Campus Antiwar Network History

To the students of Hampton Uniiversity.

You are the Americans, and the heroes. Sadly enough in these times of crisis some of our elders still think they know what the hell is going on. As they squash constitutional rights of peaceful assembly, they continue to denounce your true potential and the extreme amount of intelligence and compassion you show for your fellow human.

That is the sad part, these elders are so ignorant that they do not even recognize that your departure point is a place of cooperation versus a place of competition. I want to encourage you to stand up in the face of this lunacy.

Having served fifteen years in the United States Army, I and many others defended your rights. Many of my felow troops died, so that a nation could live in peace. For those who have fought for it, Peace has a different flavor that the Peaceful sometimes never taste. The taste in my mouth today as I read of your experience on your campus, is blood. Just like the taste I had when I served in combat.

The fact that your administrators support the fascist paradigm of this god forsaken government, which has a stated policy of torture, is a telling testament to the fact that not only does history repeat itself, history gets forgotten. The University of Hampton should recognize that over seventeen months ago photos of Abu Ghirab were released, and there are more coming. The fact that there has not been a whimper from the medical community, the legal community, nor the civil society is an embarrasment to a country that is already being laughed at by the world community. That Hampton University has supported this torturous administration. That they continue to allow people of a different pigment to be ostracized and ridiculed and even expelled is a torturous display that we are seeing on many campuses across america. The fact that they are shutting people up, and keeping people apart, separating us and dividing us is becoming apparant.

Our colleges are literally becoming prisons, and history is being forgotten while simultaneously being repeated. Keeping people from gathering under the umbrella of peace, is no different than keeping people from gathering because of the color of their skin. Across the country I see this happening, and I continue to hear from these lost souls in administration that, “We are here for the students, without them we wouldn’t have a job.”

As you note, I am not addressing the administration, I am addressing everyone but these Uncle Tom’s. The United States Troops support you, they do not want to be in war, they do not want to be lied to by their goverment, and they do not want to come home double and triple amputees to be lauded as heroes after breathing up depleted uranium for months on end. As Norman Schwarzkopf titled his book after Operation Desert Storm, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, he was right on the money. Hurling your nuclear waste all over the world as we have done for over a decade does not make us heroes.

YOU ARE THE HEROES, at the very least you are my hero. Because as Norm said, doing what we did, didn’t take a hero. Doing what you did, that takes as much courage as those who walked the first de segregation lines in Alabama. Your administrators, who do not support you, they are cowards.

Your compassion is an inspiration to me, your administration should be removed just as fast as the administration in D.C.
PEACE Dennis Kyne

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Dennis Kyne is a Gulf War veteran and former army drill instructor. He speaks nationally and writes on the US use of uranium munitions in Iraq. He was arrested in NYC during protests at the time of the Republican national convention. All charges were dropped when a videotape showed that police lied in their charges against him.