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There are more than 175 chapters of Veterans for Peace in all 50 states working hard to eliminate nuclear weapons, seek justice for veterans and victims of war, and abolish war as an instrument of American national policy.
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All right, Scott, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our next guest is John Hewer from Vets for Peace, the School of the Americas Watch, North Carolina Peace Action, and the War Crimes Times.
That's WarCrimesTimes.org.
Welcome to the show, John.
How are you?
Thank you, Scott.
I'm fine.
I hope you are.
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us today.
First of all, tell us about the rip-roaring success of the protest at what was formerly known as the School of the Americas.
I forget what the newspeak renamed it.
Well, they didn't close the school.
They changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for National Security Cooperation.
It's a little bit more difficult to transcribe from the School of Americas to the School of the Assassins, which, sadly, the school remains a training ground for Latin American military and paramilitary forces.
We had a lot of enthusiasm and excitement at Fort Benning, Georgia, this past weekend.
Great spirit among the folks.
The feature annually is the procession commemorating the victims of the graduates of the SOA on Sunday afternoon with a procession, reading the names of the victims, many cases their ages that range from infants to 80, 90-year-old victims, and a very somber event.
Yeah, I don't know if anybody's ever made the movie.
Certainly, it would never be a big enough deal, but it sort of seems like it would only be right if all 300-something million Americans had to pay attention at the same time to just a little bit of the history and what their government has done to the people of Latin America.
I mean, part of it is just because most of us don't speak Spanish, so we just don't even know anything about it, you know?
Right, and Father Roy Bourgeois, who is a Maryknoll priest, apparently up until yesterday he was officially defrocked by the Catholic Church for his support for ordination of women priests in the Catholic Church.
But Father Roy has led this annual event in Columbus, Georgia at the gates of Fort Benning every year since 1990, and he continues to be an inspiration to us.
Of course, many of the victims of the graduates of the SOA have been Catholic missionaries, priests, nuns, who have been abused, murdered, raped by the graduates of the SOA.
It's really a tragic legacy for our country.
Yeah, well, and it's just so sad.
It's almost straight out of a George Carlin skit, the way they rename it to bury the pain under jargon.
I mean, it might hurt your ears to hear the new title, but it doesn't sound like it would hurt your fingernails as much, you know?
School of the Americas is pretty easy to just imagine a soldier, an American soldier teaching Latin American soldiers, this is how you torture them.
This is how you overthrow the government and hold a gun to the head of the media while you do it, etc., which is what they're really about.
That's exactly right, Scott.
That's just crazy.
Pain buried under jargon.
That's what Carlin would have said.
All right, well, so now how many people came out, did you say?
Do you know?
Well, the Columbus newspaper estimated about 1,700.
These last few years have been smaller numbers than in previous years.
I've been attending since 2004.
We've had as many as 20,000 people there.
Last year the numbers were lower for a couple of reasons.
One was that a lot of activists across the country were engaged in their local Occupy efforts and holding down town squares across the country, but also the withdrawals of support for the SOA protests from the Maryknolls and the Jesuits and other Catholic orders, because Father Roy has violated Catholic teaching in advocating the ordination of women priests.
So we're seeing the withdrawal of official support, and the Jesuits and Maryknolls and other Catholic orders in the past few years have been strong supporters of the SOA protests, providing buses for students from Catholic schools and seminaries to come to Columbus, Georgia, on the third weekend in November.
Sadly, that support seems to be withdrawn from Catholic orders.
That's really too bad for a completely unrelated issue like that.
But I guess that's the way things go.
Now, again, everybody, it's John Hewer from Vets for Peace, the School of the America's Watch, and North Carolina Peace Action, NC Peace Action.
And is that the website, ncpeaceaction.org?
I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me here.
Yes, it is, ncpeaceaction.org.
I did have it.
There you go.ncpeaceaction.org.
So my point being, I got a chance to look through your latest newsletter there, and it seems like this is some very real and very effective activism.
This is not one big answer rally, changing the subject to Mumia Abu-Jamal all damn day.
This is real anti-war activism where it counts, harassing congressmen, harassing officials from the lowest level on up, and actually getting the job done.
That's what I have been led to understand.
Is that correct?
Well, Scott, we've launched a program in North Carolina that is allied with the national effort to move the money from wars and militarism to serve human needs.
And we launched in North Carolina this program a year ago, September, in the city of Durham.
We did an analysis of the deficit in human services, local human services, due to these draconian budget cuts in state and local and national budget cuts that are hurting our communities.
And comparing those deficits, local deficits in human services, to local contributions to the Pentagon and to the wars.
For example, we spend $1 million to put a soldier in harm's way in Afghanistan for one year while we're laying off teachers and closing libraries at home.
And local citizens, local officials are beginning to understand that it makes no sense whatsoever.
Yeah, that's great.
And, you know, it's such a nonpartisan way of putting things, too.
You could sound exactly like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul saying that exact same thing, like you said, you know, bring that money home.
No question about that.
Our town hall meeting in Raleigh last February, Scott, featured congressmen, Walter Jones, Republican congressmen, Democratic congressmembers, Brad Miller and David Price, all taking the stage at our state legislative building in Raleigh to call for ending the wars and reducing the military budget to serve human needs.
So you're right, we have a strong bipartisan or nonpartisan appeal.
All right, now, like I say in the spot I play for Vets for Peace, I'm not a veteran, I'm not the right one for this, although I guess if somebody could figure out a part I could play in helping, you know, I would be happy to.
But when I was reading that thing, I had a little fantasy about maybe some conservative Vets for Peace here in Texas going around and scheduling, you know, working hard at it and scheduling meetings with all the different state and federal representatives that they possibly can and really attacking the empire for, hey, I mean, the president just won reelection the other day, so we might as well have a whole new project to attack the empire from the right and argue, you know, all good conservative veterans know that limited constitutional republics can't wage war forever.
And it's one of those lily-livered Dianne Feinstein liberal projects to try to remake the whole world the way Obama's doing it, and we need to stop it and see if we can convince some of these right-wing politicians that it would be good for their right-wing politics to oppose the world empire.
You know, bring those troops home.
Save their lives.
Why should they be thrown away over this madness?
There's such a great right-wing case to make against war.
And so I don't know if there's enough conservative Texas Vets for Peace that could be put together in a specific group to make just kind of right-wing arguments like that, but it just is something that I imagined and thought could possibly be somewhat effective, I guess.
Well, Scott, we had visits from three Republican senators back in July, John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire.
They were on a national roadshow preserving America's strength, is what they called it.
They came to Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home to Fort Bragg, this past July, and they had three arguments against cutting the military budget at all.
And those arguments were that it could possibly damage our national security, it could cost jobs, and it could break faith with American service members and their families.
So we've been countering that narrative by arguing that our foreign invasion and occupation is what really damages our national security, which creates enemies.
All new generations of enemies for this country.
So the military posture for this past decade has not been one to make the nation more secure, but to increase our national insecurity.
And this is a message that I think some conservatives can resonate to.
As to potential job losses, it's been demonstrated by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst study that military jobs already come at a considerable cost to employment in this country.
The same amount of military dollars spent in education, health care, infrastructure, renewable energy generation would create many more jobs than currently now under our present military regime.
And finally, as to breaking faith with American service members and their families, we obviously have been breaking faith with our service members by sending them overseas on calls based on false claims and by failing to address their needs, their injuries, their educational needs, housing needs when they return.
The sad legacy of one active duty service member and 22 veterans taking their lives every day is a great shame on our nation.
So we need to do better in all of these areas, defending our national security by stopping making enemies around the world with our foreign adventures, misadventures, by converting military expenditures to civilian jobs here at home, and by attending to the needs of our returning service members, these brave souls, as they return from multiple deployments overseas.
You know, that just sounds perfectly and completely reasonable to me.
I can't believe that we haven't won this argument yet.
But anyway, on we trudge.
We have to.
Tell me this good news.
You sent me this great piece about some wounded NGO people who were cared for in Iraq and then repaid the favor.
Explain, please.
Yes, the Gospel of Redba.
It's an amazing story, Scott.
In 2003, a group of Christian peacemakers from the U.S. went to Baghdad.
They were totally opposed to the pending invasion by the U.S. and its allies of invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.
And while they were there, they violated the rules of their visa by taking photographs of the destruction by U.S. aerial bombardment.
So they were expelled.
So this group was driving west from Baghdad towards Syria, and they had a terrible car wreck and critical wounds.
They were rescued by a group of Iraqi civilians taken to the nearest town of Redba in western Iraq.
They were not taken to the hospital because the hospital had just been destroyed by an American bombardment.
They were taken to a makeshift clinic, and their wounds were addressed by the physicians there in the town of Redba.
And the physicians refused any payment for their services with just the request to go back home and tell your countrymen of the hospitality you received while you were here in Iraq.
So they decided to make a return visit to Redba in 2010, and the delegation included one of our local chapter members in Durham, Logan Male Lyaturi, who had, after a tour in Iraq as an artilleryman, received a conscientious objector status.
So he returned to Iraq as an unarmed civilian Christian peacemaker team member, and the team were guided by Iraqi Sami Rasooli, who was the founder of the Muslim peacemaking team.
They returned to the city of Redba and were greeted very warmly.
They established a sister city program between the city of Redba in Iraq, the city of Durham in North Carolina.
So the idea of a latter-day Good Samaritan story, these Iraqi civilians and physicians caring for these wounded American peacemakers without any expectation of any payment or any favor in return, I think is a wonderfully inspiring story.
Yeah, I really like that, too.
It's something that I guess we're seeing a lot of in Gaza this week, too.
Well, and this always happens.
I guess this happens when there's a storm and that kind of thing, too, where the crisis brings out the best in people and that kind of thing.
And, you know, I don't know if this is crazy or not, but I keep thinking that whenever I, and it's rare, but occasionally I see pictures of kids in Gaza, well, anybody in Gaza, and unless they're wearing Hamas garb, they dress like Westerners, right?
They wear blue jeans and plaid shirts and that kind of thing, not robes like they live in the Sahara Desert or something like that.
I was thinking that maybe if they would wear, like, really big brand name logos on their shirts, then that would put them over the top where Americans could see them as real people, if it said D.C. Shoes or had that big rhinoceros thing.
That's a famous brand of rhinoceros clothes or whatever.
If the Gazans would wear big Western logos on their shirts, then maybe they would have rights.
I think they're almost there.
You know, they don't wear funny hats.
You know, they look like they could be from Southern Europe somewhere, maybe.
So they're approaching humanity.
Give them shirts with logos.
That's my new thing, you know?
I think that could make sense.
Well, Scott, I love the idea.
I think it's great, especially if we could get any press coverage, which is very difficult with the blockade of Gaza.
It's very difficult to get unbiased reporting from there.
That's one of the Israeli government's strategies.
And it's one of the lessons that U.S. military machinery learned in Vietnam, is that you don't let independent journalists into your war zones to cover the atrocities that are taking place there.
Yeah, certainly on TV, and that's where it really counts, you know?
On social media now, it's getting much more difficult to censor the press.
The word will get out somehow.
Right, yeah, that's true.
Maybe not through our mainstream press, but the word will get out.
Right, well, and that's the whole point of this story.
Again, it's called The Gospel of Rutba, R-U-T-B-A, and you can find the PDF online if you Google it, Good Samaritan, The Gospel of Rutba.
And that's what this is about, is just, you know, everybody just being people, regardless of which fake lines on a political map they happen to have been born on the side of.
And, you know, working together, seeing each other as the same, and so helping each other instead of killing each other, you know, which is kind of nice.
And that's all I guess I was, I didn't make the segue very well, but that's what I was getting at with the whole thing about the Gazans, is that, you know, if only they could be made to seem a little bit more similar, like maybe that would put them over the top, that, you know, it would be wrong to kill them for a change, you know?
Well, I agree.
It might make it just that much easier to recognize our common humanity.
Yeah.
I mean, as stupid as that is, that a big logo on their shirt is what would do it, but I, you know, my mind's eye says the plaid shirt is nice, but if you would just have, you know, a big Levi's or whatever thing, that would really do the trick.
Well, I think it's a worthy campaign, Scott.
I would continue to encourage you to explore it.
Well, maybe I actually should, like, write a letter and say, hey, man, you guys ought to send some boxes of shirts over there, you know, to a couple of companies, make a thing out of it.
Somebody make a Facebook page.
Give brand name clothes to Gazans so that Americans can mistake them for humans for a minute, you know?
Well, anyway, we need to be creative and try every good idea that we can find.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, and that's not that good of one, but anyway.
So, listen, I'm actually very disconnected from real activism like you do, where the rubber meets the road and you actually drive in your truck with rubber on the road to the place and do the big rally and organize people and network all the things and create a new committee that's in charge of this new task and whatever.
I've never been very good with that kind of thing.
But, you know, I suspect that there are quite a few people in my audience who are, you know, they prefer to listen than read because they're too busy networking and activist-ing to sit and read all day.
And so, you know, maybe you could give them some tips and some pointers and some projects of, you know, what's pretty easy for an activist to do?
How many people can you organize and call yourself the local peace committee?
And then who's the right politician to target first with your activism and that kind of thing, you know?
Well, it's easy enough to make a handmade sign and go down to your town square at five o'clock and hold it up.
And we found that across North Carolina every town and city has got its group of advocates who are moving more towards activism with the understanding that advocacy is not enough.
People have got to be visible.
Working through faith communities, for example, a lot of churches have social justice concerns committees.
Many of the mainstream denominations, for instance, the Baptists have the Baptist Peace Fellowship.
You can find an affiliate congregation perhaps near your community.
School groups are sometimes hosting veterans that are willing to speak about truth and recruiting to counter some of the falsehoods that our military recruiters are telling our young people.
We had a court challenge in the city of Boone up in northwestern North Carolina where the local school board prevented our Quaker and veteran activists from presenting alternative views about military recruiting.
We had a successful court challenge, so now we've won equal time in the Watauga County school system to demonstrate that there are alternatives to military service and that there are risks to military service that are often unexamined by or unpresented by military recruiters.
We have campaigns across North Carolina in Durham, Raleigh, Greensboro, Burlington, Asheville, Waynesville.
We have six Mayors for Peace in North Carolina.
Some of almost 200 nationwide Mayors for Peace that have signed up to abolish nuclear weapons.
This is an effort that has been led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that cities are not targets.
We shouldn't be making weapons that are designed to infiltrate cities.
That's just unconscionable.
Peace Action nationally has 100,000 members, members in every state.
Veterans for Peace has about 4,000 members that tend to be much more willing to engage in direct acts of civil disobedience, blockading military base entrances, particularly in recent weeks and months, the bases in New York State and Nevada and elsewhere where they're operating the drones, the drone warfare.
They're killing so many civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere, again, that are creating potentially whole new generations of enemies for this country.
So there are lots of ways to get involved.
Our Durham Peace Action Group has formed a letter-writing committee where they alternate every week, sending a letter to local newspapers to counter this narrative that we can't afford to cut military spending.
You may have heard recently that Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, former Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, has published a letter saying that when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defense, they cut military spending 25 percent.
And if they could do it, we should be able to do it now.
Right.
Yeah, that's a pretty good argument.
If Cheney can do it, then anybody can, when it comes to something like that.
All right, listen, hey, this has been great.
I really hope that people will follow that advice.
Maybe I should do a little bit better at following it myself about the actual organization out there, because you think of it, there's only about 60 neocons in the whole world, and they do such a great job of being an echo chamber and claiming a monopoly on opinion in the world and saying this is what Americans think whenever they write their crazy, you know, horrible, bloodthirsty policies on the Web there.
Anyway, so it seems like there's a lot more of us than them.
If we can just do, you know, like you're saying, you know, a letter-writing night where everybody bombards newspaper editorial pages and whatever.
That's actually, you know, how you change the world is you get that you build that consensus, at least the appearance of consensus of the people who care about these things and are paying attention to these things that we've gone too far.
We didn't need to.
It's time to bring them home and call it off.
And let's go ahead now.
And, you know, once people think that that's pretty much what everybody thinks, then that's what they'll think, too, and then we win.
Right?
And, Scott, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home to Quaker House, which is the longest continuously operating GI rights meeting house, their slogan for years now has been yes to the troops, no to the war.
The neocons have been effective at saying that you can't support the troops unless you support their mission, which is complete nonsense.
You can support the troops by bringing them home, closing 1,000 overseas military bases that not only do we not need, but we can't afford, and they create local enemies wherever they're located.
So yes to the troops, no to the wars, bring our troops home, care for them when they get home.
Right on.
Okay, everybody.
That is John Hewer, Veterans for Peace, School of the America's Watch, North Carolina Peace Action, that's ncpeaceaction.org.
And Google his article.
You'll have to Google it to find the PDF file, but it's called The Gospel of Rutba.
And then, of course, last but not least, the War Crimes Times at warcrimestimes.org.
Thanks very much.
Talk to you again soon.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
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