Today on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman spoke to Aaron Hughes, of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who’s among a number of Afghanistan and Iraq war vets planning to return their medals of honor to visiting NATO generals this Sunday at the NATO summit in Chicago.
Says Hughes, “[Veterans] have to live with [the] failed policy [of the global war on terror] on a daily basis,” Hughes says. “A decade-long war, what have we been doing? … There’s a real moral disconnect between the idea that our military can build a democracy and the idea that our military is trained and designed to control, dominate and kill people. … Occupations don’t build democracies, don’t extend individuals’ freedoms. The movements—the Arab uprising, the Arab Spring—that was building democracy. The movements of Gandhi, the movements of the civil rights movements here in the United States, people’s movements, that extends democracy, not military force.”
In response to Goodman’s question, “Why do this? Why are you returning your medals?” Hughes replied:
Because every day in this country 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals that are getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted.