Iraq Veterans Against the War was founded in 2004 to give those who have served in the military since September 11, 2001, a way to come together and speak out against an unjust, illegal, and unwinnable war. Today, IVAW has over 1,200 members and chapters across the country. IVAW sponsored the historic Winter Soldier event, held in Silver Springs, Maryland in spring of 2008.
“Honor the casualties of this war—the dead, injured, psychologically altered, those who have already managed to heal—by refusing to forget the elements and consequences of combat that our leaders would rather us not know in the first place. Do not turn away from these stories. They are yours, too.”
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‣Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead, from the Foreword to Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan
Aaron Glantz is the co-author, with Iraq Veterans Against the War, of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2008). Glantz is an independent journalist who has covered the Iraq war from the front lines, and the author of the forthcoming book The War Comes Home (UC Press).
Jeremy Scahill is a correspondent for Democracy Now! and the author of the Polk-award winning New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books).
“[Scahill] is a one-man truth squad.”
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‣Bill Moyers
Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía was the first veteran to publicly refuse to redeploy to Iraq. He is the Board Chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and is the author of a memoir, Road From ar Ramadi (Haymarket Books, 2007).
“[Road from ar Ramadi] is the extraordinary journey…of a U.S. soldier, from the front lines of Iraq to military prison…We learn what happens when a young man decides to challenge the entire military establishment in order to follow his conscience. An inspiring memoir.”
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‣Howard Zinn
Laila Al-Arian is a freelance journalist and co-author, with Chris Hedges, of Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books, 2008). She has written for The Nation, USA Today, United Press International, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
“Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with veterans of the Iraq war and occupation, [Collateral Damage] lays out graphically indeed and in their own words the American system of patrols, convoys, home raids, detentions, and military checkpoints that became a living nightmare for civilians in Iraq.
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‣TomDispatch.com
Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist and the author of the award-winning book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket, 2007). Jamail writes regularly for the Inter Press Service and is a regular guest on Democracy Now!
“From the earliest days of the war, Dahr Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation…[His] extraordinary book is the result.
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‣Naomi Klein
Michael Schwartz is a founding director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, and author of the new book, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket Books, 2008).
“Americans have all along needed a sociologist, not a general, to help them understand Iraq…We have the incredible good fortune that the perspicacious Michael Schwartz boldly stepped forward to cast floods of illumination on the Iraq War and its tragic social costs.”
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‣Juan Cole
Joe Allen is a Chicago-based activist and the author of Vietnam: The (Last) War the U.S. Lost (Haymarket Books, 2008), which includes an introduction by journalist and filmmaker John Pilger. Allen writes regularly for CounterPunch and the International Socialist Review.
“Joe Allen's book is so needed, and so welcome. Indeed, the following pages amount to a masterpiece in which the author, unrelenting in his research, has reclaimed memory from the organized forgetting that has so bedeviled the very word 'Vietnam.'
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‣John Pilger
Richard Stacewicz teaches history at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois. He is the author of Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, republished by Haymarket Books in 2008.
“Stacewicz has captured the simple, rough-hewn elegance of the voices of Vietnam veterans. As in other wars, the ordinary soldier always has the most extraordinary words for history.”
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‣Stanley Kutler, editor, The Encyclopedia
of the Vietnam War
