Examined lives in the shadow of Iraq.

IN HER 1964 BOOK Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt attributed Adolph Eichmann's participation in Nazism not so much to any malevolent intent as to his very ordinary refusal to think--that is, his failure to reflect on the meaning of surrounding phenomena and to reexamine his life and beliefs accordingly. Arendt's insight is that thinking is vital to ethics: ongoing reflection on the way that abstract values take shape in our lives demands courage and integrity and keeps us human ("an unexamined life is no life for a human being," as Socrates famously put it) while mental indolence not only stunts our intellect but reduces ethics to cliches and insulates corrupt societies from criticism.

Arendt's warning about the dangers of thoughtlessness seem particularly relevant today as sound-bites about "patriotism" and "pride" increasingly drown out honest political discussion. In these dark times, three individuals in the antiwar movement, each with a military background, who spoke in April 2005 at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, offered refreshing glimpses of what it can mean for Americans today to lead examined lives. Theses representatives of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and Military Families Speak Out (MFSO): Mark Hartford, Teresa Fowler Dawson, and Bobby Hanafin, shared stories with us that revealed their courage, not only as internal critics of the military but as human beings trying to face honestly the truths that confound our beliefs and the difficulties of living up to professed values.

As a teenager, Mark Hartford fell into the army like many young people fall into summer jobs. "I didn't have a serious thought in my head," he told us. "I dropped out of college and had no other plans, so I joined the army." Hartford was sent to the "demilitarized zone" between North and South Korea where, for thirteen months, he served on guard duty, night ambush patrols, and search-and-destroy sweeps. When he returned to the United States he was a nineteen-year-old alcoholic and adrenaline junkie. Forty years later he has overcome the alcoholism but continues to struggle with the impact of those thirteen months in Korea. "War rewires your brain," he says. Among other effects, the constant near-death and adrenaline-pumping experiences addict a person to risk.

Hartford's first priority upon his return was to gain an education and to provide for his new wife and child. But soon thereafter a buddy proposed that Hartford join him in organizing VVAW chapters on the west coast. Hartford, who knew the deep toll that combat takes on young men, was ripe for the job. Together they toured college campuses organizing veterans and providing them with counsel, often listening as young men relived memories of violence. In a defining moment for him Hartford recalls "holding a twenty-three-year-old vet in my arms as he lay crying over what he had become."

Many people ignore the human fallout of war, choosing to keep homeless veterans out of their neighborhoods and to bury uncomfortable truths in "pride;" proceeding untroubled by our nation's engagement in massive violence. Hartford, however, seems driven to face the shameful implications of what he calls "a militarized society" and to restore in his everyday life some of the humanity that militarism robs from us.

"It helps fight the demons," he says when asked about his devotion to antiwar activism. He "fights the demons" by advocating nonviolence and connecting with people our society has forgotten. As a VVAW activist, for instance, he has participated in resistance to U.S.-sponsored wars in Central America as well as efforts to reduce the number of homeless in Columbus, Ohio, many of whom are veterans.

Sensitive to the human complications of war, Hartford challenges us to face the realities of violence that exceed between-commercial newsflashes and the euphemistic reports of policymakers. Pundits may tout Iraqi elections as a sign of progress, for instance, but the experience of Vietnam should make us wary. Hartford recalls a New York Times article from September 4, 1967, which reported, "U.S. officials were surprised and heartened by the turnout in successful [Vietnam] elections." However, "after this 'successful' election,'" says Hartford, "40,000 more U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese died." The Iraq death toll hasn't yet approached these proportions, but Iraq has witnessed a similar upsurge of violence following national elections. The death rate resembles that of the first years of Vietnam, and the overall U.S. military death count in Iraq has surpassed 2,000. Injuries, too, will haunt us long after treaties are signed. While many Vietnam veterans are marked by waist-down paralysis, as well as physical and psychological damage from exposure to Agent Orange, Hartford predicts that the signature injury of the current war will be traumatic brain injury (TBI). "The new equipment is so good," he explains, "that soldiers can survive when a blast should have killed them, but they experience the equivalent of shaken baby syndrome. Their brain is shaken up inside their head.... The damage is invisible and emerges slowly, but it affects you for the rest of your life."

Pursuing further this world beyond our television screens, Hartford reminds us that "Iraq is not a war, it's a country." References to "military targets" and "collateral damage," he says, allow us to forget that "enduring military installations have been built on the rubble of historic towns" and that "25,000 to 100,000 ordinary Iraqis--civilians--have been hurt by American military actions." In response to a question from the audience about the appropriateness of democracy in Iraq, he answers that he "cannot say what is right for Iraq" but only that "democracy can't be spread through the military."

"Pride" and facile slogans like "Support the Troops" may be generally more comforting than the concerns Hartford raises about the human costs of war and the limits of U.S. military power, but they gloss over policy contradictions--notably, the escalation of violence and the surge of anti-Americanism that has mounted in Iraq since the attempt to "bring democracy" to that country. Calls to "support the troops" also evade conflicts within the military. In Vietnam, says Hartford, the soldiers' resentment of officers was so severe that by 1969 GI anti-war magazines were advertising rewards for killing officers. According to Hartford, Weldon Honeycutt, the lieutenant colonel who led "the Battle of Hamburger Hill" (so named for the numerous bodies it ground up and its lack of purpose other than the colonel's career advancement), "had a $10,000 bounty placed on his head, all the money collected from soldiers."

Notwithstanding his blunt criticism of U.S. military policy, Hartford still considers himself a patriot. Smiling, he recalled how once a counter-protester charged him with never risking his life for his country. "I informed him that I had risked my life for my country." Turning more serious, he added that he would do so again. The university audience was stilled by his words, perhaps because none of us had ever offered our lives for something larger. And perhaps because we could see that through his activism Hartford is, in fact, giving his life once again for his country.

Teresa Fowler Dawson, daughter of a marine and the mother of two citizen soldiers, defies stereotypes of both mothers and military people. Her maternal ties drive her efforts to expose the truth behind the United States' preemptive war in Iraq. While many Americans are content to leave political judgment to media pundits, Dawson--with a daughter in the coast guard and a national guard son who was sent to Iraq--has "made it her business to know what this war was about." Upon studying multiple government reports and comparing newspapers from around the world, she found that the evidence for going to war simply "didn't add up" and determined that the administration was "inventing reasons as suited the occasion." Having done her homework, Dawson isn't afraid to speak out and has represented MFSO in educational forums throughout Ohio.

At the same time, like most military people, Dawson remains committed to her country and its defense. Patriotism for her, however, doesn't mean relinquishing her critical faculties and marching lockstep with every U.S. policy. "Some people tell me that criticizing our country in wartime is unpatriotic," she told us. "I tell them that I had my flag out before 9/11." If her patriotism runs deeper than a jingoistic sense of ethnic superiority, it is fueled by her activist sense of public service, for which she finds inspiration in the words of Theodore Roosevelt: "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

As a military morn, Dawson is particularly mindful of the way that individual soldiers pay the price of reckless military policy. She told the university audience the story of Kevin Benderman who "was ordered to shoot at young children throwing rocks. Young children." And because he refused to shoot," she adds, "his officer called him a coward." Furthermore, because Benderman refused to return to Iraq, he now faces a sentence of up to nine years--"More time," notes Dawson, "than anyone involved with Abu Ghraib," the prison torture scandal.

Dawson's son remains in Iraq but he is troubled by his role there. Dawson told of a recent phone call she had received from him as he was sitting poolside on a "rest and relaxation" break. "You're always complaining about the heat," Dawson told him. "Why don't you go in the pool?" "Mom," he responded, "there are kids on the other side of the fence drinking sewer water. I don't feel right about going into a pool."

Sensitive to the predicament of soldiers caught in the middle of an ill-defined war, Dawson is angered by people who turn "Support the Troops" into a feel-good slogan to stick on their car windows. "Those yellow ribbon magnets won't keep my son safe from sniper bullets nor will they keep him cool in 120 degree heat. If you want to do something to support the troops, write to your senator and tell him to send the troops home."

Concluding on a more optimistic note, Dawson quoted Lyndon B. Johnson who said he "knew the [Vietnam] war was over" when he "saw 800,000 protestors in the streets." Hartford also noted that Johnson made this statement in 1968, after which thousands more Americans died. Nonetheless, if the war in Iraq will be a long one, Dawson's point remains that, with firm and collective effort, we can stem the violence. She finds hope for grassroots social change in young activists. Regarding "some of the students I met during lunch" at the university, she said, "I was thanking God they are thinkers and doers. It makes me feel better knowing there are other college students out there who, like my own college-student son, care very much about the future they will inherit."

Bobby Hanafin--or, as he likes to call himself, "Army Dad" in reference to his son who recently completed two combat tours in Iraq--served as a grunt in Vietnam and as an intelligence officer during the first Gulf War. He entered the army in 1969 under Robert McNamara's Project 100,000. "The army lowered entry standards to accept high school dropouts, people with low IQs bordering on the mentally ill, and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans who couldn't speak English," he told the audience. "The first place the army marched us when we went to boot camp was to a GED office where they gave us a few classes and handed us a rubber stamped high school equivalency certificate in order to be able to tell Congress that its standards weren't lowered."

Having been shortchanged on education once, Hanafin later used GI education benefits to earn his college degree. He stressed the importance of community colleges in enabling veterans to gain an affordable education. "Of course," he adds, "we really had to do the work then, and learn."

Hanafin "reluctantly" joined MFSO in 2004 when both major presidential candidates--Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry--failed to review the questionable reasons proffered for invading Iraq, to take seriously the war's many costs, or to offer an exit strategy. Hanafin explained how he now engages in counter-recruitment activism but stressed that, "having spent thirty years in uniform I could never take a straight anti-military approach." Rather he informs potential recruits about the military's "downside" and the Bush administration's poor treatment of veterans--not in order to disparage the military but to provide a more balanced review. "The military had positives to offer [me]," he says, "but when military recruiters only present the positives, especially during wartime, that is unethical."

Ironically, along with counter recruitment, Hanafin also participates in a local pro-draft group, Americans for Shared Sacrifice. "Our approach to antiwar is probably the most unique in history," he said. We're "an antiwar group proposing national conscription in order to wake the populace up to the dangers [of war] and to gain recruits for the overall antiwar movement." The draft is crucial to the antiwar movement, he explained, because "the main ingredient missing in the current antiwar movement is the radical participation of our college campuses.... And our campuses will not get involved unless there is the serious and believable threat of the draft."

An effective antiwar movement, Hanafin added, must also include military people. He believes that too often "the peace movement is made up of the academic intelligentsia who can be easily discredited for not knowing about war." Furthermore, he points out, veterans can lend legitimacy to the peace movement as well as help focus criticism on the current war, as opposed to targeting the military per se.

Retaining respect for the military and military personnel is important to Hanafin, not only for broad appeal but also for ethical reasons. Thus he takes care to distinguish his opposition to the current war from his feelings toward individual servicemen and women, many of whom have been pressured by what some call "the poverty draft." And while he pursues counter recruitment his sympathy extends even to recruiters. "Well, they're in the wrong line of work," he told the audience, "but after spending nearly thirty years in uniform, I can tell you that, even in the best of times, military recruitment duty is not a voluntary assignment.... No one in their right mind wants that duty during an unpopular war."

Underscoring his defiance of the "peacenik" stereotype, Hanafin declared he is "a card-carrying Republican." His views seem less determined by any party affiliation, however, than by his analysis of who pays and who profits by current policy: "Bottom line is that our tax dollars are going for tax cuts for the wealthiest minority among us, while we mortgage our children's future to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... and the defense industry takes advantage of the situation to profit.... The only people in our society asked to truly sacrifice are military families who pay with their loved ones' lives."

Hanafin balanced his strong antiwar views with a concern for plurality within the peace movement. "Mark Hartford is from the left wing and I'm from the right wing of the antiwar movement," he mused, adding that "people don't realize it but there is a lot of diversity within the movement." Some progressives have expressed concern about such diversity, warning that a strong military presence could reduce the peace movement's radical critique of militarism to mere demands for smarter military strategy. But the diversity that Hanafin affirms involves not only a divide between military and nonmilitary activists but a heterogeneity within each of these groups reflecting both position-determined interests as well as individuals' efforts to grapple with complicated historical situations and their refusal to be pegged to a label that reduces politics to ready-made positions. What these "right-wing, left-wing," and other contingents of the peace movement share, both Hanafin and Hartford stressed, is a commitment to ending unnecessary bloodshed, and they brought their diverse insights and experiences to bear on this project.

After returning home from the forum I saw a reservist in uniform walk down my street. I cringed at the military presence in my neighborhood. But our speakers' comments prevented me from easily categorizing him. I thought about how he may have entered the army through "the poverty draft," how he may care deeply about defending the United States, how he may have a mother who is sparking real debate about the war, and how, if sent to Iraq, he will likely return permanently maimed in one way or another. Both he and I need to ask ourselves tough questions about who we call our enemies and how we can engage them in a way that doesn't destroy our own humanity.

Shari Stone-Mediatore is an associate professor of philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University and the author of Reading Across Borders: Storytelling and Knowledges of Resistance (Palgrave 2003).