War veteran: Afghanistan fight is 'charade'
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Edward Everts of Charlotte discusses the decision to deploy 1,500 National Guard troops to Afghanistan in the coming weeks. Everts, a retired officer, a veteran of World War II and a member of Veterans for Peace, opposes the war in Afghanistan. |
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By DENNIS JENSEN
Staff Writer - Published: December 6, 2009
CHARLOTTE — Edward Everts spent three days drifting in the Pacific Ocean in a raft among swirling sharks after his plane went down during World War II.
He was on board a bomber, dropping tons of bombs with the U.S. Army Air Corps (today's Air Force) when his plane crash-landed into the ocean.
Three days later he and the seven other survivors were rescued by a Navy destroyer. Four men perished in the crash.
Today, the 90-year-old Everts is engaged in a more protracted battle. The California native is a member of Veterans for Peace and says he believes the war in Afghanistan — like the war in Iraq — is an immoral foreign-policy blunder, pushed by those who profit from war.
Calling the fighting an "Afghanistan slaughter, where innocent civilians by the thousands are dying," he said, "I don't think any of the troops belong there because they were lied to."
The U.S. war effort in Afghanistan was born out of "deception and misinformation," just like the war in Iraq, Everts said during a two-hour interview at his country home.
"I'm against it," he said of the war in Afghanistan. "The whole thing is a charade to show that we are a military power. There's always money to be made in war."
About 1,500 Vermont National Guard troops will be deployed to Afghanistan early in 2010, the largest deployment of Green Mountain Guard soldiers since World War II.
'Obama's war'
Everts belongs to a chapter of Veterans for Peace out of Burlington. He said the group has about 70 members, with some six to 12 members meeting once a month.
Drafted into the Army Air Force in 1942, Everts served as a weather forecaster in the Pacific Theater.
A mechanical problem after a bombing run over Japan forced the crash landing at sea.
"We floated in a leaky raft for three days with sharks all around," he said. Upon being rescued, several of the men were taken away in stretchers, but "I walked off," Everts said.
After President Obama approved a plan to add 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, Everts said what was once Bush's war "becomes Obama's war."
President Obama is looking more and more like Lyndon Johnson as the former president escalated the war in Vietnam, Everts said.
"I think he's painting himself into a corner and he won't be able to get out of it," Everts said of Obama.
A retired lieutenant colonel, Everts has traveled to Vietnam and Iraq as a peace representative. He went to Iraq in 2000 with the Veterans for Peace to help establish a water purification project. In 1980, he traveled to Vietnam with a group of peace proponents, staging "the first demonstration for peace" by Americans in that country, he said.
A retired film director, Everts obtained a degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. He has lived in Vermont since 1972.
Dual addictions
Everts said both wars in Iraq were about America's dependence on oil, to prop up a friendly regime as a guarantee that plenty of oil will continue to find its way to the States.
"I'm against any of our troops being sent to the Mideast," he said. "The whole thing was a rigged affair to get oil."
Describing the war in Afghanistan as "an occupation," Everts said the fight there is only another in a long list of unwinnable, "immoral" wars.
Lacking a military draft, the United States can continue to wage war with impunity, Everts said, because the vast majority of Americans are untouched by the consequences of war.
The government, he said, is "quite clever" about running two wars "without stirring up the American people."
But with the current economic crisis hurting so many Americans, Everts said he believes the time will come when Americans will grow tired of sending troops abroad to places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I think there will be more resistance to the wars," he said. "The wars are going to break us."
Everts said he believes that the American "war machine" is driven by the Pentagon and by those corporations that manufacture arms, munitions and goods used for warfare.
Every state has companies under contract by the Pentagon, Everts said, "so every state has an addiction to war."
The United States has grown into an empire, with military bases located throughout the world, Everts said.
"We have 700 bases of one kind or another around the world," he said. "We've had some military force being applied somewhere since the 1880s."
Military force should be used only as a last resort, according to Everts.
"I'm against committing our troops anywhere, except for protecting our shores," he said.
dennis.jensen@rutlandherald.com
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