Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Another week of anti-war protests at Creech completed; activists vow they won’t let up

Group Protests Against

Steve Marcus

Garett Reppenhagen, left, executive director of Veterans for Peace, and Chris Velazquez of Philadelphia protest at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021. Members of Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, and Gamers for Peace participated in protests last week against U.S. military drone strikes.

Group Protests Against "Killer Drones"

Peace dancer Sharat G. Lin performs during a street theater protest at the Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021. Members of Veterans for Peace, CODEPINK, and Gamers For Peace, participated in the protest against U.S. military drone strikes. STEVE MARCUS Launch slideshow »

Garett Reppenhagen’s father is a Vietnam War veteran. Both of his grandfathers fought in World War II.

Reppenhagen followed their path into the military, serving as a sniper in the U.S. Army and doing a combat tour in Iraq before being honorably discharged.

Somewhere along the way, he said he came to the realization that there are better ways to solve problems than fighting costly wars. The 42-year-old Denver resident, who traveled to Las Vegas last week, is now an anti-war advocate and the executive director of Veterans for Peace, a group global of military veterans that pushes for dismantling the war economy. It aims to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, and has 140 chapters worldwide working on the cause.

“We believe that we should use all diplomatic efforts and make sure they’re exhausted before we send troops in harm’s way, before we engage in military aggression that ends in killing many innocent people,” Reppenhagen said.

Veterans for Peace and CODEPINK, a women-led organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, led demonstrations daily last week outside Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs to urge the United States to stop using drones for surveillance or airstrikes. Reppenhagen was among the protesters.

Many of the remote drone attacks are executed from Creech, a base about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas the groups would like to see shuttered.

“I think people in Vegas should know what’s happening under their noses,” Reppenhagen said. “The military is still servants of our democracy. We deserve a right to have a voice and control over what’s happening.”

Protesters said the Aug. 29 drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, amid the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan was a call to action. The Pentagon said it believed at the time of the attack the car that was targeted contained a known ISIS threat. Since, however, the Pentagon has backtracked and now calls the strike a “tragic mistake.”

“It’s an eye-opener for the American people and other people around the world,” said Eleanor Levine, an organizer for CODEPINK. “It happened in Kabul, so people actually witnessed it and heard about it.”

In 2019, 600 pilots and 350 sensor or camera operators work to average six airstrikes and 1,000 combat hours out of Creech every day, according to CBS News. The Pentagon reported in 2018 that 499 civilians were killed in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen due to military actions the year prior and 169 were injured in U.S. airstrikes. Another 450 civilian casualties for that year “remained to be assessed.”

Since the War on Terror began in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it’s estimated between 910 and 2,200 civilians have been killed by 14,040 confirmed drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

It has been difficult to track civilian deaths by airstrikes since the Trump administration revoked an Obama-era executive order requiring the U.S. to disclose civilians and combatants killed outside war zones.

Some of those civilian deaths are likely unintended consequences of conducting strikes on military targets, said Barry R. Posen, a national security expert and political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others can be mistakes like the strike that killed the family in August.

Additionally, drone strikes could be counter effective to long-term U.S. goals in combating terrorism, Posen said, especially when a population is under sustained attacks. When civilians are killed by drone strikes, surviving relatives, friends and community members may become sympathetic to anti-American causes.

“The various peace organizations will tell you that we probably made way more than we admit to,” Posen said. “(But) the American military has a high standard for accepting the argument that they made a mistake.”

While the term “drone” has been widely adopted, the military prefers the term remote-piloted aircraft, or RPAs. Tech. Sgt. Emerson Nuñez, a spokesperson for Creech, said Creech was one of several bases that operated the MQ-9, otherwise known as the Reaper, which can be equipped with laser-guided bombs, Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

Reapers have a 66-foot-long wingspan and are 36-feet long, according to manufacturer General Atomics. They can be operated at a number of bases because the aircraft is linked by satellite and launched from other air bases from around the world, Posen said.

“It’s a weird thing to think about,” Posen said. “A person has breakfast, drives to the base, the command center or whatever it is they’re using. And then they’re taking off a plane in the Middle East.”

And as long as the military continues to fly drones out of Creech, the anti-war groups will continue with their movement, Reppenhagen said. He said the groups had been involved in protests twice annually at Creech the past 12 years.

Despite attempts by protesters Thursday to disrupt traffic, Nuñez said “the base is operating under normal conditions and supports the rights to assembly and free speech.”

Metro Police, which polices the area outside the Air Force base, said one arrest was made at Thursday’s protest at Creech. Toby Blomé, an organizer for CODEPINK, was charged with making a false statement and obstructing a public officer, Metro Police spokesman Misael Parra said.

“The military got caught with their pants down,” Blomé said. “It’s just our way of saying this is unacceptable.”

A smaller group of anti-war activists rallied Thursday on the Fremont Street Experience, reading poems, chanting anti-war slogans and speaking with visitors to the popular tourism corridor.

Assisting veterans

Veterans for Peace strives to do more than shut down the drone program and increase public awareness about the cost of war, both financially and emotionally. It also works to assists veterans and victims of wars.

Reppenhagen, who has previously worked as a lobbyist in Washington for anti-war causes, said he also wants to be an ally of military personnel dealing with trauma.

On Friday morning, the last day of protest, Reppenhagen said protesters distributed donuts to those entering the base. There was a QR code on the napkins that would take whomever scanned it to a website with links to military counseling and other resources.

According to the on Creech’s website, 4.3% of drone operators show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That’s lower than the range of 4%-18% of personnel returning from the battlefield that may experience PTSD, according to the post.

“I know firsthand the moral injury that comes along with serving as a service member,” Reppenhagen said. “There is guilt and shame involved in taking innocent lives. These drone operators are in a very difficult situation every day trying to accomplish their mission and do their job.”