The language of combat veterans is replete with graphic and brutal description revealing the depth of emotion. When I was in Viet Nam we said things like this: “There is no justice, there is just us.” Instead of killed in action we were “wasted or zapped.” The Zippo squad burned down villages, the only good gook is a dead gook, people safe back in the World were REMF’s, rear echelon mother fuckers. The bitter rage reflected in this language has festered deep in our souls and has now been released by an act of presidential betrayal. I voted for Barack Obama and worked for the Anti-war movement in the hope that he would keep his word. He has broken his word and the Anti-war movement has fallen asleep as if in a drug induced slumber.

I went to Washington DC on March 19th for the March on the Pentagon. There were over 20,000 demonstrators and a contingent of 1,000 veterans of WW II, Korea, Viet Nam, Gulf War and Iraq and Afghanistan. The veterans were members of Veterans for Peace, Viet Nam Veterans against the War, VVAW Anti-Imperialist and Iraq Veterans against the War. The President flew over our heads and left the White House for parts unknown. No members of Congress were with us, nor any mainstream United States print or media. There were present members of the European and Japanese press.

I want to believe that in his heart Obama wants to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to believe that because he is surrounded by corporate vampires of the military industrial complex he is not able to act on his beliefs. It is becoming harder and harder for me to repress my rage. I have been attending PTSD group therapy with other combat veterans of Viet Nam. Though our politics are disparate we are all wounded and enraged by the continuing pointless killing and maiming of our brothers and sisters-in-arms. As a group we consider the wars to be illegal and immoral and an economic disaster for the United States. What is even more telling is that our voices have now taken on a context that implies using our military training to correct our own government. We talk about cosmoline and canvass. We talk about weapons caches and the 2nd Amendment. The Declaration of Independence notes that when a duly elected government fails to represent the people, it is the duty of the people to remove it, “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government….”

The entire country and world has been mesmerized by the death of Michael Jackson. Not one headline or lead media story has reported the five GI’s killed on the last day of June in Baghdad, the brigade sized operation sending 4,000 Marines into Helmand province in Afghanistan and the capture or MIA of 3 GI’s in Afghanistan. Your silence makes all of you complicit in the killing and dying. I am still flying my American flag reversed from the 2nd floor of my house in Hartford. My hope was that after the electoral defeat of the Republicans and the installment of Obama in the White House I could right my flag and fly it proudly. I will leave it reversed as an expression of my distress and rage. I hope I live long enough to see it righted.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace