Winter Soldier (18 page)

Shukran jazeelan lehadhurikum wa insh’Allah nethheb jamea’n ile al-Iraq wa nettasharek fi el-sa’ade wa aman. Al-yom sanattahdeth an al-wada’ fi al-Iraq.5 [stunned silence from the audience of veterans]

I’m sorry—did I speak in Arabic? Guys—I think this is the problem. Iraqis actually speak another language.

I worked with most of the independent journalists that came to Iraq. I didn’t work for big corporations. Before the American invasion, I was a computer engineer. I came from a family that had been oppressed by Saddam. After Saddam was overthrown, I worked as a journalist just because there was nothing else to do.

One day I was driving in Baghdad, crossing an American checkpoint, and I was stopped along with all the other people. That day I was grouchy because the electricity had been off all day the day before. Before the war, when there was no electricity we used to sleep outside on the roof, but we can’t do that now. It’s not safe, because you never know what’s going to fall on you.

So I had to sleep indoors and it was really hot. And at seven in the morning I had to go to work. So what happened—at this checkpoint—they stopped me. And as you all notice I use crutches, because I had polio as a baby. One of the soldiers came to me, pointing a gun at me and said, “Get out of the car.” But he wasn’t saying it in polite, nice language, he was swearing and I began to fear for my safety. But despite the risk, I decided to speak my own language, a language the soldier didn’t understand.

I put my hands up and I waited. I knew if I grabbed the crutches he would shoot me before he realized that they were crutches and not a weapon. An apology would have done nothing for me. So I decided to just sit there until he opened the door.

He continued shouting at me and when the other soldiers heard him shouting the translator came. There were about fifty soldiers and one translator. And translators in Iraq, they got paid about—about ten to fifteen dollars a day at a time. The rate is still less than forty dollars a month. So these translators are not the best. And who wants to work this kind of job anyway? You are a moving target for people who hate the Americans. After work, you go home to your family in a civilian neighborhood and the soldiers go home to their base. There is no way to do it.

So the translator came and he didn’t know the word for disabled. So he translated as best he could—he looked at the car and he looked at my crutches inside—and then he said, “Oh, he’s injured in his leg.”

When the soldiers heard that, they assumed I had been injured in a firefight. One of the soldiers threw open the door and grabbed me out of the car, put me on the ground, put the gun over me, and started swearing at me saying, “Where did you get injured?”

And then I decided, “I think it’s time to speak English.” So I spoke with them in English and he was like, “Man, why you didn’t say that from the beginning?”

After this event, I knew that any contact with U.S. soldiers could be deadly. I have seen it happen to many other people. Many of my friends have been shot accidentally. I began counting my friends—how many of them have died since the start of this occupation. But after I got to thirty-four I decided to stop because I could never catch up. There’s always another death, and then another.

I want to tell you about another incident. I was driving one night, around 9 p.m., which is very late in Iraq. I was on the highway just by myself driving really crazy because I wanted to get home before I ran into any soldiers or the people who were trying to kill them.

And there was a voice in my head saying “This is very dangerous.” There were no other cars around. Then I looked in my rearview mirror and there was another car—a white pickup truck behind me. And the guy who was driving it, he looked like a farmer or something. So I decided that I would let him go in front of me so if something happened to him, I would know there was danger ahead.

I felt bad about it afterward, but.…

So this farmer was driving about a hundred meters in front of me—and I saw these three tanks. They were in the middle of the empty highway. And these tanks had no lights, no sign—nothing.

And there were about thirty soldiers and they were lying on the ground in a shooting position. And I didn’t see them at first, I saw them after they saw our lights and the cars coming. They turned on one of the tank’s lights and I was wondering, “Is that a tank? Is it something else?”

So I decided to slow down. And then on the loudspeaker they said, in English, “Stop—deadly force is gonna be used.” I heard that and I understand English so I stopped right away. But the other car, he didn’t understand and went right through them. And then I heard—I heard them shoot him. They shot him and I felt like I killed him—I put him in front of me. That should have been me. Should be me.

I was just stopped there, watching them, just frozen there. And I saw them drag him out of the truck. I watched the American soldiers pull the canvas cover off the bed of his pickup. They looked inside the bed and it was just vegetables. It was lettuce—lots of lettuce. And I wondered to myself, “Wow—you could be killed for transporting lettuce in this country.”

In December 2004 my friend was killed in my car because the killers thought he was me. So I decided that was gonna be my last day in Iraq.

For all the people who talk about progress in Iraq, who think the American military should stay in Iraq, I have a simple question: “What about you going to Iraq?” I will buy your ticket. You go and enjoy your time in Iraq. If you think it’s great, go there—stay there. I will let you stay in the house I left behind. The Americans have a base right across the street from it. They have ten snipers just pointing at my house and my neighbors’ homes.

I don’t know how many of you have seen Iraqis except the soldiers. But actually Iraqis are human beings–they are like you. They have families. They have friends. And actually they have bigger families than you.

My family is five brothers and five sisters. We are eleven. I stopped counting how many nieces and nephews that I have. I think I have fifty-three. And all of this from one mother and one father.

I really respect those soldiers that are the ones that don’t want to deploy again, and the soldiers that left the military when they noticed what they were doing and what they should do. I really think they’re heroes.

Here at Winter Soldier, I have had the opportunity to speak with many veterans and have really enjoyed it. I wish I had met them back home in Iraq. But many of them told me, “No, you didn’t want to see us there.” Over there, it would have been combat, but now we are talking human to human.

Today, I think if these veterans saw me back over there in the same situation, they would never shoot me. They’re the same people, but they’ve realized that I’m a human just like them, and actually speak the same language. So I think if the language is a problem, today I’m gonna teach you all Arabic. That’s what I’m gonna do.

And I’m gonna start teaching you the words that we should all learn. The first word you should learn is my name. My name is Salam—it means “peace.” So this word—you should learn it. And if all Americans learned this word, I think they will never, ever go to other people and steal their peace.

Dehumanization bred through training and combat stress not only leads to brutality against the “enemy,” it also leads to discrimination and brutality within the ranks. Women, gays and lesbians, and heterosexual men perceived as “weak” are often targeted.

The large numbers of female soldiers on the battlefields is one of the key differences between the Iraq War and previous conflicts. More than 160,000 female soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, compared with the 7,500 women who served in Vietnam and the 41,000 who were dispatched to the Gulf War in the early ’90s.1 Today, women make up 15 percent of U.S. active-duty forces and 11 percent of soldiers deployed to the front.2 These women, who are already risking their lives in misguided occupations, must often fight a second battle against servicemembers wearing the same uniform. Nearly a third of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and 71 percent to 90 percent say they were sexually harassed by the men with whom they served.3

In the testimony that follows, these soldiers describe how the chill and pain of sexual assault followed them through basic training and into the conflict zone. Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that in 2004 former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered a task force to investigate.4 The investigation did not result in any prosecutions, but rather in a new website to clarify that sexual assault is illegal. Regular classes on sexual assault and harassment were also initiated, but many servicemembers do not take them seriously.

When a rape or sexual assault occurs within the military, reporting it is intrinsically difficult. Such incidents usually occur in a setting where the victim lives and works. In most cases, this means that victims must continue to live and work closely with their perpetrators, often leading to increased feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and being at risk for further victimization. It is usually impossible to remain anonymous. Often the victim must rely on the perpetrator (or associates of the perpetrator) to approve or provide medical and psychological care. “Perpetrators are frequently peers or supervisors responsible for making decisions about work-related evaluations and promotions,” notes the VA’s National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “In addition, victims are often forced to choose between continuing military careers during which they are forced to have frequent contact with their perpetrators or sacrificing their career goals in order to protect themselves from future victimization.”5

If heterosexual women face barriers in reporting discrimination within the military, the situation is even worse for gay men and lesbians. Gay and lesbian Americans are increasingly accepted in civilian society and (at present) allowed to marry in California and Massachusetts, but are not allowed to serve openly in the Armed Forces. If a gay soldier reports abuse to his or her chain of command, the servicemember can be immediately expelled from the military for violating the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Over eleven thousand servicemembers have been expelled since President Bill Clinton implemented the policy in 1994.5

Military leaders have stuck by this discriminatory policy even as they have loosened recruiting standards for everyone else. In 2006 an estimated one in five soldiers being recruited to fight in Iraq received a “moral waiver” in order to enter the service. From 2003 to 2006 the military allowed 106,000 people to enter with troubled histories, including 4,230 convicted felons, 43,977 individuals convicted of serious misdemeanors such as assault, and 58,561 convicted illegal drug offenders.7 In the army, allowable offenses include making terrorist threats, murder, and kidnapping.8

Why, veterans at Winter Soldier asked, does the Pentagon allow kidnappers and murderers to join the military, but not openly gay men and lesbians? Consider this question as you read their testimony on “Gender and Sexuality in the Military.”