Mint Press News 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 some 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.
In this five-part series, we’re sharing the stories of veterans 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.
Chante Wolf: Member, Veterans for Peace (VFP), Veterans in the Arts, Freedom Farm Therapeutic, Women Veterans Initiative
— Was in the military from 1980 to 1992
— Served in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War in the 1990s, when Iraq invaded Kuwait
At the ripe age of 22, Chante Wolf says she knew she wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic, but without the grades and funds to get into college or start her own business, she couldn’t explore either of those paths. So to please her father, a Korean War veteran, Wolf joined the military, even though she says she didn’t know much about politics or conflicts of war.
Wolf says before she joined the military she believed that the U.S. had a right to defend itself, but since neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked our country or took away our civil liberties, she says the wars were basically illegal.
“We’re not defending our freedom and democracy, which we swore to defend,” she said. “Our rights were never being taken away, and the military taught me that.”
She says that war is often sold in a “neat and tidy package,” where a soldier is sent to do a job and then is supposed to come home. But as Wolf and others discovered, moral implications about serving in a war, and the changes a person faces by being in war, are rarely if ever considered when discussing the costs of war.
“War brings out the nasty side of our nature,” she said, giving the example of rape. “Rape is an instrument of warfare and we don’t talk about that. Our men are no better than any other men on the planet.”
“I can’t tell you how many ladies I know were raped,” she said. Women in the military are given one of three labels: bitch, dyke or whore.
Wolf says serving in Operation Desert Shield / Desert Storm in the early 1990s “rocked her world, shook her cage, took me upside down and dropped me in half — and it wasn’t because I killed anyone. I didn’t have to. I came close, but I didn’t have to.”
Though Wolf can’t pinpoint one event that made her realize she wanted to join the peace movement, she says she was introduced to VFP at her ticker tape welcome home parade. “I didn’t want any fanfare,” said Wolf. “I don’t think people should be cheered for annihilating another group of people — there’s something twisted about that.”
She shared with Mint Press News some examples of U.S. military behavior that were less than heroic, including Air Force pilots herding camels for target practice, and said pilots were shown pornography and told to ejaculate before flying.
Wolf said there’s constant competition in the military, especially between branches, to prove who’s a badass, but she says the “competition” is really “bullying.” The animosity between military branches, even while stationed in war zones overseas, is so great that each branch is separated from one another with razor wire and armed guards.
Having animosity and hatred is necessary in being part of the military, Wolf said, since the military institutionalized homophobia, racism, classism and misogyny.
It’s this hatred that Wolf says has led the military to misunderstand Iraqi and Afghanistan people’s resistance to the U.S. military. She said people in the military say civilians don’t understand freedom, but says in reality, civilians hate the military’s egoism, arrogance and bullying.
She shared that “by the end of the war there was nothing to be celebrated … It came out later that U.S. troops started oil spills and oil fires and it just totally ruined my day,” she said. “It was just like everything that I wanted to save and see and preserve on this planet, we destroyed in 42 days with a flippant attitude.”
Eight months after returning to the U.S., Wolf says she had the trigger of a gun halfway pulled against her head. She says she was ready to commit suicide because she was so broken-hearted. “I was grieving,” she explained. “All this destruction, and for what?”
“John Kennedy had it right — ‘Mankind has to put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind,’” she said. “There’s a tsunami coming. Vietnam veterans are still committing suicide to this day, and they just did one tour.
“My concern for some of these [veterans] is that when they get out into the community and have heavy interaction with police, is that the person who may not understand that the person [hiding] under their truck, holding an umbrella may be having a flashback; and they are just responding. Police are too eager to shoot people.”