Veterans’ Gulf March

As a charter member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), I’ve been advocating, along with others, the three planks of the organization:

1. Ending the Iraq War

2. Reconstructing Iraq

3. Taking care of veterans

March 19, 2006 will mark the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. Three years will have passed, and yet we will be no closer to victory, or even ending the war, than when we began. Over 2,200 warriors have lost their lives; over 16,400 have had their lives irrevocably, and irreducibly altered, by sustaining grievous wounds in the fields of battle. And we haven’t even begun to count the thousands upon thousands of men and women whose lives and minds will have been forever altered–not just those who’ve been killed, but those who’ve had to kill; not just those who’ve been maimed, but also those who’ve had to maim, and who will forever be scarred by the images seared into their minds.

Moreover, in 2005, we’ve seen the virtual annihilation of a major American city. I speak, of course, of New Orleans. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the attention of the nation was fixed, however briefly, upon that disaster. The attention was especially fixed upon the fact that, had we not been engaging in an ill-chosen, ill-timed, ill-waged war in Iraq, we would have been able to devote the entirety of our resources to saving, rescuing, and repairing an entire swathe of the Gulf Coast.

Sadly, in our go-go media culture, so obsessed with the latest missing prom queen, we’ve lost sight of the disasters at home and abroad. Our attention has been so minimal that in his fifth State of the Union Address, the President devoted only six sentences at the end of his speech–an hour-long speech laden with bromides and banalities–to the loss of New Orleans. Even more amazingly, no one called him on it.

No more. We’ve decided that we will commemorate the loss of so many of our brothers and sisters, both here and over there, by gathering in Mobile, AL on March 14, 2006, and marching 135 miles to New Orleans. The march will conclude there on March 19, 2006–the third anniversary of the war’s beginning.

My fellow veterans in this project and I hope to draw the nation’s attention to the war here at home–because the Katrina Disaster wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t fighting an ill-conceived war of choice–and the war abroad. We will participate in reconstruction projects along the route, and we plan to build a house in every single city we stop in.

Interested? Join us! We need your help. We cannot make this happen without you.