Near the end of UTNIF's second session, UTNIF students had the opportunity to participate in a discussion about the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq with two veterans of those wars, Jacob George and Spencer Hindmarsh. George and Hindmarsh are members of Operation Awareness, a peace movement group comprised of veterans opposed to war.
Operation Awareness is one among several peace movement organizations made up entirely of veterans. Along with Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Vietnam Veterans Against War, Operation Awareness brings the voices and experiences of veterans to the forefront.
What follows is a very interesting discussion. The subjects range from questions about how day to day counterinsurgency operations actually work, military conditioning and its psychological toll on soldiers, the issues of wikileaks and Private Bradley Manning, to the history of GI led anti-war peace movements.
This Q and A makes for a nice companion to the interviews conducted and published in earlier posts here by John Hines of College Prep.
I can imagine a powerful aff or neg argument structured around the need to "privilege the local" in considerations of military policy as a way to decenter the abstract concepts that characterize military grand strategy. Such an approach could make good use of these interviews/transcripts.
I will post some cites and suggestions about this in a later post, but its fair to say that there is a tremendous literature base (much of it coming from feminist international relations scholars) about this very subject.
UTNIF '10 Operation Awareness pt. 1 from UTNIF on Vimeo.
UTNIF '10 Operation Awareness pt. 2 from UTNIF on Vimeo.
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