My Speech at the March 20 Great Rutgers Walkout Against the War

Good afternoon friends.

As the organizers of this protest know, I did not immediately, nor blithely, agree to speak here today. I come to you not as a lifelong Republican who, in 2003, while publicly voicing his opposition to this war, ran in the General Election for NJ State Assembly. I come not as a devoted Christian dedicated to human rights. I come not as a military veteran against this war and member of Veterans for Peace. Neither do I come to you as a writer or student of: philosophy, environmental policy, political science, law, or ethics. Nor do I come before you as a former campus activist. No, I stand here before you, most importantly, and most simply, as a fellow Rutgers student and part-time lecturer at Cook College… ..as just another fellow member of the Rutgers community.

While I have publicly opposed the Iraq war since before it began, I have always differentiated that opposition, and my opposition to the Bush Administration, from my support for the brave women and men who serve as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, & Marines.

When I first came to Rutgers University, as a University Scholar and on an ROTC scholarship, I participated in both Army and Air Force ROTC and eventually served my country proudly as a US Air Force combat weatherman. I served attached to Army combat infantry units, providing Army infantry troops with weather observations and forecasts on the front lines. The bonds I developed to my fellow servicepeople and my country were strong, and remain as strong today as they did then.

Because I supported both our fellow Americans in uniform and the War in Afghanistan, I chose, until today, not to participate in anti-recruiting protests. But, I was wrong. Yes, I was ignorant of truths so important, so central to the world we live in that it defined the very reality we all share. Like a smoker not REALLY ready to quit the habit, I was willfully ignorant of the real truths at play.

Sadly, at times, we live in the real world, not the world we would wish. Today that real world is a place where servicepeople don’t have the training or equipment they need to perform their jobs to the best of their abilities, or even safely.

We’ve all heard the stories of Humvees without armor, or soldiers and marines without body armor, but do you know that today, as a result of this war’s toll, stateside military units are reporting that they have 40% less equipment than they need – it’s been worn out and broken by the excessive tours in Iraq.

These numbers are joined by the nightmarish reality of the stark human toll from this needless, optional and immoral war – yes, immoral; as philosophers and theologians going back to the middle ages have deemed OPTIONAL wars unjust and ungodly, war is, if ever justified, only justified as a means of LAST resort – and this is an optional war I publicly and repeatedly called misguided and foolhardy when it was first suggested.

We can all recite the tragic statistics:

Today more Americans have died in combat since 9/11 than died on that horrible day. Modern combat medicine has saved many who would died in earlier conflicts, so the numbers of wounded today are truly untolled.

Our government spends millions of dollars on propaganda for the war in Iraq and at home, while cutting research money for traumatic brain injury (a leading injury in this conflict) by millions of dollars.

The scandal at Walter Reed Army hospital tells us all in terms we cannot ignore, how overloaded our military and veteran’s medical system is.

Veterans are returning home with psychological and physical wounds that are remaining poorly treated or completely untreated because the Veteran’s administration can’t handle the influx.

..And, now comes news that helped me make my decision to speak here today. .. Our military is so strapped for trained troops, that the press reported last week, still-injured soldiers are being ordered to return to Iraq.

I won’t recount the details here, but 74 still recovering soldiers assigned to the 3^rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia have been ordered to redeploy to Iraq.

During this nation’s wars we have admired those who voluntarily chose to ignore their injuries and return to the fight, however, since the Civil War, we have not ordered injured men and women back into combat when they are unable to defend themselves fully as the result of their injuries. This is simply immoral in the most basic sense.

Otto Bismarck once said that government is like making sausages, people don’t want to see what goes into making them. Well friends, I can tell you one thing our government is doing in making those sausages… Bluntly and inexcusably, they are allowing these brave injured individuals to be used as filler for the sausages being made by that human meat-grinder we call Iraq.

I cannot and will not support recruiting people who won’t get: the equipment, training, medical care and veteran’s benefits this nation promises them and owes them. I won’t, any longer, remain blind to the false promises and lies told to get them to join.

The second thing that changed my mind about participating in anti-recruiting protests was meeting John Fenton of Little Ferry, NJ last year. John’s son, Matthew Fenton was a proud 24 year old Marine, killed, last year, by shrapnel from a suicide bomber in Anbar Province.

When I met Matthew’s father, he was proudly holding a framed photo of his son in Marine dress blues. I don’t believe anyone could look into his eyes, feel this father’s loss, and not know a troubling sorrow. But, in a nation where our President and Vice President have refused to attend the funerals of any of our fallen soldiers, it was John Fenton’s innocently simple words at an anti-war protest that pierced me to my core. This father, who buried his son, said, simply, “I wish I had come to the anti-war protests sooner.”

The final reason I chose to speak today is much more personal and one, with no thanks to the Targum, that has never been told to the University community. You see, we all know the Rutgers connection to the World Trade Center attack of 1993. The Targum ran stories on the two former Rutgers students: Nidal Ayyad and Ramzi Yousef, involved in that bombing. Even if you don’t remember their names, would be hard to call yourself a Rutgers student and not know that our School of Engineering produced two of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

Yet, the Targum has conspicuously forgotten or ignored Rutgers’ own special connection to the brutality, torture, and human rights violations that have become part of the Occupation of Iraq and the farcically named War on Terror.

I mentioned at the start of my remarks that I served in Army ROTC when I first came to the banks of the Raritan. Well, there was another young man serving with me, a young man who would one day, in the name of this country and its people, burn his name with ugly brutality across the souls of prisoners held in American military jails during this unjust war.

The young man of whom I speak is a proud Rutgers alumnus, a graduate of Rutgers Army ROTC and was a decorated US Army officer. When I knew this young man as a fellow cadet and student, he was also a brutal sadist and racist, who once purposely fired an M16 next to my roommate’s ear, injuring his hearing, simply to make a petty point while “playing soldier.”

This man, who the Targum has consciously ignored the story of, is former US Army Colonel Thomas “Tony” Pappas… ..pictured on the center of this poster. Tony was a distinguished Military Intelligence officer sent to Iraq by an Army who could not fail to know of his racist and violent tendencies. He was sent there to do a dirty little job for this country and lead a military intelligence unit in doing it. We have all heard the names of two other soldiers who took part in Tony’s little game of torture in Iraq: Lynndie England and Scott Graner. Yes, two of the Army personnel convicted for prisoner abuse, and two of those who served under Colonel Pappas at that very dungeon first drawn by Saddam Hussein from the bowels of hell itself… ..that place called Abu Ghraib prison.

Yet, at Rutgers, we have never heard the name of Tony Pappas, the man who stood at the very center of this wretched and disgusting moment in American history. For commanding the troops directly responsible for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib, this man, the senior officer present at the homicide during interrogation, of an Iraqi prisoner; this man who courtroom testimony about that death states, said “I’m not going down for this alone”; this man was in the end fined only $8000 in pay.

At Rutgers, we know the names of Ramzi Yousef and Lynndie England, the 21^st Century’s poster children for hate. But, we should also know and never, ever forget, the very special connection of Rutgers University to a hellish place called Abu Ghraib. We should always remember and revile the name of Tony Pappas, a Rutgers alumnus we should be sickened and repulsed by. Surely, Tony Pappas has made certain that some in Iraq will never forget the name of Rutgers University, thanks to a proud Rutgers’ alumnus named Colonel Thomas Pappas.

Finally, in the shadow of the Bloustein school, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a former professor of mine, one who kindled and inspired my love of philosophy and rekindled my love for things intellectual. That professor was Edward Bloustein. I was fortunate to sadly have Ed as a professor and friend during the very semester he passed from this earth. I mention him today, not for the Bloustein School building who’s shadow we stand beneath, but for his innate and unswerving moral courage and conviction. When this University and universities across the nation were arguing about possibly divesting from South Africa, to oppose the human evil that was Apartheid, when Rutgers’ own Board of Governors failed to join the cause, President Bloustein personally joined the protests. Not only did he write editorials in opposition to Apartheid, but he choose to personally march with the students. Holding a sign like any other student, he chose to be arrested with them during a sit-down strike meant to push the university Board of Governors to change its pro-racist policies.

Today, in the fight against the Occupation of Iraq and the immoral Bush War, we are again engaged in a similar moral cause, a cause where morality falls only on one side. In the spirit of President Bloustein, I call upon President McCormick to cross the line, follow the morality of your heart and join with your students in the struggle for what is good and moral. President McCormick, heed what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels human nature” and lend your imprimatur to this righteous effort. Join us today so that you do not one day look back and wish you had chosen the only truly moral path.

At the beginning of my remarks, I mentioned my ignorance of truth that had kept me away in the past. Ironically, perhaps, I might best explain it by paraphrasing a statement Ronald Reagan once made. You see, President Reagan was originally a staunch union member and Democrat. In answering a friend’s question as to why he chose to become a Republican he said: “I didn’t leave my party, they left me.”

Similarly, I stand here today as the result of realizing an essential truth. I stand here not because I have stopped supporting the US military, I am here because the Bush Administration has left the military and its veterans. I pray that my friends at Rutgers and across the nation will not abandon them as well. I pray that they will continue the fight against: this unjust war, the untolled pain, and needless deaths it brings.

Thank you.