Cruelty and Silence

There's a fair amount of press here. Washington Post. Lovely grand dame from the Houston Chronicle who was kind enough to watch my laptop while I got lunch. I saw NPR on the press registration list. Lots and lots of TV cameras, many from seemingly foreign media. Bloggers bloggers bloggers. What isn't here, as far as I can tell, is politicians.

It remains a fact of American politics that a conference featuring first-hand testimony about the inhumanity inherent in occupying foreign countries is too hot for anyone seeking reelection. The politicians that send these soldiers and Marines to war will dispatch them under false pretenses, fund an endless war year after year after year after year after year and will spew patriotic doggerel about the need to always support the troops. What they won't do, evidently, is listen to them about how they experience the war.

Iraq Veterans Against the War's Geoff Millard told me this in January:

Millard, like many soldiers, switches from intensity to self-depricating humor in the same sentence. His tattoos, peeking out from his black IVAW hoodie, mark him as the punk rock kid he was growing up in Buffalo, N.Y. And the unity that the hardcore scene preaches is evident in his attitude toward his fellow veterans, no matter their politics. Vets for Freedom, he says, should tell their own service stories. “I think the American public should hear their experiences as well, not just IVAW. We’re the ones just happening to take the initiative to tell the American people, because we feel they don’t get these stories,” he said. “I think the American people need to hear the experience of not just us but all veterans, from veterans themselves.” As Millard spoke, an Iraq vet, who had arrived unannounced on his doorstep at four that morning, was upstairs napping.

The only politician I've seen here is Dennis Kucinich. As I was walking in the building, he was walking out. That was before the day's first panel.

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