Patrick TrautfieldThree members of Iraq Veterans Against the War spoke at Farmers’ Market and high schools in Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande last week.
The group was making a series of appearances before going on a national bus tour to speak out against the war and share their personal accounts in Iraq.
IVAW was founded by Iraq war veterans at the annual Veterans for Peace convention. Since its start in 2004, the group has called for immediate withdrawal of all troops, reparations for destruction in Iraq, and full benefits and adequate health care for returning servicemen and women, according to their Web site.
Iraq war veteran Joe Hatcher, 26, returned from his duty in March 2005, eight months of which were an involuntary extension, he said. Hatcher joined IVAW and helped run an antiwar blog while deployed in Iraq.
“We were so plugged in technologically,” he said, that he had access to the Internet while in Iraq. He said it made it a lot harder for him and his peers to separate the two worlds in which they lived because they still felt so connected to home.
Hatcher said the group had emphasized speaking at high schools to counter military recruiters and that they had been received fairly well in the county.
Sherry Lewis, a San Luis Obispo resident who works with Alternatives to Military Futures, helped arrange the high school visits for the group. She said her group’s goal is to show students that there are many options for them after they graduate, and that “the military is a lethal choice.”
At a high school visit, Hatcher said his group of three would typically speak about what IVAW does, “tell a few horror stories” from their personal experience, and then move into a question and answer format with the kids.
Hatcher said he was surprised at how intelligent and meaningful the students’ questions were.
“Most teenagers aren’t given enough credit,” he said, and that they are usually brushed off as kids.
“But this society is raising a generation of revolutionists.”
Hatcher is a Carlsbad, Calif. native, but currently lives in Olympia, Wash., which he said has been “an amazingly supportive community.” Hatcher said he is still experiencing side effects of Lariam, an antimalarial drug that he was required to take once a week while overseas. The drug is known to cause anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, and other, sometimes permanent, side effects.
“I haven’t had a clear dream in two years,” he said.
Iraq veteran Jeff Englehart, 26, who lives with Hatcher in Olympia, returned from service last year.
“At times it feels repressed in the back of my mind,” Englehart said of his experience in Iraq, but that the memories stay fresh by speaking about them all the time.
At one high school last week, the trio debated the war with staff members who were formerly in the military.
“It was incredible,” he said. “The students were very intelligent, asking solid, hard questions.”
Englehart also joined IVAW while in Iraq and spoke to patrons at Farmers’ Market Thursday. “We been getting so much support,” he said of the San Luis Obispo community.
Englehart said Congress’ recent action against the war was more of a symbolic gesture and that “the Democrats have just as much to gain in Iraq as (the Republicans).”
“In reality, it’s a one party system working for the wishes of a corporation,” he said.
The IVAW will start their national bus tour in March and plans to head to New Orleans for the anniversary of the war.
You can see the organization’s Web site at ivaw.org and see the antiwar blog “Fight to Survive” at ftssoldier.blogspot.org.