COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
She's on Activist Duty Now
Elizabeth Mehren, Los Angeles Times
January 20, 2006KEENE,
N.H. In a dingy meeting room with walls the color of day-old oatmeal,
40 people in plastic chairs formed a ragged circle. Sharing first
names, they went around the room: teachers, students, nurses and at
least three active-duty service members. They had come to hear about
military buildups around the world, but what they really wanted to do
was hash out their feelings about the Iraq war.
Fred wanted to know what to tell his 10th-grade grandson, who already
worried that he would be sent to Iraq. Catherine questioned whether the
high school students she counseled should believe the promises they
heard from military recruiters. Army veteran Tom asked if conditions
for the troops were as bad as he had heard.
Finally, the circle ended with Ann. With her smiling sincerity and
sleek hairdo, she looked like she belonged on the suburban charity
circuit. Not hardly: As an Army colonel and diplomat, Mary Ann Wright
served her country for more than 30 years in some of the most isolated
and dangerous parts of the world — then quit because
she felt she could not defend this war.
"I resigned when the Iraq war began in March 2003 because I felt the
policies of this administration were making the world more dangerous,"
Wright said. "I felt it was an illegal war and I could not be a part of
it."
For more than two years, this unlikely activist has carried her message
to small audiences, arguing that the war has increased animosity toward
the United States. Wright is part of a tiny network of individuals who
crisscross the country to speak out against the Iraq war.
Ron Kovic, a disabled Vietnam veteran from Redondo Beach, pulls out his
bullhorn at rallies in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington.
Michael Berg, whose civilian contractor son Nicholas Berg was beheaded
in Baghdad in 2004, said he was so "obsessed" with ending the war that
he once gave the same speech 16 times in seven days.
These independent antiwar speakers often appear on platforms arranged
by peace groups. Like Wright — a member of Diplomats
and Military Commanders for Change and Veterans for Peace
— some belong to organizations. But as they address
rallies, student groups and whoever else invites them, they represent
only themselves. They pay their own expenses and do not accept
speakers' fees.
"That would be obscene," said former California state Sen. Tom Hayden, a freelance antiwar speaker.
Wright, 59, brings a distinctive perspective. "I come at this as a
foreign service professional," she said. "This is not a political rant.
This is a well-reasoned argument of why I thought it was necessary to
resign."
Even those who dislike her views do not dispute her right to contest
U.S. policy. Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, noted that
Wright was now a private citizen. "The 1st Amendment, that's what we're
fighting for," Krenke said. "She is basing her views on what she has
experienced — and she has obviously had a wide and
expansive career."
James Jay Carafano, a national security analyst at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington, said he didn't think Wright had special
credibility because she spent time in uniform. But, he said, "This is
how democracies wage war. In every war, you are going to find people
who don't like it."
Operating out of the limelight, activists such as Wright are
influencing public opinion about the war, said Bill Dobbs,
communications director of United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar
coalition in New York. "Their impact is subtle, but they must get
serious credit," he said.
No one was more surprised than Wright to find herself among war
opponents. She had been part of the system since she was 20, after she
heard an Army recruiter's pep talk at the University of Arkansas.
Wright was one of two daughters of a Bentonville, Ark., banker who gave
Sam Walton a loan that helped launch his Wal-Mart empire.
Her career options in the 1960s were largely limited to being a
teacher, nurse or homemaker, but Wright wanted something different.
Mostly, she wanted out of Arkansas. "The recruiter made it sound
glamorous: 'Join the Army, see the world,' " she said. "So that is what
I did."
She saw the Army as an escape, not a career path. But the structure of
the military suited her. Starting with her first posting at San
Francisco's Presidio during the Vietnam War —
followed by a stint at a NATO station in the Netherlands
— Wright loved being in the Army.
She served 13 years on active duty, broken up over several tours, and
16 years in the Reserves. She never saw combat, though she was
stationed in Grenada, Somalia, Nicaragua and Panama. She earned two
master's degrees and a law degree while in the Army. In the early
1980s, she began trying to open up new military assignments for women.
Retired Brig. Gen. Pat Foote said she expected to see maybe a dozen
women in uniform when she attended one of the "women in the military"
meetings Wright organized at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Instead, she said, "I was
amazed; there were over 200 women in the room."
Foote said she was neither surprised nor troubled by Wright's
transformation. "If you want a point of departure on Ann, it is that
she is one of the most ethical and principled human beings I have ever
met," Foote said. "When she went into government service, she did it as
a public servant. She did it because she felt it was the right thing to
do to help her country. She is a patriot."
When she requested an embassy posting in 1987, Wright was told that the
Army's defense attache program was not open to women. Her response was
to leave the Army — giving up a likely promotion to
general — to switch to the foreign service.
She rose swiftly, landing assignments in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
Micronesia, and earning a heroism award for evacuating U.S. citizens
during a coup in Sierra Leone. In 2001, she was part of the first team
of diplomats to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
"As a diplomat, Ann had an absolutely phenomenal career," said F. Allen
"Tex" Harris, a retired senior foreign service officer who worked with
Wright. "She had abilities, background and luck. The luck is that she
served in several posts where things went crazy, and she was given an
opportunity to show her capability."
Wright was second in command at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia when she
heard that large numbers of U.S. troops were being sent to the Middle
East. Before long, she and other diplomats began receiving cables from
Washington, threatening to cut off development funds for the countries
where they were posted "if our country was not part of the coalition of
the willing," Wright said.
In 2003, Wright awoke at 3 each morning in Mongolia to watch BBC news
on her satellite TV. "In the pit of my stomach, I became convinced that
there was no way in the world that going to war in an oil-rich country
in the Middle East was going to make the world safer," she said.
Writing her three-page resignation letter to then-Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell made her so stressed that medics thought she was having
a heart attack.
"This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have
felt I cannot represent the policies of an administration of the United
States," she wrote.
She was one of three top diplomats to quit on grounds that the war was
a foreign policy debacle, halting what Harris called "an odds-on"
candidacy to head an embassy.
While serving in such places as Honduras, Panama and Grenada, Wright
said, she justified her sometimes questionable work
— in support of Nicaragua's Contra rebels, for
example — on grounds that it provided humanitarian
aid.
"But when you really look at the long arm of it, I should have resigned earlier," she said.
Wright left with no plan for the future. She owned an apartment in
Hawaii, and thought she might retreat there to watch the whales. When a
Washington think tank asked her to be on a panel about "risky
diplomacy" weeks after her resignation, Wright surprised herself by
coming out with a fully formed thesis about the strategic shortcomings
of the Iraq war. Soon she was fielding invitations to talk about U.S.
foreign policy.
She traveled all over the U.S. — even to Europe
— enjoying the fact that her government pension was
financing her antiwar activities. She became a perpetual houseguest,
sleeping on pull-out couches in remote outposts such as this western
New Hampshire college town.
She began to have fun. In Dover, Del., the young Republican club at
Wesley College denounced her as a "Bush basher" who had no place at the
small Methodist school. (She spoke there anyway, and about 100 people
turned out in a room where 50 chairs had been set out.)
In August, Wright spent 26 days outside President Bush's ranch in
Crawford, Texas, protesting alongside Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son
in the war and who vowed not to leave Crawford until Bush met with her.
There, Wright became known as the commandant of "Camp Casey," the
protest encampment named after Army Spc. Casey Sheehan.
At Keene State College here, Wright began by describing her Army
career, but quickly turned her focus to the Iraq war. She talked about
U.S. soldiers whom she said lacked adequate equipment, who operated out
of "four huge military bases that have been constructed like little
Americas, in a country that does not have enough sewage or electricity
for its own people." She discussed what she called excessive
involvement by civilian contractors, along with the prospect that U.S.
soldiers will return from Iraq with mental and emotional problems.
Offering advice on protest techniques, she said: "I am a brand-new
person to this. But it sure seems to me that the physical acts get a
lot of attention."
Wright spoke with pride about being ejected from a Senate hearing last
fall after excoriating the witness, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice: "You, the Senate, were bamboozled by the administration on Iraq
and you cannot be bamboozled again! Stop this woman from killing!"
Within seconds a guard was escorting her out of the room. Wright
slipped her arm through his elbow and walked out as if he were her date.
She has heard nothing from Washington officials: "They just ignore me."
But Tom Stockton, 35, paid careful attention as Wright addressed the
gathering here that was part of a larger conference on globalization.
Stockton, an education student, spent nine years in the Army.
"The protesting part kind of bothers me," he said. "But the message she
is portraying is a good message. She is talking about the impossible
situation our military is in trying to fight this war. Usually, the
issues of the soldiers are not being addressed, so it is good to hear
from an insider — who is now an outsider."
Keene State education professor Susan Theberge said the audience left
inspired because of Wright's ability to connect with her listeners.
"She was on the inside, and so she really understands what's going on.
And yet she gave up all that power and privilege," Theberge said. "To
me, that is the definition of what an active conscience is. And that is
her real draw."
After decades of government service, Wright, in turn, has found a new
community. The Army officer and diplomat is at home among Americans who
are anguishing about this war. "We are on the same sheet of music," she
said, adding that she would continue to make her voice heard, as long
as the war goes on.
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