IVAW’s Matthis Chiroux was a star this last year when he kept his message in the liberal northeast, but now that he’s tried to take it home to Alabama, it’s a different story. Sure he finds some people to feel for him, mostly journalists. Like Annie Gilbertson of The Auburn Villager;
“I believe Alabama is the most important place to foster an antiwar movement,” said Chiroux. “I’ve found a lot of support from the Alliance for Peace and Justice, the Muslim community, the Quakers, the Baptists and other Christian communities. A lot of churches have it right on and see the core of humanitarian ideas.”
Chiroux is often asked if he will eventually run for office–a career he said he is not planning on now, but one that he would pursue in Alabama if he ever changed his mind.
The folks that know Chiroux tell me that he thinks he’s too urbane for life in Alabama, but he works at the Southern affectations for the locals;
“I’m not a coward,” he said, “I’m not a bad soldier, I’m exactly the kind of soldier this country needs right now.”
Chiroux has forged alliances with organizations such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, CODEPINK, Granny Peace Brigade and the Campus Antiwar Network in hopes of building an antiwar effort.
“I ain’t going, I ain’t running and I am not hiding,” he said. “If we all stood up, we’d have a fighting chance.”
Yup, he’s the kind of soldier we need alright. A soldier who shirks his duties and gets outraged when someone expects him to do what he’s been getting paid to do all along. Yeah, we need a ton of folks like that.
Well, over at OANOW.com, the folks who wrote the story the other day that I linked, found some locals who aren’t being taken in by Chiroux;
“When you hear somebody compare our military to the Fourth Reich, you kind of realize that this guy isn’t really worth listening to,” said Janine Babbitt, whose husband Maj. Erich Babbitt, an active duty Army National Guard member, has been deployed in Afghanistan for about a week.
“What this guy is pitching is the ugly American,” [U.S. Army Capt. David] Van Horn said. “He would be pitching this if there was a cold war or a hot war. I would warn strongly against people buying into anything that hasn’t been seen first hand. Until you’ve been there, you’re not going to know.”
“The army is not trying to make criminals out of people. It falls on deaf ears for someone like me who’s been out there and run the road and seen it. American soldiers aren’t built to be terroristic… It’s not who we are as people. My guys are too damn good,” Van Horn said.
Yeah, I think that Chiroux had planned on mooching off of the locals with his pretty words and grand pronouncements, but it may all end soon and he may have to get an actual job. Make sure you read the comments just to get an idea of how out of step Chiroux is with his homies.
