Forum Conversation: Garett Reppenhagen, Veterans For Peace
On Liberation From War
The following interview with Garett Reppenhagen continues the Forum Conversation, an ongoing series within this substack where influential leaders and broad-minded thinkers of our times, share their experiences and knowledge.
The foundations of war and peace are central to this interview. Garett’s willingness to present and implement ideas that contradict conventional wisdom is an indication of his resolve and nobility.
In a society where freedom of speech is protected, we are not always provided with all facts and opinions. Particularly when the topic is about the military or a crisis, the opposite occurs; we are asked for blind loyalty and trust without question. Most who doubt the mainstream narrative on numerous topics are marginalized. Instead of reasonable conversation and debate, there is derision, hostility, and repression.
Censorship by the press or government is the first symptom of an end to liberty and freedom — and gives license to further abuse. Tolerance and consideration of different points of view are the foundations of keeping democracy secure.
Garett’s viewpoint and call for change are important for the future of the United States and the world. Whatever we might believe are the causes of the incredible level of militarization, it is important to recognize that challenging the motives and actions of the great and powerful in all realms, is our right and responsibility.
As a child, Garett Reppenhagen imagined becoming a soldier to defend the ideals of democracy. He volunteered for the United States Army and completed a deployment on a nine-month peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, followed by a combat tour in Baqubah, Iraq. As a U.S. Army Cavalry Scout and Sniper in Iraq, he awakened to the horrors of war and the need for peaceful solutions. Garett wrote a blog about the conflict within himself from the battlefield. After gaining an honorable discharge in May of 2005, he immediately began working as a veterans advocate and a dedicated activist. Before becoming the Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Iraq Veterans Against the War and as Vice President of Public Relations for Veterans For America.
Forum: Garett, thanks very much for speaking with us. Perhaps you can start by telling us about your childhood. Did you ever imagine yourself as a soldier?
Garett: When I was young, my father was in the military; he was a Vietnam veteran who eventually died of Agent Orange related cancer. I had been surrounded by the military my whole life. I remember being babysat by guys from my dad’s unit who would come and take care of my brothers and me when we were super young. All of my father’s friends were in the military. I played with plastic army men and a GI Joe and watched war and action movies.
So I was fascinated with the U.S. military and certainly admired the heroics and the glory that the myths about warfare provided. When my father passed away, I was 13 years old, and I began looking for that rite of passage. Eventually, I felt like the military could provide a place for me. Plus, I imagined the economic benefits would allow me to go to college and I could feel that I had earned a seat in the classroom.
Forum: It seems that as a child, you embodied the potential to continue a warrior culture.
Garett: Sure. And we certainly have a warrior culture in this country and it's a problem. The war and superhero movies I grew up on always had a good guy and a bad guy; it was black and white. I was trained and conditioned to see the world in that way. And I’ve found out the hard way what reality is: most things happen in a gray area that doesn't have black hats and white hats or good guys and bad guys. This misconception has infected the way we grow up — and it's something we really need to change. It accounts for the glorification of war that permeates our society.
You can't go to a ballgame without military jets in a flyover. We see this glamorization of the war machine on every holiday.
Forum: After training, when you first went overseas as a soldier, what was your first experience?
Garett: Before I went to Iraq, I did a peacekeeping deployment in Kosovo. Amazingly, I really enjoyed my tour there. I felt like we were doing good things with the U.S. military. I was stopping abducted children from being smuggled out of the country. We removed landmines from the church where Mother Teresa was baptized. And we even guarded a wedding where a Kosovar Serb and a Kosovar Albanian were married. Because they were from different cultures, their family members were willing to stop it with violence. We protected them, allowing the ceremony to go ahead despite threats. So I was really proud of my service in Kosovo, and I felt like I was needed and I was wanted there.
Forum: When did your perspective about being in the military start to change?
Garett: I arrived in Kuwait at Camp Wolverine in January 2004. And we acclimated for about a month there before moving up to replace the military unit near Baqubah, a city in Iraq, in the Sunni triangle. I was there — doing operations and conducting over 200 sniper missions — for a little over a year. We departed on Valentine's Day in 2005.
Forum: What was different about your military service in Iraq?
Garett: On my first day in Iraq I realized we were not liberators. Nobody was giving me chocolates or flowers. I was looked at as an enemy — as an occupier and an invader. Many times when we would drive by groups of kids in our Humvees; they would be yelling “George Bush, number one, America, number one.” And then as soon as we passed by, they would throw rocks and give us a middle finger. It was unsettling to feel like I was basically an oppressor of an empire — and the more and more people that I killed in sniper missions — a burden of moral injury started to grow within me. It wasn't necessarily one incident that transformed me, but an accumulation of small and large events that initiated change.
Forum: You were there when the U.S. role was increasingly questioned.
Garett: I remember the day the torture at Abu Ghraib was exposed. I was in Iraq when Paul Bremer gave false sovereignty to the Iraqi people when the contractors were hung up from the bridge in Fallujah. I was in Iraq for the second battle of Fallujah, and for the first constitutional elections. It was one of the bloodiest years of that conflict for the United States. And I was running sniper missions the entire time.
Forum: How did you act on your observations and changing perspective?
Garett: When I started getting these feelings, I began writing an anti-war blog. It started as just an online journal called Fight to Survive. My writing became more opinionated and the audience that I started developing was more of the anti-war group in the United States. I had never heard the term, conscientious objector — it’s not like they teach you a class on it in basic training. I didn't really know what to do. I knew if I quit fighting I would be considered a deserter and if I ran, I would be AWOL. Honestly, most of the time, I was more afraid of the punishment if I resisted and refused service, than if I just went along with it.
Forum: Your writing was the first effort you made to change things.
Garett: Yes, I started just speaking out through my blog and it was just enough to alleviate the guilt. I felt like I was participating in some active resistance, at least publicly informing people about what was going on in Iraq and sharing my personal experiences. That sentiment grew and grew within me; despising the war and being connected to a community of other military veterans and service members that hated it as well.
Forum: Your efforts to change the attitude towards the military and war have only grown from those days.
Garett: I became the first active duty member of Iraq veterans opposing the war that came home and were organizing underneath Veterans for Peace. When I got out of the military and finally got an honorable discharge, I ended up in Fort Worth, Texas, at their convention. That’s where I met Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq. She asked me if I would stand by her side, as she was going to confront George W. Bush, while he was on vacation in Crawford, Texas. She wanted him to explain why her son had to die. I told her, “I could never replace your son,” but I’d go wherever she needed to go. So we went out to Crawford, confronted the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals, and after a long day of arguing, realized we weren't going to get into the President’s compound right away. I asked Cindy what she wanted to do. She said she was going to stay until she talked to the President.
Forum: You found yourself in the middle of this protest. What happened next?
Garett: I gathered up the other veterans and we all decided that we better go get camping gear because we were going to be there a while. And we started a month-long occupation in Crawford, named after Cindy’s son, called Camp Casey. And it had become a movement that was gaining attention. After some weeks, I had to return home, but I remember going through the airport terminal in Dallas, and seeing CNN on a television screen — and there was Cindy Sheehan. At that moment, I thought that organizing the anti-war movement could have some impact and effect — and I dedicated my life to it.
Forum: Since then, you’ve remained active and involved with Veterans for Peace.
Garett: I'm now the executive director; it’s an international veteran’s anti-militarism organization. It was founded in 1985, really emerging from the anti-Vietnam war movement and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Ten years after that conflict ended, those veterans decided that they wanted to continue to organize against militarism, against nuclear weapons, and against the U.S. meddling in foreign affairs — at that time, particularly in Latin America. The organization just grew into a more dynamic and interesting space. Now we have international chapters that take in pretty much any warfighter, whether they were uniformed or not. Anyone who is willing to lay down the weapon and organize for peace is an accepted member. And we have associate members who are non-veterans, supporting the organization.
Forum: What’s the mission and scope of Veterans for Peace?
Garett: Our efforts are very broad since obviously, military impact is wide and expansive. We are involved in social justice issues that are impacted by military service. And we fight for environmental issues because the U.S. military is a huge multiplier in climate disaster. We have many programs supporting peace and discouraging youth from considering service. Our aim is to exhaust military resources — whether financial resources or personnel resources. We have a counter-recruitment program; building truth and supporting resistance to online efforts that indoctrinate and recruit young people into the military. We continuously challenge the Pentagon budget and the military-industrial complex.
Forum: Your work to influence children seems to be a key part of the organization. Keeping kids out of the military is a priority.
Garett: Veterans for Peace calls our counter-recruitment program, Truth in Recruiting because we feel that the U.S. military doesn’t have honest recruiters and intentions in their efforts to find soldiers. In the old days, they would get a lot of veterans to go into classrooms around the country, speaking to high school and college students. They would also go to shopping malls and job fairs and other public places to offer a description to potential recruits of what the military experiences were like. And if they still want to join the military, ensure that they have the proper information about what they get by signing a contract with the government. There was some honesty. This has changed.
Forum: How so?
Garett: For one thing, we have an all-volunteer force now; there’s no draft like there was during Viet Nam, but we do have an economic draft. A lot of communities are so desperate that young people are looking for answers and any way out — and recruiters have a giant book of excuses of why you should join the military — they're guaranteed to find three or four of them that fit your circumstance. So we like to help debunk some of those myths and talk about them. And as the digital age is upon us, most recruiters are moving into online platforms. They use multiplayer gaming systems and similar applications to try to talk to our kids. They are going through the internet, getting right into your living room and children’s bedrooms to have conversations with them. So we started a program called Gamers for Peace that has just exploded. We’re getting into those same online spaces with new games, trying to build a peace community, and encouraging discord about recruitment.
We're providing an alternative to military service and reasons for kids not to join — and it's successful. And it's fun because we get to play games and we can enjoy it and be humorous. It connects to kids in a way that the U.S. military has a problem with — because ultimately they have only one motive — they just want soldiers.
We are developing a program that provides educational opportunities, called Alternative to Military Service Scholarships. Initially, it will be offered to the children of veterans through our local chapters, to try to break the tradition and cycle of military service and families. There's no one that knows better than military veterans how awful the service can be — and what those experiences have done to them. We're hoping that they'll help guide their kids into getting these scholarships, by staying in school instead of going to the military. I don't want another kid to come home dealing with a burden of moral injury; because they've taken people's lives and lost their souls at war.
Forum: Your motivation began with the realization that the U.S. was not always on the side of good. What do you see as true allegiance to the ideals of the United States?
Garett: Everything we do is wrapped around nationalism. In our culture, if you're not thanking somebody for their service or waving an American flag, you are less of a patriot. That just has to change. Every Veteran's Day, I feel like I'm betrayed again. I was sent to war based on lies, and then they use my military service again, annually on Veteran's day, to recruit kids to do the same. And we can oppose this: we could change mass media, and we could change the video games we play. And we could change the way we talk to our kids. We should have parades that celebrate peace and reflect on the tragedy of war and not glorify it. Supporting peace in all areas of life, including Hollywood and schools would make a better world – all the places that influence and impact generations of kids. It's no surprise school shootings are increasing, that racial violence is increasing, and that political violence is increasing. We just live in a violent society right now — and much of it relates to excessive nationalism — and our warrior culture.
Forum: Our current situation is dangerous with the war between Russia and Ukraine. What’s your perspective on how this will unfold and what can be done?
Garett: Veterans for Peace opposes the continuing escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. We put a lot of the blame on leadership in the United States and NATO for increasing the pressure on Russia and growing tension there. But it takes two nations, and always two sides to go to war. And certainly, Putin has a lot to gain out of the military conflict. It's usually the most powerful people that reap the benefits of war; where the working people are the ones that fight and suffer. Most people all over the world don't want war. There's resistance in Russia, and war dissenters in the United States, all of who are opposing this incredible and dangerous level of conflict.
Forum: What would you suggest to reverse this course?
Garett: We need to remove NATO from Russia’s borders. We need to de-escalate and we need to start moving on a path toward peace before it gets worse. I'm afraid that we're going to look back at this and realize what a tragedy it was — while CNN and other news services attempt to convince you that war is a necessity and that we're doing the right thing for the people of Ukraine. They are suffering horribly in this conflict — they are being sacrificed in this effort — while all sides are increasing hostility and violence.
Forum: For anyone who has not been immersed in war, it is hard to imagine the horrific impact on civilians — and there’s also an incredible toll on soldiers.
Garett: Having grown up in a military family, with all of my friends having parents who were in the military; it was the only life I knew.
My father was burdened with post-traumatic stress disorder as a Vietnam veteran. It created a lot of hardship for me and my brothers and was incredibly tough on my mother. So it's very difficult, and there are many kids without fathers and mothers out there because of military service. Now that I have a child, I'm so glad that I didn't have a family while I was in the military because of that incredible burden upon them.
It's a very tough cycle to break. My grandfathers served in the military in World War II. My father served in Vietnam. I served in Iraq. I just pray that I can empower my child to be able to think critically and have the resources and the opportunities to not need to serve in the military.
Forum: What more can we do to wage peace?
Garett: We're up against immense challenges. The military-industrial complex is embedded into our electoral system and the money flows into every campaign – very much manipulating what our government does. Nonprofits like Veterans for Peace and other activist organizations are not funded like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Though it’s not just about money — the challenges are great, but the people have power. We can organize and we can collectively change things in this nation. I think we have to challenge and exhaust all military resources, whether it's financially — by going after the Pentagon budget — or organizing locally against the military-industrial complex directly, at factories where they are building weapons.
Importantly, we need to keep speaking with our kids; we need to connect with them and talk to them about the realities of military service and offer them opportunities to do something else.
Forum: It seems like a huge challenge, and there’s endless organizing.
Garett: We can organize and have mass protests; the big mobilizations and marches are great. It's awesome to be heard as the American people — and to demonstrate and to show up at events like these is important. Though sometimes it feels like all you're doing is dropping a form in a complaint box and nothing ever happens. But without real activism on the ground, we're probably not going to change things. There were huge mobilizations before the invasion of Iraq. And we still went to war despite having historic numbers who protested worldwide in major cities, all over the Earth. So we’ve got to do something different and there's little time.
There's more need than ever for the resources that are going to the Department of Defense to go to social and health programs. The money spent on the military should be used to educate our children, to help with green jobs in a green transition — so we can stop the climate crisis from accelerating further — these are all massive needs.
If racial and economic inequalities keep growing, very soon we won’t be looking at Russia as our biggest enemy. We will have greater civil conflicts in the United States, exasperated because of the need for resources. So the solution is diverting the finances from fattening corporations and fighting unnecessary wars, towards helping Americans — and all the people of the Earth to live peacefully.
Forum: You’ve become a warrior for peace, which is in some ways even more difficult than being a soldier. How does this affect you personally?
Garett: I want to reiterate that I'm burdened by moral injury. I have post-traumatic stress disorder because I've been in many violent situations in combat that still impact me. This moral injury is the worst thing for me; sometimes I feel like I lost my soul and the guilt and shame are often very debilitating. I can have trouble getting out of bed in the morning or feel like I don’t deserve to be happy, because of the crimes I committed.
However, I’m motivated because we just don't need another generation that suffers through these kinds of moral injuries. Unless our country stops perpetrating violence overseas, things will only get worse. So let's do what we can to end war — let's create a better future for our children.
Forum: Are you hopeful that can happen?
Garett: If I didn't have hope, I wouldn't be doing this work — there has to be. I look into my child's eyes, knowing that I'm doing something to try to change the course of history. And I feel good seeing the passionate people that are organizing. There’s a paradigm shift — with folks starting to wake up and realizing we could treat each other as humans differently. I see the youth mobilizing and organizing like never before, especially with the environmental and climate crisis. People are willing to start making more and more sacrifices to make changes in the world and they're working together. And I think a brighter future will revolve around mutual aid programs and community solidarity. We're not going to survive these times by building a bunker. You will just end up dying alone.
So we have to join together with our communities. We have to talk to each other. We have to work together. And I think we'll find solutions there. There is global resistance building against the war mentality. Technology has provided us with the ability to connect worldwide simultaneously with like-minded people; we’re not working in isolated silos anymore. Our enemies are globalized also; corporations are globalized, and governments are globalized.
There has to be a unified global effort to expose and stop their exploitation and all violence. Liberation from war will take a united world effort; I think we can do it.
For more information, see:
Veterans For Peace — VeteransForPeace.org
American Friends Service Committee — https://www.afsc.org/get-involved
Courage To Resist — https://couragetoresist.org/
GI Rights Hotline — https://girightshotline.org/
Military Families Speak Out — https://militaryfamiliesspeakout.com/
About Face Veterans — https://aboutfaceveterans.org/
This transcript of a recorded interview has been edited for clarity. Previous Forum Conversations include Mattias Desmet and Norman Fenton.