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| Horseplay: US Army Capt. Jon Powers and an Iraqi boy at a Baghdad orphanage in late 2003. Courtesy of Jon Powers |
Back from Iraq, veteran finds charity work, maybe politics
Former Army Capt. Jon Powers launched War Kids Relief to help Baghdad's orphans.
from the April 4, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
While on the tour, he talked with other veterans and found, to his surprise, common threads in their experiences.
"All this traveling around to talk about it helped me better understand my thoughts on the war.… I realized for the first time my story wasn't as personal as I thought it was," Powers recalls in an interview in New York. "I could be a voice for it."
The road trip included screenings on Capitol Hill. Powers and other soldiers on the film tour were surprised by questions from staffers for House members. The Beltway crowd seemed more interested in what the soldiers ate in Iraq than what light their war experiences could shed on US policy there. He says he came away disillusioned. After having "such a faith in Washington," he now felt policymakers were out of touch with what was happening in Iraq.
"Coming to terms with that took a long time," he says. "There was a long period of frustration [after] coming to D.C. and seeing how the discussion is."
A novice humanitarian
It was after a screening in New York City that Powers struck up a conversation with a member of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Joe Donahue. Mr. Donahue asked what Powers would do if he could go back to Iraq, and the answer came in an instant: "Without a doubt, help the kids."
Donahue says he seldom meets veterans who want to return to the war zone they just fought their way out of, especially to do humanitarian work. He himself had struggled to break into such work after leaving the Army and knew it could be daunting to find an outlet for good intentions.
"I didn't have a clue about it," Donahue recalled during a recent phone interview. "I was calling the United Nations switchboard." Enthusiastic about Powers's idea, Donahue pledged to try to get backing from the veterans foundation.
Says Powers: "When I finally had time to decompress at home is when I decided to go back" to Iraq to start War Kids Relief.
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