These are times...

To:  Retort
From: IB & SB

It was Mark Lane who suggested the name "Winter Soldier" for the Vietnam war crimes investigation in January 1971, evoking a phrase from the opening lines of Tom Paine's December 1776 pamphlet The American Crisis -  "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots".  The event met with a total blackout from the national media, until Senator Hatfield had the entire transcript read into the Congressional record two months later. This weekend's "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" has once more met with virtual silence, again with the honorable exception of Pacifica.  

Winter Soldier 2008 called for adequate health care for vets and an end to the occupation. It also demanded reparations for the people of Iraq, but that discussion was lost in the welter of American contrition and pain.  And who would begrudge traumatized soldiers the therapeutic possibilities in speaking publicly of atrocities committed and witnessed? Much more dubious, however, was the pervasive implication that contrite veterans have some privileged moral standpoint concerning the war, as is any presumption that McCain deserves extra slack because he was in the military.  The air in the KPFA studio was heavy with the tears and sympathy of the two anchors, as well as reports of their own internal states; they served up half-time replays of the emotional high spots in the testimony, spliced together over a maudlin neo-Ochsian sound track. 

There is a long history of soldiers posing for the camera. Summer Brenner sends this striking photograph taken in Camp Dodge, Iowa, in 1918.