Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 5:49 AM
Subject: [PDLA] A Letter from Ron Kovic to Young Veterans and GI's Re: Dec.
16th Civil Disobedience
A Letter from Ron Kovic to Young Veterans and GI's
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
By: Ron Kovic
"Raise Your Voices, Protest, Stop These Wars"
The following is a personal appeal from Ron Kovic, Vietnam War veteran and
author of Born on the Fourth of July, to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans
and active-duty service members. Kovic issued the appeal to bring more
veterans and GIs into the anti-war struggle and to support the work of March
Forward! To learn more about March Forward! visit their website
http://www.answercoalition.org/march-forward/statements/a-letter-from-ron-k
ovic-to.html .
As a former United States Marine Corps infantry sergeant, who was shot and
paralyzed from the mid-chest down on Jan. 20, 1968, during my second tour of
duty in Vietnam, and someone who has lived with the wounds of that war for
over 40 years, I am writing this letter to ask you to join me as we begin a
critical new phase in the growing anti-war movement.
Many of you have already served multiple deployments in Iraq and
Afghanistan. You have been coming home now for almost 10 years. Many have
begun to question, to doubt these wars and our leaders. Over two million of
you have served honorably in both theaters of conflict. Though many years
separate us, we are brothers and sisters.
Though we have fought in conflicts generations apart, we have all been to
the same place. We know what war is. We understand it, and for many of us,
our lives will never be the same again. In many ways, we represent a very
powerful force in our country-a moral, spiritual, and political high ground
that is unassailable, a potential to transform our nation that is
undeniable. No one knows peace or the preciousness of life better than the
soldiers who have fought in war, or been affected by it directly: the mother
of a son who has died, a wife who will never see her husband again, a child
who will never have a father, a father who will never see his son again.
For, it is we who live with the physical and emotional scars of war, and we
who live with these wounds every day, and feel their weight and pain every
morning. It is we who have walked and wheeled through the streets of our
country and watched children stare at us and wonder why. And it is we who
cry out now for the future, for a world without war.
We are the reminders of what war can do, of how it can wound and hurt, and
diminish all that is good and human. We struggle everyday to believe in a
life that was almost taken away from us. We know that even though we have
lost, though parts of our bodies may be missing, though we may not be able
to see or feel, we are important men and women, with important lessons to
teach, with important things to share.
Those of us lucky enough to have survived combat yearn for life now, for
beauty, for all that is decent and good, for in war we saw the worst in the
human being. We saw poverty and death, killing and savagery, the darkest
sides of the human soul, the most hated parts of our humanity.
I, like many Americans who served in Vietnam and those now serving in Iraq
and Afghanistan (and countless human beings throughout history), had been
willing to give my life for my country with little knowledge or awareness of
what that really meant.
Like many of you who joined up after 9/11, I trusted and believed and had no
reason to doubt the sincerity and motives of my government. It would not be
until many months after being wounded, and while recovering at a veterans'
hospital in New York that I would begin to question whether I and the others
who had gone to that war had gone for nothing.
Change does not come easily, and opposing one's government during a time of
war is often very difficult. You've been taught to follow orders, to obey
and not question, to go along with the program and do exactly what you're
told. You learned that in boot camp. You learned that the day the drill
instructors started screaming at you. It is "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" and
nothing in between. There is the physical and verbal abuse, the vicious
threats and constant harassment to keep you off balance. It is a powerful
conditioning process, a process that began long ago, long before we signed
those papers at the recruit stations of our hometowns, a process deeply
ingrained in the American culture and psyche, and it has shaped and
influenced us from our earliest childhood.
The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, "A time comes when
silence is betrayal." King went on to say that, "The truth of these words is
beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one.
Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty. Even when pressed
with the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of
opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the
human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of
conformist thought within one's own bosom and the surrounding world.
Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the
case of this dreadful conflict we are often on the verge of being mesmerized
but we must move on."
Over 40 years have passed since Dr. King spoke those words to an overflow
crowd at the Riverside church in New York City in 1967, and the tragic
lessons of Vietnam continue to go unheeded. The same patterns of wars, lies,
aggression and brutality continue to repeat themselves. Another country,
another occupation, another reason to hate and fear, but in the end it is
the same crime being committed over and over again, the same innocent
civilians being killed, the same young men and women returning home in
caskets and body bags and wheelchairs.
We have petitioned our government time and time again. We have peacefully
marched and demonstrated for over a decade yet the killing and mayhem
continues. Precious lives continue to be wasted as another generation of
young men and women are squandered in this, our latest foreign policy
debacle.
Our leaders refuse to listen. They refuse to learn. How many more senseless
wars, flag draped caskets, grieving mothers, paraplegics, amputees,
stressed-out sons and daughters, innocent civilians slaughtered before we
finally decide to break the silence of this shameful night? Many of us
trusted and believed that change would come, these wars would end, and that
we would finally we be listened to but that is not at all what has happened.
We have been tragically misled.
We have been deceived and betrayed. We have been promised peace and we have
been given war. We have been told there would be change and nothing is
changing. Rather than learning the lessons from the disastrous fiasco in
Iraq, our government continues down the path of destruction, brutality,
aggression and war, dragging us deeper into another senseless and
unnecessary conflict in Afghanistan. The physical and psychological battles
from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan will rage on for decades, deeply
impacting the lives of citizens in all countries involved.
As the 43rd anniversary of my wounding in Vietnam approaches, in many ways I
feel my injury in that war has been a blessing in disguise. I have been
given the opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new
shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, a completely different vision.
I now believe that I have suffered for a reason, and in many ways I have
found that reason in my commitment to peace and non-violence. We who have
witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible
consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and sorrow and turn
the tragedy of our lives into a triumph.
I have come to believe that there is nothing in the lives of human beings
more terrifying than war, and nothing more important than for those of us
who have experienced it to share its awful truth.
A time comes when a people can no longer wait. A time comes when the
agonies, the suffering, have become too great. A time comes when a people
must act and do what is necessary. Lives are at stake. No longer can we
trust the President or politicians to end these wars. No longer can we
believe them when they say the troops will come home soon. They have long
since lost their credibility.
Each day that passes another life is lost. Each hour that this war drags on
the need for a daring new approach by the anti war movement becomes more
apparent. Bold, creative, and imaginative leadership is needed, and I do not
believe there is a group more suited for that task at this time than the
veterans of our nation's most recent conflict.
At exactly 10:00 a.m., Thursday morning, Dec. 16, 2010, veterans of Iraq and
Afghanistan, including troops now serving in the armed forces of the United
States, will be leading a dramatic act of non-violent civil disobedience in
front of the White House in Washington, D.C. with other brave veterans and
citizens, protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling for all
troops to be brought home immediately and without delay. (Click here to
learn more about this action)
<http://www.answercoalition.org/march-forward/statements/march-forward-calls
-on.html>
May this action and other actions like it in the days ahead represent a
growing awareness by the American people that only they can end these wars
and begin to redirect the priorities of our nation toward more positive and
life affirming goals.
I am writing this letter to you today asking you to join them on that
day-and the difficult days ahead, to bravely, and with great dignity step
over that line you've not stepped over before and begin to exert that
powerful moral force you as veterans and active-duty troops represent; to
raise your voices, to protest, to demonstrate, to end these wars and make
our country a better place.
This is my hope. This is my prayer.
With great admiration and respect,
Ron Kovic
Vietnam veteran
Author, Born on the Fourth of July
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