Heroes in Civilian Clothing: Veteran Peace Activists
Veteran peace activists and organisations are at the coal face of anti-imperialism and human rights.
Published: 2024-03-05
Mike Prysner is a father and peace activist. He was a soldier. In response to Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation he wrote an article in honor of Aaron's courage and pleading with other active members of the US military, "an institution of killing", who are suffering in a moral vice, to leave.
To those of you in uniform, there are many ways out, and it is far easier than you think.
Veteran Peace/Antiwar Organisations
While I have never been a part of any military organisation, I have felt the evil of war and the terror of its threat most of my life. My investigations into civil approaches to removing the scourge of war from our beautiful planet have lead a circuitous route. A stop which keeps demanding to be revisited are veteran's peace organisations. To my simple mind there is no more authentic antiwar voice than a soldier's, or ex-soldier's.
For a soldier to reach the point of becoming a part of the solidarity and nurture of an antiwar/pro-peace organisation seems a momentous journey. From believing that the military is an honorable institution which defends one's beliefs in rights and freedoms, through a wilderness of confusion, to a realisation that an imperial military is a killing machine supporting an industry of death and a exclusive group of elites.
Bushnell's "extreme act of protest" from "a sublime madness in the soul" is a shocking tragedy. A person of clarity of vision, awareness, and morality, possessing such courage is lost to their family and society. Prysner's urge to others in uniform to find a way out is also an urge to preserve these people who have walked this very difficult road.
British Ex-SAS soldier Ben Griffin has spoken of the perverse psychological abuse to which SAS trainees and members are subjected. His realisation occurred on leave back in the UK after a tour in Iraq. There was no honor in the actions he was being commanded to perform. He was terrorizing people. He was a cog in an injustice machine.
In Iraq his group would follow up on intelligence that an insurgent was "hiding" in a house. They would travel to the location and set shaped charges around the front door and blow the entire section of the wall in. They would rush into the building to secure it. Fighting aged males, if any, would be separated from the women, children and old men, in the dead of night. Blinded by the lights shone at them by Kevlar armed soldiers equipped with accurate, deadly automatic weapons the women and children would be herded into a room while any 'captives' would be hog tied and led away. Then, they would just leave.
The captives would be delivered to sub-contracted Iraqi armed forces personnel for interrogation and internment at places like Abu Graib. Griffin realised that not only was the whole process disgusting, but that the intelligence was usually faulty, obtained from people either pursuing revenge or just trying to make money to feed their families. The army is neither a police force nor a judiciary and attempting a just form of counter-insurgency in a remote land where the language is foreign is pure insanity. This is what 'exporting democracy' looks like.
Griffin, like Prysner joined Veterans For Peace, an international organisation which supports veterans who have crossed the wasteland to the horrific understanding of what an imperial Army is and does.
Prysner offers an important understanding in his eulogy to Bushnell. It is known to those who have stood among a people as a revolution is achieved. The edifice of the power structure being protested falls when its security services refuse to follow orders. Prysner wrote:
Much more importantly than your own personal salvation, by doing so [leaving the military] you can contribute to the mounting political crisis for Washington. The only thing that can stop this genocide is deepening that crisis — what more powerful turn of events than rebellion within the military?
One hopes that by connecting with veteran peace organisations veterans and their families can receive validation and psychological support from the community which they have joined. These people possess outstanding moral courage.
We all get to choose our political beliefs and our heroes. For me, antiwar veterans sit in the highest category of heroism. To Bushnell, to Prysner, to Griffin, to Sjursen and many more, continue.
You are deeply valued. We need you.
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Sources
Tribute to Aaron Bushnell by Iraq Veteran Mike Prysner, Mike Prysner, The Empire Files Substack, 2024-02-27
A Guide to Getting Out of the US Military (Now) w⧸ the GI Rights Hotline, Mike Prysner and Maria Santelli, Eyes Left, The Empire Files, 2024-02-02
# Download
$ yt-dlp -x https://soundcloud.com/eyesleft/girights
Love, Agency & Courage, YesXorNo, 2024-02-27
Aaron Bushnell's Divine Violence, Chris Hedges, ScheerPost, 2024-03-01
Skeptical Vet, Danny Sjursen’s website.
Ben Griffin - RESISTANCE OF WAR FROM WITHIN THE MILITARY, Ben Griffin, Glastonbury Symposium, uploaded 2018-12-08
I advise ignoring the setting and introduction. Just listen to Griffin tell his story.
Anti-war veterans explain how US lost Afghanistan while leaders lied, profited, Aaron Maté interviews Sjursen, Pushback [The Grayzone], 2021-08-22
Culture
First Aid Kit - Universal Soldier (Buffy-Sainte Marie), First Aid Kit, uploaded 2009-07-15
Copyleft: CC0
