Turning Point: When Soldiers Have Had Enough
By Nadya Williams
Stand up and repeat these words in marching cadence:
"I went down to the market
Where all the people shop
I pulled out my machete
And I began to chop
I went down to the park
Where all the children play
I took out my machine gun
And I began to spray"
This is a chant our young are taught to march to in our military today, and this is how two young veterans of the Iraq War begin their presentations to groups across the country.
Late last fall, Josh Stieber and Conor Curran spoke to a gathering of Veterans For Peace and civilian peace activists in San Francisco, as part of their six months of walking and biking from the East Coast to the West to engage in dialogue about war and to become involved in community service along the way. Both young men are from small American heartland towns - Josh from Maryland and Conor from Ohio. They did not know each other until after they got themselves out of the military. They spoke of their motivations for joining the Marines, their experiences in Iraq and the turning points that made them reject violence.
The two called their cross-country odyssey, "The Contagious Love Experiment" - certainly a retro, '60s "Hippie Haight-Ashbury" moniker to more mature ears. The tag is both innocent and naive, but on a deeper level, it is their counterbalance to the brutality and disillusionment they experienced. Their story and reasoning are worth listening to.
