What the Hell do you know about Afghanistan?
I caught wind of a little presentation that the Chicago chapter of IVAW was giving in the Windy City next month entitled “What the hell do you know about Afghanistan?“. Apparently, it’s designed to inform us woefully ignorant Americans about Afghanistan. But here’s their press release about the event;
Iraq Veterans Against the War present a series of shorts, improvised skits, talks, stories, and performances that dive into how little and how much we know about Afghanistan. Hear from the first hand experience of veterans that have walked the streets and driven the roads of a country that too many of us know too little about. And tell us what the “hell” you know about a country we have now occupied
for over nine years.
So I went over to the Chicago Chapter’s roster just to see who the Hell is going to tell me what the Hell they know about Afghanistan.
Chicago | Chapter 12
President – Pete Sullivan
Treasurer – Mike Applegate
Secretary – Jim Redden
So what is their background? According to their profiles, none of them have been Afghanistan – or Iraq for that matter;
So, I checked the profiles of the other members of the Chicago Sect and couldn’t find any who had been in Afghanistan. Two had been to Iraq, one had been to Guantanamo.
So I wonder what the Hell they know about Afghanistan that I don’t already know.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers
“The streets and roads of Afghanistan are memorable, but mostly for their scarcity. They should talk about the rocks. There’s a lot of rocks.”
…And potholes…and dust… I wonder if the combination Hadji-mart/checkpoint on the Russian road from Bagram to Kabul is still there? I like how they used BMP treads as a slowdown speed bump.
Yeah, except you come from a position where you can talk about anyone, while I come from a position where I need to protect my people against exposure if they’re not comfortable and already public.
But if they are going to take part in a public event then they are going to be very public. So if they aren’t comfortable being put under the microscope examining how they do things then perhaps they should consider why we should listen to the same? It is like wanting to have a witness but not allowed to cross examine them.
Also still waiting on a reply to my other post.
Sporkmaster:
Matthis purchased a prostitute and took advantage of a shitty situation. I have to say it, he was certainly not the only military member who did. Guys from my units would constantly while overseas talk about having sex with prostitutes and mistreating women. Do I think it’s right? No, not at all. But if I wanted to never again belong to an organization which contains people who purchased prostitutes in leadership positions, I would probably have to quit the VFW, Legion, and all other veteran organizations. Percentage of Vietnam vets especially who patronized prostitutes? Fairly high, from what I hear.
We need to change the culture, but I don’t see anyone arguing for that to happen for anyone but Matthis. I don’t see anyone here arguing that prostitution is wrong and anyone who patronizes a prostitute is wrong. It’s only argued with Matthis. I personally do believe that people who engage in human trafficking are wrong, but that’s not what I’m hearing here.
Yes, IF they are going to take part in a public event, but that doesn’t mean every Afghan vet in Chicago is going public.
It goes like this. Let’s say A, B, C, D, and E are afghanistan vets in Chicago. A, B, and C, are testifying. If you ask me “Who are the Afghanistan vets in Chicago?” and I tell you because I know some are testifying, I am exposing D and E, who may not be ready to go public.
Ok, I wanted to go with ya AS but thats just plain absurd. How or why would anyone join an organization who’s goal was to publicly decry American policy in Iraq yet they don’t want anyone to know they have joined the organization. That just doesn’t pass the smell test. Being anonmyous would defeat the whole purpose wouldn’t it? You say there are plenty of folks who are legitimate claimants to a cloak of authority concerning A-Stan and Iraq yet when pinned down you vacilate then ultimately defer to some position of polite in-exsposure. Your not outing some closet gay couple.
So…like…someone isn’t being truthful here. I am trying to be fair but your making it very difficult.
Finrod:
IVAW has a lot of purposes. None of them actually state “to publicly decry American policy in Iraq”. Some of them include working to bring an end to the war. Others include working for veterans and soldiers’ benefits.
Many of our members, ESPECIALLY active duty, national guard, and reserve members, prefer at first to have their membership remain confidential. They’d like to help, but they don’t want to have to deal with the harassment they’ll get from their unit. And yes, there is a lot of harassment that comes sometimes, even for perfectly legal actions. (For example, when I was appointed to the Board of Directors while on active duty, I took a /lot/ of shit from my chain of command for that action alone)
I wish that the culture was different. I wish people didn’t get exposed to mockery and harassment simply for having opinions that ran counter to the crowd. But the fact is that it is. Some members have received threats against them. I personally have had people arguing whether or not it was worth sexually assaulting me in response to some of the things I said. People have received harassing phone calls and emails.
I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to bring that onto themselves. I hope that they’ll be more public, but we have a lot of work in the organization that doesn’t involve just speaking to the media. For example, we have IVAW members being trained as VSOs. They may not be public about their affiliation, but they’re doing their best to try to take care of vets in the way they think is best.
So, I guess that’s your final answer, AS. Whenever you can’t answer a question in a way that doesn’t make you look foolish, it’s suddenly going to become a privacy issue, or a state secret. Seems to me that if these assmonkeys are going to tell us how to think about our foreign policy, we have an absolute right to know what their experience is. I mean it’s not like Jesse MacBeth or Richard Strandlof never tried to pass themselves off as experts, is it?
I haven’t found any Afghanistan veterans in the Chicago coven of IVAW and since you won’t give a satisfactory answer, my initial assumption still stands.
I’ve kept off of this discussion because I don’t know about being on the ground in Afghanistan and I don’t pretend to, either. However, since the name of the org is Iraq Vets Against the War and things are officially winding down in Iraq; I think their mission is pretty much over and they can now claim victory for their cause, which was against the Iraq war; correct?
So, the group needs to change their name in order to encompass their new cause, which is Afghanistan. They can get Matthis to do his part, because unlike some in the group, he has actually been there, even if it was for less than a week and he never left REMFville, he has more credibility than some of the other “performers” in the Mystery Farce Theater production.
Why not roll yourselves into VFP and call it a day? That would be the logical move, since they encompass the whole of anti-war. Or, better yet, the VVAW, since membership in that group didn’t require someone to have actually served “in country” in order to join or run their yappers at the original Winter Soldier mockery, but “they still care”, which goes along with IVAW’s claim to fame.
I’m just sayin
OldTrooper:
Unlike the Obama Administration, I don’t think calling something a “New Dawn” means the war is over.
“We need to change the culture” We need to hang up the globo-cop nation building and military occupations that keep young service members in their sexual peak deployed for months at a time in foreign nations.
That too, Junior AG.
I didn’t say it was over; did I? I said “winding down”; to the point where all the blabbering and carrying on that your anti-Iraq war group has been doing, and continues to do, makes you look more stupid than effective. So, now that that is happening, you want to grab ahold of the next thing, which is Afghanistan. I’m curious, though, because I thought that you weren’t as against Afghanistan as you were against Iraq? I may have you mixed up with someone else, so feel free to correct me about that. As it goes, your group should have nothing against the Afghanistan theater at all, since I do know that there were those in your group that said we should be concentrating on Afghanistan to begin with. Well, they are, now, so there’s no need to bitch and protest; is there? Or, is that not the real intentions of your little anti-war group to begin with? After all, the name says Iraq Veterans Against the War; correct? That’s why I made the suggestion about coming clean and just joining up with the other anti-war groups and be done with it. Your first order of business is anti-war, not helping returning warriors, which you have admitted in the past, so I take great umbrage to you now trying to pass off that you “have members being trained to be VSOs”. Why? Why have a bunch of anti-war types, whose main stated purpose is to oppose the Iraq war, training as VSOs?? Or, is that just window dressing that you folks put out in order to look a little more legitimate and a little less extremist?