A veteran's voice

Kelly Dougherty is a 26-year-old Irish American who served for a year with the US military in Iraq, but is now a prominent anti-war activist. Here she talks about what made her change sides, why she joined the army in the first place and Ireland's role in the conflict. Interview and photograph by William Hederman

The odd thing about Iraq veteran Kelly Dougherty is that her current vocation as an anti-war campaigner was not the result of an epiphany on the battlefield. She had always been anti-war, even before she signed up for the National Guard, aged 17. "During my senior year at high school in Colorado Springs, which is when I joined the military, I was into the whole punk scene. I was anti-government, anti-establishment. I always had a liberal standpoint, so it was ironic that I joined the military."

So why did she join? Money is the simple answer. "I was looking to go to university, but I didn't know how to pay for it; I was looking at scholarships, but that wasn't going to cover it. My stepfather's son is in the National Guard and he said, 'You should go talk to a recruiter: they'll pay for your school and all you have to do is drink coffee once a month and sit around'. Of course it didn't quite turn out that way!"

Dougherty, now 26, says college fees are probably the biggest reason that young Americans join the military. And the sacrifice sounds manageable. After boot camp, her commitment to the Colorado National Guard, where she trained as a medic, amounted to one weekend a month and two weeks every summer. This went on happily for about seven years, until one afternoon in January 2003, when Kelly was beginning the final semester of her biology degree. She got a phone call telling her that not only was she being sent to Iraq, but also that she would be a Military Police Officer rather than a medic and that she should report for duty the next day.

"So I reported the next day, spent a month training and found myself in Kuwait in late February." The only training specific to Iraq that her unit received was "a one-hour briefing, where a man got up and said, 'Well I've never been to the Middle East, but don't shake hands with your left hand and eh, be warned that men sometimes hold hands with each other.' That was it! There's so much misunderstanding about the Arab culture and about Iraq and misunderstanding leads to violence."

Upon arrival at the Military Police company, Dougherty approached her platoon leader, a captain, and expressed her misgivings about the war. To her surprise, he said he too felt unsure about the war and felt they weren't being told the complete truth. "But then, in front of our whole platoon, he said, 'People might disagree with this war, but you just tell them to remember September 11th, remember when those two planes came down'. That really made me mad, not only because September 11th had nothing to do with Iraq, but also because he was lying to us."

"What I saw from my own experience was that the Iraqi people, when we arrived, were living in desperate poverty; by the time my unit left Iraq, their situation had not improved at all, and in certain areas it had gotten worse. My unit had no translators until the last month that we were in Iraq, so we were in charge of policing the Iraqi people, but without any way to communicate with them."

This problem, she says, is behind the huge number of Iraqis in prison.

"What happens is that if US soldiers suspect that an Iraqi may have done something, they just find it easier to err on the side of caution because they're in so much danger and stress, so they just arrest them and say, 'Well someone else will sort it out later'. But as we're seeing now, with the thousands and thousands of Iraqis in jails, no one is sorting it. You have people who are finally being released after spending a year in a detention facility and saying they were never questioned."

What about the rebuilding of schools and other humanitarian efforts by US forces?

"Well, some soldiers say, 'We did good, we rebuilt a school or helped at an orphanage', but it's so overshadowed by all the negative that it doesn't make an overall change. Once my unit went to an orphanage to give out aid material, but the stuff we gave them had been sent to us by our families back home: snack food, candy, toiletries, and we couldn't use it all. So this wasn't coming from the US government. Also, I wondered how many of those children were in the orphanage because our bombs may have killed their families or their parents may have gotten shot at one of our checkpoints. So, yeah, it's great that I gave candy to an orphan but why is that child an orphan?"

On the Bush regime's justification for war, she points out that only two years ago, "We weren't being told it's all about democracy; we were told it's about keeping America safe because Saddam is going to nuke us. Now all of a sudden we don't talk about that in the United States. Bush doesn't talk about weapons of mass destruction; he doesn't talk about links to Al-Qaeda. Now it's all about bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. I don't trust them. I don't believe that. You cannot have democracy when you're living under a foreign occupation."

Dougherty was able to leave because her eight-year contract was up, but many others have served time in prison for refusing to serve in Iraq.

"There's a man named Camilo Mejia, who served in Iraq, came home on leave and refused to go back. He said that by putting down his weapon he was reasserting himself as a human being and he would not go and kill people any more. He has just spent a year in prison."

Others have gone to Canada and applied for refugee status, to avoid facing jail in the US.

"I was fed up with our foreign policy and with the reckless administration, which does not care about the soldiers, or about human life in general, it's just bent on pursuing its own agenda. When I was in Iraq I really wanted to become more involved in the anti-war movement and get more informed about politics because if anything makes you realise that the government's foreign policy affects you personally, it's getting sent to fight their war."

In June 2004 she attended the Veterans for Peace Conference in Boston, where she teamed up with five other Iraq veterans. The six promptly founded Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW) and Dougherty soon found herself travelling the country making speeches. "It was definitely nerve-wracking; I came into it really suddenly. I'm more comfortable now. I just know that my story is one that needs to be heard and that there are a lot of veterans who can't speak out."

IVAW now boasts more than 150 members, but naturally the group has its enemies. "We get our share of hate mail on the website. We have people saying we're unpatriotic, when I think the opposite is the case. I think it's a great disservice to the United States to blindly support a war without thinking about the human costs for US citizens and the people of Iraq."

"You know, when I said I was anti-government as a teenager, I wasn't anti-American. I love the United States, I'd say it was the best country in the world. I know Americans who say they're from Canada when they're travelling abroad, or they put a Canadian flag on their backpack. I would hate to do that. I hate to think that this administration has wrecked the image of the US to the point that Americans have to be afraid to say they're American."

Dougherty was in Dublin recently to support the five activists on trial for damaging a US Navy plane at Shannon in 2003. She also delivered a letter to the Taoiseach, calling on him to "lead the Irish people in their stand for compassion and peace", by closing Shannon Airport to the US military. She dismisses the argument that this would adversely affect US investment here.

"Does China have a good human rights record? No, but we import their goods in a huge way. It's not about politics, it's about money and Ireland is a really good place for corporations to invest, so I don't think that would happen. Countries must take a stand against something that is illegal and wrong."

"Some people say what my group is doing is anti-American, but we think what we're doing is actually pro-American and pro-humanity, because we're trying to stop death, including the death of our own citizens. But in the United States there's a lot of dissent against the Bush administration and in particular with the war in Iraq. Anti-war, anti-occupation feeling is growing."

Despite Bush's re-election, Dougherty is ultimately optimistic about the anti-war movement.

"The current foreign policy of the US is really bringing out more people who were never active before." She insists that, contrary to the impression given to the rest of the world via the "biased" US media, there is more and more vocal opposition to the occupation. Twenty-four Congress members recently signed a bill calling for the immediate withdrawal of all forces from Iraq. "This is significant and it's building."

Returning to the question of "actions" against the tools of war at Shannon or anywhere else in the world, what tangible outcomes do they have, apart from the temporary immobilising of a plane and possibly the jailing of the perpetrators?

"Well, if you look back over the movements in history that have made a big change, and many of the people who were involved their whole lives in the movement, they never actually saw the change come about. Also, I think their bravery is inspiring to others. Even if you save just one life, it's worth it."p

?More A full transcript of this interview, and Dougherty's letter to the Taoiseach, are available at www.indymedia.ie Iraq Veterans Against War: www.ivaw.org Saturday 19 March is a global day of protest against war. The Dublin rally meets at Parnell Square at 2pm