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Few but Organized, Iraq Veterans Turn War Critics
By NEELA BANERJEE
S ean Huze enlisted in the Marine Corps right after the Sept. 11
attacks and was, in his own words, "red, white and blue all the way"
when he deployed to Iraq 16 months later. Unquestioning in his
support of the invasion, he grew irritated when his father, a former
National Guardsman, expressed doubts about the war.
Today, all that has changed. Haunted by the civilian casualties he
witnessed, Corporal Huze has become one of a small but increasing
number of Iraq veterans who have formed or joined groups to oppose
the war or to criticize the way it is being fought.
The two most visible organizations - Operation Truth, of which
Corporal Huze is a member, and Iraq Veterans Against the War - were
founded only last summer but are growing in membership and
sophistication. The Internet has helped them spread their word and
galvanize like-minded people in ways unimaginable to activist
veterans of previous generations, who are also lending help.
"There's strength in numbers," Corporal Huze said. "By ourselves,
we're lone voices, a whisper in a swarm of propaganda out there.
Combined, we can become a roar and have an impact on the issues that
we care about."
Those who turn to the groups are generally united in their
disillusionment, though their responses to the war vary: Iraq
Veterans seeks a quick withdrawal from Iraq; Operation Truth focuses
on the day-to-day issues affecting troops and veterans.
Iraq Veterans Against the War, which started in July with 8 people,
now has more than 150 members, including some still serving in Iraq,
said Michael Hoffman, a former lance corporal in the Marines and a
co-founder of the group.
Operation Truth, based in New York, began with 5 members and now has
300, with an e-mail list of more than 25,000 people. Its Web site is
a compendium of soldiers and veterans' stories, a media digest on the
war, and a rallying point on issues affecting troops.
Iraq veterans are keenly aware of the need to argue for their
interests, given the struggles of veterans of Vietnam and the Persian
Gulf war. The older veterans have offered a reservoir of knowledge
and compassion to help Iraq veterans avoid the mistakes they made.
It took Vietnam Veterans of America almost 15 years to have an effect
on government policy, said Steve Robinson, executive director of the
National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for gulf war
veterans. Mr. Robinson said his group did not come into its own for
about eight years, despite help from Vietnam Veterans of America.
Mr. Robinson is working closely with Operation Truth, which he said
had already surpassed his operation in raising money.
For Corporal Huze, the transformation began when he returned home in
fall 2003. Unable to forget the carnage he had seen in Iraq, he began
to grapple with the justification for the war, he said.
"By sometime in December 2003, I came to the conclusion that W.M.D.'s
weren't there and that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11,
and now I'm left with all that I'd experienced in Iraq and nothing to
balance it," Corporal Huze said, emphasizing that he was speaking as
a citizen, not as a marine. "When I came to that conclusion, I felt
this sense of betrayal. I was full of rage and depression."
That rage has since fueled Corporal Huze, a native of Baton Rouge,
La., who is awaiting a medical discharge for a head injury. With the
consent of his commanding officers at Camp Lejeune, he speaks
regularly to the media and others as a representative for Operation
Truth.
"Who I was before the war, who I was in Iraq and who I am now are
three very different men," Corporal Huze said. "I don't think I can
ever have the blind trust in the government like I had before. I
think that my being over in Iraq as an active participant, I'm a bit
more responsible than others for things there. And I think by
speaking out now, it's my amends." He added, "I don't know if it will
ever balance."
Operation Truth does not address the necessity of the war. David
Chasteen of suburban Washington, a former Army captain in the Third
Infantry Division and a member of the group's board, said Operation
Truth hoped to stake out a nonpartisan position on aspects of the war
that could realistically be changed, as opposed to tackling the
administration's Middle East policy.
"Our attitude was 'Want to do something? Here's what you can do: get
body armor to the guys on the ground, get interpreters to people on
the ground, get people who know how to plan this stuff on the
ground,' " said Mr. Chasteen, who said his experience in Iraq as an
expert on unconventional weapons left him disillusioned about the
war. "Maybe if we tell people what we saw, maybe some of these things
can get fixed. I definitely think we added momentum to some issues."
Operation Truth points out that when Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld took questions from soldiers in Kuwait last month about
equipment shortages, the Web site's readers sent 3,400 e-mail
messages in 24 hours to members of Congress asking for hearings into
the issue, which are to be held in the next few months.
Organizing those who have recently returned from Iraq is an uphill
battle, older veterans and Iraq veterans agreed. The first priority
for many is resuming their lives. And unlike most Vietnam veterans,
many Iraq veterans have remained in the military after returning,
limiting their ability to participate in groups critical of the
government.
Despite their different focuses, Operation Truth and Iraq Veterans
Against the War overlap on some issues, most notably with lobbying
the government to address what is expected by many veterans of Iraq
and previous wars to be a high incidence of post-traumatic stress
disorder among those who served in Iraq.
Some who served in Vietnam, like Tim Origer of the Santa Fe, N.M.,
chapter of Veterans for Peace, have said Iraq veterans face a more
intense version of the stresses they experienced: constant threats
inherent to guerrilla war, inability to distinguish friend from foe,
and profound despair that often accompanies taking a life, especially
a civilian's.
In March 2003, reports of suicide-bombing attacks on American
soldiers had reached Sgt. Rob Sarra's Marine Corps unit in an Iraqi
town called al-Shatra. A short time later, soldiers saw an older
woman walking toward them with a small bundle. The marines, fearing
that she might be a bomber, called to her to stop, but she kept
walking.
"I was looking at her, and I thought 'I have to stop this woman,' "
Mr. Sarra said. "So I fired on her, and then the other marines fired
on her."
"When we got to her, we saw that she was pulling out a white flag,"
he said. "She had tea and bread in her bag. I kept thinking, 'Was she
a grandmother? Was she a mother?' "
Mr. Sarra, who has left the Marines after nine years, struggled with
post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq and at home in Chicago before
seeking counseling and help from other veterans. Now he is one of the
leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
"When someone is wounded or goes through P.T.S.D., it brings what
they went through to the forefront," Mr. Sarra said. "I knew when I
joined the Marines that if I was going to be there for 20 years, I'd
face combat. But the question is, why did we go?"
A grenade tossed into Robert Acosta's Humvee in Baghdad in July 2003
left him without his right hand and shattered his legs. Mr. Acosta,
21, spent months in hospitals surrounded by other young amputees,
watching news about government commissions concluding that Iraq had
no unconventional weapons.
He began reading, watching the news and talking to people, especially
Vietnam veterans like Mr. Origer in Santa Fe. Last summer, his
girlfriend heard Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Operation Truth,
speak on the radio. Mr. Acosta contacted him. By the fall, Mr. Acosta
had become the organization's public face, appearing in a provocative
television advertisement.
Mr. Acosta, who is attending community college in Southern
California, said he hoped to bring friends from his old unit in the
First Armored Division into Operation Truth as they leave the Army,
because they might start to experience some of the problems he faced.
For instance, he said, he once used duct tape to hold his prosthesis
together because he could not get it repaired quickly at the local
Veterans Affairs hospital. And people often asked about his injury.
"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?'
" Mr. Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be
like, 'What war?' "
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