Eli Wright, 26, is an active duty soldier and Iraq veteran who expects to receive his medical discharge in the next few months. Along with four of his fellow soldiers, he plans to spend this weekend at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., listening to testimony from veterans who have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The forums are modeled on the January 1971 “Winter Soldier” hearings in Detroit, which marked one of the first national platforms for Vietnam veterans to speak out about what they had seen and heard during service in Southeast Asia. The hearings were held just before the trial of Lt. William Calley for war crimes committed at My Lai. The three-day event became the basis for a book co-authored by John Kerry, who eventually went on to the Senate and ran for president in 2004, and a movie, Winter Soldier.
The paper chase: Peace activists will be targeting the Post-Standard Wednesday, March 19, as an example of how the mainstream media is mis-reporting the war in Iraq. Michael Davis photo.
The Winter Soldier hearings were in part responsible for a congressional investigation into charges of war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam. Kerry, who was a leader in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, referred to the stories told by returning veterans as “not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.”
The film is not easy to watch. The stories told by the returning Vietnam vets are as painful as they are disjointed. In their eagerness to purge themselves of the war they had witnessed, they unleash a torrent of personal as well as political angst. In late February and early March the Syracuse Peace Council and Iraq Veterans Against the War showed Winter Soldier a half-dozen times at local campuses and at the Redhouse, 201 S. West St., to slender audiences.
The March 4 Redhouse showing attracted only about 50 people yet resulted in nearly $600 raised to assist Wright and his comrades with travel expenses. Wright and his fellow anti-war veterans are hoping that their efforts will, in his words, “highlight the truth of the occupation, that the American people are not getting through the media. We are making sure that these wars are getting into the history books accurately.”
The term “Winter Soldier,” said local organizer Jessica Maxwell, comes from Thomas Paine, the Revolutionary War propagandist. Writing in December 1776, Paine famously wrote of the incipient revolution against British rule: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
Less famous were the words that followed, but they now have come to hold meaning for many of the returning veterans eager to speak about what they saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now {in winter}, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
None of the Fort Drum five will be testifying at the hearings. Wright said active duty soldiers have legal reasons for not speaking out publicly but he is not concerned about repercussions from attending. “As long as we are out of uniform, and we’re going on our own time, we can attend. I do not know what would happen to me if I were to share certain experiences,” he noted. “I’ll wait ’til I’m out for that.”
Concern that the media is not giving Americans the full story about the war is also behind the rally planned for noon on Wednesday, March 19, in Clinton Square, sponsored by the Peace Council and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Maxwell said that the march will visit the nearby Bank of America branch, 440 S. Warren St., as a “symbol that money interests are behind the war.” Asked how Bank of America is connected to the war, Maxwell said it’s a symbol that “there clearly is a profit motive behind the war, the most obvious being the connections with the Bush administration, like Dick Cheney and Halliburton.” The protesters will also stop at a military recruitment center and, for the first time, the Post-Standard building.
“We’re not singling them out because they’re worse than anyone else,” explained Maxwell. “We see the Post-Standard as a symbol of the mainstream media. It’s not necessarily just Fox media or the extremes that are to blame for the coverage. Even the most average newspaper just reprints whatever comes in on the AP wire. They’ve printed every mistruth that led us into the war, and they keep doing the same now with the surge.”
Senior managing editor Stan Linhorst was reached at his home over the weekend. “I can’t recall anything in my time,” said Linhorst, about any past protests; he then went on to put a positive spin on the idea. “In general, the more that Americans demonstrate their positions in public, the stronger our democracy. We celebrate making sure that every voice is heard. There has been a lot of criticism of the ‘mainstream media’ in the run-up to war, and that is very good for everyone to hear.”
Linhorst acknowledged that the Post-Standard does run a lot of news service reports, including the New York Times News Service and the Associated Press, but he rejected the criticism that they are just running reports without questioning. “I wouldn’t say that we automatically print anything. We have to exercise news judgment every day. Our editors don’t live in a vacuum.”
Linhorst said he regularly hears from both opponents to and supporters of the war. “It’s a sign that the nation has been divided over the war. We try to provide information to help people decide whether the war is good or bad. To be fair, you’d have to look at the broad sweep of our coverage to give a good accounting of how we’ve done.”
And has the Pentagon or the administration ever contacted him to influence coverage? Never. “The administration is probably not going to contact the Post-Standard,” he added. “I think they would probably go to the source that originated the story.”
Linhorst admitted, “There’s a bit of discomfort when we’re writing about ourselves. But in some ways, it will be a bit easier, since it’s right outside our door.”
—Ed Griffin-Nolan
