The following is an article by Clare Bayard posted on Left Turn Magazine’s website, and in the April / May issue of Left Turn Magazine. Its incredibly powerful in illustrating what the war means, or at least should me, to all of us. It brought me to tears. Here it is:
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Last night, I stood over a thousand candles on the lawn in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Veterans for Peace had organized a vigil to mark the official 4,000 U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, which technically happened Sunday, March 24th. As people began reading the last 1,000 names aloud, my whole body suddenly wracked with mourning. My chest was exploding and I knew it wasn’t a coronary or panic attack, but grief saturated me so thoroughly I could barely stand. Loved ones held me up as we mourned together; I could hardly let go of a former Marine friend who chose military jail instead of Iraq, and I had never felt such frantic, choking relief to have him standing alive beside me. I can’t imagine the world without him now.

I say “technical count” because we don’t even have the numbers to do the math, which means the full picture is beyond our grasp.

4,000 official U.S. servicemembers killed

1-6,000 U.S. servicemember suicides- inadmissible as war casualties

over a thousand nonmilitary contractors, civilians, etc.

how many debilitating injuries?

Plus how many deeply affected partners, parents, family members, friends, lovers in the life of each one of these tens of thousands? the children they might have had, and the ones some already did?

…and, echoing in barely broken silence, the deaths of 650,000 to over a million Iraqis.

A Presbyterian minister, who participates a similar annual vigil for the deaths of San Francisco’s homeless people, began the ritual with a nondenominational invocation. She spoke of the tremendous loss of so many humans with all their talents and creativities, everything they might have brought to their communities.

I feel lucky to be alive today, walking in the spring sun and holding the fierce grief of so many deaths. I feel lucky that my father, a Vietnam Vet, is alive instead of a name on the black granite Wall in D.C., lucky that I was born.

But war doesn’t play duck-duck-goose, bypassing most people entirely and just taking a scatter of heads. No one in Iraq lives separate from the war, and in a dramatically different way neither do we in the U.S.

War defines daily reality in occupied lands. Where wars are being fought in the streets and skies, where depleted uranium underfoot rises in plumes of dust and a sudden noise might be the last thing you hear, war is everything from the toxic air to the mined soil. In the U.S. there is a myth that war is just happening “over there” where bombs are vaporizing houses and human bodies. As if war was not already here, and as if the multivariant violence of militarism does not return in the body of every veteran, alive or dead.

My perspective on this is profoundly shaped by being raised by a veteran father; the war on Vietnam lived in my house every day when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to be born. To be housed. 1 in 4 homeless people in my city are veterans. My dad’s class and race privilege and my mom’s waged and unwaged work kept us housed and together, even though war has never let him go. And in a way, I have come to understand myself as lucky to be the child of a war veteran, in the ways that it helps me to keep my heart alive during the crushing numbness of this “endless war.” I cannot see, or feel, myself as disconnected from war—either from those murdered by U.S. occupation, or those within the ranks of our military who are struggling to stay human.

War comes into homefront communities in many ways. It is the wartime economy, where every bomb explodes twice: once shattering lives in Fallujah, Karbala, Basra; then burning up our schools and universities, healthcare, levees, social system. It is the racist dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims that inflames hate crimes of street violence and hate crimes of state legislature. It is where “security” means genocide, and none of us are made at all safer by U.S. empire expanding. And war comes into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces and social spaces, cloaked in the silent roar of a taboo topic: how veterans return from war carrying the violence of militarism. Some kill themselves quickly, with a bullet or a rope, and even when these deaths occur on a base they are not part of the official tally. These 4,000 recognized deaths are the tip of the iceberg of U.S. war casualties. Domestic violence murders, almost entirely women, don’t qualify even when under the clearest circumstances. Other vets die slowly, self-medicating with drugs or alcohol, often on the streets. Many strain enough healing through gritted teeth to put their life back together, supported by their loved ones, not by their government, not by the drivers of SUVs decorated with yellow ribbons, and largely not by the peace movement.

I do not mourn these 4000 deaths (and the other invisibilized U.S. deaths) any more than the uncounted Iraqi lives, nor any less. The judgment that some lives are disposable is part of what we are struggling against, in demanding justice and peace. I don’t hold these 4000 accountable for engineering this war, nor do I excuse them for participating. To do so would remove their agency in the situation, and dishonor the choices that many U.S. soldiers are making every day to refuse orders, resist compliance with occupation. I won’t devalue the choices that the majority of young people in this country are making to not enlist at all, despite the outrageous lack of options facing them, especially working-class kids and youth of color. Every day, people act to resist the U.S. military, from around the world, from within its ranks. And how do we know how many of those names read out last night belong to resisters? How many were carrying an unloaded weapon, like Agustin Aguayo did for a year while the Army denied his conscientious objector status? How many were considering going AWOL? How many were pursuing, if they knew the option existed, a conscientious objector status? How many had done something recently to stand up to racism, misogyny, or some random violence within their unit? Mostly we’ll never know because now their mouths are filled with dirt and their stories will be carried only by those surviving them. The singers among them, the writers, the kid who was so good at math, the girl with the fierce will, the boy who protected his best friend from queerbashers, the dreamers, the confused, the 20 year old with a 2 year old daughter, the one who died so homesick, the one who learned Arabic to talk to the neighborhood kids, all the ones you and I will never meet, who died in a country that’s losing millions of its people to death and escape.

We do not stop organizing. We can’t. But as we keep organizing, we do also need to mourn. It keeps us human to mourn, to truly recognize the grievous loss of millions of people, to stand with their loved ones in remembrance and in defiance—to spit in the face of war. We say: no more lives, war, we will not feed you. All of us are needed, and war, we shall starve you.

About the Author:
Clare Bayard heads the Anti-War program of Catalyst Project, organizing to connect work against wars abroad with domestic racial and economic justice struggles, and building the G.I. resistance support movement. Clare serves on the National Committee and Organizing Task Force of the War Resisters League, an organization that seeks to end all wars and the root causes of war.

Resources:

• Catalyst Project: www.collectiveliberation.org
• War Resisters League: www.warresisters.org, www.notyoursoldier.org
• Check out the brand new Iraq Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier hearings archive at: www.ivaw.org — Iraq Veterans Against the War
• Servicewomen’s Action Network: www.servicewomen.org
• Courage to Resist: www.couragetoresist.org

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So what’s going on in Venezuela anyway? Greg Wilpert explains in a new book “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government” whats going on there, its history, how it came about, and where it might go. A great read for people on the Left everywhere who are interested in Venezuela and Latin America’s challenge to international capitalism.

When much of the Left trains its ideological sights on the campaign of Barack Obama, it is found wanting:

1. He is not a socialist (or an anarchist).

2. He is not an anti-imperialist.

3. He does not have a plan for immediate withdrawal of US troops and advisors from Iraq.

4. He has said nothing in his campaign in critique of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

5. He is too close to University of Chicago free-market economists.

6. His does not call for a single-payer health insurance plan.

7. His message implies that our biggest political problem is largely one of political communication; he claims that he can unite Democrats and Republicans and transcend political partisanship; he seems to be avoiding and denying the reality of strong differences in American politics

8. He tried for too long to avoid issues of racial justice so he will not be perceived as a “Black” candidate; and when forced to discuss race he marginalized Jeremiah Wright’s legitimate concerns.

9. He has had little criticism of the size of the military budget.

There is truth in these critiques and Obama, like any other leader, should not be exempt from criticism and pressure from the left. All leaders need to be called to account. (I will leave it to others to discern the limitations of American election campaigns and what progressive candidates are limited in saying to avoid political marginalization and retain some chance of electability.)

But if we leave matters here, I believe will be missing the moment. Why then should the Left be open to and supportive of the Obama Presidential candidacy?

First and foremost, Obama has tapped into and publicly articulated that something is deeply wrong with the current state of American politics and that something big has to change. And he is not doing this, as is typical in current American politics, from the mad-dog right. This is the root cause of Obama-mania. He poses an alternative to right wing demagoguery and Clintonian Democratic Leadership Council “Republicans with a human face” politics. He has not only confounded the pundits, but he has opened up room for real discussion of important political issues, such as, in his words, “the mind set” that produced the Iraq war. In his “Toward a More Perfect Union” speech on race relations, whatever its shortcomings, he elevated the discussion of race in American politics to a new level. He allows for and promotes real talk about significant issues, sorely lacking in mainstream political discourse.

Secondly he has energized young people. I have a friend who has been a leading antiwar activist for many years. He told me that he has had more meaningful talks about the war in Iraq in a few weeks of working on the Obama campaign than he had in the years since the Iraq war began. The awakening of the young to political activity is a momentous accomplishment that the Left has reason to envy. Obama doesn’t chastise the young for their apathy and cynicism; he inspires them to participate.

Thirdly, Obama has inspired, not just a campaign, but a significant mass movement that can outlast the campaign season. In his Feb. 19 speech in Houston he called for continuing grass roots activity: “And if we win that election in November, then we are going to need your help and your time, your energy, your enthusiasm, your mobilization, your organization, and your voices to help us change America over the next four years.” When was the last time a candidate called for extra-parliamentary activity that wasn’t anti-abortion or homophobic? The Left in America can profit from an unorthodox Democratic Administration. There will be more openings, less marginalization of the Left, a wider debate, and an atmosphere where ‘politics as usual’ will be suspect. None of this is likely under a continuation of the Clinton dynasty which favors “triangulation” by which it attempts to co-opt Republican issues and disdains social movements in favor of ‘focus groups’.

I must admit, that as a tired old leftist that I am moved by a politics “advocating the audacity of hope” to overcome the cynicism that passes for wisdom in American political commentary. Certainly there is a danger of empty, hollow words, but an energetic Left could take advantage of an opportunity to push for its understanding of necessary change on a wide range of issues: single-payer health insurance, equitable education, affordable housing, humane immigration policy, enforcement and expansion of labor rights, environmental justice, and anti-racist and anti-imperial policy.

If we, as a Left, are content to smugly and dismissively critique the Obama phenomenon, we trade self-fulfilling sectarianism for the chance at political impact. A victory for Obama will not only be a boon for the African-American community and for people of color, it will offer a unique opportunity for the development of an organized and aggressive Left movement that retains its independence at the same time that it is willing to risk everyday involvement in the strange world of American politics. If we just critique, we will miss a moment that may not come again for a while. If our politics are meaningful, effective, and get to the root of problems, we should put them to the test in political work that connects to large numbers of people struggling to find direction in an increasingly dangerous world. Something wonderful is happening. We must be alive to it. I hope we can figure out how to relate to it effectively before we consign ourselves to continued marginalization.