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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Returning Soldier Turns Anti-War
Wednesday 14 July @ 15:51:56 |
 by Nicole Colson
Michael Hoffman was part of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. When he joined the military, the former Marine lance corporal thought that U.S. military intervention could be a positive force. Today, he knows otherwise. Michael is now active as a member of Veterans for Peace, and in late March, he traveled to Fayetteville, N.C.— home of the Pentagon’s Fort Bragg — for a rally to join with hundreds of veterans and military families calling for an end to the occupation.
 COLSON: The Bush administration said that U.S. soldiers would be welcomed as “liberators” in Iraq. After the uprisings across Iraq, what’s your take on that claim?
MICHAEL: This has been a long time coming. You can’t expect to be greeted as liberators on one hand, and be acting as an actual conquering army on the other, and expect to be welcomed. It’s something we should have learned in Vietnam, that you can’t do this.
The morale among U.S. soldiers is horrible, and it’s dropping day by day. A lot of the units that are there now were supposed to be getting rotated out — they’ve already been there for a year. Now, they’re being told by Bush that units which haven’t rotated yet are now going to get extended because of the new hostilities. There’s a lack of equipment and a lack of information.
Beyond that, soldiers on the ground know the reality of what’s going on right now. They look around, and they know better than anyone else that there’s no weapons of mass destruction. They know that we’re not really helping this country. If anything, we’re making things worse.
There are Iraqis out there saying, “We might not have been living in a free society under Saddam, but at least we had electricity.” That’s what’s happening there, and the soldiers see that. And that’s just destroying their morale right now.
 COLSON: What was your experience in Iraq?
MICHAEL: I was part of the actual invasion force, so I started in Kuwait, crossed the border March 20 when the invasion began, and worked my way as far north as Tikrit. I was part of an artillery battery, so I was a little bit behind the front line. I crossed through these areas right behind the infantry, so I saw towns just utterly destroyed, buildings on fire.
The amount of damage we did to the infrastructure was incredible. And this was damage that wasn’t all just from this time. Iraq had been constantly bombed ever since the first Gulf War.
COLSON: What do you think the impact of the crisis of the occupation will be in the U.S.?
MICHAEL: The recent increase of fighting is terrible. I think it might be too strong of a comparison, but in my mind and to some of my friends who are Vietnam veterans and activists from that time, we’re all thinking: “Tet offensive.” That’s really the kind of [casualty] numbers that are happening there — that kind of sustained, simultaneous assault across all of Iraq, with heavy losses on the American side.
That’s what it looked like to us. I can see already it’s not carrying the same amount of weight, but I think this is going to be a turning point for organizing against the war. People are really going to be clued into what it’s like on the ground. We’re losing upwards of 12 people a day. That is just absolutely insane.
 They didn’t expect this kind of resistance. Everyone on the ground, my unit included, was told, “We’ll be here for about six months — one year at the absolute latest — and that’s going to be it.” And that just went completely out the window.
I have a feeling that if they would have had any idea that what’s happening right now would happen, I would still be there right now—my unit would never would have left. I think every single soldier that was there would have stayed there.
I think we’ve got upwards of 130,000 troops right now. We might have had upwards of 200,000 troops if they would have known this was going to go this way. Actually, I think that if they would have known that it was going to go this badly, they might not have done it at all.
They thought this was going to be an easy, winnable war. They were trying to avoid the “Vietnam syndrome,” which is what they’ve been thrown into right now.
 COLSON: What do you think is the solution?
MICHAEL: For me, the solution right now is a withdrawal of the American occupation force. It’s not working. We’re losing people on both sides every single day. We need to cut our losses and say that we can’t have any more deaths on either side.
It’s a horrible toll—American, British, all the occupation forces, and the Iraqis. We need to admit that we were wrong, pull out all the occupying forces and make reparations—not be concerned about getting money out of the country, but actually being concerned about the people of Iraq and making sure that they get a real country back.
If you look at Vietnam, there were three things that really ended the war. It was the resistance by the people in Vietnam; it was the resistance by the people of the United States and in other countries; and the third major part was the military, and the refusal to fight in the war. Soldiers got sick of the war, and I think that’s happening right now.
As we get more troops rotating back and getting off of active service and such, you’re going to see more and more troops coming out and speaking out against it. Right now, the line that everyone keeps saying over and over again is “We need to support the troops. We need to let them know that we’re behind them, that we support them.” But the best way of supporting them is to make sure that they’re brought home now.
 This interview originally appeared in the April edition of SW magazine.
For more information about Veterans for Peace, please visit their official website.
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