 My name is Jerry Condon and I'm a proud member of Veterans for Peace. My comments today are directed to the youth, to young people in middle school who are already seeing military recruiters in the hallways and the cafeteria, to young people in high school who are told they must register for the military draft, to young women and men who have already enlisted in the military and are being trained to fight in multiple wars. So I'm addressing my remarks to these young people, but I ask that their parents and grandparents listen closely as well. The reality of resisting war is familiar to me. When I was 19, I enlisted in the Army right during the middle of the Vietnam War. I was feeling the draft breathing down my neck, so I jumped into the military before I was pushed, even though I had doubts about the war, even though I did not want to kill another human being, even though I did not trust the pro-war politicians. Yet, there I was, wearing military fatigues, carrying a rifle, running in formation with scores of other young men, loudly chanting, kill the gooks, kill the gooks, what? When we did not perform up to our drill sergeant's expectations, we were called girls and cunts. Jesus Christ, I thought, this is wrong. This is racist and sexist and evil. Nonetheless, I kept on going with my military training. I was not yet ready to resist. I was recruited into the Army Special Forces and trained as a Green Beret medic, which ironically kept me from being shipped off much sooner to Vietnam. The Special Forces medic training took an entire year, so it gave me plenty of time to think. It also gave me opportunities to speak with returning Vietnam veterans who told me horrifying stories about their experiences in the war. They told me they had tortured Vietnamese prisoners of war, that they had mutilated the bodies of dead Vietnamese soldiers, that they had seen other US soldiers rape Vietnamese women and kill innocent Vietnamese civilians. That was enough for me. I knew then that I could not be part of that war. I went to the newspapers and announced that I would refuse all Army orders. The Army responded by kicking me out of Special Forces and ordering me to Vietnam. I refused. I refused those illegal orders to participate in an illegal war. So I was court-martialed, convicted of two counts of disobeying orders and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. Luckily for me, though, I managed to escape from Fort Bragg, North Carolina during my court-martial. I fled to Canada, to Europe and to Sweden, where I joined hundreds of other US deserters and draughty sisters who had been granted asylum. I joined the American Deserters Committee in Stockholm and worked on their newsletter, The Paper Grenade. My political education was just beginning. I met Palestinians and Chileans and South Africans who had fled persecution in their countries and found sanctuary in Sweden. I met Portuguese deserters who had refused to fight colonial wars in Africa. I met with Vietnamese representatives of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam. The American Deserters Committee worked closely with the large Swedish anti-war movement. We attended international peace conferences in Sweden and France, and we met with leaders of the peace movement in the United States. I learned that my country was not about mom and apple pie after all. It was not the defender of freedom and democracy around the world, as I had been taught by my parents, by my teachers, by my church, by the media, and by Hollywood. It was all one big lie. How could they send 58,000 US troops to their deaths for a lie? How could they kill 3 million Vietnamese men, women, and children for a lie? This shocked and outraged me as it did many thousands of young people of my generation. When I returned to the US six years later, campaigning for amnesty for war resistors, the mood of the country had changed. Most people thought that the US war against Vietnam had been a big mistake, if not worse. There was widespread support for amnesty for Vietnam war resistors. I didn't spend a single day in jail, but US wars continued one after another. We invaded Panama. We invaded Grenada. We invaded Nicaragua with CIA trained terrorists. We armed both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We bombed and destroyed Libya. We armed religious fanatics attempting to overthrow the Syrian government. We fought in Somalia and deployed troops throughout the African continent. We refused to make peace with North Korea and threatened them even with total destruction. Many of these wars continue today. Now, we are threatening war with China. We are building new nuclear weapons instead of working to rid the world of nuclear weapons. We have brazenly intervened in the elections of dozens of countries, and we have imposed sanctions or economic war on 39 countries, about one third of the world's population. This is the term we very loosely. Normally I try to avoid saying we when I'm referring to actions of the US government, the military industrial complex. The US government has been completely captured by the billionaire class, by the corporations that profit from war, and profit from the exploitation of natural resources, labor, and markets around the world. It is a violent racist system called imperialism. No war carried out by the United States government military can be justified in any way. These are not defensive wars. These wars are not only unjust, unnecessary, illegal, and immoral. They now threaten the very existence of human civilization. Climate catastrophe and nuclear war are the twin existential threats looming ominously in front of us today. That is why young people must resist for their very future, not just their long term future, but their immediate future. Middle school students and high school students can organize to kick the smooth talking military recruiters out of their high schools. 18 year old men and soon possibly 18 year old women can refuse to register for the draft. Young people who have already enlisted in the military can refuse to obey illegal orders, as I did. Young people who attend colleges and universities have great opportunities for organizing against US intervention for climate justice or racial justice for gender equality and for economic justice. And also of course to abolish nuclear weapons and war. Your future is very much in your hands. Sometimes you may have to make sacrifices in order to resist war and injustice. You may suffer negative consequences, such as rejection by family members and friends, such as denial of jobs and educational opportunities, or even jail time. But such consequences pale when compared to the to the traumatic scars carried by veterans of war, those who survived the PTSD, the moral injury, the suicides. Whereas great joy and fulfillment can be found in communities of resistance. Without the friends and allies that will help you build the youth led movements that are so needed today. You do not have to be alone in your resistance. There are many who will support you, including veterans for peace resistance to war takes many forms from educating ourselves about the realities of US foreign policy. We're not fighting in the streets to blockating weapons corporations, or to just saying what so many have said before you know your wars are illegal and immoral, we will not fight a rich man's war. Thank you.