans Against the War see http://ivaw.org/
