(…)

Those were the words I screamed into a microphone before thousands of people as I threw my Global War On Terror Service medal back to NATO. I had to throw it because no one from NATO came out to get it, and the police wouldn’t allow us up to the barricade. Their fear of us — US war veterans who challenge ten years of US war-making and publicly advocate for peace — is symbolic of their fear to confront real problems.

I threw my medal back, though, in fact, I never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.