PROTEST

Three of a kind: Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Jason Washburn (above), Kelly Dougherty and Sholom Keller (below).

The Enemy You Know

Philly vets testify against the war this weekend.

by St. John Barned-Smith & Meredith Aska McBride

Dressed in a camo-print T-shirt and khaki cargo pants, and with several days’ beard growth, Jason Washburn reclines in his paper-strewn office and describes how he enlisted in the Marines to “defend the Constitution against all enemies.” Though Washburn already served three tours of duty in Iraq, he’s headed south this weekend to fight his next battle, this one against the war machine itself.

Washburn is one of more than 100 members of the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who, along with Iraqi civilians, will describe their experiences during the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., this weekend.

Their testimony is designed to “shatter the illusion that in order to support the troops you must support the war effort,” says Afghanistan and Iraq veteran Sholom Keller, IVAW’s national membership coordinator.

“I can’t even count the number of deceits about Iraq,” Washburn says. He ticks off the Bush administration’s justifications for the invasion of Iraq—from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein’s repressive dictatorship and his connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. “All of these things are just outright lies.”

Washburn and his fellow soldiers didn’t initially question these claims. “About something this big, why would they lie?” he says. But after three tours of duty, “you see and go through so much, and you see the reason you’re there keep changing. You’d have to be pretty thick-skulled [to continue to believe it],” he says.

IVAW’s weekend testimony, which they’re calling “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan,” is their 21st- century twist on a famous 1971 event in Detroit and the subsequent hearings before Congress on atrocities committed in Vietnam.

The 2008 incarnation of Winter Soldier isn’t focusing just on individual soldiers’ war crimes. Rather, it’s intended to expose the systemic flaws in U.S. military policy.

“That’s what we’re about—putting the blame where it belongs,” Washburn says.

IVAW’s not looking to politicians to end the occupation anytime soon. Instead, they’re mobilizing GIs and veterans to take action themselves to end the war, from challenging illegal orders to becoming conscientious objectors.

Keller clarifies that most veterans are opposed to the war not because of “political ideology, but as a direct result of their own experiences in Iraq.” This hasn’t stopped pro-war groups like the Gathering of Eagles from labeling IVAW everything from unpatriotic to communist, says Washburn. But “this doesn’t come from pundits or armchair intellectuals or theoreticians,” Keller argues. “It comes from the mouths of those who’ve been there and who have an unsurpassed credibility.”

While the organization numbers just more than 700 members right now, it’s hoping to recruit thousands more by publicizing Winter Soldier through ads in military publications and by streaming live video of the testimony across the globe.

Media “is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. A movement is not a movement until it has a tangible literary element,” says the tattooed, overcaffeinated Keller, also the editor of Sit-Rep, IVAW’s official publication.

It’s an increasingly powerful weapon: Sit-Rep’s first issue had a print run of just 1,000. But almost 5,000 copies of the fourth issue, published last month, have already been distributed. Keller, a wiry former Army communications private with wide-rimmed glasses, expects demand for the fifth issue to increase by at least 200 percent. “This thing is viral,” he says.

IVAW’s executive director and co-founder Kelly Dougherty, who served as a medic and military police officer in the Balkans and Iraq, says one of Winter Soldier’s main goals is to “get the stories of soldiers and civilians who’ve gone through the occupation to a much wider audience,” which she hopes will in turn “empower other active-duty men and women to find their own voice and their own way to end the war in Iraq.”

“It’s time to take action,” Keller concludes. “I don’t mean marching in the streets. I mean confronting those in power who have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the status quo.”