IVAW and friends

An interested reader sent me this link to an article about an anti-war protest earlier this month in Boston on the anniversary of Congress’ approval for the use of force in Iraq. At this point, it’s almost funny that these groups are still demanding that we leave Iraq now that the tough part is almost over. Funny until you start taking into account the people involved in these protests.

Let’s take, for example, Jabbar MacGruder who is quoted in the article. I went and looked at his profile at IVAW and found this oddly-written paragraph;

When return for my deployment I informed that in order to keep drawing my GI Bill I had to maintain my enlistment in the Army National Guard. Or I had to go into an Inactive Ready Reserve drawn no GI Bill, and be put on a big list of the go back to Iraq with any unit any army who needed a Black Hawk helicopter mechanic. No real choice at all. Once I return to school what really agitated me is that here were no sentiments about the war whatsoever, no discussions for or against it, just apathy.

Because I speak three languages fluently, I was able to decipher from that mess above that no one was paying attention to the atrocities that he witnessed as a helicopter mechanic. We’re all apathetic to the plight of helicopter mechanics. So he joined the IVAW to promote Blackhawk mechanic awareness.

Jabbar was there as a coordinator for Military Families Speak Out. Discover the Networks tells about the founders of MFSO;

The founding members of MFSO are Charley Richardson and Nancy Lessin, who are veterans of the 1960s anti-Vietnam War movement and the parents of a soldier who served in Iraq (he returned home in 2004). Says Lessin, “We were very concerned about media coverage that tried to characterize the anti-war movement as those who supported the troops and those who didn’t,” and so MFSO was born.

MFSO is an organization that falls under the umbrella of United for Peace and Justice, founded by Leslie Cagar who is thusly charaterized by Discover the Network;

…an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence (a remnant organization created by the American Communist Party upon going out of business) and a strong supporter of Fidel Castro since the 1960s; Cagan proudly aligns her politics with those of Communist Cuba.

Sweet crowd, huh?

The Boston article also refers to Gabriel Payan. According to the article and his IVAW profile, he’s a deserter from a unit in Germany. His profile says he deserted “one snowy day in January 2007”. As is the norm for IVAW deserters, he claims he has PTSD. I’m not demeaning those who suffer from the disorder, but the main problem I see with these claims from the IVAW people is that no one believes them. I have real trouble believing that’s true.

This is from his profile;

Soon after my return from Iraq, I began to suffer from PTSD. I suffered anxiety attacks, and agoraphobia. The Army said I had Indigestion. A fellow Non Commissioned Officer committed suicide, only to have our commander brand him a coward in front of the whole battalion. Two of my Soldiers attempted suicide soon after.

It’s kind of hard to confuse agoraphobia with indigestion. Apparently he deserted to get psychiatric help according to another article I found about him;

But by 2007, Payan had deserted and was living with his family in California, seeing a psychiatrist for his PTSD. “The Army had changed dramatically since 2001,” he says. “You had to be beating the war drum along with the Bush administration.”

He made it clear that he was vocal about his opposition to the war among his superiors and then he went AWOL. But the record is a little fuzzy when he went AWOL.

He claims in his IVAW profile that he deserted in 2007, but reports in articles say he told reporters he deserted in 2005.

Gabriel Payan, who said he deserted the Army in 2005 while in Germany, was angry.

I find these articles that continue to claim he spent ten years in the Army.

Gabriel Payan, a former staff sergeant who served with the Army for 10 years, spoke at the rally about growing resistance toward the war within the military.

Gabriel joined the Army in 1997 and in just under ten years had risen to the rank of Staff Sergeant and held a position a Gunnery Sergeant of a firing platoon in the field artillery.

His IVAW profile;

I joined the Army in 1997 and in just under ten years had risen to the rank of Staff Sergeant and held a position a Gunnery Sergeant of a firing platoon in the field artillery.

So when did he desert? Does he know? It actually makes a difference – if he went over the hill in 2005, it could more probably be blamed on PTSD, but two years after he returned and just prior to another tour? Not so much. I suspect he’s telling reporters 2005 to make his story seem more compeling.

So what happened to him?

He turned himself in after eight months AWOL, was other than honorably discharged, and decided to join IVAW.

Well, it seems to me that if he suffered from PTSD and he’d been evaluated by a civiliam psychiatrist, as he’d claimed earlier in the article, the Army would have made allowances for that and given him a medical discharge, or at least had him evaluated along with the civilian psychiatrist’s report – but an OTH? The Army isn’t a heartless brutal organization that just tosses bodies and money around. An experienced NCO is hard to replace and I suspect that they tried to salvage him and he refused to be salvaged.

His suppage at the trough of Kool AId is complete. At his IVAW profile, he spews;

Soldiers have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

I highly encourage more Soldiers to have the courage to resist this war and demand the immediate withdrawal of all US Forces in Iraq.

The implication is that the war is illegal (despite the irony that the protest in Boston being a rememberance of the day Congress authorized the use of force in Iraq) and all of the soldiers should desert like he did (in either 2005 or 2007…or whatever).

The article quoted Payan;

Profanities peppered the 29-year-old veteran’s speech about why he was “sick and tired of this war that has claimed the lives of my brothers and sisters.”

I think those troops who died would take offense at Payan, a deserter and coward, calling them his brothers and sisters. they gave the last full measure of devotion – he dishonored his obligation and took the coward’s way out…running away.

Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Politics