THINKING FOR OURSELVES
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, Mar.22-28, 2008
This week begins the sixth year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. This war is slipping quietly into what we think of as normal. It seems we can hardly bear to look at what we are doing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan—or to ourselves. But we must look. And listen.
We especially need to listen to the Iraqi people, the vast majority of whom want us to leave their country. It is arrogance to say that people who gave the world the first cities, the first universities, and spiritual traditions and who have endured for centuries, are not able to govern themselves. It is blindness not to see that they have already created methods of decision- making and self-protection so powerful that they have fought the US military machine to a standstill.
The mainstream media avoided coverage of two events this week that asked us to face the responsibility of not only stopping this war, but also of finding ways to reconcile ourselves with the people we have harmed and to restore our country to the world community.
Both events held closely the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said he opposed the war “because I love America. I speak out against this war not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world.”
The first event was the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan gathering modeled after the Winter Soldier hearings held in Detroit in opposition to the Vietnam War. The event was an opportunity for men and women who have endured war to talk openly. Soldiers talked of witnessing or participating in abuses, of indiscriminate firings into crowded areas, of killing sometimes out of panic, boredom, and revenge. In all the stories there was a deep sense that somehow these young men and women had betrayed themselves and that their country has betrayed them.
While no mainstream media reported on the event, you can hear the stories yourself by going to www.iwav.org/wintersoldier. Both Democracy Now and some public radio stations are broadcasting the testimony as well.
As I listened to one young man talk about how he nearly shot to death an 80 year- old woman who, because of her failing eyesight, did not see him ask her to stop, a part of me was also listening to the voices of those earlier hearings. A much bolder John Kerry said: “The term ‘winter soldier’ is a play on words of Thomas Paine’s in 1776,when he spoke of the ‘Sunshine Patriot’ and ‘summertime soldiers’ who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough. … We feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country and
we could be quiet. We could hold our silence. We could not tell (but). We have to speak out. “
I also heard the voice of Dr. King warning that if we did not create a radical revolution in values we would find ourselves marching against wars “without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.”
And that is why the second event, Left Forum 2008: Cracks in the Edifice, was so important. Over 2000 activists, artists, intellectuals and independent media gathered from around the country in
New York's Cooper Union to probe, think and create ideas and actions to help change the direction of our country.
These are urgent times. We know we have to do much more than change our leadership to end this war. We have to change ourselves.
Email Shea Boggs Center,