Veterans Speak Out, Part 2

Ross Caputi in Iraq.

by Ross Caputi

 Veteran Privilege

I worry that by using the authority and privilege of veteran voices to spread our antiwar message and deflect criticism, we in the antiwar movement have inadvertently made veterans into a kind of propaganda, packaging an antiwar message within a familiar warrior ethos. In effect, we are using the very same culture of soldier worship that we should be dismantling.

I worry also that the antiwar movement assumes a “truthiness” about veteran war narratives. The common refrain is that no one knows the horrors of war better than veterans. However, the experiences of veterans do not always lend themselves to a single antiwar interpretation. To assume that they do is just another iteration of what James Campbell has called combat gnosticism — “a construction that gives us war experience as a kind of gnosis, a secret knowledge which only an initiated elite knows.”

The culture of the antiwar movement has created a kind of veteran identity politics that regards veteran voices as given goods. But combat gnosticism can be dangerous when it leads us to become uncritical of our soldiers, even the ones who share our political beliefs.

I’m not saying that veterans have nothing to offer the antiwar movement. I’m arguing that we should not rely on them as sources of informational or moral truth. This does not help us build a culture of critical, independent thinking, responsibility, equality, and antimilitarism.

An alternative contribution that antiwar veterans could make is to offer stories and self-reflection that renounce the authority and privilege we enjoy in our society, that recognize our moral agency, that confess our mistakes in enlisting and participating in unjust wars, and that announce our responsibility to our war victims. This would be a first step in a process toward full reparations that not only seek to repair the harm done, but that also address the root causes of the violence: power, privilege, and imperialism.

Ross is the cofounder of the Islah Reparations Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah. The full essay can be read at VeteranReparations.org

 

Veterans Speak Out, Part 1



Ross Caputi in Iraq.

Note from Kathie MM:  This post from long-time guest author  Ross Caputi begins a new series on ending violence; his focus is on the role of veterans in promoting repair as an antidote to violence.

Veterans Speak Out, Part 1

By Ross Caputi

Ever since I got out of the military, I’ve felt that those around me, conservatives and progressives alike, have bent over backwards to give me an opportunity to talk about my experience in Iraq. I think many people do it because they think they owe me this courtesy.

But others seek me out and ask me to speak about my experience because they know and I know that veteran stories accomplish a lot of political work. I always accept, because I have an agenda to push.

I want to end war and prosecute war criminals.

But I’ve always felt uncomfortable with using the authority of my voice as a veteran to accomplish anti-war work. It’s a strange corner that I feel backed into where I have to identify myself as a former soldier so that I can try to undermine our culture of soldier-worship. And I can’t help but feel troubled by the contradiction between the means and ends of this rhetorical strategy.

No doubt, the privileged status of soldiers/veterans in the US is a major reason why we play such an important role in the anti-war movement. Our biggest contribution is that we help civilians navigate support-the-troops jingoism and accusations that anti-war ideas are unpatriotic. For whatever historical reasons, veterans enjoy a near sacred status in US culture and society. We carry with us an enormous amount of symbolic capital, and our voices are privileged like none others. We then bring this symbolic capital and privilege with us to the antiwar movement.

Simply by letting us make short speeches at anti-war rallies, or even letting us wear our cammies in an anti-war march, organizers know that audiences will be more willing to listen and less likely to criticize. In short, veterans help legitimize anti-war ideas by vouching for them.

But we can do more than that. Stay tuned.

Ross is the co-founder of the Islah Reparations Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah. The full essay, from which this post is excerpted, can be read at VeteranReparations.org.

 

An Honorable Marine

Ross Caputi in Iraq.

by Kathie MM

He doesn’t know it (yet), but on this Veteran’s Day, I am honoring a particular veteran, a former Marine, Ross Caputi, for his enduring courage.

It takes courage for anyone, in or out of military uniform, to face death, injury, terror, loss. It takes an extra dose of courage to speak out when you recognize that you have been duped by your government, tricked into participating in an unjustifiable bloodbath.

In November 2014, Ross provided a veteran’s perspective on Veteran’s Day: Inconvenient memories: Veteran’s Day 2014.” The message of that essay, excerpted here, is as crucial as ever.

“Most Americans believe Veterans Day is a day of remembrance; in reality, it’s generally a day of forgetting.

On Veterans Day, people applaud as veterans march in parades, wearing their medals and fancy uniforms. People who have never seen or smelt war’s rotting corpses bask in an atmosphere of pride and patriotism, suppressing inconvenient memories of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, millions in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands in Korea, and so on throughout our nation’s short and bloody history….

On Veterans Day, we are called upon to remember America’s wars, sanitized of the harm they brought to countless victims around the world, and abstracted from their historical and political context. We are asked to support our veterans while forgetting the reality of what they participated in…. But my experience as a Marine in Iraq [see series on engaging peace starting in May 2012] has forever changed the way I look at war and the way I feel about being a veteran.

Let’s change the way we celebrate Veterans Day. Let’s make it a day of learning, not forgetting. Let’s be sympathetic to the ways veterans have suffered without ignoring the suffering of civilian victims. Let’s teach and learn about the wars in which our veterans have participated…. Let’s end the reflexive support for popular mythology, the jingoism, the cheer leading, and the forgetting. Let’s refuse to encourage the next generation to follow in the footsteps of today’s veterans.”

Note from Kathie MM:  Amen.

Ross is the founding director of the Justice for Fallujah Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah

 

American Sniper, Part I

By guest author Ross Caputi. This is the first in a series discussing the implications of the new film, American Sniper.

What American Sniper offers us — more than a heart-wrenching tale about Chris Kyle’s struggle to be a soldier, a husband, and a father; more than an action packed story about America’s most lethal sniper — is an exposure of the often hidden side of American war culture. The criminality characterizing American military engagements since the American Indian Wars, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, is hardly noticeable in this film. And that’s exactly my point.

Chris Kyle built his reputation as a sniper during one of the most criminal operations of the entire occupation of Iraq, the 2nd siege of Fallujah, yet American Sniper doesn’t even hint that Chris Kyle did anything in Iraq except kill bad guys and defend America. This speaks volumes about how little we understand the wars our country fights around the world.

Perhaps my argument seems strange — that the most significant part of this film is what is not in it. I believe the omissions reflect more than what the director decided was irrelevant to the plot. They reveal an unconscious psychological process that shields our ideas about who we are as individuals and as a nation. This process, known as “moral disengagement ,” is extremely common in militaristic societies.

What is fascinating about American Sniper is how these omissions survive in the face of overwhelming evidence of the crimes in which Chris Kyle participated during the 2nd siege of Fallujah — an operation that killed between 4,000 and 6,000 civiliansdisplaced 200,000, and may have created an epidemic of birth defects and cancers. That he can come home, be embraced as a hero, be celebrated for the number of people he killed, write a bestselling book about it, and have it made into a Hollywood film is something we need to reflect on as a society.

Ross Caputi, a regular writer for engagingpeace.com, is a former Marine who participated in the 2nd Siege of Fallujah. Today he is on the Board of Directors of the Islah Reparations Project.  He is also the Director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah  Ross holds an MA in Linguistics and he is working on an MA in English Studies at Fitchburg State University. Read his blog here.