M. Junaid Alam

The scene was replete with symbolism and loaded with emotion: on Oct. 19, students at Kent State University interrupted an on-campus Army recruiting event to protest an increasingly unpopular war. Unlike the four students shot and killed by National Guardsmen thirty-five years ago, however, Dave Airhart, one of the protesters, was not shot at - at least not in the United States.

But as a veteran of the Marine Corps who served in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Airhart has seen his fair share of bullets, blood, combat and casualties, and is now an eager foot soldier in the growing movement to end America's war campaign.

The center of attention at the Oct. 19 Kent State protest, the war veteran says it was a relatively small-scale affair. The action involved about 20 students who assembled to express their opposition to the war and the military's recruitment policies near the recruiters' area. The activists belonged to the Kent State Anti-War Committee, an affiliate of the national student anti-war group, College Anti-War Network.

Airhart says he scaled an artificial rock climbing unit recruiters had set up for the day, an anti-war banner tucked underneath his shirt. Once he reached the top, he tied the banner to the wall. It read: "Kent State 4 Peace."

"An Army recruiter started to climb up and come after me, so I climbed down the other way," he explains. Airhart said recruiters began verbally abusing him, shouting that they will "kick [his] ass." He also added that a right-wing student tore up a female protester's sign, spit on it, and told her he should "punch her teeth out."

Airhart - but not the recruiters or the threatening student - now faces possible disciplinary action, including suspension or even expulsion in an administration hearing to be held on Nov. 16. He is charged with being a danger to himself as well as others because, according to the administration, his descent from the wall unit via the rear side could have disrupted the hydraulics mechanism.

Airhart is unimpressed with the accusation. "If the thing is that unstable, it shouldn't be there in the first place," he said. The anti-war veteran went on to add, "The administration is saying that I put other students at risk. Well, it is the one putting the entire campus at risk, by letting these recruiters on campus who want to use us as a supply of fresh bodies for Iraq."

Airhart was part of this supply himself until he left the Marine Corps after four years of service. He recalls the exact day without hesitation: July 4, 2004. Initially stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., he served in crucial hotspots of the "war on terror," including seven months at Guantanamo Bay, six months in Iraq, and finally, seven months in Afghanistan.

"I always disagreed with [the Corps] after the first week of boot camp. It was not the most humane place in the world," Airhart said. But his awareness intensified as he saw the military's policies in action. "The mistreatment of detainees I saw at Guantanamo really started it," he explains.

The defining horror, however, came when the war on Iraq began. "None of us thought Bush would actually invade," Airhart said, referring to his unit, First Battalion, Second Regimen, Charlie Company - or what he calls "the fix-it people."

The former Marine says he saw dead bodies frequently as a result of all kinds of violence, but above all, because of American military action. "The majority of dead bodies I saw were of Iraqi women and children. And most of that was from airstrikes" he says.

Airhart, whose battalion was part of the initial invasion force, recalls a particularly harrowing experience in the early days of the war."Our company was coming behind Jessica Lynch's," he says. "We were fighting in the heart of a city and our battalion commander ordered in air strikes with an A-10," Airhart explained. The A-10 is a subsonic ground-attack aircraft equipped with a Gatling cannon and explosive munitions.

Referring to his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Rick Grabowski, he added, "That guy was a real idiot, he blew up six of our amtracks," military parlance for amphibious transport vehicles. Airhart blames Grabowski's heavy-handedness for the heavy losses in his company: out of 130 soldiers, there were 52 casualties, with 18 killed and 34 injured, many seriously.

He also claims 80 percent of his company tested positive for depleted uranium poisoning. "They sent us in there with plastic, watch-like devices and then collected them when we left, and we never saw [the devices] again. Ultimately, they sent us back these results about DU," he says.

Returning to the topic of his present anti-war activism at Kent State University, the soldier turned student says, "I knew that I wanted to join the movement as soon as I got out." The key problem now, he explains, is that "85 percent of students are against the war, but most of them are not active in doing anything about it. It's not really personal enough."

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M. Junaid Alam, 22, is co-editor of Left Hook and a Journalism student at Northeastern University. He may be reached at alam@lefthook.org.