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Demond Mullins, a current New York National Guardsman and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, points an imaginary gun at Veterans for Peace member Thomas Brinson during IVAW’s staged Memorial Day “operation” to bring home the reality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Iraq vets make Memorial Day maneuvers in NYC By Chris Lombardi As the doors of the packed N train slid shut on Sunday morning, and the car began to leave the Times Square station, a group of young men in one of the cars started to hoot, startling some of the tourists headed downtown. Then a young man with oversized glasses called out, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen! Sorry to disturb you!” But before New Yorkers in the crowd could give the usual snort, he got laughs instead, by adding: “We are not here collecting money for our basketball team!” The speaker wore an Army basic desert uniform (BDU), with sergeant’s bars and the name “Braga.” The car was also half-filled with other young men with BDU jackets, boots and desert hats. “We are not putting any money in our pockets!” continued Braga, a Bronx native. “We are Iraq veterans against the war, and we are conducting Operation First Casualty! Because what is the first casualty of war?” “Truth!” the other veterans shouted back. “And we are here,” Braga shouted to the end of the car, “to bring the truth about the war to New York!” As the train approached the Union Square station, Garret Reppenhagen, a six-foot-five former Army sniper in a webbed helmet, stood and shouted, “Move out!” The dozen soldiers began to pound up the stairs and headed to their destination. At the station, the informal platoon checked in with former Navy Lieutenant Fabian Bouthilette, who asked them soberly, “Are you guys all set up for the riot?” Thus began the military occupation of Manhattan. The day before Memorial Day, New Yorkers sharing the picture-perfect summer day with tourists found themselves besieged by Operation First Casualty (OFC), a series of demonstrations of tactics used by occupying U.S. troops in Iraq. At five locations in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn, soldiers “walked point,” scoped in all four directions, and detained suspicious persons with hoods and handcuffs. Of course, the “suspects” were civilian volunteers, the “actions” went on for less than 10 minutes each, and passers-by were given not citations but simple postcards, saying, “Scenes like this occur every day in Iraqi cities and towns, conducted by American soldiers and funded by your taxes.” Sunday’s “operation,” the second-ever conducted by members of the three-year-old organization Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), was intended to shake up what IVAW leaders see as American unwillingness to think about the war and occupation. IVAW members told Chelsea Now that choosing to make their dissent public, in uniform, had come at some personal cost: At least two of the group’s ex-Marines now face unprecedented charges from their former commands for participating in a previous OFC exercise. Sunday’s operation shocked some locals and tourists, and confused others, though many Downtowners treated the events as just another memorable New York moment. As public opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq continues to grow, with more than 60 percent of Americans in last Friday’s Associated Press poll favoring immediate withdrawal and a parade of former generals and diplomats having declared the war a disaster, the willingness of enlistees to publicly oppose it has also increased. Close to 2,000 servicemembers in Iraq have signed an online withdrawal plea to Congress called the Appeal for Redress; anti-war opinion pieces signed by soldiers dot newspapers; and individual soldiers, talking to reporters, are more willing than earlier to have their names used. “Why are we here?” asked Staff Sgt. David Safstrom about Iraq, in a Monday New York Times article. And as such troops return, more are joining organizations that ask the same question. IVAW, by far the most upfront in its demand for withdrawal, was founded in 2004 by five recent returnees from Iraq, and now has thousands of members in 43 states as well as overseas, who speak to schools, churches and Congress of their experiences and their opposition the war. Mentored by older veterans from Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), who assert that that earlier war ended only because soldiers and veterans spoke up against it, IVAW’s leaders modeled OFC on VVAW’s 1971 Operation Dewey Canyon, a three-day campaign in Washington most famous now for the moment when Lieutenant John Kerry asked the U.S. Senate, “How can you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
Chelsea Now photo by Lovella Calica Demond Mullins, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, watches over hooded “detainees” outside the U.S. Army Recruiting Center at 41 Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn on Monday, as part of IVAW’s staged “operation” in protest of the Iraq War. The war’s impact, once removed In an interview earlier this year, Reppenhagen told Chelsea Now that he arrived in Iraq in late 2003 fresh from service in Kosovo, where “we saved a church where Mother Teresa had lived,” only to be ordered to shoot “anyone in sight” including farmers who went out at night to water their fields, and witness the effects of cluster bombs on civilians. In April 2004, he started Fight to Survive along with two other buddies from his Army base in Baquba, Iraq; by the time Reppenhagen’s command found out about the blog, the trio was also quietly pasting the base with stickers that said, “Bush lies—who dies?” “I meet vets and they tell me, ‘I remember that sticker!’” said Reppenhagen, who since his 2005 honorable discharge has worked as a liaison for the Washington group Veterans for America. But now, with IVAW growing so fast, he told Chelsea Now on Sunday, “This [IVAW] is all I do.” Reppenhagen and the rest of IVAW’s board conceived of OFC while deciding what to do during March’s big antiwar protests in Washington. Many of the vets, upon returning home, had noticed that even the most welcoming of civilians seemed unaffected by the war they’d just left. “I came home, and all they were talking about is ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” lamented Jose Vasquez, a 14-year National Guard veteran and current CUNY doctoral student who co-chairs IVAW’s New York City chapter. They designed OFC to shatter what they see as complacency. So, the combat veterans among them, including Reppenhagen and former Marine Corps Civil Affairs Officer Adam Kokesh, devised “scenarios” to illustrate the damage that troops, often exhausted and enraged, inflict on civilians they don’t know or trust. And rather than wear just their Army jackets and “covers” (hats) over civilian clothes, they decided participants would have to be in full uniform—for many, the first time since being discharged from the military. That very act, which flirts with violating the military’s arcane and complex regulations, was in itself an act of protest. “The first time we did OFC and I put the uniform on, it really freaked me out,” Kokesh told Chelsea Now in Union Square Park. “Because it means something, you know? It was the proudest day of my life, when I became a full Marine. I had to have [a profound] moral conviction, protesting in an active-duty uniform.” The uniforms drew stares from Union Square passers-by and tourists, about 50 of whom gathered to watch the veterans as they spoke from a podium. After each speaker, the crowd began to applaud, but were stopped by organizers pleading, “This is a press conference, not a rally. We’re trying to get information out.” After veterans spoke, a mob of white-clad demonstrators began to approach, shouting: “Go home! Go home!” And the cheerful, sunsplashed veterans morphed into angry, paranoid soldiers, overwhelming the “rioters” and shouting obscenities in a fast-moving mass, forcing some to the ground and placing hoods over their faces—all part of the “operation.” Earlier, at Rockefeller Center, the platoon treated the famed skating rink as a detention center, according to volunteer Elaine Brower of Military Families Speak Out. “They lined us up against the wall …I started screaming out to the crowd below,” said Brower. “Those people…did not know what the hell was going on. There were hundreds of them looking up with their mouths agape, frozen in their tracks.”
Both Kokesh, who became famous this spring for heckling Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during his May testimony to the Senate, and Madden, one of the founders of the Appeal for Redress soldiers’ petition, were already on the military’s radar before OFC. But these charges, coming just as the U.S. Defense Department issued strict limitations on soldiers’ blogs and sharply limited their permission to testify before Congress, have implications for all soldiers and new vets. “I’m mostly worried about the guys who are just beginning to speak out,” said Kokesh. At press time, none of the military lawyers queried for this story, let alone the soldiers, quite knew whether these unprecedented measures were even legal, or whether an honorable discharge could be revoked for dissent. But in Kansas City on June 4, a Marine Corps judge will consider whether to do just that: revoke Kokesh’s honorable discharge. Kokesh told Chelsea Now that he would not wear his uniform—but instead “a suit, and all my combat medals”—at the hearing. IVAW is raising money to bring a bus of supporters to Kansas City next month, while others still in uniform are watching. “I’ve gotten some great e-mails of support from guys on active duty, saying ‘We’re counting on you!’” said Kokesh.
On the national level, all talk was of Kokesh’s hearing and of the group’s planned bus tour of military bases in the South, where at each stop’s small towns, “we will have mini-OFCs,” said board chair Reppenhagen. “The intention is to raise awareness and organize active-duty soldiers, to reduce their support of the war.” As they described their plans, the veterans tended to smile and their body language loosened, like vets of any generation looking forward to a get-together. But their backs stiffened a little when asked if OFC was going to be an annual event. “Hopefully, there won't be a need,” wrote Reppenhagen in a post-event email, “because we will end the occupation in Iraq before a year’s time.” But if that doesn’t happen, he added—if the U.S. military has not shut down the occupation by March 2008—IVAW is determined to conduct another operation in D.C., just in time for election season. At the New York chapter, the vets were proud of what they’d pulled off, floating the idea of mini-OFCs in the outer boroughs, and trying to recover from an exhausting time, after the adrenalin of the operation had faded. Fabian Bouthilette, the former Navy lieutenant, told Chelsea Now on Tuesday that it was hard just going back to the private school where he teaches, after two days of simulated war. “I was fine Sunday and Monday, but I've had to choke back some tears in the classroom,” said Bouthilette. “What we did Sunday was amazing, and we need more of it, but it's been way more emotionally taxing than what I was expecting.”
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Chelsea Now photos by Lovella Calica
