Eva Golinger: Did people in your class [at Evergreen University] know you were in the military? What did they say to you?

Josh Simpson: Yes, but people knew I was opposed to the war.

Benji Lewis: The "support the troops" campaign has altered everyone's perception.

Simpson: I'm actually opposed to that campaign. People should have been more confrontational with the troops.

Golinger: Like in Vietnam.

Lewis: The "support the troops" campaign was engineered to allow for indirect acceptance of the war.

Simpson: People are scared to criticize the troops, it's considered the most blasphemous thing in the world. At the same time, if you are never criticized then you will never know that what you are doing is wrong.

Lewis: You can't criticize the troops. It's a poverty draft, these kids just do it because they have no other way out of poverty.

Simpson: But you have to criticize them, because they will say they are just following orders, but that's bullshit, the Nazis were just following orders too. The military is fascist, it's basically blind, unquestioning obedience. Then they try to tell you that the blind obedience is some form of courage and bravery. It's much easier to go with the current than against it. While I was at Evergreen [University] I was learning something different than what I was told in the military. I got to the point where morally I couldn't just be opposed to the war, I also couldn't even participate in the military or train other soldiers to go kill people in a racist war.

The above (emphasis added) is an excerpt from Venezuelan-American lawyer and journalist Eva Golinger's September interview (which I've just unearthed) of two Iraq war veterans (see PROFILES below for short bios of all three), which provides further insight into how U.S. troops conduct themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of us who pay for these wars must confront this knowledge, especially those Americans and others who support or do not sufficiently oppose President Obama's Iraq and Afghanistan wars. . . .

The destruction of Fallujah: revenge was the explicit motive

Golinger: Benji, you were in Fallujah during the of four Blackwater scandal [the killing, mutilation and hanging from a bridge of four Blackwater Corporation mercenaries/contractors]?

Lewis: Right after. I was sent to Fallujah and there was excitement because it was right after the Blackwater scandal and we were on a mission of revenge. No one told us what had really happened except that US citizens had been killed by the Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah. So I was excited because I was going to be in a mortar unit and would be able to do what I was trained to do, we were going to utilize our mortars. We thought we were going to Fallujah to neutralize an insurrection, but they didn't tell us that the entire city had already been bombed by the US for about a week and a third of the population was already displaced or dead. We were being told that this was a mission of revenge, we didn't know they were Blackwater mercenaries that had been killed, we were told they were just US citizens. Several batallions of marines were unleashed on the city from every angle. It was a seige. There were thousands of us that assaulted Fallujah. We surrounded them and cut off their electricity and water, we bombed Mosques.

Golinger: The military wasn't giving the soldiers any kind of information?

Lewis: Hearts and Minds is double rhetoric. You have to first control the hearts and minds of the troops committing these atrocities before sending them to war. You have to lie to them otherwise you can't fight these kinds of wars.

Golinger: How did you perceive the resistance of the Iraqi people?

Simpson: They were terrorists, radical, islamic fundamentalists, not people fighting for their country, that's what we were told.

Lewis: The military indoctrination is so sophisticated - you are even cut off from members of your own batallion, you can't ask questions, the only thing that matters is to protect yourself and your batallion. There are no politics. The first thing you learn is not to question, keep your thoughts to yourself.

Heavy metal music to stoke a homicidal rage--I mean gung ho spirit

Lewis: As I was in bootcamp the invasion was happening and we would see video clips of it set to heavy metal music to get us riled up. It was disturbing. Before every class in bootcamp they would show videos of people getting shot, killed, set to heavy metal music, and then as we were invading Fallujah, the PSYOPS (pyschological operations) units weren't pointing the speakers at the people in Fallujah, they were pointing the speakers at us, playing the same music as they did in bootcamp.

Torture

Golinger: When did you go to Iraq, Josh?

Simpson: September 2004 to September 2005. . . . I was in charge of interrogations in Iraq. And Source Operations, running sources to get information. I was in Mosul, Iraq. In Iraq, 95% of those detained and interrogated were innocent. The interrogations agitate the population against you. If they weren't terrorists or insurgents when detained, they will be afterward! The reason why 95% are innocent and still detained is because the way to measure succes in Iraq, unlike in Vietnam where it was a body count, is based on the number of detainees. It doesn't matter if they are women or children or innocent. I didn't participate in physical torture and beat detainees. But I did participate in psychological torture.

Golinger: But you knew torture took place?

Simpson: I saw the victims of the torture. The bruises and lashes all over their bodies came from somewhere. We would send the detainees to the Iraqi Army and Kurdish Militia that were working with us and they would do the torture for us.

Take direct action against the wars, words shouted in the street are less important

Simpson: . . . by the time I ended up going to Iraq [in 2004] I was already against the war. Today I believe they are all imperialist wars, but then I didn't support the war, but figured I would still go because I had to go and I didn't know people were resisting.

Golinger: Do you mean soldiers resisting or people against the war?

Simpson: I didn't know there was an anti-war movement. I was in the desert in California on a military base, and in the military we never knew there was a huge opposition to the war in the US, the media didn't cover it. I think there were tactical errors made in the US by the antiwar movement, if people would have stopped military shipments from leaving the country instead of just marching in the streets, if people would have blocked railroad tracks and ports, this war would have never started.

The next war, the next resistance labeled terrorists

Golinger: Why did you come to Venezuela?

Lewis: South America is in a position to resist the economic collapse in the US. We also have plans to set up a safety net for friends and people in the US in case the US does turn into a bigger police state domestically. If there is a larger war coming on the planet the people have to choose sides and this is the side I want to be on.

Simpson: Venezuela is the one spot in the world where there is optimism. This country is moving in a good direction. In Venezuela there is a lot of really great work going on.

Golinger: What would you say to the Venezuelan people about the US military buildup in Colombia?

Simpson: Be prepared. Neighborhood and popular militias are the most effective way to deter the US - it's working in Iraq, and Afganistan. People with rifles can hold out forever. You're not going to be able to defeat the US military with tanks and airplanes because they have more than all countries in the world combined. Live up to the creed, socialismo o muerte! Capitalism is in a major state of decline and it's going to lash out. We have to fight it however we can, it's the only way to exist. If Venezuela was attacked, and there was an Abraham Lincoln Brigade to defend Venezuela, I would come here in a heartbeat.

PROFILES

* Josh Simpson, 27 years old, was a Sergeant in the US Army Counterintelligence Division. He was in charge of interrogations and source operations in Mosul, Iraq from 2004-2005. His actions resulted indirectly in the deaths of hundreds of Iraqis. Today, Simpson is the president of the Fort Lewis Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and is co-founder of Coffee Strong, a GI Coffee Shop that seeks to mobilize soldiers against the war. Simpson earned his Bachelor's Degree in Political Economy from Evergreen University in 2008 and is pursuing a Master's Degree in Teaching at the same institution. He speaks across the US against the war and US imperialism and is very active in blocking military shipments from leaving the US as a form of direct action war resistance.

* Benji Lewis, 24 years old, is an ex-Marine Infantry soldier who did two tours in Iraq, both to Fallujah from 2004-2005. His M-16 mortars killed over 500 people in Fallujah during a three month period. Today, Lewis is an outspoken anti-war, anti-Empire activist in Oregon. He is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Courage to Resist. He speaks throughout the US against the war and organizes soldiers to resist deployment to Iraq and Afganistan. Lewis is studying English Literature and Philosophy at Lynn-Benton Community College in Corvallis, Oregon.

* Eva Golinger, winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named "La Novia de Venezuela" by President Hugo Chávez, is a Venezuelan-American attorney from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 She is the author of "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006 Olive Branch Press) (which has been translated and published in six languages and is presently being made into a feature film), and "Bush vs. Chávez: Washington's War on Venezuela" (2007, Monthly Review Press). Since 2003, Golinger, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government's efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America.

More on our illegal wars: Ehren Watada

Transcript: Ehren Watada: a Soldier Refuses an Illegal War

Lieutenant [Ehren] Watada refused to be deployed to Iraq because by standards of both international and domestic law, the war in Iraq is an illegal war. Under international law, 'wars of aggression' are not only a war crime, but also the supreme example among all crimes against humanity. For refusing to participate in a war crime, Lt. Watada is currently awaiting trial in military court and faces up to 6 years imprisonment.

Watada: . . . In World War II we fought against tyranny, aggression, and inhumanity. We helped put an end to the utter cruelty of Auschwitz and Dachau, Nanking and Bataan, but in doing so we saw first hand the devastation, degredations, and eternal sorrow that war brings to everyone. Because of what we and what everyone else in the world witnessed and experienced, the world with the United States at the forefront vowed to never again allow this to happen. It was determined after Nuremberg and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals that the greatest threat to international peace, the greatest crime against humanity, was and is engaging in a war of aggression. Wars of aggression are started for plain reasons - profit, control, and power. A war of aggression was codified as the international crime against the peace because it enabled all other war crimes to take place, including genocide. Thus wars, and especially wars of aggression, were strictly prohibited by the United Nations charter so that no member nation could ever again start a war with another country that was not out of imminent self-defense or authorized by the United Nations.

Now I tell this to you to explain the lesson the children and grandchildren of World War II vets have learned through their sacrifice - it was to prohibit, condemn, and hold responsible those who wage aggressive war. To hold responsible all those who have a responsibility to stop it - from the civilian, to the generals, to the government officials. . . .

As Hermann Goering admits, all the government has to do is to instill fear among the people, cast doubt on the detractors, and they will have any war they want. It is my personal belief that we have been lied to, deceived, and betrayed. And every day that we allow this, every day that we allow this deception to continue, more and more of our sons and daughters will pay the price. More and more of our hard earned tax-dollars go down the drain, when they could be used for far more noble purposes like health care, education, and providing for disadvantaged Americans. Ask yourself what 8 billion dollars a week could buy. There are those within our society who have the most to gain by deception, the most to profit. Just as the oil companies paid for fake studies to cast doubt on global warming, so have those who have cast doubt over the issue of Iraq. There were never were any WMDs, there was never any ties to international terrorists. But for those who have something to gain from war, that is not what they would like us to believe.

So of course, I fell for it. Along with many, many Americans. I believed in our leaders. And like many other Americans, I asked "What could I do for my country?" I volunteered, as did disproportionate amount of service members who have no other choice because they lack a good paying job and opportunities for education. We were used and defrauded, manipulated through fear and poverty, to fight a war not out of necessity, not of defending our loved ones, but for a war of choice, profit, and aggression for the wealthy few.

Malalai Joya on the war crime against Afghanistan and resistance to it

The U.S. war in Afghanistan, Joya writes, "is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country." She adds:

The UK government has also tried to silence dissent, for instance by arresting Joe Glenton, a British soldier who has refused to return to Afghanistan. I had a chance to meet Glenton when I was in London last summer, and together we spoke out against the war. My message to him is that, in times of great injustice, it is sometimes better to go to jail than be part of committing war crimes.

Chris Floyd on what to do

Chris Floyd, during the course of an essay on pwoggie pundit reaction to President Obama's second Afghanistan escalation, says to do what Henry Thoreau might've done. Floyd's excellent article -- Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power -- begins as follows:

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."-- Henry David Thoreau

To me, this quote from Thoreau expresses the only rational, moral and humane stance that a citizen can take toward the vast and brutal machinery of the American imperial state in our time. The crimes of this state are monstrous, and mounting. But what is worse is that these crimes are not aberrations; they are the very essence of the system -- they are its goal, its product, its lifeblood.

Later Floyd lays into a Digby attack on Tom Hayden, whose whimpy response to Obamascalation, a vow to scrape off his Obama bumper sticker, was too much for her. Don't-get-it-ism doesn't get much worse than broadening her attack to the entire anti-Vietnam war campaign (which was not perfect but certainly effective):

Digby seems to slam Hayden directly for the "silliness" of his "behavior" in "his heyday" - that is, when he was taking direct action to try to stop an immoral war. She says of his denunciation of Obama's betrayal: "It's this kind of behavior that has given liberals a bad name since Hayden was in his heyday."

Well, we all need to mind our behavior, of course, just as our parents sternly admonished us. So by all means, let us not be indecorous in our opposition to murder and corruption. Let us not be intemperate in our resistance to evil. And for god's sake, let us not be silly or "have fits" in our dissent against atrocity, deceit and destruction.

I hold no special brief for Tom Hayden, who over the years turned into a standard hack politician, nor do I endorse every point of his new dissent. But if he is using what is left of his notoriety to speak out against this monstrous war and its escalation - for whatever reason, even a baseless sense of "betrayal" - then I say more power to him. What on God's green earth does it matter if someone says they feel "betrayed" by Obama's decision or not? In the light of the death and destruction to come, how could that possibly be important? . . .

Admittedly, it is very difficult for antiwar politicos to fit into, which often means `find employment in', a starkly pro-war U.S. political system. `Reasonable' pwoggie advocates are defined by the PTB as those who approve smaller escalations than the Republicans do, or preemptive wars only against opponents who are just too similar to Hitler. And so you see with Obama's latest yes to a military solution, as Lloyd documents, capitulation or whimpiness all along the top tier of progressive punditocracy. Hayden takes the whimpy road, a well inside the Beltway `reasonable' response that effectively does as little antiwar-wise as capitulation. Instead, what we need now is public abandonment (at the very least for the 2010 elections) of the two war parties and, following Josh Simpson, much more direct action - effective direct action - against the war.

And, also suggested by Simpson, antiwar activists need to criticize the troops (and praise, honor and support the non-troops, civilians who decide not to join the military despite the economic hardships that decision often involves). A start would be informing U.S. and other foreign troops that they are war criminals if they continue to participate in the unprovoked `aggressive wars' against and neocolonial occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. As this is the third in a series of articles documenting that war criminality, soldiers could just read this series and decide for themselves: what do they think about our occupation soldiers' standard mode of operation? The first in the series, I apologize if it was too bold and lacking in context for an opener, was Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are war criminals. The second, providing evidence and context the first may have lacked, War criminality, in U.S. soldiers' words. (Yesterday's poem was Support the Non-Troops I, btw.)

War criminality is a very hard thing to recognize in oneself, but the consequences of denial are (also) devastating, as Lewis and Johnson and many other vets tell us. Soldiers should free themselves of the lies/psyops and take the only honorable stand by refusing to serve in Afghanistan or Iraq. If the U.S. (or Britain) decides to punish doing the right thing, soldiers should accept that with great pride, and we civilians need to support those new non-troops. For example, JoeGlenton, Ehren Watada, Travis Bishop and all who resist within the military.