| This dissertation provides a comprehensive examination of the involvement of U.S. military veterans and families in the anti-Iraq War movement which I term the modern "military peace movement." I draw on over two years of participant observation, thirty semi-structured interviews, and analysis of over 600 media articles and thousands of organizational documents to describe the dominant social movement organizations, strategies, tactics, and identities in this subsection of the peace movement. I demonstrate how the military identities of veterans and family members shape this movement and are used by the movement to make claims. Participants must overcome the unique constraints and heightened risks imposed by the military on their activism. Activist experiences cause these veterans and their families to distinguish themselves from the wider military, and they form a culture of action distinct from the larger peace movement in its goals, organizational forms, emotion culture, rituals, tactics, and strategies. Activists in this culture of action build a collective identity that combines two seemingly contradictory aspects of their lives: an intimate connection to the military and anti-war activism. The bonds between military peace movement organizations resemble a heterosexual family, and this movement family helps to transform activists' negative emotions from war, including fear and guilt, into emotions of resistance, including righteous anger and group pride. Activists strategically deploy their combined military and peace activist identities in order to challenge dominant pro-war framings of the Iraq War and to heighten the emotional resonance of tactics such as war memorials. I argue that the military peace movement complicates the traditional peace/war binary and reveals important diversity within the U.S. military. The military peace movement also demonstrates the significance of social movement scholarship that examines everyday personalized political strategies, movement cultures of action, and the role of identities and emotions in both internal and external movement processes. |
