Berlin – Former U.S. Army Spec. Chris Capp spent a year in Iraq and decided to take an “other than honorable” discharge rather than be redeployed to Afghanistan for another combat tour.
But instead of quietly going home, Capp joined a group of other disillusioned Iraq veterans to speak out against the war, even though it has ostracized him from his family and friends.
“I have gotten a lot of criticism for this,” the Hackettstown, N.J., native said in Berlin today as part of the Iraq Veterans Against the War tour around Germany. “But I’d rather be looked at like that than to be redeployed to a war I feel is wrong.”
Capp was joined by two other soldiers and a Marine sergeant at a news conference that launched a three-day protest in Germany supported by the American Voices Abroad peace group.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the group plans to protest at the U.S. Army base in Ansbach, which is getting set to deploy more troops to Iraq as part of the current buildup of U.S. forces.
Their main objective is to urge President Bush to immediately pull all troops.
“And when we say now, we don’t mean six months from now or 18 months from now or 50 years from now,” the group said in its statement. “Now means now.”
Bush has warned that civil war would ensue in Iraq if the United States “cuts and runs.” But Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that the U.S. presence is Iraq’s biggest problem.
“Immediate withdrawal of troops in Iraq is the only way to end the occupation,” said former Army Spec. Jeff Englehart of Durango. “It’s that simple.”
The group also is lobbying for troops to receive better physical and mental-health care when they get home and for the U.S. to pay reparations to the Iraqi people.
“Soldiers need to know that when they decide to resist, they will have the support and thanks of the global moral majority,” said Marine Sgt. Adam Kokesh, of Santa Fe.
