This article, "G2: Men on a mission: In a rundown suburb of Washington DC, a group of anti-Iraq war protesters has set up home. But they are no ordinary activists - they are all veterans of the conflict. Daniel Nasaw talks to them", by Daniel Nasaw, was published in The Guardian (London), August 20, 2008
The mock soldier's grave in the front yard, along with the bottles of urine in the refrigerator and the anti-war posters festooning the first floor, tell visitors this is not just another group house for politically minded Washington DC twentysomethings.
The bottles, says Adam Kokesh, a tattooed, muscular former US marine sergeant and prominent member of a community of virulently anti-war Iraq veterans based in the house, are to be tested for depleted uranium, a munitions component thought to be harmful to soldiers exposed to it.
The house, in a rundown neighbourhood of the US capital, is headquarters for Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), a group with more than 1,200 members across the country and on military duty in Iraq. It is also a flophouse for visiting and needy veterans, a "frat-house on steroids" in the words of one resident, and a friendly space where veterans can commune with like-minded comrades.
On a recent Sunday evening, I joined Kokesh, several other Iraq veterans, and a crew of other anti-war activists for a cook-out at the vets' house. They talked politics, shared war stories, drank beer and wine. Then, and over several other meetings, the members told me about the domestic situations peculiar to the group: the bottles of urine stored in the refrigerator, a member's inordinate rage at malfunctioning computer equipment, and a shared sense of purpose and experience that mitigates and outweighs the strife.
The members of the IVAW house are the newest incarnation of a long tradition of anti-war activism by US military veterans. They are the tattooed, web-savvy descendents of the Spanish-American war veterans who decried US torture of Filipino rebels at the turn of the 20th century, and the shaggy-haired Vietnam vets who tossed away their medals in protest. They offer legitimacy to the anti-war movement, show ing that peace activists aren't necessarily anti-military or motivated by knee-jerk opposition to George Bush. Some were against the war from the start, but had already joined up and hoped they could speed US involvement in Iraq to an end. Others were afraid to resist deployment or were unaware how to do so.
"The vet groups are our street cred," a California-based anti-war activist tells me at the group's barbecue. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of feminist anti-war group Code Pink, says the veterans' group appeals to the American glorification of the military, even within the anti-war movement. "People who have been part of a war that I consider immoral and illegal still have more legitimacy than people who were against the war from the very beginning and refused to fight in it," she explains, sitting in the vets' living room while her college-age cohorts chat with the veterans and eat hamburgers and sausages. "They command more of a sense of authority and more of a sense of understanding of what's actually happening on the ground. Generals who come out against the war are seen as more important even than Congress members who are against the war."
The house has become a centre of Washington anti-war activism, but it serves a different function for the five men who live there. "When you're coming out of the military, the one thing that you lose bigger than anything else is the camaraderie of your unit," says 27-year-old Geoff Millard in between bites of sausage and sips of root beer. "You've got family, you've got friends, but you don't have the people who have been there, and that's a huge thing. In this community we have that, whether they want to live here, or they want to stay a weekend, or they just want to come over and watch some TV for a little while. It's just a space for veterans."
A native of Buffalo, New York, Millard joined the National Guard when he was 17. After the 9/11 attacks, he was sent to New York City to search incoming vehicles for bombs. When the Bush administration began pushing for war with Iraq, Millard didn't want to go.
"Our military is trained to kill people and we're the bullies," he says. "I didn't sign up in the military to be a bully. I signed up to protect people from bullies. We started to talk about Iraq, and Iraq just didn't pass the smell test." In winter 2003, he marched with a group of Vietnam vets in a massive New York anti-war protest. He thought briefly about fleeing to Canada, but was afraid to desert. "I thought that if I resisted they would put me in jail," he says. "So I went to Iraq". He spent a year as an administrative aide to a general there in 2004.
Now a web journalist, Millard joined IVAW in December 2005, and co-founded the Wash ington chapter the following autumn. He and Kokesh had lived together in a small apartment, but wanted space for other like-minded veterans. The men moved into the Washington house in December.
The 50-member IVAW chapter, of which Millard is president, sub-lets the lower level, which was converted into comfortable office space decorated with anti-war posters. Considering it is occupied by a group of twentysomething bachelors, the house is remarkably tidy. The men share cleaning duties, dividing up chores on Sundays so the house will be clean for vets attending the weekly support group and visitors to their potluck dinner. "Most of us were NCOs in the military, so we're good at telling people to clean up shit," Kokesh explains.
Some of the men have jobs or are attending university, while others spend their days writing anti-war literature, working out, or travelling across the region to speak to anti-war groups, recruit other veterans and help organise new chapters. The attic and basement hold "berths" for dozens of visitors, and 43 guests bunked in the house during a March anti-war event.
The members don't merely provide food, drink and company. At the weekly "home-front battle buddies" support group in the basement of the house, the veterans talk over their war experiences, hash out problems adjusting to civilian life and struggles with the US veterans administration, and even discuss relationship troubles. The men, a rotating group of about five who live in the house, plus regular visitors from outside Washington, can also spend hours a day strategising and talking politics. Their tactics include "counter-recruitment" of young people sought by the military and sit-in style protests at government buildings.
Life in a house full of jittery veterans can be trying, they acknowledge. Routine domestic disagreements explode into rage. Many of them have trouble sleeping, and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). "The PTSD is so thick in the air you can cut it with a knife," one tells me. They say they have all learned to recognise when one of their housemates is in the grip of an episode (symptoms differ in each, they say, with some becoming depressed and angry, others anxious, others restless).
Millard recalls that an uncooperative internet modem sent him into a fury, and when he tried to discuss the issue with his housemates, he could only yell and curse. He eventually threw the equipment across the room. "I had been seeing a girl for about two weeks at the time, and she was here, and that ended that relationship," he tells me, sitting in his book-lined den upstairs. But his housemates were more accommodating: "They let me flare up like that and they gave me that space, and then as I naturally came down of that, I was able to say 'I'm sorry, I was not thinking naturally.'"
Kokesh, a Santa Fe, New Mexico native, is working toward a master's degree in political management at George Washington University, and supports himself with modest speaking fees from addressing student and anti-war groups. He also spends more than an hour a day working out in a garage where he keeps weights and a computer. With his muscles, tattoos, shaved head, goatee and piercing eyes, Kokesh is an intimidating presence. A fluent, self-taught Arabic speaker, he served in a civil affairs unit in Iraq and was decorated for providing humanitarian aid to civilians during firefights.
While some vets prepare the food at a cookout, Kokesh works with other veterans and supporters in the basement on a speech he is planning to give at an upcoming rally. Though anti-war, Kokesh isn't a liberal. He describes himself as a libertarian, and supported Ron Paul in his bid for the US presidency.
The workshop devolves briefly into an impromptu political strategy session, as Kokesh compares the efficacy of what he calls "direct action" with "civil resistance", techniques such as blocking a major city intersections to call attention to their anti-war message. "If I have a conversation with a kid in high school and he decides he's not going to join the military, that's a direct action," he says. "A war resister inside the military is both. But that doesn't necessarily make it more effective. I would rather have 1,000 high-school students who would otherwise not join, than one person within the military resist. That's taking 1,000 bodies out of the system as opposed to taking one out."
Other participants in the discussion note the news value of a high-profile soldier refusing to redeploy to Iraq. The IVAW members who live in the house and visit it appreciate sharing space with people who have seen, first hand, the results of the US adventure in Iraq and who know how to manage war-traumatised veterans.
"I've to a certain extent found solace in it," says Nick Morgan, a bearded 24-year-old who was a combat engineer in Iraq. "I'm kind of an anxious person, I'm kind of antsy. I have a lot of quirks that make people uncomfortable. But being around cats like this, it's second nature. Nobody really notices it."
But it is their shared devotion to ending the war in Iraq and agitating for veterans' benefits and reparations for Iraqis that ultimately holds the house together, even when tensions are running high. "There's a certain environment that we're able to create here that is distinctly for veterans who have the freedom of mind to see that they've been lied to, that essentially a certain element of their service was for nothing," Kokesh tells me emphatically. "An environment that empowers them to live out their convictions".