Iraq Veterans Against the War demonstrate in Ansbach

by Coilín Mon May 21, 2007 20:40

“JUST SAY NO!”
U.S. Iraq War veterans come to Germany to work for peace, 11-24 May 2007

Today (11 May), three members of Iraq Veterans Against The War (IVAW) arrived in Germany to assist the local population in Ansbach in Franconia in their resistance to the U.S. Army’s plans to expand the military base there. Anti-war veterans Thomas Cassidy, Jeff Engelhart and Adam Kokesh will be staying until May 24th in order to reach as many U.S. soldiers and military dependents as possible.

The high point for the Iraq War veterans will be the rally outside the gates of the U.S. barracks in Ansbach-Katterbach as part of the Ansbach Week of Action “Signals Against War”, directed against the planned official military ceremony on May 24th, when more than half the 5,500 U.S. troops stationed in Ansbach will receive their marching orders for the war in Iraq, where they will have to bear being deployed in the northern part of the country for at least fifteen months, along with thousands of other U.S. soldiers trained in Germany.

“We are calling this campaign ‘Just Say NO!’,” says Darnell Stephen Summers of the Stop The War Brigade, an organization of U.S. war veterans and soldiers formed in Germany in 1990. Summers spoke at this year’s Easter peace march in Ansbach. Together with Ansbach citizens and local peace activists, he planned bringing the Iraq veterans to Ansbach so that they can report on their experiences at first hand. “The soldiers can say No to this war, and so can Germany,” emphasizes Summers.

After mass protests took place recently in Italy against the enlargement of the U.S. base in Vicenza, resistance is also increasing sharply in Germany, where more than 45,000 troops, the majority of the U.S. forces in Europe, are stationed. Ansbach, located in rural northern Bavaria, in Central Franconia, has been selected as a pilot project, one of the four other giant main U.S. military bases to remain in Europe, the fifth being Vicenza. These five bases will be the central hubs for current and future military adventurism by the U.S.A. in Africa and the Middle East. For this geostrategic region, U.S. military activities are directed from EUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart.

When he explains why he is coming to Germany, Adam Kokesh says, “I want to do everything in my power to stop the war.” A former Marine sergeant who is now studying political science in Washington, Kokesh was once an enthusiastic Marine volunteer. Today, he wears a black T-shirt with the inscription “We must not be silent” in Arabic. This quotation from the U.S. anti-war movement, which is direct against the fact that the U.S.A. is constantly violating fundamental human rights and the law of nations, is derived from the motto of the German anti-Nazi group, the White Rose, “I will not be silent!”

Engelhart and Cassidy were deployed both to Kosovo and to Iraq. Their “home base” was another main U.S. military site in Europe, Grafenwöhr in northeastern Bavaria, where the U.S. Army hires thousands of German “bit players” every year to play the role of Iraqis on its huge training area. The two can inform the German public not only about the violation of human rights on U.S. bases, but also about the continuing environmental destruction there. The local population also suffers massively from aircraft noise until two in the morning, which keeps thousands awake, whether in Ramstein, Spangdahlem or Ansbach. “Etz langt’s!” (“Enough is enough!” in the local dialect) is the motto and name of the citizens’ action group in Ansbach.

In the past three months, the citizens have created a broad-based opposition to the U.S. Army’s plans for enlargement, which would make Ansbach into the largest helicopter base outside the U.S.A., and a marshaling yard for their deployments in theaters of war; they are resisting the construction of a ghetto-like barracks on Urlas hill above Ansbach with massive civic protests. The opposition movement wants to prevent further militarization of their home, and is led by the Lutheran pastor Hansjörg Meyer. It includes not only environmental and peace groups, but also members of all the parties represented in the Bundestag (except the FDP, which plays only a minor role in Ansbach).

Until now, the citizens who seek to block the plans for enlargement have been called “anti-American” again and again, something which is still being used to silence people in Germany, with its unhappy history. Despite this, many people are saying “There must be limits,” and emphasize that in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-46, the ‘major war criminals’ were sentenced for “preparing a war of aggression”. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany adopted this principle in Article 26, which prohibits preparing for or carrying out such a war. Today, many are convinced that the U.S.A. is violating this, and that German territory is once again the site of war crimes. This view is also expressed in the Appeal from Ansbach of the Ansbach Alliance for Peace (a member of the citizens’ action group), which demands that the Federal government review the rights of the U.S. Army in Germany under the stationing-of-forces agreements.

The Ansbach action group is firmly convinced that the great majority of Americans share this view, even many of the U.S. soldiers and their families, who secretly oppose their deployment to Iraq. This is why it has invited the Iraq War veterans to come to Ansbach, in order to make it clear to their opponents that a new German-American friendship opposed to the war is possible.

by Coilín Mon May 21, 2007 20:45

More from the press release for the Ansbach week of action:

One of the complaints of the citizens of Ansbach about the plans of the U.S. Army for their community is the high walls that are to be built around the military compound, separating the Americans from the German community. Supposedly this is being done to protect the Americans from terrorists, but some think it is intended to separate them from a German population, the great majority of whom do not agree with current U.S. policy. The U.S. Iraq War veterans plan to do everything they can to help the Ansbach community “tear down that wall”.

A start may have already been made with the strong German public support for Iraq veteran and conscientious objector Agustín Aguayo, whose court martial in Würzburg on March 6, 2007, gained international attention. Convicted of desertion after he resisted being brought by force to Iraq from Schweinfurt for a second deployment, Agustín was confined for nearly eight months in the U.S. military detention center in Mannheim, Germany. Amnesty International adopted him as a “Prisoner of Conscience.”

Agustín flew out of Frankfurt yesterday (10 May), finally on his way home to his family in California, though still facing further legal battles appealing the conviction of desertion and his bad-conduct discharge.

Of his time in Mannheim, Agustin said yesterday: "Sometimes you can feel so isolated in there that at certain moments the only thing you can hope for is to hear from someone outside through a letter. And I would get the most surprising, encouraging, inspiring messages, many also saying, ‘I'm sorry, my English isn't so good’. Hundreds and hundreds of letters and postcards! But in Mannheim prison I was only allowed to write ten letters a month, so I couldn't answer many of them. I want everyone in Germany to know how much I thank them for letting me know there are so many who care about the same things I do."

by Coilín Mon May 21, 2007 20:48

Lots of interesting detail here.
Best,
Coilín.

IVAW die-in in Ansbach with Vietnam Veterans Against the War in the background

by Coilín Tue May 29, 2007 15:31

Good to see that Indymedia Ireland is being read as far abroad as Santa Fe, and serving as a source of news about the international peace movement for local readers in the US. See excerpt from the Santa Fe New Mexican below.

Best,
Coilín.

Iraq veteran marches in Germany protest
By Bob Quick | The New Mexican
May 23, 2007

A former Marine sergeant from Santa Fe is taking part in an ongoing protest against the war in Iraq being held this week in the small southern German city of Ansbach.

Adam Kokesh, whose father is Charles Kokesh, a Santa Fe venture capitalist, founder of a firm called Technology Funding and owner of the Santa Fe Horse Park, served in Iraq in 2004 after volunteering for duty there.

“I served in the Falljuah area from February to September and received the Combat Action Ribbon and Navy Commendation medal for my service,” Adam Kokesh said in a statement on his Web site.

Adam Kokesh couldn’t be reached Tuesday, but an employee of Technology Funding said ex-Marine is a graduate of the former Native American Preparatory School in the village of South San Isidro, near Pecos.

Charles Kokesh declined to comment.

According to a Web site called Indymedia Ireland, which has a reporter covering the event, Adam Kokesh is in Ansbach taking part in a protest against the war in Iraq and also against the U.S. military’s plan to expand its base in Ansbach.

...

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/61749.html

by Coilín Tue May 29, 2007 15:39

At this Google address, you can see (without any fancy video players) a video of an Arte Info news program on the American Vets against War, including the die-in in Ansbach:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=488037388152294...og-sl

Best,
Coilín.