[Marxism] Profile on an antiwar veteran

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, October 29, 2004
PUBLIC LIVES
Back From Iraq, and Fighting for Soldiers
By LYNDA RICHARDSON

ALONG with, let's guess, perhaps a gazillion other Americans, Paul
Rieckhoff cannot wait for this presidential campaign to end. He was an
Army lieutenant who led a platoon in one of the most dangerous areas of
Baghdad for nearly a year until February. He now heads Operation Truth,
an advocacy group in New York for soldiers and returning war veterans.

"I want the election to be over with, then we can get down to brass
tacks," says Mr. Rieckhoff, a burly 29-year-old, his sneakered foot
propped on a messy desk. "We're not going away. The casualties are not
going away."

Mr. Rieckhoff says that the presidential campaign is so polarizing that
it is diverting attention from the truth about poor war planning,
overstretched troops and ill-equipped soldiers on the front lines. The
group's issues have been making news recently with the refusal of a
reserve unit in Iraq to deliver a fuel shipment in what the soldiers
called a suicide mission because of inadequate armor.

"At the very basic level, this is a validation of why we exist," Mr.
Rieckhoff says. "Troops have been saying this for a long time. It took
this revolt to understand what it means."

Mr. Rieckhoff's voice booms in a large open room crackling with the
caffeinated energy of a dot.com start-up. He sits among a handful of
young people with laptops, tapping onto the group's Web site,
www.optruth.org. It is not hard to spot him. There is a large American
flag behind his desk. He is the guy with the tree-trunk neck. He was
captain of the football team at his high school near Peekskill, N.Y.,
and a tight end at Amherst College, where he also was student government
president.

He is likable and intense, and talks in rapid-fire mode. He can be
irreverent, too. Take the issue of his bald head. "That's what happens
if you go to the desert for a year without sex and alcohol," he says.
"It falls out."

Don't get him started on the election. He wonders aloud whether the
presidential candidates are "smoking crack'' because of the way they are
jawing over the war, while troops in Iraq are in dire need of better
equipment, higher pay and family support.

"When it comes to the war, neither of them seems to have an honest
understanding of what is going on over there," he says. "They are so
detached from what is going on. They are so handled, and there's so
little spontaneity. People want to have an honest dialogue."

He won't reveal his choice for president. He says that he is a
registered independent and that the nonprofit group is not aligned with
any political party. But he took a bit of heat from conservatives after
he delivered a tough critique of the war in May in the Democratic
rebuttal to one of President Bush's weekly radio addresses. Mr.
Rieckhoff shrugs. He says the Democratic radio address gave him a chance
to gain national visibility. In 1998, he volunteered as a bus driver in
the failed Senate campaign of Geraldine A. Ferraro, a Democrat. He
shrugs again.

Mr. Rieckhoff started Operation Truth on credit cards this summer with a
friend whom he worked with at J. P. Morgan. It is run out of a leased
office in Lower Manhattan. He says the organization, with 170 Iraq
veterans from across the political spectrum, is about more than him.

"We've been right about every issue," says Mr. Rieckhoff, who says he is
speaking as a private citizen and prefers to be referred to in his
civilian capacity, not as a first lieutenant in the Army National Guard,
which he still is. "Tell me there is a connection to 9/11? There's not.
Are there weapons of mass destruction? There's not. Tell me the war will
be over soon? It won't. Tell me anything that isn't true and you can say
it's partisan. If George Washington himself was in office, cutting
combat pay, we'd be criticizing'' him.

Mr. Rieckhoff munches on a bagel, clicking on his computer, scooting
around in a swivel chair. He talks with his hands. He describes himself
as competitive, loving a good fight. "I dig it," he says. "Bring it on."

The son of a Con Edison electrician and a nurse, he was the first in his
family to go to college, and surprised just about everyone by enlisting
in the Army Reserve after graduating in 1998. He could have gone
straight to J. P. Morgan, but wanted a personal challenge. His father
and grandfather were drafted into the military.

"Because I didn't have to go didn't mean I shouldn't go,'' he says.
"Military service was just a part of life if you were middle-class or
lower-class."

LATER, while at J. P. Morgan, he transferred to the New York Army
National Guard to become an officer. He burned out on Wall Street after
two years, quitting a few days before Sept. 11, 2001. With war looming
in Iraq, he volunteered for active duty because he feared being left on
the sidelines.

As an infantry platoon leader of 38 men, he spent 10 months conducting
combat operations in central Baghdad. A few of his men were wounded. A
squad leader lost both legs. Mr. Rieckhoff is grateful they all returned
home alive.

He says Operation Truth is like therapy. He often works until midnight.
Across the room, his girlfriend, Laura Thomas, a rock musician who
shares his Lower East Side studio, nods her head vigorously. He grins.

"It's a healing process for all of us," he says. "We are able to come
together to talk about our experiences and to talk about solutions so we
can lessen the impact on the next round of guys."

--
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