Josh and Conor—Home From War In Iraq
by: Nadya Williams, January 26, 2010


Veterans For Peace members left to right: Conor Curran, Fred Ptucha, (Vietnam War veteran from Santa Rosa), and Josh Stieber.

Stand up and repeat these words in marching cadence:
"I went down to the market
Where all the people shop
I pulled out my machete
And I began to chop
I went down to the park
Where all the children play
I took out my machine gun
And I began to spray"

This is a chant our young are taught to march to in our military today, and this is how two young veterans of the Iraq War begin their presentations to groups across the country.

Late last fall, Josh Stieber and Conor Curran spoke to a gathering of Veterans For Peace and civilian peace activists in San Francisco, as part of their six months of walking and biking from the East Coast to the West to engage in dialogue about war and to become involved in community service along the way.

Both young men are from small American heartland towns - Josh from Maryland and Conor from Ohio. They did not know each other until after they got themselves out of the military. They spoke of their motivations for joining the Marines, their experiences in Iraq and the turning points that made them reject violence.

The two called their cross-country odyssey, "The Contagious Love Experiment" - certainly a retro, ‘60s "Hippie Haight-Ashbury" moniker to more mature ears. The tag is both innocent and naive, but on a deeper level, it is their counterbalance to the brutality and disillusionment they experienced. Their story and reasoning are worth listening to.

Josh, a tall, blond, "all-American-type" in his early 20s, was in junior high school in Maryland when September 11th happened. His determination to, as he saw it, protect his country was initiated when his parents took him to see the damage at the Pentagon, and so he joined the Marines straight out of high school. Raised as a devout Christian, he pushed aside doubts while in basic training and forced himself to answer "yes" when asked, "Will you kill a ‘hostile' even if lots of civilians are around who will get hurt?"
Conor, thin and tall with black curly hair, also became a Marine, but spoke more of being alienated during and after high school, wanting to fit in and be accepted, using "lots of drugs," getting into debt, and not having a skill or education to direct him. So at 20 years old, "The Few and The Proud" seemed to give him all the answers.
At the time, he said, being in the Marines helped him to change his values and gave him a "mission accomplished" feeling. He became a good soldier. But Conor's second tour was when ‘it got heavy.'

Josh spoke frequently of his Christian upbringing that taught him principles in complete opposition to the killing, fear and hatred he learned in Iraq. (To say nothing of the disconnect of being told that America was "liberating Iraq and bringing Freedom and Democracy" and the "chop and spray" chant!)

He said fear of and hatred for the Iraqi people would build up in the troops to the point where ripping apart homes, wrecking gardens and property, and arresting and abusing prisoners became commonplace. On the street, going out of the way to run a truck through mud to spray old people, or, during house searches, taking the dolls of little girls, twisting their heads off then giving them back became acceptable behavior. "Why do we make the locals fear the U.S. military more than the insurgents?" he wanted to know. "We out-terrorized the terrorists!"

Josh vividly recalled pulling guard duty on a prisoner with another young American soldier right after coming from a church service. Josh thought of the moral and religious lessons he learned at home in Maryland: "blessed are the peace makers;" "turn the other cheek;" and "love thine enemy," as his buddy talked of how he was going to brutalize the prisoner. "Jesus wouldn't let himself get punked around," his friend replied when Josh objected on Christian principles.

The insanity of war gradually became apparent to Josh during his 14-month tour of duty, as when he and his squad detained a man with ample evidence that the Iraqi had been involved in attacks on American soldiers. This man turned out to be the mayor of the town, and U.S. military authorities' regular "payments" of school supplies and cash ensured a halt in attacks on Josh and his men, at least in that part of town. So much for "we will not negotiate with terrorists," he thought.

These revelations led this idealistic youth into a "bleak" period, he said, with feelings of hopelessness, "always looking over my shoulder," and the realization that he'd always let others tell him how to think and how to live up to their expectations.

Neither young man spoke of killing anyone, and no one from the audience asked. But each spoke of turning points when they decided they could not continue as soldiers. For Josh this was a gradual process, but for Conor it came during his second tour while conducting random searches with his squad for weapons caches in Ramadi, without adequate intelligence. They set upon a home with an exceptionally beautiful garden and proceeded to tear it apart and dig it up. "Then the man of the house came out with a tray and served us all tea!" said Conor. "He spoke English and wanted to be our friend. He showed love to us and we were terrorizing him."

Thus the seed for "The Contagious Love Experiment" was planted.

Conor and Josh had many encounters along the roads of America since the spring, but the one that stood out for them was meeting a Vietnam War veteran who told them, "Instead of uniting against a common enemy, we should unite for a common goal - peace."

For more information, see: www.contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com Also: www.ivaw.org (Iraq Veterans Against the War) and www.veteransforpeace.org
Part Two will be an interview with Salam Talib, an Iraqi refugee and Pacifica journalist who hosted Josh Stieber and Conor Curran in his home.

Nadya Williams is a freelance journalist and former study-tour coordinator for Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights and peace non-profit. She is an active associate member of Veterans for Peace, San Francisco chapter, and is on the national board of the New York-based Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

Photo: http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com

By Sharon Kufeldt and Gail Sredanovic

The joys and relaxation of summer vacation come with some extra safety concerns for parents. One you may not have considered is the presence of military recruiters looking to meet their quotas with your children. During the school year, recruiters are a heavy presence on campus, with games, small gifts and other inducements, military aptitude tests and a database that includes information on children as young as 16.

However, they do not stop their efforts during school vacation. They are present where children gather, especially targeting youth of color and low-income youth.

Earlier this month, responding to an ACLU report on recruiter abuses, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a report urging the U.S. to make sweeping policy changes regarding domestic military recruitment practices.

Although the U.S. signed the U.N.'s Optional Protocol on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict in 2002, military recruiters still target children under 18 years of age for enlistment with techniques that include false promises and coercion.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Program, said that "to claim the high moral ground and assert leadership on the issue of human rights, the U.S. must take vigorous action to bring its current conduct in line with the committee's recommendations." The recommended changes that we fully support include the following:

The U.S. government must closely monitor domestic military recruiters and investigate and punish misconduct by recruiters.

It must ensure that military recruitment does not particularly target racial and ethnic minorities and children of low income families.

Furthermore, the No Child Left Behind Act must be amended to protect students' privacy rights and the rights of parents and legal guardians. Any child currently signed up under the Delayed Enlistment Program must be adequately informed of their right to withdraw from enlistment.

Perhaps most important to put the U.S. in compliance with the protocol is to raise the minimum age for recruitment to 18.

This summer you may see members of the Raging Grannies Action League as we continue our public information campaign to reach children and parents with facts about military enlistment.

Meanwhile, it is up to parents to make themselves informed and know who is influencing their child. Should your student come home with a military contract, be sure to read carefully both sides of any document he or she may sign.

The enlistment contract is cleverly formatted to disguise that although it is binding on the recruit, nothing in it is actually binding on the military.

Tama Adelman: Army combat nurse in Vietnam.
My name is Tama. And I'm just a regular, middle-class working single mom. I was raised in this city. In the late '60s, I joined the Army as an Army nurse, thinking I was doing the right thing, thinking I was going to be of service. I was 21 when I went to Vietnam.

Those 12 months defined who I am today. Thirty-six years later, it is with me like it was yesterday: the sadness, the tears, the depression, the smells. I carry that war in a very private place. But what is happening today, by my country, requires that I bring my very private pain to a very public arena.

Maybe had I not spent my year patching the wounded or bagging the dead, I wouldn't believe so strongly. Maybe if I didn't have an 18-year-old son, I wouldn't feel so strongly about the damage we're inflicting on the next generation of young men and women, who have been asked to go to war and possibly sacrifice their life -- and if not their life, certainly their soul.

Maybe if I hadn't seen the devastation of a country and the permanent damage to a people and a land, I wouldn't believe so strongly. But I have seen, and I do believe what our government is doing is morally wrong.

I see every person, whether Iraqi or American, as some mother's son or daughter. And since I would die to protect my own son, I am morally obligated to speak out against this egregious use of power by our country.

In Vietnam, our mission was to win their hearts and minds. Today I say hearts and minds can't be won through violence. This is a sad time for those of us who see the great potential in this experiment called a democracy. Yet we must weep at our inability to take this potential greatness and translate it into solutions other than war.

And I have to say, I'm confused and I have no answers. What is the message we're sending to our kids about conflict resolution? And what does it really look like when it says I support the troops but I don't support the war? I struggle to understand.

But what I do know with certainty is my own experience with war. I have seen firsthand not only the futility of the violence, but the devastation it brings to lives and countries. And it seems ironic, with all our accomplishments, from landing on the moon to mapping the human genome, that we still haven't learned how to resolve conflict without war.

How far have we come in these years? I ask each of you, will those people in harm's way today, both Iraqi and American, look back in the rear-view mirror, 36 years from now, and face the same pain that I feel today? I fear that answer.

Thank you.

John Wike: Army combat veteran of the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic.
Everybody has their war -- big wars, little wars. My grandfather fought in the British artillery in World War I. My father was a RAF pilot in World War II, shot down at the battle of Dunkirk.

When I went to the Dominican Republic, I ended up guarding a sugar mill -- American-owned. I want to read you first something from General Smedley Butler, U.S. Marine Corps. He says:

I helped make Mexico, and especially Tempico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.

When I was guarding that sugar mill, people were shooting at us and we didn't know why. We called higher headquarters and we said, "We're getting shot at. Can we get some support down here?" And they said, "There are no rebels down in that district, so we can't send anyone down." We said, "Well they're shooting at us."

So we organized ourselves and we went out and we found the people who were shooting at us and we killed most of them and we captured some of them. And we asked them why were they shooting at us. And they said, "Because in 1916 you killed our grandfathers, you raped our grandmothers." It keeps going.

George Lymburn: Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, was shot down and held as a POW in Germany for 14 months.
If a man makes a fist and hits a woman in the face, I call that momentary insanity that leads to violence. You remember about a year ago, they showed [on TV] a women in a parking lot and she was hitting her daughter in the back seat of her car? Do you remember that? That's what I call momentary insanity that leads to violence.

But if you were appalled at that woman striking that child, what in the world do you think is going on in Iraq right now, this moment? Think about that. You're offended to see a woman strike a child. What's going on over there?

And when a nation rises up and has a war with another nation, I call that momentary insanity that leads to violence.

I was a B-24 pilot during World War II. I got shot down over Berlin. The 10 people in our crew were taken to be prisoners of war. We were finally liberated by the Russians on March 8, 1945. The rest of the crew now, are all dead. My co-pilot died a year ago, on January first. So I feel there's a voice left to speak for them, so therefore I do feel some responsibility about that.

We're here to share what we think, as veterans, to you. And I'd like to quote three veterans right now.

The first is the four-star general Omar Bradley. He said, "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace. We know more about killing than we know about living."

Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, and those who are cold and are not clothed." And let's not just think of this country. He was talking about a world condition; those who are not fed, those who are not clothed.

John F. Kennedy said, "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation in prestige that the warrior does today."

Well I heard some interesting information on a talk show the other day. I found out that I was an un-American, left-wing idiot. Thank you....

One thing I've observed about this country during the years that I've had here, is that I think we're a very bored country. I think we're a very isolated country. Look at the cell phones going and so forth. What one thing might have the possibility of uniting us all? Take us out of our boredom? Take us out of our isolation? It's war, isn't it? Isn't it perfect?

So I think there obviously must be another answer, because I would see some day, like Kennedy, in the future, when this globe experiences so much pain -- everybody experiences so much pain -- we say, 'Enough. I give up. There must be a better way.'

I'd like to conclude by saying may God bless all the people of this magnificent planet.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Warren Langley is also a former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange.
I have to say that I'm really proud to be standing here with this group of people today, making ourselves heard about this war and how we feel about it. This is a group of people who understands war. As you've heard from their stories, they've been in war. They know why you don't want to go to war.

My 84-year-old father, who was a prisoner of war in the second World War, captured in North Africa, said to me in December, when I was very surprised how strongly opposed to this war he was, "This war was being decided on by people who've never been to war." And we know that's the truth.

I've had a little trouble in the last few days dealing with the fact that I think a lot of effective voices were protesting the war [from] starting -- and then it started, and I haven't been able to deal very well with 'what do we do now?'

But I think being here with this group of people helps me. It helps me understand that we have to do more. We have to make sure that this is the only war that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld start.

We have to be sure that they don't carry out their grand plan, which looks to me like North Korea, Iran, Yemen and several other places that they think they know how to do better. We can't let that happen.

And as I saw on one of the signs here among us, saying the way to stop this war is to march to the polls in 2004. It's got to be all of us here, and everybody else that we can make come with us. And understand that we need to find the leadership that will make decisions that won't take us to war, that will look for ways that stop short of war -- to get diplomatic means -- and to help us rejoin the international community.

There are so many places in this world that just think America is George Bush, and we've got to change their minds.

Thanks you very much for letting me be a part of this group. Thanks you very much for coming out and supporting our troops, because I think all of us here know how important it is to differentiate between opposing the war, and opposing the politicians, and opposing the people who made the decision to go to war, and supporting the troops who are in harms way and fighting the war.

Thanks very much and I'll see you at the next rally.

(More soon!)