Veteran status as privilege

author : Wally Cuddeford topic : Iraq occupation

by Wally Cuddeford

It's no secret the high esteem our society holds for veterans of the armed forces. One need only look at one's nearest calendar to see the exorbitant number of holidays devoted to soldiers, veterans, and the military, especially when compared to the number of holidays set aside for causes of social justice and popular liberation.

Parades and patriotic music fill the streets in celebration of our contracted mercenaries, while the people who fight and die in popular struggles in Oaxaca, Palestine, and Chiapas are forgotten. Prisoner of War flags abound, while people who are domestically incarcerated, and sometimes executed, under unjust motives go nearly unspoken of in the mainstream.

Even the word "veteran," unspecified as it is, has been reserved by society to mean "veteran of war or of the armed forces," a bias if ever there was one. This saturation of war glorification is of course no accident, but rather part of the pro-war propaganda mill at work. The goals are more support for imperialist wars, more acceptance of the military-industrial complex, and higher recruitment numbers.

What's strange is how the anti-war movement, ostensibly a movement with the long-term goal of breaking our society's addiction to and obsession with fascist militarism and the myth of heroism-through-warfare, has echoed these same sentiments time and again. "Support our troops" has been attached as a preamble to nearly everything the movement ever says. Every action is weighed in terms of how it may offend soldiers, veterans and their families, instead of how effective it is in helping end war and empire. And the true victims of our continued war campaigns, the millions of indigenous people here and abroad who have been murdered, raped, brutalized, and subjugated by our missiles and muskets, continue to be left out of our rhetoric.

This "support our troops first" ethic is reflected in many movement veterans. Many "anti-war" veterans condemn the current war in Iraq, while glorifying past conflicts (perhaps the ones they fought in). When asked why the Iraqi occupation is so criminal, many will say it's because of "bad intelligence," "poor planning," "lack of material support (bullets and armor) for our troops," and, conveniently, "failure to take care of our vets when they get back." They shout Marine Corps slogans, wear their "I helped kill lots of people" medals and decorations as badges of honor, and run their anti-war organizations like mini-militaries with authoritative hierarchies. And they love waving that flag. You know the one: The most murderous, genocidal, and imperialist flag in all of human history. Woe to those who would challenge, desecrate, or speak ill of the troops, the military as an institution, or that flag in their presence.

Why do we think of people who would glorify the military and exalt soldiers as anti-war allies? Contrary to popular belief, the anti-war movement is not in the habit of working with any old group that claims opposition to the occupation of Iraq. The Minutemen (racist border-patrollers), the Westboro Baptist Church (the "God Hates Fags" people), and various neo-Nazi groups all claim opposition to the occupation of Iraq, but their opposition is grounded in hate and bigotry. We don't let them anywhere near our organizing, not even as temporary issue-specific allies. We know that once we wed our movement to racism and hate, it's very hard to divorce them. So it seems odd that we would so willingly wed our movement, aimed at ending the occupation of Iraq as the first step toward ending war, imperialism, and militarism at large, to the notion that soldiers are inherently heroic, that military service is to be glorified, and that the criminality of war lies on the shoulders of those who give criminal orders and not on those who follow them. Given our immediate rejection of other counter-productive alliances, it seems that we, on some level, truly do know better.

The reasons behind our acceptance of such a skewed view as being "anti-war" are nuanced, but one key reason is that we have long since established veteran status as a movement privilege. People in the movement treat your average veteran activist as automatically having accomplished more for the cause of social justice than your average non-veteran activist. Well-intentioned activists, and even some respected anti-war veterans, frequently say that vets should be the "leaders" of the anti-war movement. Veterans are bussed and flown around the country just for being vets (not even necessarily for being combat vets of the particular war in question). For my part, I can say I've been chosen to do interviews and speak on behalf of groups as large as 22 people, just because I was the vet of the group.

As with any class of people given unquestioned deference, many veterans have taken their privilege and, instead of challenging it, or at least trying to use it for the good of all, have consolidated it and used it to entrench their power. Some "anti-war" veterans organize into cliques, without any particular strategy other than to simply exist as groups of anti-war vets. Veterans are routinely identified within anti-war organizing meetings, where there is no public credibility gain to be had. I've even been told horror stories of veterans in meetings actually pulling out their I.D. cards to claim some sort of higher authority over the non-veterans.

Many anti-war veterans groups and soldiers' families groups (who enjoy the same privilege) routinely dictate to groups they work with what the message from an action will be. The same groups that practice this sort of message orchestration seem obsessed with making the salvation of imperialist soldiers the focus of war opposition, with finding every reason to forgive soldiers for their criminal participation in war, and with making sure words like "murder" are only used in reference to certain Presidents. Individuals who openly challenge this skewed rhetoric are frequently targeted for discredit and removal by these groups, putting non-veterans in the position of either standing up for viewpoint diversity or losing their more valued allies.

Most counter-productive of all, veterans groups have had a recent history of selective support of other anti-war organizers. A local chapter of Veterans for Peace (the largest and most diverse umbrella group for anti-war veterans) refused to endorse a student march from Olympia to Fort Lewis two years ago on the grounds that the soldiers might think organizers were confronting them. A year later, the same chapter refused to endorse the protests at the Port of Olympia, once again because they thought it might appear anti-troop. Chapters of other soldier-related groups, such as Military Families Speak Out, have threatened to withdraw support for key coalitions if the other groups don't toe their line.

The movement is then coerced into operating on an agenda formed not through discourse, or through an objective look at our goals and what we need to do to achieve them, but through a UN Security Council style system of permission and denial, with veterans groups and soldiers' families groups as the vanguard. Such a system has dangerous consequences for our movement, and for the positive goals we hope to achieve. It can only serve to cease discussion, limit diversity of tactics, and to alienate our allies who will never be in "the club." Is it any wonder a few anti-imperialists, frustrated with unfair treatment and a skewed focus, have taken to retaliating with banners and postings that say "Fuck the troops"?

Unlike most privileges we have to deal with, which are multi-layered and complex, veteran privilege within the movement is rather straight-forward. Veteran privilege starts when the movement decides to oppose war primarily for the soldiers who choose to fight it, and not for the victims whose voices we don't hear. When the soldiers are the focus of the anti-war movement, it only makes sense that veterans would lead the charge. Veterans have been there, if not in direct combat, then at least as prisoners of the institutions we are fighting against. Veterans can better relate to soldiers (and vice-versa), because they've been in the soldiers' boots.

But when the focus becomes the true victims of war, the indigenous peoples of the nations we're bombing, exploiting, and subjugating, that dynamic changes. It's absurd to assume that someone who once signed up to help kill poor people for money automatically knows what's best for indigenous peoples. It's illogical to assume a combat veteran has a clearer perspective into the politics of empire and the subjugation of societies than someone who has spent years studying these issues. And finally, veterans are simply too close to the subject of war criminality to be truly objective.

This is not to say that veterans don't have a place in the movement, or that we shouldn't identify or organize as vets. Indeed, Iraq Veterans Against the War continues to be one of the loudest voices in the call to escalate our active resistance, and veterans and vet groups have been significantly represented in the GI resistance support movement, which is a key front in the struggle to end war.

In a society that holds veterans to such high regard, we do have a powerful voice with which to challenge empire, but that power must be used for the good of others. We must relinquish our desire to "own" the issue of war, as painful as it may be to do so. We must throw our support behind our allies' struggles, even if theirs are not the struggles we would engage in ourselves. When we wear our uniforms and medals, we must do so to challenge assumptions and to lend credibility to our non-veteran allies, and not to reinforce our own privileges. And we must never withhold our solidarity from our allies for any but the most destructively misguided expressions of personal frustration.

If we are to stop not just this war, but every war, veterans and soldier-aligned groups must forfeit ownership of the issue of war. We must acknowledge that, no matter our pain, the people directly victimized by war and empire will always have it worse. We must learn to work as equals with students, labor, and the anti-war community at large. By giving our unconditional support to these allies, the discussion will become more honest and enriching, and tactics and strategies will be more easily weighed by their effectiveness and not by sentimentality. Ensuring that kind of solidarity is a key step in turning dissidence into resistance.

Wally Cuddeford is an anti-war activist, a veteran of the United States Navy, and a lifelong resident of Olympia, Washington.