[A-List] Bringing the war home - IVAW on "patrol" from Union Station to Arlington National Cemetery

["Leigh Meyers" <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

Outside the Metro station were about eight civilians with white
T-shirts over their winter clothes. In real life, they are antiwar
activists. On this day they played suspects and bystanders in a war
zone patrolled by an edgy occupying army.

Shouts and curses, shoving and arm-twisting, from Reppenhagen and his
men: "Don't move!" "Get down on the ground!" "Do I have to shoot you,
or are you going to stay still?"

The soldiers twisted on the cuffs and adjusted the hoods, then
ordered, "Get 'em out of here!"

In two frantic minutes the scene was over; the civilians moved on to
the next location outside CNN and Fox News, and the soldiers continued
their patrol.



This could spread...

The video onsite is quite good. 10 second commercial.


Far From Iraq, A Demonstration Of a War Zone

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901558.html?nav=rss_world/mideast/iraq

There's a lot of weirdness every day in the capital city, but this one
pushed the envelope: 13 Iraq war veterans in full desert camo going on
"patrol" from Union Station to Arlington National Cemetery. They
carried imaginary assault rifles, barked commands, roughly "detained"
suspected hostiles with flex cuffs and hoods -- and generally shocked,
frightened and delighted tourists and office workers.

"How does occupation feel, D.C.?!" shouted Geoff Millard, head of the
local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who previously served
on a brigadier general's staff in Tikrit.

They cut a swath across downtown, taking imaginary sniper fire and
casualties on the grounds of the Capitol and the Washington Monument,
scouting the White House, performing mock arrests at the foot of the
Capitol steps and a vehicle search on the Mall. At the Capitol, the
veterans almost got detained themselves by civilian peace officers
with real guns. The vets brought their act to a military recruiting
station on L Street NW and concluded with a memorial ceremony in the
cemetery.

The 12 men and one woman included one veteran of Afghanistan, and they
represented the Army, Marines and Navy. They were young, intense,
disillusioned. Home from the war, on yesterday's fourth anniversary of
the Iraq invasion, they wanted to bring the war home to Washington.

They called it Operation First Casualty -- citing the adage that truth
is the first casualty of war. The premise of their guerrilla-theater
incursion was that, for all the yellow ribbons and "support the
troops" sloganeering, life goes on at home pretty much oblivious to
what it's like for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

"When I got home, the hardest thing for me was realizing the war does
not exist here," said Aaron Hughes of Chicago, who was a sergeant in a
transportation unit that convoyed troops and supplies in and out of
Iraq from Kuwait.

The gonzo lost patrol stayed earnestly in character for much of the
day, which meant creeping down the arcade outside Union Station in
formation at about 8:15 a.m. "Danger area ahead," warned patrol leader
Garett Reppenhagen, a former Army sniper with the 1st Infantry
Division.

They held their left arms out straight, like gun barrels, and gripped
imaginary triggers with their right hands. He signaled for his men to
sprint two by two through the arcade, past the Thunder Grill, to the
Metro entrance.

Outside the Metro station were about eight civilians with white
T-shirts over their winter clothes. In real life, they are antiwar
activists. On this day they played suspects and bystanders in a war
zone patrolled by an edgy occupying army.

Shouts and curses, shoving and arm-twisting, from Reppenhagen and his
men: "Don't move!" "Get down on the ground!" "Do I have to shoot you,
or are you going to stay still?"

The soldiers twisted on the cuffs and adjusted the hoods, then
ordered, "Get 'em out of here!"

In two frantic minutes the scene was over; the civilians moved on to
the next location outside CNN and Fox News, and the soldiers continued
their patrol.

"Way off the hook," said a man on his way to work.

This is the way it is on patrol, the vets said. You can't take
chances, which means you can't treat people like human beings.

Motorists halted for the strangely alert, cautious, crouching column.
Men and women in the workaday uniforms of trench coats and business
suits got tangled in the advance. While explanatory fliers were handed
out, not everybody got the message.

"I don't know what they're doing, but they're in everybody's way,"
said Janet Ruck, a career counselor in Washington. Upon hearing an
explanation, she said, "So they were intentionally getting in people's
way. I don't think that people have lost touch or forgotten [about the
war]. I don't think this is the way to get people to connect."

"At first I was scared," said Maria Rave, a restaurant owner from
Maine who saw the platoon reenact visions of a sniper attack, near the
Smithsonian Castle.

"We weren't sure what they were doing, but it's kind of cool," said
Glenn Gebhart, an IT consultant from Rochester, N.Y. "We're all in
favor of the message," said his friend Chris Santillo, a martial arts
teacher from Alexandria.

All day, an alien context was being imposed on familiar streets and
tourist zones. The new frames of reference made for little epiphanies.
For example, through the eyes of a soldier, potentially hostile cities
all look alike. The soldier reduces every feature to threats or places
of shelter.

"Watch the windows," called Reppenhagen.

The windows? That's Goodies Deli.

"We got a long danger area!"

No, those are the steps and promenades to Upper Senate Park, adjacent
to the Capitol. The soldiers took cover behind the marble.

"I feel like Forrest Gump, desert style," said Mark Lachance of
Philadelphia, formerly a scout in the 1st Infantry, now zigzagging up
to the Capitol.

U.S. Capitol Police officers held the patrol on the grass briefly,
mulling its lack of a permit, then let the vets go. A mounted Park
Police officer approached the patrol. "Do you guys have any weapons?"
she asked.

They are all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group that
claims about 400 members nationwide and calls for immediate U.S.
withdrawal. "We are the troops," said Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of
the group. "Supporting the troops means not sending us into a war
based on lies."

After lunch by the Washington Monument -- five of these antiwar vets
are vegetarians -- it was back on patrol. The day ended at Arlington
Cemetery. They saluted the fallen, remembered dead friends.

Then they removed their uniform shirts, a symbolic leave-taking from
the war and from the roles they had taken up once more. Many had found
it troubling, acting like soldiers again.

"I definitely feel it," Reppenhagen said. "We don't want to act like
soldiers. We felt we had to for today to help express the honesty of
the war. But we want to revert back to being veterans and civilians."

--30--