Spirit in Action
From the Battlefields of Iraq to Capitol Hill
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ Today's Spirit in Action guest, Matt Southworth, comes to us from the battlefields of Washington, D.C. But Matt was well prepared for the punishing environment of Capitol Hill by the state qualifying wrestling of his high school days and by his time in the U.S. Army as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. Sensing that he and our other soldiers were ill used in that war, Matt returned to the U.S. got a higher education in political science, history, and psychology and got involved with the National Veterans for Peace Organization as their Vice President. And he currently works with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, applying his heart and intellect to lobbying Congress for peace and for laws and a budget which would be a moral statement that we could be proud of. Matt Southworth joins us by phone from the Washington, D.C. offices of FCNL. Matt, I'm excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thanks, I really appreciate you having me on the program. Did you have to beg her plead in order to get free time from FCNL so you could talk to me? No, it was quite, everyone here is quite accommodating. How long have you been working there? I first came to FCNL in 2009. FCNL has a paid internship in Washington, D.C., which is sort of a rarity, and I applied in 2009 and became a campaign's program assistant and have essentially been on staff ever since. My work with FCNL actually began before 2009 and 2005 and 2006. I started to organize with FCNL to bring students to Washington, D.C. to lobby to end the war. So we better go back and find out what led you there. You served at least one tour in Iraq back in 2004. When did you join the military and what led you to join? I joined the military in 2002, pretty much right at a college or a high school weather. What inspired me to join? Well, you know, I was from a relatively working class, maybe upper low class, lower middle class family. My family, my mom and dad weren't people of memes. Neither of them had been college educated, and I was a high school wrestler. I was being solicited to apply for colleges. I was a two-time state qualifying wrestler back in Florida, way back in the day now. And I was being solicited, you know, by colleges to apply. And I did apply to some, and my mom and dad were very excited that I was choosing the collegial path. What ended up happening, though, since my family had not, you know, no one in my family had gone to college, we really didn't have a sort of sense for the application process, for the student loan process for any of that. I visited a few colleges, and I got a half scholarship to wrestle at a college in Iowa, and I was sort of the mecca of wrestling, if you will. Really? I had no idea. Yeah, wrestling in Iowa is a real main attraction. But I got a half scholarship to wrestle, and I came back and told my folks, and they said, "Well, that's great. What's the half we have to pay for?" And it was $12,500 a year, and it was just simply too much to manage. And again, we didn't really have a family history of college degrees, and, you know, my folks didn't know how to navigate the process. So my two best friends were joining the military, the U.S. Army at the time, and then in the process of, you know, signing their paperwork and talking to recruiters and all that. They said, "You know, my nickname back in that day was Cheeks, because I have a round face, so it's a funny high school nickname, but my friends were saying, "You know, Cheeks, why don't you just come down and talk to Sergeant Eyal, our recruiter, and, you know, he can set you straight. You know, we'll all go to Hawaii together," that sort of thing. And I did. I went and talked to the recruiter in Florida, and I ended up signing with my friends, and long story short, they both ended up in Hawaii, and I ended up in Seattle, Washington, and that was the first of the three of us to deploy. Because you've been involved in veterans for peace and other peace-related work, I'm curious about what your attitude was going into the military. Would you have described yourself as very patriotic, pro-military? How did you think about violence? I mean, you're a wrestler, so... Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. I mean, I didn't have much of a political orientation. Oddly enough, I hated politics. I thought it was a lot of petty back-and-forth between people who, you know, weren't really strong leaders a lot of the time. So I wouldn't describe myself politically as, you know, a Republican or Democrat or anything like that. I didn't really have too much of an opinion on war, either. I was very patriotic. I, you know, I love my country. I always have. You know, this was when I joined in 2002, it was relatively soon after 9/11, and, you know, my response to 9/11 was to really put American flags on everything, and, you know, it was very supportive of the idea of getting the bad guys who did this. So I wasn't exactly, you know, a pacifist, for sure, but I definitely wasn't a dyed-in-the-wall conservative hawk, either. So, you know, going into the military as someone who's pretty politically apathetic at that time, it was just me signing up for a job. And that's sort of how they, how they couch it, how the recruiters talk about it. You know, you're doing a job, and you're doing a job that will help you get a different job when you get out, and, you know, everyone's going to be much better off than if they don't do this, you know, that sort of thing. Of course, we know that that's not really true. You could see the unemployment rates for veterans between 18 and 24 are typically significantly higher than those unemployment rates for their peers. But essentially, I didn't have too much of a political orientation. When the Iraq war started, that didn't make a lot of sense to me. By that time, I was through basic training and had been an intelligence analyst and trained in that, and started to learn about a lot of the sort of classified intel that was out there. And that did seem quite a miss, and I just really didn't know how much at that point in time. So, you're an intelligence analyst while you're in. What does that mean, operationally? Well, predominantly, it means I make coffee for everyone. So, you're good at that. Yes, the first and foremost obligation of the intelligence analyst. Now, I was a part of a unit, a 114 CAV with the second infantry division out of Fort Lewis, Washington, and we were a risk to unit, recognizance, intelligence, surveillance, and tug with acquisition. So, essentially, what I would do is take close and open source intel that was collected by others that came across the radio that was gleaned from Internet websites or handouts like flyers or through interrogations. And I would do two things with that. One would be predictive analysis, trying to determine patterns of attack and determine where the next attack was going to come from. Particularly, we were interested in IED snipers and movements of whatever kind of military units were out there, mostly insurgency. The other thing would be target acquisition. So, we had a few high-value targets in our area of operations. We now would work with our special forces and other folks who came through predominantly through a liaison, and we would attempt to track down some of these high-value targets using intelligence they brought using intelligence that we collected and so on. So, operationally, I would say the majority of my time was spent doing that high-value target acquisition. But this was the time 2004 in Iraq when President Bush had declared mission accomplished, and all of the divisions were switched out for combat brigades. So, basically, units who had an area of operation were about a third of the manpower they needed to actually secure the area. So, in our case, we had a battalion-sized area of operations with only a squadron. We had basically 775 guys where we needed about 3,000. That meant, no matter what your job was, every day, you had a job in addition. You were a soldier first, and whatever you were second. So, for me, this meant pulling OP guard every other day, going on convoys occasionally, those sorts of things. I'm curious about your comment. You said before you were actually deployed to Iraq, already it didn't make much sense to you. What do you mean by that? Well, so, I worked under a chief-worn officer, chief-worn officers in the military. There are fewer of those than there are generals. They typically are people who are experts in a given field. Pilots are often also chief-worn officers. But in my case, I worked under a person who was a chief-worn officer and had been in the military for longer than I had even been alive, doing intelligence work. And he was on the task force that was responsible for seeking and destroying the weapons of mass destruction that existed in Iraq in 1991 during the first Gulf War. Now, these are chemical weapons predominantly. They were given to Saddam by the US, by the Russians, the British, and the French. There was also some degree of nuclear capabilities. But this gentleman, who was essentially my mentor, was very cautiously warning me about the operation in Iraq. He was saying, you know, I was responsible, I was on the task force for seeking and destroying these WMD in 1991, and I know there aren't any there. You know, and he didn't really share this with everyone, just a few people, and I was one of those. So it was really alarming to me, and I was very conflicted because, you know, the government, our government, our president was saying something completely different from what I was hearing inside of the, you know, so-called inner circle. So it was alarming to me. So that aspect didn't make sense. The other piece that didn't make sense was this idea of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Saddam was a secular nationalist. He was not a fundamentalist at all. You know, was of a religious sect that didn't see eye to eye with the al-Qaeda-minded folks, was known for the heading people, like those who couldn't be al-Qaeda. So in my mind, it didn't make a lot of sense that al-Qaeda would seek safe harbor in Iraq or that Saddam, based on what I knew at that time, about the regime would have welcomed al-Qaeda in Iraq. So that also seemed very far-fetched to me, even at the time. Now we know now that there were no al-Qaeda ties in Iraq in 2003 when the U.S. invaded al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaeda in Iraq now, both of which didn't exist in 2003, are some of the strongest al-Qaeda franchises in the world. So it really has been, over these last ten years, what we've seen transpire has, in my mind, validated my caution early on, my concern, and what other folks who knew more than I did were saying back then. You know, I never served in the military. I have a brother who did, and my sense of it is that his time in the military increased his dedication to military solutions. I think maybe that's a fair way of saying it. Certainly, I think you must be surrounded by a number of people who are not anti-military, much different percentage than what you find in the general populace. Did that affect you, or were the people around you lukewarm about this, or how did that go? You know, in terms of those enlisted, there was really a generational divide that I observed. A lot of the long-serving NCOs, the 15-year, 20-year career folks, and officers as well, but mostly NCOs, were very mission-first oriented. They didn't care if it was a lie. Didn't matter to them, the politics of the situation. And keep in mind, I was in Iraq in early 2004. Just when the political campaign between then Senator Kerry and President Bush was kicking up, and people were just really, you know, the older generation was really opposed to participating in any of those kinds of discussions or anything like that. But younger guys like me, you know, I was 19 when I got to Iraq. I wasn't even able to drink yet. I was just a baby. 29 now, just hard to breathe so much time has gone by, but yeah, I was just a young kid. And the people who were in that age group through mid-20s, we were all very skeptical. Not necessarily anti-military or anti-intervention or anything like that, but just, again, for a lot of us, what we were hearing and what we knew. Or in direct contradiction. So it was definitely along those lines that people sort of went one way or the other. In my experience, no, that's certainly not everyone's experience. I also, you know, I know a lot of people, people that I served with, people that served, that I have met since and so on, who aren't anti-military, but they are certainly not pro-war. And I think this is an important distinction because just because someone doesn't believe in a military solution doesn't make them anti-soldier or anti-military, in my mind, it makes them wise. And I think that you often find the people who have served and have had real experience in combat and in war are the biggest bugs there are. It's not always true. And there is certainly a struggle to justify and vindicate one's experience. But that said, I really do believe that people who serve and have this on-the-ground experience tend to fall even when they're apolitical or apathetic tend to fall somewhere along the lines of, you know, that was not the best use of resources or my personal time. I want to check out some other attitudes that must have been swirling around you. How did your parents feel? How did your family feel about you going in military? You know, my dad had served. He served by court order in the 1980s. He was told by a judge and I actually never found out what he did wrong. My folks never told me that part of the story. And we're not going to put it on the air now. Yeah, right. So, I don't know, but he served three years, mostly in Germany, and my grandfather, his father, also served. He was a Navy Seal in World War II, essentially, before there were Navy Seals. We actually didn't find that out until after his death when my grandmother was looking through papers in the attic and found all these military accolades. So, there was some family history there on my dad's side. My mom's side, no one ever served. And it's ironic because they tend to be the more hawkish of the whole family. But, you know, my dad essentially said, "I'll support you in whatever you want to do. Here's what I want you to know about my military service," and sort of reflected some of his experiences, you know, mostly the negative ones. Certain people getting away was not having to do anything while he was having to work very hard, that sort of thing. And my mother really didn't want me to join because she was her first child and thought of losing your child in a place like Iraq is incredibly scary. In fact, the first time I ever heard my mother cry was on the phone with me the two or three days before I deployed. I actually had to get off the phone because once she started to cry, I started to cry too. It was a very emotional, moving experience to have that conversation with my mother. They generally, you know, were supportive. They wrote to me, sent care packages, that sort of thing while I was gone. When I came back, it was really, really hard because I had changed so much, so much about my worldview, just my experience had changed me physiologically. I didn't come back with battle scars that one could see, but I certainly was affected by every part of my experience. And it was really hard to relate to my parents after that. It was really hard to relate to my family and my friends after that. So, it was a difficult transition back in a difficult time. I think we are in a much better place now, my family and I. I work for the French community on national legislation now where, for the last three years, I've led my being on Afghanistan and Iraq and drones and other foreign policy endeavors. They are very proud and very supportive of all that stuff. You mentioned, while you're in Iraq, one of the things that you had to do was target acquisition. And when you mentioned drones, I say, well, you're the intelligence people who are helping those drones find where they're supposed to attack. How did that go internally for you? I think there's a lot of words in the military which are very antiseptic, target acquisition, collateral damage, et cetera. So, how did that hit inside you? Well, it was a really strange thing. Back in 2000, putting the timeframe in context here, 2002, 2003, 2004, essentially the Internet wasn't as popular. And this was a time when not everyone had a website. Facebook wasn't invented until sometime in 2004. It didn't go sort of more mainstream in public to 2006. So, there weren't all these ways of communicating now that we completely have ingrained in every part of us for a lot of folks anyway. So, you know, the technology we had was, in today's terms, fairly primitive. We had drones in my unit. We had shadows, which are relatively small surveillance-only drones. They've recently armed them. At least ours were surveillance only. With those, we would predominantly watch the border between Iraq and Syria. There's a lot of smuggling, weapons smuggling. More popular were cigarettes, though. Lots of cigarette smuggling happening along the Syrian-Iraqi border. And it's a very important commodity. I never saw a drone used to attack a target. I never saw that where I was. Maybe it happened and I didn't know about it, but we generally had an Air Force liaison on our post on our Ford operating base, Bob Folta. They would occasionally call on fast movers. That's what we called the F-16s or F-14s, whichever they were. And, you know, we would sometimes see targets get struck by those. But the condition today, on the ground experience today, say in Afghanistan, where there are hundreds of drone strikes every single year, I just didn't experience that. And, you know, in terms of where I am on the drone's issue, I am very A.T. drone. I think that, from the military perspective, they are counterproductive. They are undermining U.S. strategy abroad, for sure. No doubt about it in my mind. And if you think about it, you know, on the tactical level, if you can use a drone and kill a bad guy, that makes sense. But if on a strategic level, when you, you know, kill that alleged bad guy, these are people we actually don't even know if they did anything wrong for the most part. But when you kill that alleged bad guy, and you create, you know, ten new enemies in some village, some remote village and was here in Afghanistan, when you do that, it undermines you strategically. Because you are creating more enemies than you are able to take care of through force. Which is why I don't think that force is a very practical tool in the world today. There are just too many people. The battlefield, if you will, is not in some far removed field away from the city center like it was during, say, the Civil War. This is, you know, this is all taking place in the middle of neighborhoods. You know, imagine if you're in your home and someone two blocks away is a drug dealer and the government's response to that is to use a drone or anything else to bomb the house to get the, you know, the alleged bad guy. And you're not going to take too kindly to that. And this is the experience that, you know, we see playing out all over the world where these technologies are used. They're fomenting anti-American sentiment. So that's sort of where I am today on the drones issue. That's the military perspective. There's also a moral and ethical perspective. Quakers, of course, you know, I don't believe that there is the light of God within everyone. And even if you're not a faithful person, even if you don't believe in a God per se, I think most people can find residence in the idea that every person should be treated with dignity and respect and everyone's humanity should be cherished. And drones, especially, but truly all use of force, completely disregard the idea of both the light of God in that of people and humanity and dignity in that of people. So that moral ethical component is also very powerful and compelling. You know, I think the reason that drones are as popular as they are in the military is you might be risking a machine up there, but you're not risking a soldier. So one of the things that I'm sure many people consider led to the end of the Vietnam War was because Americans weren't willing to put up with our soldiers being killed. There wasn't a lot of concern about the people in Vietnam who were being killed, but our soldiers count to the people on the other side of the border don't count. That's maybe a little simplified and a little harsh, but I think that there's a wide amount of thinking that much. So what do you see as the pros for drones? Right. Well, I hear you on your point that U.S. soldiers are out of harm's way. Another way to keep U.S. soldiers out of harm's way is to use tools like diplomacy. You know, foreign investment, international agencies like the UN addressing root causes such as poverty and water scarcity and food scarcity, those sorts of things, through a civilian lens, not through a military lens, but through a civilian lens. You know, give the State Department the same capabilities and logistical abilities as the DOD has and watch the magic happen. The ability to reach out and to say deliver goods and help facilitate a safer environment for people will inevitably yield a more stable world. So from that perspective, you know, I think there's so much more we can do from the ground level to address these very rudimentary, basic causes of issues that in long-term lead to violent scenarios. So, I mean, that's a philosophical argument to a practical question, which I know is problematic, but I think drones themselves have a surveillance component. I mean, it makes sense by some calculations, depending on the system, it is cheaper to use a drone to do surveillance 24/7 than having someone on the ground or something like that. But even so, you know, it takes around 200 people to keep a drone, you know, like a predator drone in the air for 24 hours, a team of 200 people. When you consider the people who are actually flying the drone through to the people who are refueling it and so on, it takes a large team of people. And if you consider also the amount of bandwidth and other technological requirements, the acquisition of satellites, for example, all of those things that a drone requires, the cost per flight hour can be significantly higher by the time you calculate all of the people who are involved into that. It can be significantly higher than a standard aircraft. So, even from that, fiscal perspective, the idea that a drone's cost plus that may not hold true for all operating systems. So, I mean, again, I think there potentially is a surveillance component. I think we have to be careful there because people do have a right to privacy. So, you know, it's something to be thought about, but yeah, I guess it's sort of where I end up on that. I want to remind our listeners, we're speaking with Matt Southworth today for Spirit in Action. He served a tour in Iraq back in 2004, not too long after he got out of the military. He got involved with Veterans for Peace, recently served as Vice President for the National Veterans for Peace. After a term at Wilmington College, I guess he got involved with Friends Committee on National Legislation as well. So, we'll be talking more about that shortly, but first of all, I want to remind you that this program is available on the net at northernspiritradio.org. And on that site, you'll find more than eight and a half years of our programs for free listening and download. You'll find links to our guests, and you'll find more information about them. You'll also find a place to post comments, and we love comments because we love two-way communication. Sometimes I get tired of my own voice, I'd like to hear yours. So please post a comment when you visit, there's also a place to donate, and that is how we make our survival. This is our living, your donations make all the difference, but even more, I want to encourage you to support your local community radio station. They give you a piece of the news and music that you get nowhere else. That slice of news and information is invaluable, particularly because larger media in this country shies away from controversial topics. So please do support with your money and time, your local community radio station. Again, we're speaking with Matt Southworth. He works with Friends Committee on National Legislation since 2009, and we're talking a little bit more here about his time in Iraq and his experience with that. And one of the things I wanted to follow up on, Matt, was you came back being changed, you said, from your time in Iraq, from your time in the military. People, of course, have heard PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Fewer people have heard about moral injury. That diagnosis, which is growing, it's different than PTSD because it has to do with guilt feelings about what one actually didn't saw. Did you actually see the carnage while you were there, or was it, again, kind of antiseptic? You just see statistics charts and diagrams? Well, it's definitely a good bit of both. A lot of those experiences are the ones that stick with me the most and caused me the most trouble. Ultimately, I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2006. I agree that there is a spiritual component, spiritual injury, or moral injury. In fact, I recently read a fellow veteran who wrote that. Essentially, we confuse PTSD with a mental injury, but, truthfully, at its core, it's a spiritual injury. My perspective, essentially, is that PTSD and experiencing trauma and one's reaction to that trauma, these reactions that people have, everything ranging from depression to suicide, are, in my view, natural reactions to a traumatic experience. It's not a disorder. We weren't put into these situations, and we didn't develop a disease. Those of us who have experienced these things and come away scarred are having a reaction to an incredibly horrific circumstance, for the most part. It always interests me that people think humans are naturally violent. Maybe chimpanzees are, but I don't think humans are. The reason I don't think humans are is my friend Paul Chappelle, who's a former Army Captain, has written extensively. It's basically humans don't experience post-traumatic stress disorder in times of peace. And I would venture to say that no human who has ever lived in the two million years of human evolution has ever experienced trauma as a result of an act of kindness. But almost universally, when someone experiences an act of violence against their will, they experience some kind of trauma. To me, this speaks to the idea that we can't continue to fight wars on a very small planet, which is strapped for resources with over 7 billion people on it. We really have got to figure out a way to get along, or we're going to be in a lot of trouble here. I look at the epidemic of suicides in the military, 18 veterans per day attempt suicide. That's one of the most recent statistics I've heard. There's something about that statistic that is trying to tell us all that there's something incredibly wrong with this system. Not all of those people have necessarily experienced combat, but honestly, I don't think that matters that much. What matters is people are having some kind of experience where they are broken down and allegedly built back up, but that doesn't seem to be making them whole, whether or not they had combat experience. To my mind, I think we have a much deeper problem. I think this is a problem for all of humanity, not just US soldiers or those who experience trauma, but we are, I think, struggling for identity in our very cluttered, very fast-paced world. The evolution of technology in just the last 100 years has completely revolutionized the way we interact with each other and the way we view ourselves and so on. And you have to wonder, you know, human beings, homo sapiens have been evolving for around 200,000 years, and the last 100 more has changed than did in the previous 100 and 99,900. So this is, in my mind, changing who and what we are as beings. And I think it's a problem that needs to be addressed. And I don't have the answers to how to address it, but I think it's a very important question. A crucial question. I'm tempted to go about three different ways at this point, Matt, but I guess I want to follow mainly with your evolution from pro-military or well-engaged in the military to becoming vice president for veterans for peace involved with FCML. What changed for you coming out? Were you the same person six months after you got out of the military as you were your last day in the military? Definitely, definitely not. I would say that, well, you know, it took me some time. I went to college right after the military and I was taken over the wing of some very important people in my life. People who helped me give meaning and understanding to the experience I had in Iraq. I came back and I felt like a stranger among my family and my friends. I felt very disillusioned. I had pretty regular nightmares. I was very jumpy. I had all the symptoms of someone who had PTSD. Of course, I was later diagnosed, but it took me a while to figure out how to talk about my experience. It took me a while to figure out or begin to really question deeply. What was that all about? What did I just do? What did I just go through? What was I part of? These feelings, these tremendous overwhelming feelings of guilt and despair that I had and feelings of loneliness and anger that I had or a result of what I had essentially been a part of. It took me a while to really get those pieces under control. Of course, PTSD is not the kind of thing that you can treat and goes away. It's something that you live the rest of your life with. I think that it was definitely a transition for me that took a number of years. I would argue it's still very much underway of me being able to talk about my experience and relate that to other people as well as just being able to make amends with myself to accept what has happened in my past and to forgive myself to ask at least in spirit for forgiveness from others. It's been quite a journey. I'm not really a religious person, but I'm a spiritual person. It has been a journey for me to come back from all that. There have been some real low points. That's for sure. I'm in a very good place now, really feeling like I'm making progress and moving forward. Part of the reason I've gotten involved in all of this work with VAP and the Friends Committee on National Legislation is, in my mind, at the very least subconsciously, maybe consciously to sort of make amends for what I took part in. Is it okay if I ask you, Matt, about specifics? I hesitate to do this because I'm not asking you to go back into too much of the trauma, but I still expect that there must be specific things you look back on and you said, "I was part of something really bad, not just conceptually, but you probably saw things." Yeah, well, I mean, probably the best snapshot I can give you is our process for detaining Iraqis. Now, you have to keep in mind. In 2003, this whole Iraq campaign was about, initially, it was about weapons and mass destruction, and it became about freedom and democracy. It's with the Bush administration sort of sold this on, the way to liberate the Iraqi people. So I went to Iraq knowing very little about Iraq, and in fact, before I joined the military, I probably couldn't find a rock on a map, let alone tell you about its culture and history. So I read a lot and learned a lot before I went, but it told me very little. We were put in a situation where we were told, "Hey, it's your responsibility." Generally speaking, our unit, it's our responsibility to transition authority from the U.S. government to the Iraqi government, and we need to do some high value target work and figure out who the bad guys are and all that sort of thing, but at the end of the day, our job is to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. So, you know, for the first month or so that I was in Iraq, that was sort of the mission, sort of stuck to, but all that really started to change when the first person in our unit was killed in an IED attack. In February 16, 2004, I'll never forget it, there was an IED, it was about dusk, there was a convoy coming back from Mosul to Talafar, where a operating base was, killed one of the folks in our unit who was probably the most well-liked person in the entire squadron. You know, he's 24 years old, young guy, he got stop lost and ended up having to stay longer and wasn't able to get out because of that, and he's the kind of guy that you would go to for anything. You know, you needed advice about girls or lifting weights or whatever. He was the person you want to talk to. He's the funny guy, the charismatic person. So, you know, after that happened, you think, my God, you know, why him? I'm hesitant to use his name here because I know this is a radio program and all that, so I will choose not to, but it really gave everyone pause. And from that moment on, it was not about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraqis, it was about getting the bad guys and the bad guys to ask for anyone, you know, who was attacking our convoys and doing those sorts of things. It didn't really matter why, you know, you don't have the time or the luxury of stopping to ask, "Well, why are these people attacking our convoys?" That doesn't matter. What matters is keep staying alive, protecting your back and the back of your battle, buddy. For us, the way this really manifested was we were trying to find the IED makers. We were trying to find the insurgents who were operating in our area of operations. We would take the intelligence that I gathered and my unit would do night raids. You know, three in the morning, we'd break down people's doors, separate all the men and women and take all of the men of fighting age. The youngest of which we ever saw was around 10 and the oldest was in the 70s. We'd take these people and put a sandbag over their head and drag them out to our Ford operating base, pull them out of their personnel carrying vehicles one at a time, put them on the knees. And then one at a time, walked them over to a crude processing station where they were strip naked and they were searched. You know, most of the time, that was full body cavity searches. A lot of times, these people were terrified, so they urinate or deflate on themselves. And we had a little hose there. We would hose them off and put them in an orange gem suit and stick them in a basically an outdoor room that had four plexiglass walls and a shingle roof. And it was the detainee holding area surrounded by a 15 foot high berm that was topped with constatino iron, which is razor wire. And there were four observation points in this complex. Three were high. Those high points had at least two gunners in them at all times, putting their weapons down at these detainees. And there was one low point, which was the entry and exit point. And that's where I spent my time when we had detainees working with a counter until folks. Now, an inappropriate but accurate analogy is that of fishing. You can fish with a line in a pole and you can essentially catch one fish at a time. Or you can fish with a net and you can throw say a calf net in or a drag net. And you pull back all kinds of stuff when you use a net because it's imprecise, you know. You pull back trash, you pull back frogs, sometimes you pull back fish, you know, if you're lucky. But this is what we were doing in Iraq. We were throwing our net out into the community and pulling back whatever we could. And what it served to do was radicalize people. It took people who were pro-U.S. or neutral to our presence and turned them against us. So it was a direct contradiction as well to the idea of freedom and democracy. Because under the guise of freedom and democracy, we were setting up a different kind of oppression. You know, Saddam had an oppressive regime and we were sort of not Saddam, but we weren't a whole lot better in some regard. So we had this really egregious system of detaining people who by and large, you know, 80% or more had done nothing wrong. And then subsequently were radicalized by this whole experience. So to me, that was a huge piece of the guilt that I carry. I couldn't imagine what it would be like at three in the morning to be ripped from your home and shoved into a orange jumpsuit and stuck in a glass room when you had done nothing wrong. You know, imagine what that must be like. It's incredible. And that's what we did. We did that. We did that to a lot of people. And it happened for years and the abuses got worse and worse and worse. And we all know about Abu Ghraib, but that certainly wasn't the only incident of torture in Iraq. And that's hard to hear. It's hard to imagine you going through that, Matt. There's a quote that I really like by Mother Teresa. It was, "The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of family too small. It strikes me that doing that, pulling people out of their house, putting them in those enclosures, doing the search, all that. That's easier if they're not part of our family, if they don't count. Was there a point at which there was some kind of transition for you, where they got closer, where they became extended family, if you will, for you? You know, I didn't have too much of that happening to some degree, but it was definitely -- I felt very alienated for the most part. So they were simply the bad guys at a certain point, and you were the good guys. They killed your friends, and so -- Yeah. I mean, there was a language barrier. There was certainly cultural barriers. One of the most profound moments I had in Iraq was a young Iraqi teenager who was detained by us in our holding area. Looked directly into my eyes and saying, "Broking English, why are you doing this to us?" And to me, that was a question I couldn't answer. We had some interrogators, translators rather, who were Iraqi and who worked very closely with us, and I may have felt, you know, closer to them at a different point of time. But, you know, for the most part, I felt pretty -- I kept a distance, emotionally. So let's talk a little bit more about your transition out. At some point, you got involved with Veterans for Peace. Would you have been tempted to be involved with a group like that while you were in? How long after you got out, did you get connected up, and why with that group? You know, it was actually a woman named Leah Bulger, who was the president of the Appear, at least on the board, who recruited me to the organization. Essentially, I had not been very involved in the veterans groups, especially the anti-war veterans groups. I had been involved a little bit with Iraq veterans against the war, a little bit with the AP, but the protesting scene wasn't really where I felt most effective. I know for a lot of people that's where they liked to spend their time, and that's all good and well, it just wasn't for me. So it took me a little while to become involved with the AP. I think 2,000 made me nine or ten before I joined officially. And really what motivated me, two things motivated me. First and foremost, I found out Howard Zinn was a member. And Howard Zinn, for those who don't know, he's an American historian, was an American historian, passed away a couple years ago now. He was a veteran himself. He was served in World War II, and he's probably one of the most honest historians, American historians, that has ever lived. As someone I admire has worked very, very much. The people who stood in the United States of America is an amazing book that did more to educate me than 12 years of public school and four years of college, for sure. That's first and foremost why I was very interested in BFP. The other reason was just the idea of working with other veterans, mostly Vietnam-era and BFP, who have had similar experiences to mine, who care deeply about peace and believe that it is possible through peaceful means. So that's what really motivated me to get involved. So what did you actually do with veterans for peace, for BFP? You rose to Vice President, so you must be big shakes in that organization. Well, you know, my real value add, I started working on the home in 2009 and became involved in 2010, maybe a lot of them. I'm not sure exactly when. But I knew the congressional side of things, the policy side of things, really, really well, because it was my job to know. You know, I think the reason I gained credibility and respect early on with my fellow vets was I had that understanding of what was happening in Washington and where we could leverage some influence using the BFP logo and sentiment. That was, I think, a big reason for me becoming a more central person in the organization. I recently actually came off the board, and as of January this year, I'm no longer Vice President, but I'm going to still stay involved. I'm still working with the Development Committee of the board, working to secure the future of VFP, make sure that people are aware of the organization, not working, and all that. I think VFP is a tremendous, a powerful organization. The concept of a veteran for pieces, tremendous, and powerful. And my real hope is that more people become exposed to the idea in that VFP can use our stories and use our experiences to relay a very simple message to the American public. And if the war doesn't work, war is not unnecessary for us, but it is an unnecessary choice that simply does not produce pieces of stability short of complete and total other destruction and devastation. Is it your take on it, Matt, that this is true now, and it was always true? I mean, World War II, most people think of it as the good war. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think people romanticize things after they happen. One day people romanticize the rock war. Maybe that's already happened to some extent, but I understand the idea that there are evil people out there, and there are people who are sociopaths and do bad things. That's not limited to a certain religion. That's not limited to a certain ethnicity or gender. I think that it can happen in just about every circle. But realistically, you know, we don't live in the World War II era world anymore. This is 2014. I think we have to evolve as human beings. We don't live in a time where you can indiscriminately drop bombs, and that can't lead to something worse down the road in terms of retaliation. Whereas, yes, Hitler was a very evil person and had to be dealt with, ignoring the fact that Hitler probably could have been dealt with much earlier on without a major war or a continental war or world war. You know, the Treaty of Versailles set up Hitler's reign. The Treaty of Versailles was a punishment for Germany's provocation of World War I. So, you know, we sort of, the European powers more than any, but those who participated in World War I played a role in setting up the conditions that transpired and caused a second World War. So ignoring that, maybe one could argue that there was a necessity there, but I personally find it kind of hard to believe that we couldn't have solved those problems without war if we had tried earlier and had been smarter about it. And that really comes back to what we need to do today. When we talk about these genocides that are happening around the world, some of them very quietly, some of them very open, the use of military force may seem appealing, but it is a very primitive reaction to most designed political problems. That maybe brings us to your involvement with Friends Committee on National Legislation. Again, website FCNL.org. There's veterans for Peace.org. People can come to Nordenspiritradio.org and they'll find links to both of those and to you. So FCNL, I guess maybe that's where you went, so you could actually try and prevent some of those future wars? Yeah, as I said earlier, I never really felt that the protests were an effective place for me to be. But when I started working with FCNL back in 2005, 2006, I got on Capitol Hill and talked to Congressional staffers about my experience in Iraq. And I literally, one of my first visits was with Congressional staffer of Senator Mike DeWine, who was a Republican senator from Ohio. He still involved in state level government in Ohio, but this is when I was going to college Wilmington, which is in Ohio. And this young woman who at the time I was probably 23, maybe 24, and she was probably about my age, had never served in the military or anything like that, was defending the Iraq War to me, someone who experienced it, and giving a very rosy view of what she thought was happening on the ground. And I learned right then and there that there was room for someone like me to do some work on Capitol Hill educating and advocating for better policies. That's initially how I became involved, and I have felt over the years that my experience in Iraq has helped me open doors and has helped me be effective in communicating these positions to Congressional staff and others involved in these policies. And ultimately, the reason I'm involved with FCL is because I believe in the work and I think what we're doing is working. If anything was learned in the last year or so, if you look at, say, President Obama's March to War with Syria, the American public does not want another war. We're a war weary, as they say, or maybe war-wise, is a better way to think of it. But ultimately, the work that the peace groups, including FCL and BFP, have done over the last decade or so, has helped create the condition for people who are opposing more military interventions around the world. My sense is, though, that if we just oppose military interventions, the world can still be a very nasty, horrible place, and the hitlers will grow up. What can we do that's constructive? We can't war. A lot of people don't know of any other tools in their tool chest. Right, yeah. So it comes back to my earlier point about making investments in the root causes of conflict. So imagine, you know, we spend roughly two cents on the dollar on our foreign aid budget. Now, that includes all of our embassies, too, and some military assistance as well. So that's all of our whole diplomacy budget is two cents on the dollar of our federal discretionary budget. Meanwhile, if you look at the Department of Defense budget and you include costs of veteran's care, you include the legacy costs of previous wars. And look at that, you know, the war budget and its totality, and the national security budget, you know, NSA and others, and its totality, we're talking somewhere between 39 and 50% of the federal discretionary budget. So that's up to 50 cents on the dollar on military, current and past and future as well as research and development, too. The budget, in our view, is a moral document, and this really lets us know where our priorities are. If we're spending half of our federal discretionary budget on military, current, past and future, but only 2% of that budget on engaging the world diplomatically and creating friendships and partnerships around the world based on mutual economic interest, not predatory economic interest, based on, you know, the idea that we're sharing this planet together, we could get a lot further with that in terms of preventing future wars than we could spending that 50 cents on the dollar on the military. You really don't have to convince me, but then you know I'm Quaker. I'm curious a little bit about your spiritual journey. You referred to yourself as not religious, but your spiritual. How did you grow up, either when you're in New York or when you're in Florida, you went to evidently Quaker College there, Wilmington College in Ohio, you're working for a Quaker organization. Why not work for the Lutherans? Yeah, I was baptized Methodist as a kid, and I was raised rather agnostic. We went to church a little bit when I was young, but not that much. And when my family moved to Florida in 1995, I would go to church with my friends on occasion. I went to Catholic Church, I went to Pentecost Church, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, you know, a number of different Christian denominations, Catholic and Protestant. And I never quite felt at home in any of those places. The one place, and I'll say, you know, that was sort of my adolescence, I remained mostly agnostic for most of, really most of my life. And then after the military, when I found Quakerism and started taking part in Quaker meeting, I felt like a real sense of belonging that I had not felt at previous churches and worshiping with others. And I think it's something about the silent connection with God. And, you know, for some people, and I'm sort of out, my jury is out on whether or not I really believe in God per se, but I certainly believe in the power of human spirituality. I believe that there's an interconnectedness, you know, call it instinct, call it dumblock, whatever. But to me, there's something more than the physical presence on earth, and I'm not so sure to say that, you know, that that for sure is what God is, but I think that there is definitely something to it. So for my journey over these last few years, especially, I've become very close to Quaker tradition. And I, again, you know, feel very spiritual, but don't necessarily feel religious. And I think that makes the Quaker community a good home for someone like me. And, again, it's a journey, you know. I haven't arrived at my final destination. I'm still on my way. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going, and I'm not exactly sure the vehicle I'm on at times, but I feel like my thought process is constantly evolving on those fronts. It's a beautiful evolution to see, Matt. I'm really touched that you've shared as much as you have and that you continue to do this work. I think that the whole nation is benefiting from your dedication. So thank you. Go forth. Keep doing such wonderful work. I hope that it helps also, as you said, with your own healing. That as you're healing the world, that it works within you because it's such a precious gift you're giving to us. So thank you for doing that, and thank you for joining me for Spirit in Action. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time and the conversation. We've got a minute or two left, so I'll take you out for today's show with a portion of a song by Jacob George, a veteran of three tours in Afghanistan. Hear the full version in my interviews with Jacob on northernspiritradio.org. See you next week for Spirit in Action. This is Warrior by Jacob George. This song is about the difference between a soldier and a warrior. You see, a soldier is loyal. The soldier is technically and tactically proficient. The soldier follows orders. Now a warrior ain't so good a following orders. Because a warrior follows the heart. You see, a warrior has empathic understanding with the enemy. So much so that the very thought of causing pain to the enemy causes pain. Cause it's pain to the warrior. You see, a warrior understands that we fight to make a stand. No matter the injustice we might see. And I'm telling you that's nothing but the truth. I'll be the best of war I could be. It was a hot and sunny day in Chicago, as we lined up to march down the road. With 20,000 strong there was nothing to go wrong as we sang songs through every barricade. Now I held my head high as I, Moss beside my sisters and brothers in arms. And there's nobody days and the day that we march to the gate. The NATO barricade hot said now a warrior understands that we fight to make a stand. No matter the injustice we might see. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website. NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Matt Southworth was a wrestler in high school, fought as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq after graduation, and now conducts legislative battles for peace on Capitol Hill.