April 18
GUEST: Gerry Condon, Vietnam era veteran, war resister, and President of Veterans For Peace, talks about veterans resisting the empire in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Ireland.Call on US troops to resist invading Venezuela
Gerry and I were in the military at about the same time, in the late 1960's. It wasn't a good time to be "serving" your country.
Gerry was a "Green Beret" and I was just a bewildered English teacher who was drafted after my first year on the job. I went into teaching in part because I didn't believe in the war, and certainly didn't trust our nation's leaders. Yet there I was being trained for Vietnam.
I was a poor and rebellious soldier. I wouldn't yell "kill" at bayonet practice. I snuck out off the base and got my share of Article 15 conduct charges. My biggest thrill was two days before graduation from bootcamp when the master sergeant proclaimed to all the other training sergeants that here was a man who had not been "broken." It was too late for them to do anything about it.
Gerry made a bigger transition, going from volunteering with the Green Beret to escaping from the Army and going to Canada. For the next six years he lived a life that I have often thought about. Why hadn't I done it myself? I guess I didn't want my parents to be ashamed in a small rural community, and I didn't want to lose my teaching license. In addition, I was making plans to marry. Conventional reasons.
Both trajectories came to the same place. Gerry and I came to understand the empire and what it does to the people that it occupies and oppresses. Neither of us were part of the two to three million killed in Vietnam. I came to Korea well after the empire had murdered three million in that country, although the history of US war crimes was just below the surface.
And both of us pledged to expose the empire's dirty wars wherever they occurred. We were both in Nicaragua in the 1980's. We have both visited Cuba.
My first documentary was "The Resisters," a compilation of interviews of those who either went to jail or escaped to Canada to resist the war. I learned a great deal doing the film, and later when George W became president, several of the people I interviewed urged me to "get out while you still can."
Being a veteran at Standing Rock was the first time I really considered that I was "serving" my country. It was an exhilarating feeling, one that Gerry must experience often during his various trips to expose the war crimes of the US military machine. True patriots don't let their countries turn into empires.
