In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
In 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War exposed the criminal nature of the Vietnam War in a historic event called Winter Soldier. They were called traitors, ingrates, malcontents, and cowards, but they were brave enough to look their accusers in the face while they made history in the spirit of Thomas Paine and the revolutionaries who founded the United States.
In an effort to provide the public a better understanding of the war, 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished testimony in a crowded Detroit hotel lobby about the war crimes they participated in or had witnessed. This was something that had never happened before and the media treated it as such. Those who participated in the investigation are proud to this day of that service to their country.
I know that many of you are wondering right now how big of an event this could have been, since you have most likely never heard of it. Don’t feel bad. I am a product of a very good public school system, and I excelled in history and government while I was in school. I also had never heard of Winter Soldier until recently. This is not something that the government wants to teach its students: that the Vietnam War was ended not by traitorous anti-war hippies, but by conscientious, moral-driven veterans of that criminal war. Even now, those brave men and women are slandered. Most recently, John Kerry was the subject of the traitor tag. I am sure you remember the ads showing a young Kerry testifying to the pillaging of villages during the heated 2004 presidential election.
Today, I am here to educate you about Winter Soldier: what it was (which I just did); who is participating in WS:IA; why I am participating; and how you can help to make sure that this time WS is not lost in history.
My name is Justin C. Cliburn, but the army likes to call Specialist Cliburn. I deployed to Iraq in December 2005 as a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq War and returned as an Iraq Veteran Against the War. How I undertook this change is story longer than any of you have time to hear, but I will do my best to condense it.
I arrived in Iraq on December 20th, 2005, and I immediately started to notice the divide between what I had thought to be true about the war and the reality of the situation.
It was our first week at Camp Anaconda and my team leader had just come back onto the base after his first "right hand ride." A "right hand ride" consists of the replacing unit personnel riding along with the unit to gain a sense of what is going on in the AO. Upon his return, I anxiously asked him what it was like out there.
Stephen told me he didn't want to talk about in front of the other soldiers and I didn't press him. Later that night, he and I spoke inside his room.
"So, what's it like?"
"Man, it's not like we thought."
"How so?"
He described to me the cruel nature of the men he had ridden with that day. They told him they usually pull over one vehicle a day and search it and told him to choose which to search. He pointed out a small bongo truck with two men inside and the truck's gunner leapt from his sling and pointed his rifle at the men as the driver of the humvee aggressively drove towards them.
The men pulled over and appeared to be scared to death. There was no interpreter and no way of being able to communicate effectively. The men had large amounts of cash on them and the squad interrogated them about how they had come across the money. Were they terrorists? Were they trafficking for terrorists? Through the dialogue, there was no way of knowing . . . until the two men started crawling around on hands and knees "baahing" like sheep.
The men were nothing more than sheep herders and they were terrified. They were subsequently zip cuffed and blind folded as the squad took turns taking pictures with them.
"So, they weren't terrorists?" I asked, a glint of hope in my voice that they had done something to deserve this.
"Well, all I can say is this: if they weren't terrorists today, I guarantee they'll be terrorists tomorrow." Stephen said with a mixture of humor and sadness.
This really struck a chord with me, especially because I never perceived Stephen to be particularly sympathetic to the Iraqi plight. If he was this upset by it, then it must have been significant.
I was already beginning to rethink my position on the war, but I knew that my turn to right hand ride was coming up and I could make judgement on my own then.
We left the base, navigated the long, windy turns of Route Milton, and onto Main Supply Route Tampa; we were headed to Baghdad. It was the first time I'd be in an Iraqi city, and I was nervous and excited. As we entered the north gate of Baghdad and into the heart of the city, I was struck by the sheer normalcy of the people. They were driving to work, walking to the market, socializing on the sidewalks, and drinking tea outside cafes. Children were walking to school and citizens were cursing rush hour traffic. In the middle of all this, there we were: pushing cars off the road, pointing guns at people, firing warning shots, blaring our sirens, and generally disrupting the normal nature of their day.
I always thought my first trip into Baghdad would be greeted with applause, thumbs up, smiles, and cooperative drivers allowing me to go wherever I needed to go to defend their freedom. On this day, I just felt guilt: guilty that I never once thought they could possibly be normal human beings with the same daily routines of Americans, and guilty that I interrupted it with sirens and intimidation. I felt like an unwelcome visitor.
I got over the initial shock and continued to do my best to remain sane. Not long after that, we were moved to Camp Liberty in Baghdad and our mission changed. Now, we were to escort military and civilian officials to Iraqi police stations and train and mentor the Iraqi police. Our work was going to have a direct effect on the security of the country and the success of the war. I was a little excited and hoped we could actually make a difference.
One of our first trips to the traffic police headquarters brought me face to face with an Iraqi child collecting cans. He had a big, dirty bag of soda cans, filthy clothes, and worn out shoes that barely protected his feet. He was shy and apprehensive, scared and distrustful. It took the better part of an hour to open up to us but he eventually did just that.
His name was Ali and he was about 13 years old. Members of my squad made jokes about his shoes and he laughed nervously until they gave him $20 or so to buy new ones. He couldn't believe it. We left that day hoping to see him again.
Every time we would arrive at that station, I would look around for Ali. The next time I saw him, he introduced me to his best friend, Ahmed. Ali and Ahmed became my saving grace in Iraq. They were all I looked forward to seeing; they were the people I felt I was truly helping, in my country or theirs.
My time with those children reinforced my inflated idea of what we were doing there, however, and it only served to set me up for disappointment when I communicated with other Iraqis . . . Ones that weren't benefiting quite so much from our presence.
The Walk
It was a May day like any other as we pulled into the poorly fortified Traffic Police Headquarters compound. We parked in our usual spots and the squad leader rallied us around him. He had a BOLO (Be on the lookout) list in his hand, and we were to check license plates in the adjacent parking lot against it. He needed about half the squad; I was one of them.
It was about a 100 meter walk between the parking lot and our location in north Baghdad. In our way was small market, but a crowded small market, and we made our way towards it. As we fanned out, I saw all the blustering and posturing my comrades were doing; they looked ridiculous. They were wearing body armor, a helmet, sunglasses, a pistol, and a semi-automatic assault rifle; they didn’t need to intimidate anyone with their behavior. As we approached the market, I saw the Iraqis' faces; they looked apprehensive. What was going on? What was going to happen? Why do they look so angry?
"Sergeant Jackson, can I mess with somebody? Please, let me mess with somebody!" one of our junior NCOs asked our squad leader.
The squad leader said that it might not be a good idea to piss anyone off, especially when we were outnumbered and had to come here practically every day for the next nine months, never mind that it was just plain wrong. Wrong was not something that the young sergeant would have responded to however, so I don't fault the man for omitting the most obvious argument against the request.
We continued walking towards the market and I could now make eye contact with the people there: the passers by; the shop keepers; the shoppers; the old men drinking chi under a canopy . . . all of them. They looked frightened. They looked angry. They looked hopeless. I made eye contact; I smiled. "Salaam a'alaikum," I said. Some smiled back and replied "Alaikum a'salaam" in the same nervous manner that I had greeted them; others continued to stare. Activity slowed all around us; we were the center of attention.
"Hey, Sergeant Stephens. That guy's staring at you!" one said with a laugh and a smile.
"I'll kick his ass!" Stephens yelled with an exaggerated arch of his back and raise of his shoulders. Now, everyone was staring and the looks of despair and hopelessness deepened. What could anyone do? What could the man in question do? We were armed to the nines and wrapped in body armor; the staring man was in a tunic and sandals.
. . . and why wouldn't he or anyone else stare? They tolerated us at the police stations and on the roads, but this was their territory. Why were we there? This was out of the ordinary, and they had every right to wonder, every right to stare. They were scared, worried, angry.
As we made our into the market and started splitting up to search the parking lot, two old men sat at a table to my left. They were old; they looked wise. They both stared at me like they would a disappointing adult grandson: saddened; disappointed; resigned to my and their respective fates. They weren't angry; they were just sad. There was a lot of wisdom in the creases that stretched out from their old, tired, brown eyes. They had probably seen more war than I ever will, and they were tired. I gave a nervous smile, an embarrassed smile, and made my way into the parking lot.
As I looked out over the vast parking lot, the sheer lunacy of this mission hit me. Here we were, looking for ten cars in a city of five million people. It was unlikely that we'd find one of them, but it was highly likely that we had just alienated a few more Iraqis. At that moment is when I empathized with the Iraqis still staring at me from the market. I felt hopeless, saddened, disappointed, just a tad angry, and resigned to my fate: I would spend the next eight to nine months performing counter-productive missions like this one. At the end of every day, I would make a few more enemies than I killed or brought to our side. I was embarrassed and humiliated that I ever thought differently; I wanted to tell the people behind me that I was sorry for what my country had done. I was sorry we had interrupted their commerce that day.
Like a good soldier, I drove on. I continued to search; I continued to do my job, just as I would the rest of my tour. In front of me, two men were trying to push start an old rickety van. I had thought of helping them, but I was carrying the M249 SAW machine gun with no sling; there was no way I was going to set it down or ask someone to hold it so I could help. Then I heard SGT Stephens' muffled voice. “We're supposed to be winning hearts and minds, right?" Stephens sighed under his breath. I watched, shocked, as the same man who had just lobbied to "mess with somebody" slung his rifle and helped these men get that van started as I covered him from a safe distance. It was indicative of his seemingly bi-polar personality, I thought as we all met up in the rear of the parking lot.
"Any luck?"
There wasn't any, and we made our back through the parking lot, to the market, through the market, to our humvees in the police station. As I passed through the parking lot that last time, the same old men stared at me once more. Our eyes met again, and I nodded in their direction. They nodded back, and I felt like I was forgiven.
I made it back to my humvee, sweaty and slightly out of breath, and didn't think about those old, tired men again for quite some time.
I went away from that day realizing two things: one, we were not exactly the welcome liberators that we thought we were; and two, that these were still normal people who reacted to compassion and politeness. I started to look around ask myself "Why?" Why was I here? Who were we helping? I started to read anything and everything I could about foreign policy, theology in politics, democracy, and Islam. I had not read anything on my own accord since high school, but I was now seeing a reason to educate myself, to look for answers. I decided that the only thing I could do in my year there was to treat the Iraqis as well as I could, continue to make life easier for at least Ali and Ahmed, and, through the Iraqi police we trained, make the streets safer for all of them. It wasn't long, however, before that idea was shattered as well.
You may remember hearing about vague reports of a Shi'ite death squad being caught in Baghdad, shortly before the sectarian civil war became what it is today. The day that CNN covered the story, I transported, catalogued, and inventoried the confiscated weapons from that death squad. They were members of the Iraqi Highway Patrol, under the command of the station that we trained. The next day, we returned the weapons to the station and signed them back over to the IHPs. I felt stupid giving the weapons back to the people who were using them for the wrong reasons, like we were played like fools, but it we had no choice.
I was no longer comforted by the positive nature of our mission; I felt like all I was doing was training the best death squads in Iraq. It all left a bad taste in my mouth; guilt set in, even though I knew I had very little choice in the matter.
August 24th, 2006 was a routine day for my squad in Baghdad. We had gone to Traffic Headquarters and I had gotten to visit with Ali. Business taken care of, we started to make the familiar trek back to Camp Liberty. It was a hot day, over 120 degrees, and I stood up just a little higher than usual with my sleeves unbuttoned to let the air circulate inside my body armor and clothing. It had been a good day.
Back on Route Irish, we were on the home stretch when the call came out over the radio:
"Eagle Dustoff, Eagle Dustoff, this is Red Knight 7* over"
"This is Eagle Dustoff, over"
"Eagle Dustoff, I need MEDEVAC; my gunner has been shot by a sniper."
The voice went on to recite the nine line MEDEVAC report and I marveled at how cool, calm, and collected he sounded. My squad leader plotted the grid coordinates and found that this had occurred only a couple blocks away from one of our two main destinations on Market Road.
"Cliburn, go ahead and get down; someone might be aiming at your melon right now", CPT Ray said. Sergeant Bruesch concurred and I sat down, listening intently to the radio transmissions that I couldn't turn off even if I wanted to.
Five minutes in, the voice on the radio was losing his cool.
"Have they left yet?! He's losing a lot of blood; we need that chopper now!"
In the background, you could hear other soldiers yelling, screaming, trying to find any way to save their friend's life. At one point, I swear I heard the man gurgle.
Ten minutes in, the voice on the radio was furious.
"Where's that fucking chopper!? We're losing him! He's not fucking breathing! Where the fuck are you!?"
Every minute to minute and a half the voice was back on the radio demanding to know what the hold up was. Every minute to minute and a half the other voice on the radio, a young woman's voice, tried to reassure him that the chopper was on the way from Taji. She was beginning to tire herself; I could hear it in her voice. She was just as frustrated as he was.
All the while, there I sat: sitting in the gunners hatch, listening to life's little horrors with no way to turn the channel. No one in the truck was speaking. The music was on, but no one heard it. There was just an eerie silence. All I heard was the radio transmissions; I watched as the landscape passed me by in slow motion. I didn't hear wind noise or car horns or gunfire or my own thoughts. I was only accompanied by the silence of the world passing me by, interrupted only by the screams of the voice on the radio.
At this point, I was as frustrated as I had been all year. Where the fuck was that goddamn chopper and why was it taking so long?! What if it were me? Would I be waiting that long? Would this pathetic exchange be included in the newscast if the guy dies?
I was angry, upset, frustrated, and anticipating the next transmission in this macabre play by play account. Forget about TNT, HBO, and Law and Order: THIS was drama. This was heart wrenching. Seconds seemed like hours; minutes seemed like days.
Finally, after several more non-productive transmissions where Eagle Dustoff attempted to reassure the voice, after twenty minutes and a few more frantic, screaming transmissions by the voice, the man's voice was calm again.
"Eagle Dustoff, cancel the chopper. He's dead."
. . . and that was that. The voice had gone from being the model for the consummate soldier (cool, calm, collected, professional) to more human screams and frantic pleading for help and, finally, to solemn resignation. Now, the voice was quiet.
"Eagle Dustoff: requesting recovery team. We can't drive this vehicle back; we need someone to come get the vehicle and body. Over."
"Do you have casualty's information?"
"Yes. SGT King, over."
I sat in that gunners sling in a fit of rage that I couldn't let out. I had to be a soldier; I had to keep my cool. We all did. I was so angry, I still am, about being an unwilling voyeur, forced to listen to the gruesome play by play of another soldier's life and death.
We had been told that the insurgency was in its last throes, that they were just a bunch of dead enders. No, not this day. Today, SGT King was the one in his last throes, and I was there to listen to the whole damn thing, whether I liked it or not.
A soldier's death isn't anything like the movies. There was no patriotic music; there was no feeling of purpose. It's just . . . death. I wasn't there physically; I didn't see him, but I was there.
Any sane person would have wanted to turn the channel. No one wants to hear the screams of a man losing his friend, but I couldn't turn it off. We were required to monitor that channel. Either way, it didn't take long to become emotionally invested in it; was he going to make it? I needed to know, damnit. I hung on every word until I got the final, sobering news.
My truck was the only one in the convoy monitoring that net. When we got back to base, no else had heard it, and SSG Bruesch, CPT Ray, and I didn't discuss it. I don't think we ever did.
A few days later, I felt like I had to find out more about this soldier. I felt like I had lost a friend, yet I didn't know anything but his name and rank. Looking back on it, I should have just let it go, but I didn't. Using the miracle of the Internet, I found out all I needed to know about the young man, and to this day I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
SGT Jeremy E. King was 23 years old. He was from Idaho, where he played high school football. He had joined the army to get out of Idaho and see the world. He was one year younger than I was, and he was dead. He sounded like any of a number of teammates I played high school football with. What irked me the most was how sanitized the news account of his death was:
A Fort Hood soldier from Idaho has died in Iraq of injuries sustained when troops came under fire during combat, the Department of Defense said Friday.
That's it? That sounds almost peaceful, maybe even heroic. I can attest that the whole thing was anything but peaceful, anything but heroic. Who am I though? Shortly after investigating who SGT King was, I locked the memory away in my head and didn't think of it again for quite some time.
Later in the year, I had confided in my aunt that I was really getting nervous. I told her how the violence level in Baghdad had been steadily rising and the sniper activity was higher than it had been all year. Bodies were being found every day tortured and dumped out in the open. I couldn't tell my immediate family this, but I had to vent my fear and frustration to someone and she was strong enough and kind enough to listen.
So, I was surprised when she sent me a message asking what I thought of a report on CNN that said murders in Baghdad were down 50% in the past month. I was shocked and initially didn't know what to think. I wondered how I could feel so out of the loop when I worked there and had not seen any of this progress. It was a very unsettling feeling, and I thought about it to myself for over a week wondering if perhaps I was wrong, but the reality of the intel briefings and the gun shots and explosions I heard outside the wire told me otherwise. After a week of wondering what was going on, I logged onto CNN.com and saw an Associated Press article stating that the Department of Defense had retracted its report. In their original estimation of the murder rate, they had counted any and all violent killings; however, in their second one, they had classified some violent deaths in other categories and therefore could trumpet the success of the decreasing rate. In other words, they tried to pull a fast one on the US and someone caught them.
Again, I felt betrayed.
No matter how guilty or betrayed or angry or frustrated I felt, though, I always felt better after seeing Ali and Ahmed. Later that month, I arrived at Traffic Headquarters and immediately saw Ali running to my door. I opened the door and bellowed "Ali!", but he didn't yell back. He didn't smile. He was repeating "Ahmed, Ahmed" over and over again as he made signals with his hands and booming sounds with his mouth. Through an interpreter I learned the sobering news: Ahmed had been in an explosion. He and his mother were at the local fuel station when a suicide bomber approached them. His mother was killed instantly, but Ahmed, who was carrying the can of fuel, was set ablaze and lay somewhere in a Baghdad hospital, burned head to toe.
Hospitals in Iraq will not treat someone until they have payment, and Ahmed was poor. Ali explained that Ahmed's father was out begging for money to get his son treated, but he didn't have enough. My squad put together what little cash we had, about $40, and gave it to Ali for Ahmed's care.
It was several days before I again got to see Ali at Traffic Headquarters and I spent the days and nights wondering about my friend. I dreamed that I had adopted him and Ali; I dreamed that he was okay. The next time I got to see Ali, however, I looked in his eyes and I knew: Ahmed was dead. Ali quickly left that day to go be with Ahmed's father and I sat inside the humvee with my squad leader as we silently cried.
I had always promised to give those boys a picture album of us together, but I never got around to it. I asked my mom back home if she would put one together for Ali and she came through in less than a week. When I gave the album to Ali, he opened it up, saw a big, smiling picture of Ahmed, and fell to his knees and wept.
I felt so angry and helpless and started thinking about what had really killed Ahmed. Was it the suicide bomber or was it the US letting the genie out of the bottle in a place that they have little knowledge of? I felt guilt as an American and could not wait to go home and get away from all this. I had come here to help people and instead I had only helped death squads operate more efficiently, angered motorists on a daily basis, been betrayed by my leadership, and lost the son I had never had.
If I had not gone home at the time I did, I just may have gone crazy.
I arrived home December 1st, 2006. After four months of heavy drinking and debates that never went anywhere, I stumbled upon the IVAW website and joined the cause. After all that I have shared with you, it is easy to understand why I joined an organization of Iraq war veterans that calls for three things:
- Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;
- Reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and
- Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.
So, I stand in front of you today as the South Central Regional Coordinator and Lawton-Fort Sill chapter president of Iraq Veterans Against the War to tell you about Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Winter Soldier is taking place March 13-16 at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland. Already, we have over 200 Iraq veterans registered to attend, as well as Iraqi and Afghan civilians. Contrary to popular belief, Winter Soldier is not about war crimes and shock value. Each veteran and victim will tell a story that, when pieced together, paint a larger picture of the reality of occupation. In order to make this event as historic as it can be, however, we need your help.
There is a way to help for everyone. For starters, IVAW would appreciate it if everyone here will sign the statement of support listed on the IVAW website. There are still veterans who are trying to raise money to attend the hearings and donations of any size are a tremendous help. Donors can conveniently donate online or they can fill out a “Support a Veteran” form, which I have with me today. Of course, all donations are tax-deductible. In order to make Winter Soldier something people look back on and remember, we need as many people to view the hearings as possible. This is possible if our allies host Winter Soldier House Parties. The hearings will be broadcast on Dish Network’s Free Speech TV and streamed live online. The IVAW website has ways for you to organize and publicize your viewing party. We need our elected officials to pay attention to Winter Soldier and, as such, we are relying on you to write your Congressional delegation to pay attention to the troops that they say they support. We need letters to the editor and a cry for local media to cover the event. All of this is easy and we appreciate everything our allies do for us.
Something that has defined my life since I joined IVAW in April of 2007 has been Gandhi’s famous quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Without you, without me, without hope, there will never be the change in foreign policy that we want so badly. Thank you for your time and thank you for your support.
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