"I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unneccesary forclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land." ~~~Mike Prysner.
AMERICAN IRAQ VET SAYS - ENOUGH, NO MORE!
August 12th, 2010
" My name is Mike Prysner. I joined the Army and went for basic training on my eighteenth birthday in June of 2001. I was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division and in March of 2003 I was attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade deployed to northern Iraq.
When I first joined the Army, we were told that racism no longer existed in the military. A legacy of inequality and discrimination was suddenly washed away by something called the 'Equal Opportunity Program. We would sit through mandatory classes and every unit had this EO representative to ensure that no elements of racism could resurface. The Army seemed firmly dedicated to smashing any hint of racism.
And then September 11th, 2001 happened and I began to hear new words like 'towel head' and 'camel jockey' and the most disturbing: 'sand nigger.' And these words did not initially come from my fellow soldiers but from my superiors: my platoon sergeant, my company first sergeant, battalion commander. All the way up the chain of command these terms, these viciously racist terms were suddenly acceptable
And I noticed that the most overt racism came from veterans of the first Gulf War. And those were the words they used when incinerating civilian convoys. Those were the words they used when this government delivered any target(ing) of civilian infrastructure; bombing water supplies knowing it would kill hundreds of thousands of children.
We've just learned that we've killed over a million Iraqis since the invasion. But we already killed a million Iraqis in the '90s through sanctions and bombings prior to this invasion. But the number is truly much higher.
When I got to Iraq in 2003 I learned a new word and that word was "Hajji". Hajji was the enemy.
So we took the best thing from Muslim and made it into the worst thing.
But, history did not start with us and since the creation of this country, racism has been used to justify expansion and oppression. The Native Americans were called savages. The Africans were called all sorts of things to excuse slavery. And Vietnam veterans know of the multitude of words used to justify that imperialist war.
I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unneccesary forclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land.
Allen L Roland http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/american-iraq-vet-says-enough-no-more.html
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.netRead more at www.thepeoplesvoice.org
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