Casualties of war

It’s a place where drug abuse is rampant, suicide is common, and mental health is severely placed at risk. One in three women stands a chance of being raped — as do one in four men — and the violence directed toward each other undercuts the real fight against the enemy.

According to several veterans in a local peace movement, these are regular occurrences in today’s active military. What sounds like a prison environment in theory was a near reality for people like Cherish Hodge or Brigitte Wooten, members of a local peace group formed by recent veterans of the Iraq Conflict.

Their search for new members willing to come forward and join the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) punctuates the proud military sentiment set forth this season, after the passing of Veterans Day, with a sharp caveat: awareness of the injustices and dissent within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces’ own soldiers.

“It’s different for us to be in an environment where there’s so much racism and bigotry and homophobia,” says Hodge, 26, president of the IVAW Ventura branch. “The military is a melting pot of all of those things. Suddenly, you’re exposed to that.”

Hodge served in the Army, achieving the rank of specialist when she was discharged in 2005. She was deployed one year earlier to Korea, only nine miles from an active combat zone.

“When I was over there, we were experiencing a lot of problems,” she said. “There was a lot going on.”
Call it the uncertainty of being called off to battle at any moment’s notice, or the fatigue plaguing a battalion spread too thin, asked to do too much with too little; the stresses took their toll on soldiers, according to Hodge, and many turned abusively to alcohol, drugs, even each other, in response.

It was an eye-opening experience Hodge had not expected when enrolling.

“I knew it (war) was going to be the most challenging thing ever,” she said. “I did not know we would do it to ourselves and take out the aggression and violence and dehumanizing factors on each other.”

Wooten was discharged from the Navy one year ago this month after a five-year stint in the Navy that sent her to Kuwait for about eight months. Having served as a hospital corpsman, she, too, was witness firsthand to blatant drug and alcohol abuse, which, among other soldiers, led to medical problems from drunken brawls, near overdoses and attempted suicides.

“I went in knowing I would be seeing some things. I didn’t think I would have seen as many rampant things,” Wooten said. “When you go to boot camp, you’re taught to look up to your officers and enlisted; you expect a certain amount of professionalism and a family-type bond. But you don’t see that very often.”

Both veterans’ experiences fall in line with a study published this month stating that morale among Army soldiers currently in Afghanistan has reached an all-time low, while war-time violence is now at record highs.

Dahr Jamail can confirm this firsthand. As the first unembedded U.S. journalist to report from the Middle East, Jamail spent two years in Iraq at the start of the conflict, and he’s since recounted stories of dysfunctional protocol, a lack of help for soldiers in need, and a quiet resistance effort among those opposed to the war.

Jamail appeared at a Veterans Day event last week at Ventura’s Unitarian Universalist Church as part of a speaking tour.

“People are not getting the help they need,” Jamail said. “These wars are senseless, and they’re destroying people in the U.S. military.”

The statistics he shared last Wednesday astounded a packed audience at the event.

According to Jamail, 18 current and/or former U.S. soldiers a day commit suicide. Often a symptom of post traumatic stress syndrome, it started with Vietnam, says Jamail, where the more than 58,000 casualties from that conflict are dwarfed by the 170,000 Vietnam veterans who have since committed suicide.

In the current U.S. conflict, 17 percent of troops in Afghanistan are prescribed psychotropic medications. And 80 percent of the aforementioned rapes and sexual assaults, soldier to soldier, go unreported to the Pentagon, he said.

Jamail recounted stories about women GIs stationed in the Middle East, so afraid to use latrines after dark, for fear of being jumped and assaulted by their fellow male soldiers, that some died of dehydration.

Many soldiers are accepted into the armed forces, he says, with full knowledge that they have been diagnosed with mental illnesses or convicted of felonies. Four thousand troops have been reported absent without leave, Jamail said.

For other soldiers actively serving in the military, these problems have not been an issue.

“I can only speak from personal experiences, and I saw none of that,” says Alex Kohnen, a lieutenant commander with the Navy.

Kohnen, who serves out of the Port Hueneme Naval Base, has been deployed three times to the Middle East, twice as a Seabee. He witnessed a regimented, structured military system where alcohol is not abused because it is outlawed by Islamic rule.

Yet there’s still a subterranean resistance effort that exists in the current overseas campaign, says Jamail, who cited examples of soldiers, secretly against the war, embarking on “Search and Avoid” missions, opting to play soccer with Afghan children unbeknownst to their commanding superiors.

That resistance effort manifests itself in Ventura County through the local IVAW or Veterans for Peace, of which Frank Peterson is a long-time member.

Peterson, a decorated Korean War veteran, had volunteered for a mercy medical caravan to El Salvador in the 1980s, and after being witness to the carnage there, was inspired to channel the experience through art.

Twenty-five years later, Peterson’s “Memorial for the Fallen,” a door panel display he’s painstakingly filled with thumbnail photos of each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, Kuwait or Afghanistan, depicts more than 5,000 deceased veterans and has toured more than 25 locations in California.

“People react more when they see pictures,” Peterson, a 51-year Ventura resident, said. “The public is losing interest in veterans’ problems. They’re just numbers to them.”

Peterson’s wall was on display at the Unitarian church last week, along with artwork known collectively as the Combat Paper Project, a traveling display of war-themed paintings, sculptures and mixed media creations by soldiers.

Hodge, of the IVAW, became part of the project in July 2008, although her work was not on display last week at the Veterans Day event.

Her drive is to recruit more veterans into the IVAW’s small local chapter, which currently has five members. A person’s viewpoint on the war, pro or con, is unimportant for joining, Hodge said. An ultimate goal is to branch out eventually to Santa Barbara and help other veterans struggling with PTSD or drug, alcohol or violence issues.

“A lot of veterans, the last thing they want is to get back into these problems,” she said. “Just because there’re a lot of outspoken veterans, doesn’t mean we aren’t here.”   

The Ventura IVAW, Chapter 47, is online at ivaw.org/ventura. For info on the Combat Paper and Warrior Writers projects, visit combatpaper.org and warriorwriters.org.

paul@vcreporter.com