Growing disgust with endless wars

A recent opinion poll shows the majority of American veterans think foreign wars were not worth fighting. RT spoke to one such person, who says his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan served weapons manufacturers and not people.

“These wars were unjust, illegal, immoral, should never have happened,” Will Griffin, who is now an anti-war activist and organizer, told RT. He said that would be true regardless of any poll.

America’s growing disillusionment with endless military deployments on foreign soil was highlighted in a Pew Research Center report on Wednesday. The polling agency said 64 percent of veterans in the US thought the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. The same answer was given about Afghanistan, the longest war in America’s history, by 58 percent of those polled.

Griffin said one didn’t need to look deep to see that engagements in the Middle East were reprehensible and senseless.

“More civilians have died than enemy combatants. Veteran suicides are at all-time high. There are no schools or hospitals being built in these countries. More bombs are being dropped. And terrorist organizations have risen exponentially since 2011. So every goal that we had going in to Iraq and Afghanistan have failed by every single measure,” he explained.

As a veteran, he knows well the feeling of guilt that one can bring back from a deployment.

“The things that we did were very bad and evil things. I spent two years in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said. “As a mechanic I most certainly worked on vehicles that killed people over there. Who they killed I do not know.”

He said after returning home and educating himself he realized that he was basically cheated into believing that his military service was justified.

“I never served or provided service to the American people or the people of Iraq or the people of Afghanistan. Who I did serve were the corporations, the weapons manufacturers and the politicians, who benefited their careers off of these wars and off of the lives of my fellow soldiers and innocent civilians,” he said.

~ Will Griffin is a Global Network board member and lives in Philadelphia, PA.