FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Contents:

1. How do I join Bring Them Home Now?
2. I am not a veteran and have no relatives in the service. What can I do to help?
3. Where can I get posters and bumper stickers to promote the campaign?
4. Aren't you hurting the morale of the troops by demanding that they be brought home?
5. Isn't this campaign just part of an anti-Bush agenda?
6. Isn't all this complaining about the conditions the troops face in Iraq just whining? Why don't they and their families remember why they joined in the first place and just suck it up?
7. If your campaign is successful and the troops are brought home right away, won't there be a catastrophe in Iraq and further suffering by the people there? Don't we have an obligation to clean up the mess we have made?
8. If the troops are brought home now, won't this encourage more terrorist attacks on the US?
9. Shouldn't we be trying to get the United Nations into Iraq replace the US and facilitate the transition to Iraqi self-rule?
10. I demonstrated against the war before it started and it didn't stop them from invading. What good does it do to protest now?
11. Isn't it true that whatever you think about our going into Iraq, we're there now and we have to finish the job, otherwise our troops will have died in vain?
12. What about the fact that the troops all volunteered to be in the military? Shouldn't they accept their role without complaining and shouldn't we all fall in line?

1. How do I join Bring Them Home Now?

Bring Them Home Now! is a campaign – not an organization – and everyone can join in! We are based among military families, veterans, active duty troops, reservists and National Guard members, and their supporters. People with loved ones in the military can join Military Families Speak Out – one of the sponsoring organizations of Bring Them Home Now! Veterans can hook up with Veterans for Peace or one of the other veterans organizations which have taken a stand against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

You can also join the Bring Them Home Now! campaign by taking action in your local areas. We encourage veterans, military families and supporters to develop working committees in your local areas to speak with the media, meet with elected representatives and take actions which keep our cause in the public eye and put pressure on the powers that be to Bring Them Home Now! See our Take a Stand section on our website for hints on actions you can take.

2. I am not a veteran and have no relatives in the service. What can I do to help?

There's plenty that we all can do:

• If you know veterans or family members of active duty troops, direct them to this website.
  
  
• Call your Congressional Representatives and Senators and tell them you want the troops back home and an end to this illegal and senseless occupation – before more troops and Iraqi civilians are harmed or killed. It is important that the politicians start to feel the heat on this. The more constituents they hear from, the more chance they will do the right thing.
  
  
• Keep an eye on our website. New material is added almost every day and the Take a Stand section has suggestions about what more can be done. There are also great education and action sites listed in our Links section.
  
  
• If you can afford it, please make a tax-deductible donation to the BTHN! campaign. Details for making a contribution are on the website home page.
  
  
• If you know of other military families, make sure that they know about Military Families Speak Out and send them on to the MFSO website – <www.mfso.org>.
  
  
• Most importantly, build and take part in activities being planned across the country to protest the occupation. Do this where you live, and consider going to larger regional or national mobilizations like the October 25 demonstration in Washington DC.

3. Where can I get posters and bumper stickers to promote the campaign?

Bring Them Home Now! is planning to produce buttons, yard signs, bumper stickers and other materials to help spread our message and direct people to our website. Meanwhile, we recommend that folks check out the stickers and other products produced by Andrew Boyd. Andrew is a young anti-war activist who owned the address of this website in the first place and generously donated it to us in the first hectic weeks of July when we were getting BTHN! off the ground.

4. Aren't you hurting the morale of the troops by demanding that they be brought home?

The Bring Them Home Now! Campaign is not causing the morale problems currently being experienced by our men and women in uniform.

We did not send our troops into harm's way based on lies told to the American people. We did not lie about uranium in Niger. We did not tell the American people there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 when there isn't. We did not use fear as a weapon against the people of our country, as the administration always has.

We did not spit in the eye of the UN and world public opinion and decide to attack Iraq almost alone.

We did not tell the world that the Iraqi people would throw flowers as foreign invaders arrived to occupy their land indefinitely and pump their oil out.

We did not send our troops into battle and the ensuing occupation without a plan to provide sufficient housing, food, water and Kevlar vests, and without a clue about how to deal with the resistance they are now facing.

We did not privatize logistical and support services resulting, among other things, in a 5 week delay for some troops in getting their mail.

We did not tell the troops they'd be coming home, then change their return dates again and again.

We did not start rushing troops back to the Middle East battle zone only months after their first deployment ended.

We did not put National Guard and Reserve units, trained to respond to natural disasters, and heavy armored divisions from the regular Army into a situation where military policing is the most useful skill–and where they don't know the language, the people or the culture. Nor did we extend their tours of duty.

We did not expose a single troop to ambush for no good reason, place them in 120 degree heat, expose them to depleted uranium or give them untested vaccines. We did not force them into the terrible split second decisions that lead to the taking of innocent lives.

We did not cut veterans benefits while our troops are off in battle.

The administration and the Pentagon did all these things, and they are responsible for the collapse of morale.

5. Isn't this campaign just part of an anti-Bush agenda?

Our agenda is clear and simple. We want to Bring Them Home Now!

We are against George W. Bush's unjust and unconstitutional invasion and occupation of Iraq. We are against this administration's betrayal of our troops and the American people. But we also know that Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans, failed their constituents when they voted in October of 2002 to abdicate responsibility and hand the President the power to invade Iraq. Congress is now being asked to repeat that failure and give George Bush $87 billion to continue his war.

Bring Them Home Now! will put pressure on everyone who can make a difference, on all of the politicians and elected officials who can contribute to bringing this war to an end.

6. Isn't all this complaining about the conditions the troops face in Iraq just whining? Why don't they and their families remember why they joined in the first place and just suck it up?

There are four points we want to make here.

First, the conditions that our troops are facing right now show the contempt that Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush actually have for the troops they command. It's five months after Bush made his showboat landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared major combat over, and they still can't get US troops enough drinking water or sufficient decent rations?

Second, the conditions are not just uncomfortable, they are deadly. Modern battlefields are full of lethal toxic wastes, including radioactive depleted uranium. Over 30% of the troops deployed in the 1991 Gulf War have some sort of disability, mainly the poorly understood Gulf War Syndrome, and they were only in the region a short time. The new "mystery pneumonia" which has already killed several troops in Iraq is only the tip of the iceberg.

Third, this is not a question of the attitude or the willpower or the backbone of individual soldiers or their families. The Operational Tempo of the US military (meaning the time deployed away from home and/or the intensity–like overtime and speed-up for workers–of deployments and training) has tripled in the last ten years, with predictably bad effects on troops and on their families. As the Congressional Budget Office just reported, in six months, the Pentagon will start running out of the troops it needs merely to maintain the current force level in Iraq, let alone add the tens of thousands more most military experts say would be needed to stabilize the situation there. There simply aren't enough troops.

The bottom line, though, is that our troops are being used not to defend the people and the Constitution of the United States as they swore an oath to do, but to satisfy dreams of empire and seize control of oil supplies. US troops would face bad conditions in a just cause without complaint, but the reality is that they shouldn't be in Iraq at all. The hardships and dangers they face now are faced in an illegal and immoral war. The bottom line is that they shouldn't shut up and suck it up, because we shouldn't be in Iraq in the first place.

7. If your campaign is successful and the troops are brought home right away, won't there be a catastrophe in Iraq and further suffering by the people there? Don't we have an obligation to clean up the mess we have made?

We absolutely have a responsibility to help clean up the mess that we have helped to create. We have a responsibility to help re-build the country that we helped destroy.

But the reconstruction of Iraq cannot take place under US military occupation, it cannot happen at gunpoint. It cannot truly begin until the US has ceded military control. This is yet another reason we say: Bring Them Home Now!

Much of the chaos and violence in Iraq right now is in direct response to the U.S. military occupation. The critical first step to creating order and civil society in Iraq is a commitment by the U.S. to end the military occupation and remove the U.S. military presence from the country.

8. If the troops are brought home now, won't this encourage more terrorist attacks on the US?

The Bush administration sold the invasion of Iraq to the people of this country based on fear. We were told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could hit the United States with devastating effect. We were told that there were connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. We were told that the war in Iraq would make us all safer.

But the Bush Administration has been in control of Iraq for five months now and they haven't produced any weapons of mass destruction and haven't a shred of evidence for pre-war claims of ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

The reality is that the occupation of Iraq may be one of the biggest recruiting tools that terrorists have, a source of profound humiliation and rage for Muslim and Arab people, the same sense of humiliation and rage that drives people to enlist in organizations that engage in acts of terror. We are faced with the fulfillment of the prediction that veteran US intelligence officials made before the war that: "An invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future." The Bush administration tells us that it is "foreign terrorists" who are attacking US troops daily, not Iraqis enraged by the occupation. Quite possibly it's both. And as long as the occupation continues, so will anger at the US throughout the Islamic world and beyond.

9. Shouldn't we be trying to get the United Nations into Iraq replace the US and facilitate the transition to Iraqi self-rule?

The key to any resolution of the situation in Iraq is the removal of U.S. military control. As long as the US occupation of Iraq continues, so will Iraqi resistance and widespread suffering. Only when the US agrees in principle to a rapid withdrawal of all troops can there be any true discussion of the steps that are necessary to make a quick transition to self-rule by the Iraqis. Until then, we will continue working to keep the demand Bring Them Home Now! front and center.

At the beginning of September, when more rational elements in the administration started to realize that there is no way the US can continue to go it alone in an occupation of Iraq, the official line on the United Nations suddenly started to shift. The administration started calling for a new Security Council resolution and for UN participation in the occupation. The US government also began the bribing and arm-twisting of other countries. "Bring Them Home Now!" does not mean "Put a Light Blue (UN) Helmet on Our Troops and Give the US Command in Iraq More Troops From Other Countries To Continue the Occupation With!" It means just what it says. Our troops will not be any safer there, or doing anything more useful, if UN approval is just a fig leaf to cover up a continued US occupation.

10. I demonstrated against the war before it started and it didn't stop them from invading. What good does it do to protest now?

Bring Them Home Now! sponsoring groups like Military Families Speak Out and Veterans For Peace have been against the war from the very beginning. We demonstrated to try and stop the war from happening. We were disheartened when Bush and Tony Blair went ahead anyway, putting our troops and the Iraqi people in harm's way.

Many who are now joining the Bring Them Home Now! campaign felt that the war was justified or simply felt that supporting our troops required that they support the invasion of Iraq.

Now all of us agree that the troops must be brought home as soon as humanly possible and we are speaking out about it. We know from the thousands of e-mails we have received that we speak for many military families–and troops–whose voices have not been heard. We believe that we have helped change the discussion in this country from one about how many troops to send and for how long, to one about whether or not to Bring Them Home Now!

We can't expect to win our demands instantly, but every bit of pressure we put on the administration and other politicians brings us closer to the day when we see our loved ones step off that plane or ship.

11. Isn't it true that whatever you think about our going into Iraq, we're there now and we have to finish the job, otherwise our troops will have died in vain?

This same kind of reasoning kept us in Vietnam long after we should have left. How many thousands of the troops whose names are on the Wall in Washington, DC, would still be alive if the government had heeded the anti-war movement's call to "Bring Them Home Now!" earlier in the conflict? How many millions of Vietnamese would be alive? How much bitterness towards the United States would have been avoided?

Veterans, especially Vietnam veterans, are one of the core groups in the campaign to Bring Them Home Now! and they are here for good reason. They have experienced first-hand the costs of war. They have lived with the results of a war based on lies.

It is our job to do everything we can to make sure this doesn't happen again. Stopping this reckless and ill-conceived military occupation of Iraq must be our tribute to the 58,000 plus names on the Vietnam Memorial.

12. What about the fact that the troops all volunteered to be in the military? Shouldn't they accept their role without complaining and shouldn't we all fall in line?

There are many answers to these questions. First, listen to the voice of a Vietnam veteran on the issue of a volunteer military:

When I enlisted in the military during the Vietnam Era, I did so with the implied understanding that I would accept very little pay and be willing to jeopardize my life for American values.

In return, there was an implied contract that the political people who now held my life in their hands would be elected honestly, be of high integrity, put the good of the people, the nation and the world above business and special interests, be forthright with the people of the nation, hold high values and be intelligent enough to adhere to and implement those values.

The government failed to uphold most of its obligations then and is failing to uphold all of them now.

The main issue is that the decision to go to war is a political, not a military decision. As citizens, we all have the right and in fact the duty to question the political decisions that are being made. And the decision to go to war is the most momentous decision that a nation can make – a decision that puts our troops, our alliances and our reputations at risk. Whether the military is drafted or voluntary is irrelevant to our role as citizens.