"Your son volunteered. He knew what he was getting into ..."

So did I ... in 1968 five months after the Tet offensive. I dropped out of college and enlisted.

And like the current volunteers who are described by worn-out conservative flag-wearers, I had a rough idea of what I was getting into. That "rough idea" was based on trust ... trust in a system and, ultimately, trust in a specific leader and a specific governing political party.

The specific leader of course was LBJ, the specific party was the Democratic Party and the specific system was and is the system that allows us to hang our political opinions on buttons and sanctimonious drapery of stars and stripes from which we belch our prejudices.

When you sign up you endorse a contract on the bottom line. It's a contract with specified written obligations on the part of both parties, but also with unspecified but powerful assumptions on the part of both parties.

In the case of joining the military knowing what you are getting into is based on very powerful unwritten but nationally accepted assumptions:

1) The integrity and honor of the commander in chief of the military and that CIC's skill, wisdom and understanding of all reasons when and why military citizens are to be placed in harm's way.

As a volunteer you are at the mercy of that individual, his party and their combined priorities - with a strong expectatin that those priorities extend beyond a desire to remain in the driver's seat.

(2)As a volunteer you are at the mercy of your own fellow citizens (including your own family) whom you trust to be willing and supportive in making sure the leadership does not waste your vital blood, devotion and patriotism in pipe dreams, self-interested agenda's and idealogies; That leaders are driven by a genuine desire to involve the country in on-going mutual participation and compromise regarding foreign policiy before resorting to force as a last resort.

(3) Volunteering to become a soldier is volunteering to preserve and protect - with your own power and will - the country, it's borders, its citizens and its institutions. It isn't volunteering to keep a political party in power. The only way to avoid that circumstance is for the citizens to assume their rightful role in the triangular relationship with the troops and the CIC.

The troops are expected to trust the CIC's wisdom as well as the patriotic participation of the Citizens who will keep the CIC honest.

The CIC is expected to trust the troops to follow orders and expects to sustain by honesty and integrity the support of the Citizens.

The Citizens expect the troops to do their duties and expect the CIC to sustain by honesty and integrity his political authority. The Citizens must be willing to hold the CIC accountable and willfully resist when the honesty and integrity of leadership is absent.

That is what is going on right now. The President has demonstrated a lack of leadership at a time when leadership is needed. The killing continues daily .... and we are witness to a repeat of a leader who is like a deer caught in the headlights ... sitting there ... doing nothing ... pondering what ... while pretending to enjoy "My Pet Goat."

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Honesty and Stop Loss

Sent the following out to every Washington State Representative and Senator whose address I could find as well as the governor and others in authority.

Then sent it to every U.S. Senator and Representative whose address I could find as well as the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, and the Bush administration.

Dear Senator/Representative

I want to write and encourage you to explore legislation at the state or national level that requires a formal presentation of the Stop-Loss Pentagon policy as it is applied to enlistment contracts into the Guard, Reserves and active-duty of all military organizations.

When one buys a house or car the signing includes an assortment of paperwork that involves among other things a paper trail of full faith and disclosure. The idea is that the buyer or borrower is required to formally declare and acknowledge that he/she has had all the implications of the contract explained and understands them.

The issues brought up in the recent Santiago vs. Rumsfeld case magnify that - among other things - those who sign on the bottom line are generally in or just out of high school with limited experience in the world of employment, self-sustenance and dealing with the consequences of decisions which may or not be decisions of the moment driven by impulse.

As it is, our high schools have become something you and I never had to deal with in our lives - mandatory attendance and presence in what is literally shark-infested waters where military recruiters enjoy open-season with unrelenting aggressiveness towards our children at school.

I am employed as a social worker for the state of Washington. Last month I had occasion to interview a young man a year out of high school - a young man still considering college, trade school or immediate employment. I asked him how often recruiters contact him.

He did not hesitate. "2-3 times a day every day."

Recruiters hiding behind the No Child Left Behind and preying on families who are very poorly informed about opting out of recruitment efforts are more and more becoming the public face of a desperate and cynical Pentagon that appears more and more to be the senior hucksters trying to maintain unreasonable quotas at the expense of truth.

A "read-this-before-you-sign" requirement with its implied session of "truth-in-lending" would give greater credence to those who defend Stop-Loss with the disingenuous "They knew what they were getting into."

Further, it would remove some of the sense of victimhood presented by these young soldiers as well as the sense among their families that the soldier AND the family have been HAD.

Such legislation is very much in harmony with current tenets of American capitalism that facilitate aggressive marketing and public disclosure. It would also, I believe, help to inculcate among those who do understand Stop-Loss and go ahead and sign the enlistment contract a sense of genuine sincerity and appreciation of what they are laying on the line.

It would help the signing to become almost the commencement moment of an act of patriotism genuine in its purpose.

Again, I encourage you to work within your legislative houses to draw up and pass something that goes way beyond the simple and shallow "Support the Troops" bumper stickers and that involves recruits and their families more fully in such an important participative moment at a time of national emergency.

Otherwise, Stop-Loss as currently administered and justified is a simple and fraudulent deception with deadly consequences.

I'd be happy to discuss this with you at your convenience.

Arthur Ruger
Bay Center, WA

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'Cost of War' conference

Cost of War conference, Bend, Oregon, March 26, 2005,
Lietta Ruger, Military Families Speak Out, Guest Speaker,

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The Seattle Times Thousands rally to protest Iraq war

March 19, 2005; 2nd anniversary of war in Iraq with upwards of 750 rallys and protests held across the world...or so that is what is reported. For our local area, Seattle, the article below reports on the rally held at Seattle Center. And yes, that is us being referred to in the interview. We were invited to be guest speakers representing Military Families Speak Out, Pacific Northwest.



We got a last minute call on Thursday evening and had one day to pull together our resources and prepare for our presentation. There was some confusion about the amount of time we were alloted to speak, it went from 10 minutes to 5 minutes to 8 minutes total for the both of us combined. We carved down our pepared speeches to meet the time alloted, yet even that was was shortened to about 6 minutes total as prior speakers ran over their allotted time... considerably.



We were scheduled to speak at 1:15pm and as other speeches ran long we didn't actually speak until 2:30pm. By then the feeder marchers from a variety of other meetings and rallys had arrived at the Seattle Center for the convergence of one large march and were justifiably impatient to get started. I didn't get to deliver my brief prepared speech with 3 items I wanted to call to attention, but I was able to make mention of 2 of the items and particularly to call attention to the Resolutions already presented to both Oregon Governor Kulongoski and Washington Governor Gregoire to call home the National Guard for their respective states.



As my last statement I got to mention that copies of the Resolution for Washington Governor Gregoire were available at our table (Military Families Speak Out) to take and freely distribute. I asked that people sign and put address on the Resolution and mail in to Governor Gregoire's office.



Despite the delay in the planned tight time schedule and the eagerness of folks to get the march started, the lines formed immediately to obtain copy of the Resolution. This intrigued me because it seemed to demonstrate that people Want to take action steps beyond rallying to protest when actions are made available to take and I will be most curious to see where the Resolution goes.



We are grateful to some significant people among the event organizers who made this opportunity possible for us to share our personal message on behalf of our deployed loved ones and on behalf of the troops. We are particularly grateful to Mike of the Major Visibility Project, Seattle, who shepherded the representation and visibility of our MFSO organization amongst the many groups represented at the rally. With the help of many Friends our last minute invitation which left us inadequately prepared gave us what amounted to an opportunity to not only share our voices, but more importantly to give yet another avenue for many to act to make their voices heard.





Here is the Seattle Times news article reporting on the Cost of War, Bring the Troops Home Now rally at Seattle Center, March 19, 2005.



Thousands rally to protest Iraq war



By Tan Vinh

Seattle Times staff reporter



As military families go, Lietta Ruger said, she is as red, white and blue as any proud mother.



But how could she reconcile her loyalty to the armed forces with her disdain for the Iraq war?



For months, she kept silent — until her son-in law faced mortar attacks every night at his Baghdad compound. That's when the Episcopal preacher in her came out.



Ruger, 53, of Bay Center, Pacific County, spoke out against the war on PBS' "The NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer last fall and to her congregation at St. John's Episcopal Church in South Bend, Pacific County.



And again yesterday: On the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, she gave an impassioned speech explaining why she believes the war in Iraq is unjust, before a crowd of anti-war protesters at Seattle Center. Organizers put the number of participants at 5,000.



The Seattle protest, put together by the Church Council of Greater Seattle, Washington State Jobs with Justice and Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War, was part of a worldwide movement designed to place pressure on the military and get attention from Washington, D.C.



More than 700 marches, rallies, peace vigils and protests were held in communities from California to Illinois to New York, twice the number as last year, according to national organizers.



Thousands joined similar protests in European cities — 45,000 in London, according to The Associated Press. On both sides of the Atlantic, the protests were passionate but largely peaceful. Seattle police made no arrests.



In Seattle, Ruger, whose son-in-law and nephew are about to serve their second tour in Iraq, and who herself was raised in a military family, addressed the crowd knowing that "a lot of military [families] are not very happy with my message."



But, she said, "You should not let someone else define patriotism for you."



After the rally, the crowd marched in the rain from Seattle Center to Westlake Park and back. Several groups of students and political activists who had rallied elsewhere earlier in the day joined in the 90-minute march.



Among the marchers were church groups, labor unions and campus clubs, veterans and military spouses, organizers said.



There were protesters such as retired Lt. John Oliveira, 39, of Darrington, who told the Seattle Center crowd that he resigned from the Navy last year because he didn't want to continue pitching a war he didn't believe in.



Two years ago, Oliveira said, he looked into the cameras of several television networks and "sold this war as a war on terrorism, removing weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi nuclear threat.



"Well, we have found out that that was the biggest lie ever perpetrated on the American people," he said.



Ruger feels more at peace now that she is expressing her displeasure over the war and what it is doing to her family, she said. While her son-in-law served 15 months in Iraq, she had to console her daughter and help out by baby-sitting her three grandchildren.



Ruger declined to give her son-in-law's name but said "He will do his mission, but his preference is to be home." He is a 25-year old Army sergeant. "If I could do it, I would go in his place," she said.



The woman who once stayed silent now lobbies Olympia lawmakers to get the Washington National Guard out of Iraq and has joined a military-family group against the war.



Ruger, who grew up on a military base in Japan and 11 years ago married a Vietnam veteran, Arthur Ruger, 57, said, "I have absolute pride in the military."



Her husband also gave the crowd some advice: "You can be against the war, you can disagree with Bush and still be a patriot."



The Seattle Times: Local News: Thousands rally to protest Iraq war

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Our interviews by Newshour piece to air this week

Our interviews by Newshour piece, Military Families speaking out, to air this week.



As you know, we were filmed and interviewed by Lee Hochberg, Seattle correspondent for Newshour with Jim Lehrer. This morning (Monday, Sept 27) Lee phoned me to give update on when this piece will be aired. He said he hopes to see it aired Thursday or Friday evening..this week. Again, as he explains, their morning meetings and news pertinent to the moment decides the basis for what gets aired that evening. Lee says he is aiming for Thursday, and with Presidential debates, he thinks it is more likely it will air Friday.



Newshour with Jim Lehrer is shown on PBS stations, please check the listings in your area. Here also is url for Newshour features http://www.pbs.org/newshour/home.html



The piece Lee has been working on is military families speaking out, as this is a first in history and a new phenomenom, that military families would come together in commonality to speak in support of the troops by speaking out against the war. citing a misguided administration and Commander-in-Chief. Military families have traditionally been taught to "suck it up", support the troops with public statements of committment for whatever combat theatres where their loved ones as soldiers are deployed, and hold their criticisms of administrative policy as private thoughts not shared in public venue.



Newshour decided to learn more about what compels military families with loved ones deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to break with the traditions of military families and speak out against the war. Lee Hochberg is compiling the piece and I have no way of knowing what the completed piece will look like until we see it aired. Lee included various events and interviews of Military Families Speak Out.



Lee also included filming me at my church giving a sermon that addresses the wrongness of the war and the President's decision to take us into Iraq. He also filmed an interview with both Arthur and me at our home, my views as a military brat, young wife to Vietnam veteran, and mother and aunt to 2 new Iraq veterans; Arthur's views as a Vietnam era veteran speaking out.



We invite you to watch this piece. We hoped to be able to videotape it at home, but aren't set up to do so. If anyone else is able to do so and can videotape it, perhaps provide a copy for us, we would be appreciative. Thank you. I believe, also we can purchase a videotape of the show from Newshour.



Lietta (and Arthur) Ruger



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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ww/jim_lehrer.html



JIM LEHRER

Executive Editor and Anchor



Jim Lehrer was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1934. He is a graduate of Victoria College in Texas and the University of Missouri. After three years as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, he worked for ten years in Dallas as a newspaperman and then as the host of a local experimental news program on public television.



He came to Washington with PBS in 1972, teaming with Robert MacNeil in 1973 to cover the Senate Watergate hearings. They began in 1975 what became The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, and, in 1983, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, the first 60-minute evening news program on television. When MacNeil retired in 1995, the program was renamed The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.



Lehrer has been honored with numerous awards for journalism, including a presidential National Humanities Medal in 1999. In the last four presidential elections, he moderated nine of the nationally televised candidate debates. For the 2004 election, Lehrer will moderate the first presidential debate on Sept. 30 in Miami.



"No Certain Rest" is Lehrer's 13th novel; his 14th, "Flying Crows," was published in May 2004. He also has written two memoirs and three plays. He and his novelist wife Kate have three daughters and six grandchildren.



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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ww/hochberg.html



LEE HOCHBERG

Correspondent



Based in Seattle and Portland, Lee Hochberg has been a NewsHour correspondent since 1986, covering events in his region. He provided the NewsHour's ongoing coverage of controversies over the northern spotted owl, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. His numerous awards including a Peabody Award for a NewsHour report on dangerous trucking practices. Lee is married, has three children, and lives on Mercer Island in Washington State.

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