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CAMOUFLAGED BLUES
years for some of the bills to come due. First, 56% of the 1991
Persian Gulf War veterans are already on disability, and 11 %
have died. There are a lot of reasons why today’s wars are
causing such widespread and severe physical and mental
injuries to the soldiers who fight them. In addition to dying
or being maimed in combat or by accidents, deadly pesticides
and chemicals and experimental anti-malarial and anti-chemical
weapons drugs sometimes disable or kill. The deadliest killers
are DU and PTSD. Second, Bush is selling bonds to finance
the war that won’t come due for payment for thirty years.
BY RAY PARRISH
Thinking of enlisting in the U.S. military?
I am the military and veterans' counselor at Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. I started doing veterans' counseling
in 1976 My father, my mother, and I were NCOS in the United
States Air Force. I have also been a mental health caseworker
and an American Legion veterans’ service officer.
The most important advice I can give you is to follow
your conscience. That's what I tell the soldiers who call me for
help. I’ve learned that the veterans with the most disabling post-
traumatic disorder (PTSD) are the ones with guilty consciences.
In order to survive combat, they were forced to do things that
they now think were wrong. You need to listen to these veterans,
learn from their experience, and avoid a guilty conscience and a
lifetime of nightmares. A wiser man once said, “Recovering from
a war is an ascent from hell.”
The decision to enlist in the military is the most important
decision you will ever make. It will determine the course of the
rest of your life. I wish that you had another decade of life exper
iences you could look at, so that your decision could be better
informed. You don't, so listen to the veterans. Think about what
It would be like to have to take orders from everybody with more
rank. To have your schedule decided for you 24 hours a day. To
be in situations where you feel forced to commit evil.
First of all, President Bush thinks everyone who enlists
is willing to kill and die at his command. Are you? Do you really
want to be a part of his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or his
perpetual “global war on terror," with future attacks on Iran and
Venezuela? If so, go! But be careful, and remember that you can
always call me if you need help of any kind. If current American
foreign policy makes you uneasy you should wait for it to change
before enlisting.
After listening to thousands of vets, I know that all
veterans say that they enlisted to defend our freedoms and
families and that this is the only cause worth killing and dying
for. Since the last real world war — 60 years ago — American
GIs have been discovering that the real reason for the particular
conflict, “police action,” “humanitarian relief," or war had nothing
to do with protecting our country. We were deceived by our
leaders into sacrificing our lives for their personal, political or
economic gain. Now we warn the next generation to beware.
After a lifetime of military training and conditioning and
my father’s second year in Vietnam, I was a 17 year old warrior
wannabe. I became disillusioned after the students were killed
at Kent Stare and Jackson State. 1 realized I was just cannon
fodder after heart-to-heart conversations with Vietnam vets I
met while I was doing volunteer work at a medical-evacuation
hospital in Japan, where I went to high school. It wasn’t the
horror stories they told me that hit me. It was them! They had
been changed from my older schoolmates, who had marched
off to war to protect me, into zombies They were guilt-ridden
and filled with rage and violence. They convinced me that theirs
was a group I didn’t want to belong to! So I joined the USAF, got
trained in Russian, and worked as an intelligence analyst for the
National Security Agency. I served in Turkey during their war
with Greece over Cyprus and the 1973 Arab/lsraeli War
Even with the Gl Bill and free tuition, I needed a part-
time job to make it through college, and the VA’s work-study
program would do it. I used my motorcycle to do “outreach” to
Vietnam vets hiding from life in the Shawnee National Forest,
and I taught myself veterans’ counseling. Helping combat vets,
like my new brother-in-law at that time, was very rewarding, but
It was also draining.
By 1981, just as many Vietnam vets had committed
suicide as had been killed in the war Why? Because combat-
induced post-traumatic disorder was only finally recognized as
a disability by the medical establishment that year. It would be
years before veterans (and their children born with birth defects)
SERVING THE CANNABIS
COMMUNITY SINCE 1999
THE H EM P
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got treatment and compensation for the diseases caused by
exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange, which was used in
Vietnam.
Vets felt abandoned and couldn't get help from anybody
but themselves. While the war was still going on, it was VVAW
that set up veterans “rap groups" so that vets could deal with
PTSD. These later became the VA’s “vet centers," which
handled only mental health problems. And W A W was the only
veterans group to support the VA workers who blew the whistle
on the VA's Agent Orange coverup. The U S. government knew
for years that Agent Orange was killing vets and causing birth
defects in their children.
If you go, be prepared to pay a heavy price. You will
bear most of the costs of this war personally, and it may take
A DARK DAY
History will record October 17, 2006, as a very dark day
for democracy and the human rights on which all of democracy
is based. President George W. Bush signed the John Warner
National Defense Authorization Act of 2007 and the Military
Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006. These laws give the President
powers staggering in their scope
MCA has received quite a bit of media coverage. It is the
law that suspends habeas corpus protections and allows torture.
Habeas corpus is the ancient law protecting against unlawful
detention, without which an individual can be held incommuni
cado for an indefinite time, without court review
Thomas Jefferson said, "The habeas corpus secures
every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not
law, whatever shape it may assume." Jefferson said on another
occasion, “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences
attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a
degree of it." With this bill, the United States Senate reverses
that profound judgment of history, chooses against liberty, and
succumbs to fear.
Deep in the text is buried a presidential gift. Section
1076 makes it easy for the President to declare martial law
The Insurrection Act has historically, along with the Posse
Comitatus Act, helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military
involvement in domestic law enforcement.
The President no longer needs a request from a state’s
governor, or legislature, or other local government official, not
even Congress. At his discretion and over their objections, he
can declare an emergency and bring the armed forces, including
the National Guard, into a state to perform law enforcement
activities
Habeas Corpus, Posse Comitatus, The Insurrection
Act, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, martial law,
War Crimes Act, enemy combatants, Abu Graib, extraordinary
rendition, Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, secret CIA prisons,
Military Commissions Act of 2006, and uncountable other
embarrassments and assaults make me fear for America
DU is depleted uranium. It’s the still-radioactive remains
of fuel rods from nuclear power plants that are no longer hot
enough to boil water. It kills and causes birth defects. Armor
piercing shells are coated with it, and it’s used in the armor
on American vehicles. Millions of tons of this cancer-causing
element have been released into the air. Millions of people in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo have inhaled and ingested part
icles of it, and thousands have died or become disabled by it.
The military’s coverup of DU continues.
Half of all veterans need treatment for combat- or rape-
induced PTSD or other service-connected mental disorders.
Despite expectations of a 25% increase in new requests for
PTSD treatment, the VA is budgeting for a 3% increase this
year and cutbacks for the next four. The severity of the depres
sion or anxiety can be disabling. There are veterans who haven't
had a decent night's sleep for thirty, forty or fifty years because
of the memories. And there are many who aren’t around
because they couldn’t stand the nightmares for another day.
PTSD comes from what was done to you and what you
did. It comes from enduring the threat of death 24/7 for months
on end. It comes from seeing buddies get injured or die horrible
deaths. It comes from surviving. It comes from killing an innocent
civilian accidentally, or as part of “collateral damage.” It comes
from realizing that killing anyone for lies, oil, and politics is a sin
and may be seen by the world as a war crime. It comes from
being raped by a fellow Gl. It comes from regretting that you
didn’t do more to stop an atrocity. It comes when you realize that
“even a cook" contributes to the bloodshed. It comes from seeing
a future for yourself without an arm or a leg. It comes from being
involuntarily activated after being out of the military for years. It
comes from being kept on active duty past the date on your
enlistment contract because of “military necessity,” or from think
ing that the only way home is in a body bag. It comes from not
being allowed to use your educational benefits because your
commander thinks you’re too busy. It comes from worrying about
how your family is worrying about you and suffering because of
your absence. It comes from not being allowed to take care of
family problems because the military “needs you more.” It comes
from being denied help by the local VA because they can't find
your military medical records, or they can’t figure out what is
causing your medical problems, or they’re just too busy.
When you hear some veterans say that we should “stay
the course,” remember they are a minority. Reliable polls show
that 72% of the troops in Iraq say we should have got out by the
end of 2006, and the media rarely shows troops who don't
support the war.
I realize that after you finish reading this, there will still
be plenty of reasons to enlist. If nothing else, think of your family.
Your family will have to deal with worries during your service —
and if you don’t survive, the empty chair at the dinner will remind
them every day.When I was in basic training my father supported
my efforts to stay out of Vietnam, but not because he no longer
supported the war. He said his major concern was not forcing my
mother to endure another year of worrying.
Ray Parrish was a sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, 1972
to 1975. He is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s Military
Counselor. If you need help, call him at (773) 561-W A W , or
reach him at CAMIBLUE@WAW.ORG. His article is reprinted
from The Veteran, published by W A W .
-JEROME ARNOLD
tchft&thc-foundation. ora
wwwTHC-Foundation.org
Jerome Arnold is newly elected member of the Cannon
Beach City Council
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