Poetic Discourse
the Current Policitcal process and other writings
|
As a Vietnam Veteran
Comments on the Iraq War
by John Peterson
As a former member of the US Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and as one who lived through the terrible
domestic struggles here at home as a result of that War I had to come to grips with the meaning of my participation in an
activity that took the lives of others both combatants and civilian. I remember as I drove trucks loaded with napalm to
Ton Son Nuet Air Base in Saigon, finally coming to the understanding that I was as responsible for the consequences of
that bomb as the pilots who dropped them. Later I followed that logic back to all of those throughout the military who
handled/transported/produced/designed/financed that bomb. And finally to the American people who dug the raw material,
financed the military, and supported the government who created the War. This thinking held for napalm and all the
implements of war down to the simplest shoelaces, bed sheets, boxes of cereal and on and on and on. War is surely a
communal activity that involves all its members.
I remember asking myself difficult questions about how and when a person could take another’s life and not be burdened
with the murder of that person. I understood that a police officer in the protection of the community was given the
authority to take another’s life under the strictest of circumstances and still the personal consequences would be grave.
That authority does not come from the desire of the community for preservation though it has that as a result, it does not
come from the desires of one its members for personal gain, that we recognize as corrupt. It comes from a deep moral
and ethical consideration that we invest in these officers to operate on the truth of a situation and only in the larger realm
of protecting those who cannot protect themselves. This is what police work is about, this is why we need officers who
can act but only with trained instincts and clear thinking, knowing that what they act on is grounded in a fair and true
representation of what is in fact the case. They are then absolved, in the community’s eyes, from the terrible
responsibility of taking another’s life. We hope they personally will be free from the consequences as well. Even if it
becomes clear that the death was not warranted, if they act on the best and most honest information at hand we, the
community, absolve them. Without these underlying truths the person and the community are in grave danger.
Police offices who deviate from these stricture bare a great burden; the taking of an innocent life leaves a sever malady in
the community and in the officer, not to mention the family of the victim. And the burden becomes greater if the officer
operates out of carelessness or from false information or worse still with premeditation where the taking of a life becomes
murder. It becomes most egregious when it comes from policies reaching out from high office. All members of the
community are responsible for that office and that officer and the community bares the consequences for his/her action.
There is a great moral vacuum created when wrong is done in this way and it is not easily filled.
Members of the military in time of war are vested with these same imperatives but often in circumstances that can be far
more confusing and the outcome far more devastating. It is even more imperative that individuals and leaders operate on
the most lucid truth, insuring that truth is present at all levels and is conveyed in the most open and honest way. The
problem is that in the realm of power and politics lucid truth is often hard to come by. We hear much on the need for
transparency in the corridors of power. Openness, the willingness to reveal the thinking that precedes a decision, seems
to be a necessity but is mostly one of the spins that power puts on decision-making. So much of the decision-making
process stays under the banner of “Confidential” for years. Much never comes out at all.
But military personnel for the most part are far from the decision making process, they rely on the “chain of command”
for the authority to encage in the most damaging of human activities, the taking of another’s life. If that “chain of
command” begins from a point of failed thinking or worse, deception, then military personnel act without the absolute
moral failsafe regarding the taking of innocent life.
Sometimes, as again in the Vietnam era, members of the community and members of the military, once they find that the
premises of their actions and the actions of their government are flawed and are based on falsehood or worse outright
deception, are propelled to another course of action by the need to redress this failure. There was a time in the early 70s
when the moral collapse in this country was eminent. Many chose to make extraordinary scarifies to right what was
becoming a spiral into a sinister realm. I knew some who fled the country, some who went to jail, some who lost jobs,
some whose futures were altered completely, some like myself and John Kerry who spent time in the War and came back
to actively protest the continuing “horror,” and horror it was. Some went far and paid dearly; Jane Fonda’s courage
during these times came back years later and proved difficult for her. I knew a man who fled to the mountains to resist
the draft and 25 years later had still not fully reengaged with the community. Some chose to join the National Guard and
should not be condemned for this.
It took thousands and millions of people in many ways to stop what had taking us beyond the realm of the acceptable.
Have we entered this region again? It seems so. Those who could not and would not recognize the fundamental message
of that era have driven us relentlessly into the same predicament and it appears are using the same failed thinking and overt
deception. Worse still our leaders in Washington may have entered the most egregious realm of all and may have
implicated all of us in the murder of the innocent through deception.
There is a strong, virtually unavoidable, sense that the U.S. Government’s attempt to show that Iraq still had Weapons of
Mass Destruction prior to the start of the Iraq War was fallacious. The generous view would be that the error was due to
lack of intelligence. That, as I said, would be the generous view.
Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing
Wednesday, January 28, 2004, CNN.com
“Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.”
The other view is that the deception was intentional and premeditated because for a variety of reasons the Bush
administration wanted to go to war and has continuously placed invention after invention out for public consumption.
The Village Voice; By Cynthia Cotts - June 18, 2003
Reason To Deceive: WMD Lies Could Be The New Watergate
“In retrospect, the Bush administration's most publicized war stories have all been the products of smoke and mirrors.
Contrary to the initial hype, the Hussein "decapitation strike" turned up no bodies and no bunkers. Chemical Ali walked out
alive. Jessica Lynch was never shot, stabbed, or tortured by Iraqis. And despite all the hot tips Ahmad Chalabi spoon-fed
to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the WMD search teams have not found a single silver bullet or smoking gun.
The war on Iraq is a Byzantine puzzle that begins and ends with a lie. The media have an obligation to expose it.”
It does appear, no matter whether it is out of a lack of proper intelligence or out of pre-meditated deception, that the Bush
administration has exceeded both of the strictures against killing that hold those who are given license to kill in our name to
accountability.
Those strictures are: one, an individual or group must not operate out of carelessness or false intent and two, policies
reaching out from high office must operate on the most lucid truth, insuring that truth is present at all levels and is
conveyed in the most open and honest way.
The consequence for those carrying out the killing is extraordinary. Lt. Col Dave Grossman, Psychologist, West Point
Graduate and Military Veteran writes extensively on the consequences of learning to kill, its effect on human physiology
and the human psyche. “Indeed, from a psychological perspective, the history of warfare can be viewed as a series of
successively more effective tactical and mechanical mechanisms to enable or force combatants to overcome their
resistance to killing.”
“Any organization that sends individuals in harms way, and especially any organization that calls upon humans to
participate in the psychologically toxic realm of interpersonal aggression (which is, perhaps, the “universal human
phobia”), and does not subsequently conduct a critical incident debriefing is morally, medically, and legally negligent.”
“Furthermore, there must be an environment wherein there are no “secrets” to be kept, since the perpetrators may well be
“only as sick as their secrets.” That means, to the utmost of our ability, we create an environment of transparency and
accountability in which no atrocities or criminal acts can occur, since these are the ultimate “secrets” which often cannot
be confessed and must be kept at all costs.”
“This means that atrocities, the intentional killing of civilians and prisoners, must be systematically rooted out from our
way of war, for the price of these acts is far, far too high to let them be tolerated even to the slightest, smallest degree.
This means that we enter into an era of transparency and accountability in all aspects of our law enforcement,
peacekeeping, and combat operations. This also says something about those who are called upon by their society to “go in
harm’s way,” to use deadly force, and to contend with interpersonal human aggression. These individuals require
psychological support just as surely as they require logistical, communications and medical support.”
“Psychological Enabling Factors: The processes that can be manipulated as a weapon to psychologically enable a human,
or a group of humans, to kill. These can be broken down into posturing, mobility, distance, leaders, groups, and
conditioning.”
(The Killology Research Group, The Psychological Consequences of Killing: Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress, www.
killology.com)
But as the history of Vietnam squarely tells us, as the revelations of the lies and deceptions of the Johnson and Nixon
administrations unfolded, the soldiers, those most vulnerable, where left in the most precarious of positions, many did not
recover. And now the Iraq War combat soldiers and we, those who make the war possible, are deeply into that phase of
the war where the dangers are the greatest, where the psychological support is collapsing, where leadership has broken
down. Grossman here can surely be seen illuminating the recent revelations of prisoner abuse and deaths. We have
indeed already entered that most dangerous realm
During the years following my Vietnam tour I survived because of those around me, the lovers, fellow veterans, the
friends that held me up in those moments of deep psychological collapse that came often in the middle of the night for no
apparent reason.
Years earlier watching a senseless war movie
tears flood me like the afternoon monsoon
I call Rich and sit in the basement
drink a six-pack, he holds our circle
'til the steel bands loosen
What then should be the consequences for the current leadership that has brought this calamity on us? Shortly after 911 I
wrote in my journal that we should not be hasty in our evaluation of what has happened and what should be done. But
now, with the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war on “terrorist” (that descriptor without content), the revelations
have become clear and we must stop what is happening in the name of those who died on 911.
]
If the Iraq War is the result of faulty intelligence this administration must be replaced as inept. If it is the result of
deception before the American people, this administration must surely be removed from office. Rumsfeld, Powell,
Chaney, Bush removed from office. Impeached if necessary, and there are those who have a case for their prosecution
for the crime of murder. It can be construed as murder with premeditation against the Iraqi people, against the Hussein
family, and ultimately against the American people and those who died as a result the deception. We had better turn the
corner now or the future will just get worse and worse.
Bush contends that even if Weapons of Mass Destruction are not found it is better that Saddam Hussein is out of power.
Once again Bush has breached the rule of law. From:
American Society of International Law Insights
Pre-emptive Action to Forestall Terrorism
By Frederic L. Kirgis
June 2002, www.asil.org
“There are also questions relating to tactics. If the United States were to attempt to remove a foreign head of state from
office (leaving aside what it might do during an actual war), the analysis would differ depending on the method used. If it
were done by supporting opposition groups within the foreign country who are seeking to remove the leader by the use of
force, what the World Court said in the 1986 case of Nicaragua v. United States would be relevant:
The Court therefore finds that no such general right of intervention, in support of an opposition within another State, exists
in contemporary international law. The Court concludes that acts constituting a breach of the customary principle of non-
intervention will also, if they directly or indirectly involve the use of force, constitute a breach of the principle of non-use
of force in international relations.3
The Court decided in that case that the United States, by supporting and aiding the “Contras” in their attempt to overthrow
the Nicaraguan government, had breached its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of
another State.”
A direct assassination attempt by the government of one state against a head of another state would be even more
problematical. For example, earlier this year the World Court enunciated a rule protecting the inviolability of a top
government official “against any act of authority of another State which would hinder him or her in the performance of his
or her duties,” even if the official is suspected of having committed war crimes or crimes against humanity.” (my bold
type)
So, the rational for the legitimacy of the Iraq War has no basis in the very institutions that we look to for guidance in
international affairs. We know the United States has a long and horrendous history of intervention in other countries,
Nicaragua of course, Chile and the assassination of Salvador Allende, Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Greece after WWII,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Venezuela and Haiti today; the list is as long as you wish to make it. The resolution to that
history is a long and complicated affair but musts start here, with the end to this deception.
I was in Nicaragua in 1990 as an election observer and experienced once again the devastation this country brings on a
people through the relentless disruption of their social and political life, in the past the imposition of dictators now the
imposition of political choices that come through economic coercion and at the end of a gun. Still the people survive and
some day they will find there own freedom and make choices out of the deepest places of their heart. This is true of
Nicaragua and true of so many other countries in the world. And it is true of Iraq today and yes, this country as well.
Voice
-for Brandon
I look to Nicaragua and see the poet
Ernesto Cardenal
Rigoberto Lopez Perez
he is a poet
I am a poet
Dark soil, canopy of dark, dark green
I know now the protection of the word
Why the Nicaraguan's sing
Why the poets speak the word
wrap the people in a cover
of words to hold
the dead
who died by Somoza who
died
by the Contra's bullets again
House with Mayan rooms,
room of the Catholic, Indian, African--
women who speak the Caribbean lilt--
Spanish walls and the gold
House of Sandino, communista,
Ché, Fidel, Fonséca--revolucionario
who loves the people and gives blood
in the life of sisters and brothers
I know why the people sing,
cover the children in a love song of words
Poetry is not only a literary discipline
It is myriad pulsing
in the night time of lovers
A mother's breath sound
in her child's heart
Rhythm of nerves
dancing in space
The word before there was voice
to transmit the word
Truth talking to truth
glowing bodies in the gold light of morning
Poetry is the earth covering her own
in a green and gold mantle of love