They Sent Me to Distant Lands to Fight Against Muslims ... Then I Became One

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted April 9, 2009.

"I went downhill real fast," he recalls, "and it didn't come out good. If that happens again," he told me earnestly, "I need somebody right there, and I don't know if the imam could handle everything that would happen."   

Another breakdown might cost him his Ph.D. He knows that as a convicted felon, he will have to go "an extra 10 steps to get there."  
When he applied for transfer to a four-year college, some of his interviews were more like interrogations. He had to provide convincing answers to questions such as, "What makes you think you're not going to backslide?"  

And when one of his classmates opined that felons are a waste of social service resources because they will never change, Mike just got up and left the classroom. But he came back -- he was "too scared about not getting A's" to make an issue of the slight.

But "felon" isn't the only label Mike carries -- he is also a veteran. Although veterans may appear to be the flavor of the week in many circles, the caricature of the troubled, addicted, angry misfit is often close beneath the surface. Faculty and students alike often slip into blaming soldiers for the policies of the government and military.  

Steve Darman, who teaches sociology at SUNY and is at the epicenter of activism on behalf of Oneida County's veterans, says that "professors and students who make facile remarks about the wars and how misguided and/or stupid they are really piss these guys off -- and not necessarily because they are pro-war."

Pro or con, right or wrong, our veterans have learned something about what war is really like, what it really does to people, something that those of us who have never been might find useful if we're serious about pushing back against our nation's militaristic policies and institutions.

Comparing the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor with that of the Twin Towers, Michael Hayden, who in 2001 was director of the National Security Agency, said, "perhaps it was more of a failure of imagination than last time."   

Certainly, the vast majority of Americans failed to imagine what the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq would really cost. Author Robert Lifton has said that the task of our times to "imagine the real."

Our veterans might be able to help with that, if we are willing to listen. Having been in both wars, Mike is convinced that, "we will never win either, because Muslims have more fighting spirit than any Americans." 

Imagine that.

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Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.

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