I called Bill Distler, who sent me the letter. He said that Veterans for Peace in Bellingham, WA has an active core of about twenty. Most are Vietnam vets, only one is an Iraq vet.
Bill says the Iraq vets mostly don't want to talk about it yet. "It's way too much to lay on 19 and 20 year olds," he says; it took him many years before he could see clearly how wrong his war was, the Vietnam War, and how the mess he got into wasn't his own fault.
Bill is receiving 100% disability for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but he says his war was in the jungle, in forests. The Iraq War vets' traumas have been and still are in buildings, highways, city streets. He can stay out of forests, but every plastic bag on the highway, every window, every street corner can trigger an Iraq vets' PTSD. "The psych trouble for these guys will be way more," he concludes, and adds: "The people who talk about war are either those who didn't go, or they're the officers, who have a different perspective. To know about war, ask the grunts."
"I wandered for years after Vietnam," Bill tells me. "Settled in Bellingham in 1985 and worked in an organic flour mill... My beautiful daughter Lily is 8 years old. My beautiful wife Lisa and I have been married since 2000, my first marriage at 52 years old."
It's only in recent years he started to organize against war, appalled at what Bush had done. "My brother Ken was in the 4th Infantry Division in the Central Highlands from Jan. to May '69 when he was wounded in a huge firefight that left about half of his company killed or wounded. He killed himself in 1994. I still feel that he is watching me from heaven and encouraging me to keep going. If I accomplish anything good, I feel that I share that with him."
If I have one comment about his letter it's this: let's not imagine that all the men in Afghanistan are anti-woman. That would be as false as imagining that all the soldiers serving the American empire are pro-war. We ran a terrific article in Tikkun by Wil Morat about Afghan men, all Muslims of course, who are risking their lives to support women's rights. (Our website just crashed but you can get it here).(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
