Katie Rucke
Mint Press felt compelled to highlight all of the deaths that have occurred as a result of war, specifically the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, about 4,500 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in addition to the 122,000 Iraqi civilians that were murdered. In Afghanistan, about 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died. And while there is no official single figure for the total civilian deaths in Afghanistan, estimates place the total around 19,000. Mint Press spoke with five veterans — men, women, gay, straight, those in leadership positions and those in lower ranks, soldiers who were on the frontlines, and those who were not — about their experience.
In this five-part series, we’re sharing the stories of Leah Bolger, Mike Prysner, Jenny Pacanowski, Wes Davey and Chante Wolf, in order to highlight the largely untold horrors of war that peace options could have prevented.
Mike Prysner: Co-founder March Forward!, an organization of active-duty members of the U.S. military and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that encourages active military personnel to resist deployment.
- Joined the military in 2001 when he was 17 and ended service in 2005
- Served as a radar operator in the U.S. Army
- Testified about U.S. war crimes in the war in Iraq at the “Winter Soldier Hearings” in New York in 2008
“Before I entered the military, I saw the U.S. military as the greatest, most heroic force in the world. This is something I was taught from a very young age through educational institutions, American culture and elected officials that U.S. foreign policy’s purpose is to defend friends and family, and advance human rights and democracy abroad. I believed what we were supposed to believe.”
Prysner said he volunteered to fight Iraq, but says after spending a few weeks in the country his views changed not only about his role in the war, but about the war in general.
“In March 2003 the main part of the mission, [he believed], was to find weapons of mass destruction,” Prysner said, sharing that this is why he was confused by all the “No Blood for Oil” protests that occurred in the U.S. before his deployment. “I thought I was going to help the Iraqi people, but we were hated by them.”
Prysner says it was a combination of events that caused him to question the United States’ role in Iraq, but says the event that impacted him most was when he went into the homes of Iraqi civilians. “I was conflicted morally,” he shared. “My interaction with Iraqi people — searching their homes, detaining people — was a terrifying experience for them.”
More than five million Iraqis have been displaced so far, and pro-peace organizations such as Courage to Resist point out that the atrocities the U.S. has committed against the Iraqi people, such as bombing powdered milk factories and destroying water purification facilities, have largely been absent from the mainstream media’s coverage of America’s “liberated Iraq.”
Prysner spent 12 months in Iraq, doing everything from prisoner interrogations, to ground surveillance missions, to home raids, and says it was his firsthand experiences in Iraq that radicalized him.
“I believed I was going to Iraq to help liberate and better the lives of an oppressed people, but I soon realized that my purpose in Iraq was to be the oppressor and to clear the way for U.S. corporations with no regard for human life,” he said.
As Prysner shared in his testimony at the Winter Soldier Hearings in 2008, he realized that the U.S. was not fighting terrorists like the government claimed, but the U.S. soldiers like himself were the terrorists and terrorism was occupying innocent nations like Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It has long been used to justify the killing, subjugation and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon deployed by this government. It is a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship. It is more destructive than an artillery shell, or a bunker buster or a tomahawk missile. While all of those weapons are created and owned by this government, they are harmless without people willing to use them.”
While stationed in Iraq, Prysner wrote a letter to controversial U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore in September 2003 questioning the war, which Moore circulated online. Prysner received a lot of threats and intimidation from his chain-of-command and fellow officers for writing the letter, so he decided to wait until he left the war before he vocalized his opposition again.
While his military leaders may have disagreed with his belief that it was necessary to end the bloodshed in Iraq, Prysner says the public has been generally supportive of his work for pro-peace groups like March Forward. “The general public was opposed to the Iraq War and War in Afghanistan. Two-thirds of the public want to end the war,” he said.
But unfortunately, “we have a system that cares about maximizing profits … the Iraq War was a war for profit.
“The role of the military should look similar to countries like Cuba … the Cuban military exists for the defense of the county, not colonial domination or expansion … The U.S. military is the opposite … we defend the interests of corporations instead of the vast majority of people.”
Though Prysner has become known nationally for his work in the peace movement, he says his story is not unique. “I”m just one of many veterans who has had a political transformation and became active against the war.”