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A Grave Injustice Has Been Done
excerpts from a report by Dahr Jamail. August 5, 2005
These Veterans for Peace are actively living the statement of purpose of the organization, having pledged to work with others towards increasing public awareness of the costs of war, to work to restrain their government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations and to see justice for veterans and victims of war, among other goals.
Alex Ryabov tells of his unit firing the wrong artillery rounds which hit 5-10 km from their intended target. “We have no idea where those rounds fell, or what they hit,” he says quietly while two of the men hold their heads in their hands, “Now we’ve come to these realizations and we’re trying to educate people to save them from going through the same thing.”
“I didn’t want to kill another soul for no reason. That’s it,” adds Abdul Henderson, “We were firing into small towns….you see people just running, cars going, guys falling off bikes…it was just sad. You just sit there and look through your binos and see things blowing up, and you think, man they have no water, living in the third world, and we’re just bombing them to hell. Blowing up buildings, shrapnel tearing people to shreds.”
Harvey Tharp jumps in and adds, “Most of what we’re talking about is war crimes…war crimes because they are directed by our government for power projection. My easy answer for not going is PTSD…but the deeper moral reason is that I didn’t want to be involved in a crime against humanity.”
Ryabov then adds, “We were put in a foreign country to fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, what have we done?”
You have been reading excerpts from "What Have We Done?" by Dahr Jamail. You can read the entire piece here: /tinyurl.com/c4j5a. Thanks to Dahr Jamail for everything, including his blog: dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog. We visit often and we hope you will too.
excerpts from a report by Dahr Jamail. August 5, 2005
These Veterans for Peace are actively living the statement of purpose of the organization, having pledged to work with others towards increasing public awareness of the costs of war, to work to restrain their government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations and to see justice for veterans and victims of war, among other goals.
Alex Ryabov tells of his unit firing the wrong artillery rounds which hit 5-10 km from their intended target. “We have no idea where those rounds fell, or what they hit,” he says quietly while two of the men hold their heads in their hands, “Now we’ve come to these realizations and we’re trying to educate people to save them from going through the same thing.”
“I didn’t want to kill another soul for no reason. That’s it,” adds Abdul Henderson, “We were firing into small towns….you see people just running, cars going, guys falling off bikes…it was just sad. You just sit there and look through your binos and see things blowing up, and you think, man they have no water, living in the third world, and we’re just bombing them to hell. Blowing up buildings, shrapnel tearing people to shreds.”
Harvey Tharp jumps in and adds, “Most of what we’re talking about is war crimes…war crimes because they are directed by our government for power projection. My easy answer for not going is PTSD…but the deeper moral reason is that I didn’t want to be involved in a crime against humanity.”
Ryabov then adds, “We were put in a foreign country to fire artillery and kill people…and it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place. It’s hard to put into words the full tragedy of it-the death and suffering on both sides. I feel a grave injustice has been done and I’m trying to correct it. You do all these things and come back and think, what have we done?”
You have been reading excerpts from "What Have We Done?" by Dahr Jamail. You can read the entire piece here: /tinyurl.com/c4j5a. Thanks to Dahr Jamail for everything, including his blog: dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog. We visit often and we hope you will too.
