Revolution#113, December 23, 2007
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Call for Winter Soldier Investigation
IVAW has called for veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to come together with Iraqi and Afghani people to testify about what they have experienced in a “Winter Soldier Investigation” this spring. Winter Soldier will be held in Washington, D.C. March 13-15, 2008 and is billed as the largest gathering of vets from these wars yet held.
Winter Soldier is patterned after a similar event called together by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Detroit in 1971. At this event, soldiers delivered powerful testimony about war crimes they had seen and carried out against the Vietnamese people, exposing the nature of that war from the inside as a completely unjust war of aggression.
Liam Madden of IVAW says in an article,“We Support the Troops Who Oppose the War” posted on antiwar.com/blog, “In 1969, the My Lai massacre helped fuel popular opposition to the Vietnam War. U.S. political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. Members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War knew differently.”
The call for IVAW Winter Soldier (ivaw.org/wintersoldier) says, “Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into an increasingly bloody occupation. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming ‘a few bad apples’ instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.”
IVAW’s Winter Soldier Investigation has much importance, especially given the covering up and sanitizing of U.S. crimes in the Iraq war by the mass media. Pushing out the reality of the war and what it is doing to the people in Iraq has the potential to compel people to confront these questions and fuel more massive resistance that is so urgently required.
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.
