Afghan War Vets Patrol Halls of Congress to Stop Troop Escalation

[bigtree]

from HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/afghan-war-vets-patrol-ha_n_342576.html


by Ryan Grim

A little more than two months ago, Brock McIntosh was fighting in Afghanistan, a member of the Army National Guard. This week, he's walking the halls of Congress, trying to end a war that began when he was 13 years old.

McIntosh, now 21, and four other vets are in Washington for something of a preemptive strike. A new pro-war group calling itself Vets For Freedom plans to begin lobbying Congress Thursday, pushing for an escalation. The anti-war vets hope to head them off.

But if their erstwhile comrades and now political opponents are "for freedom," that raises an unusual question. "What does that make us?" mocks Devon Read, 29, served for eight years and took part in the invasion of Iraq before leaving the Marine Corps in 2008. "Vets Against Freedom? Vets For Terrorism?"

Technically, they're with Veterans For Rethinking Afghanistan, having linked up with Brave New Films president Robert Greenwald, whose documentary project "Rethink Afghanistan" urges a drawdown of the American presence in that country.

As the vets wait outside the office of Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Jake Diliberto, 27, recounts tales from the first skirmish with Vets For Freedom earlier in the morning . . .


read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/afghan-war-vets-patrol-ha_n_342576.html

[TexasObserver]

1. Recommend

[Liberation Angel]

2. I am very proud of these antiwar soldiers

they know it was wrong and they know continuing there IS wrong.

No one has more credibility than the men and women who were on the ground there risking their lives every day.

I hope SOMEONE listens to them and to IVAW.

These antiwar gulf war veterans really are the vanguard for peace...

I marched with IVAW in Denver at the 2008 Democratic Convention and slept in the "Freedom Cages" (Tent State) with them (the socalled free speech zones surrounded by wire prisons and klieg lights and toxic smoke spewing generators and armed goons with heavy weapons and dark visors - scary. Their heroism in oposing these wars is unparalleled in my opinion in US activism.

K&R

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

any vet pushing for a bigger war needs to get back to the frontlines (so-called Vets for Freedom)

[Winterblues]

4. needs to get back to the frontlines

I would bet most if not all never saw the "frontlines". I would bet they would be identified as REMFS by most military persons.

[Solly Mack]

5. I wouldn't doubt that at all

[Echo In Light]

6. K&R

[gratuitous]

7. Yes, Devon Read, that would make you a vet for terrorism

Feel better now that it's spelled out? You can always join the Vets for Freedom, you know.

[bigtree]

8. .