Inside the soldiers' resistance

Inside the soldiers' resistance

http://socialistworker.org/2009/07/09/inside-the-soldiers-resistance

July 9, 2009

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail documented the day-to-day
brutality of life under U.S. occupation in a way no mainstream media
sources did in his 2007 book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from
an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

In his new book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in
Iraq and Afghanistan, Jamail looks inside the resistance developing
within the American military.

This is the first comprehensive look at dissent within the ranks of
world's most powerful military, documenting the fight for justice
inside the belly of the beast. Below, we reprint the Introduction to
The Will to Resist.
--

AS AN independent reporter working at different points during the
first six years of the occupation of Iraq, I had some of the most
disturbing experiences of my life. The U.S. military, which I had
been raised to admire, had for me morphed into the enemy. Reporting
from the Iraqi perspective on a brutal, chaotic, violent occupation
that was destroying millions of lives with the indiscriminate
randomness of a hurricane, my sense of outrage had transformed into
an anger that I often aimed at those same soldiers I had admired as a child.

This feeling of being violated and betrayed increased with my
continued coverage of widespread military operations; the use of
white phosphorous against civilians in Fallujah; the collective
punishment of entire cities by cutting off their water, electricity,
and medical supplies; the widely prevalent torture of Iraqis; and
ongoing home raids. To date, the occupation has managed to displace
one out of every six Iraqis from their homes, and has, directly or
indirectly, killed more than 1.2 million people.

I felt a solidarity with the Iraqis because I had no difficulty
imagining how I would feel if my country had been invaded and
occupied. My direct experience of this extremely unethical behavior,
very common among those in the U.S. military in Iraq, and my rage at
the heedless and deliberate devastation I saw them wreak upon the
people of Iraq, fueled my rage and transformed my childhood heroes
into beasts. I was dehumanized by the occupation.

On returning home, in the course of delivering lectures and
presenting slideshows and providing testimony at various forums, I
started to meet soldiers who had deployed to Iraq. As I got to know
them, I was surprised to discover within them a familiar anguish. I
found the same survivor guilt, the ongoing burden of living a normal
life without while carrying the knowledge within that Iraq is burning
and her people are struggling to survive on a daily basis. I could
see in their eyes the same angst that I felt--the utter inability to
reconcile what we had seen in Iraq with the fact of our own
relatively secure existence in a country whose government was
responsible for causing irreparable damage there.

This compelled me to dig deeper. I realized a desire to meet more of
these veterans who had been placed in an untenable situation and
examine the roots and implications of their resistance to what was
happening in Iraq. Through conversations, I learned quickly that
there was active resistance within the ranks to what the troops were
being ordered to do in Iraq.

I found men and women to interview who had spent time in Iraq doing
patrols, working on bases, running supply convoys, and even acting as
snipers. Others worked as intelligence operatives gathering
information by spying on cell phone conversations. Along the way,
talking with these men and women, I realized the bond I shared with
them had become, in many ways, as strong as my bond with the Iraqis I
interviewed abroad, a bond that inspires me to risk my life to work
there time and time again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHILE THERE is a widespread, mostly subterranean resistance movement
in the military today, admittedly it is not yet nearly on the scale
of that which played a critical role in bringing an end to the
Vietnam War. More than ever, due to the faltering U.S. economy,
people are joining or staying in the military because of financial
necessity, despite the risks this decision entails.

In fall 2008, I spoke with David Cortright, a Vietnam War veteran who
has served as consultant or adviser to agencies of the United
Nations, international think tanks, and the foreign ministries of
Canada, Japan, and several European countries. He has authored 16
books, including Soldiers in Revolt (Haymarket Books, 2005), which is
about the massive GI resistance movement against the Vietnam War. I
was interested to know how he viewed the growing resistance movement
in the military today. Cortright said he feels soldiers are not being
as overt today when speaking out against what is happening to the
military because "there is much more to lose now by being punished by
the brass. I see that as the most fundamental change--the nature of
the military today as an all-volunteer force, economic conscription."

Another factor that serves to dampen GI resistance today is that
nearly 50 percent of those serving are married, and many of them have
children to support. This, according to Cortright, constricts the
nature and scope of the movement. Another key difference between
Vietnam and current-era GIs, he feels, is that today when someone
joins the military, they tend to stay with their unit for their
career. "Now there is much emphasis on unit loyalty and solidarity.
You bond with these people, and these social horizontal linkages have
an effect of binding people to each other within the military
community...I talk with lots of guys who hate the war, yet they go
back for a second or third tour out of their duty to support their
fellow soldiers. They think they are helping their buddies." That has
been my experience, too. I have had occasion to speak with veterans
and active-duty soldiers totally opposed to the occupation who
nevertheless agree to redeploy for the sake of their "buddies."

Cortright also underscores the lack of substantial civilian support
as a reason for today's GI antiwar movement not being on par with the
Vietnam-era movement. "During Vietnam there wasn't a real GI movement
until 1968, so it took a few years, but that was supported by
civilians who made enormous sacrifices to help them. At the time we
had a couple of legal defense organizations set up to defend GIs
which don't exist today. Then we had groups like the Young Socialist
Alliance, among others, that would back those of us who spoke up in
those days--we knew we could get access to lawyers."

However, a network is gradually building up, of groups tasked with
helping those in the military who choose to resist. Two such groups,
the Military Law Task Force and the Center on Conscience and War,
which are both successors to similar groups from the Vietnam era are
examples. Cortright is convinced that "though we haven't seen as
widespread a phenomenon as during Vietnam," there is no denying that
resistance exists and is spreading. "We've also seen individual cases
of resistance, and the work that many veterans have done in reaching
out to active-duty military personnel has been successful. This is
another expression of the underlying sentiment in the military that
the war is illegal and unjust."

With each passing day, more soldiers are speaking out against the
occupation, and are receiving support from civilians. This was a key
component of the resistance during Vietnam, says Cortright. "People
in the military have great authority and legitimacy in speaking to
the broader public in the political arena, and the more we as
civilians can support them in doing this, the more effective they
will be in bringing awareness to the movement and the need to end the war."

Of course, times have changed. During Vietnam, there was one main
Winter Soldier event--when Vietnam veterans returning from the front
lines held a weekend press conference in Detroit on January 31, 1971,
to tell the media what was really happening in the war and why it
should end immediately. "Winter soldiers" is a reference to what
Thomas Paine, America's founding father, called people who stand up
for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours.

Today, we've seen several of these Winter Soldier events, sponsored
by a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Such events
are spreading across the country, as well as internationally. By
spring 2009, Winter Soldier events had occurred in Maryland,
Washington, Florida, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, New York,
Oregon, Texas, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., and were
scheduled for Georgia, as well as Germany.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DURING THE writing of this book, I was consistently and deeply moved
and awed by the courage and fortitude of the veterans who were taking
a stand, despite the long odds against them and the brute force the
military is able to exert upon them for doing so. I learned from them
that, as perpetrators, their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is
far more incurable and difficult to treat than that of people like me
who had only witnessed the horrors they had been instrumental in
inflicting. They have to live with the consciousness of having killed
Iraqis, participated in their torture, raided their homes with women
sobbing in the background.

Surpassed only by average Iraqis, members of the U.S. military who
have been deployed to Iraq are paying the highest price for the
occupation--both while in Iraq and when they come back home. They are
now part of an unfortunate, tragic segment of U.S. society that has
been maligned and tossed aside, neglected, forgotten. Today, more
U.S. war veterans are killing themselves than are dying in open
combat while overseas. One thousand veterans who are receiving care
from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are attempting suicide
every single month, and eighteen veterans kill themselves daily. Not
all of these veterans served in Iraq, but what these figures bode for
the future is inconceivable, when we consider that 1.7 million
soldiers have so far served in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As if surviving their deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan is not
enough, upon their return home, soldiers face another battle--to
obtain the services they are entitled to receive from the VA. A valid
discharge from the military entitles all soldiers to medical care
from the agency. In the six months leading up to March 31, 2008,
1,467 veterans died while waiting to learn whether their disability
claims were going to be approved by the government. Veterans who
appeal a VA decision to deny a disability claim must wait an average
of nearly four and a half years for their answer. As of March 25,
2008, 287,790 war veterans from the occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan had filed disability claims with the VA.

These facts partially explain the growing resistance within the
military not just against the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,
but also against the horrendous toll they are taking on troops, who
suffer while they serve there and suffer even more upon returning
home. Being virtually abandoned by the government they swore an oath
to protect and serve often becomes the proverbial last straw for the
veterans, forcing them to resort to suicide.

The deeper one digs, the more apparent it becomes that the military
is in a state of near collapse. For years now, one retired general
after another has appeared in the media to denounce the occupation of
Iraq, and to expose what it is doing to destroy the military. With
the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 565,000 troops
have been deployed more than once.9By December 2006, it was estimated
that 50 percent of troops in Iraq were serving their second tour, and
another 25 percent were on their third or fourth tour.

A horrific example of how this is affecting soldiers in Iraq occurred
on May 11, 2009, at 2 p.m. Baghdad time, when a U.S. soldier gunned
down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a U.S.
base in Baghdad. Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S.
military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference
at the Pentagon that the shootings occurred in a place where
"individuals were seeking help." Admiral Mullen added, "It does speak
to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the
concern in terms of dealing with the stress...It also speaks to the
issue of multiple deployments."

The military is so overstretched that troops being redeployed often
have traumatic brain injury (TBI) from surviving roadside bombs in
previous deployments, and more than 43,000 troops listed as medically
unfit have been deployed anyway. Soldiers already diagnosed with PTSD
and other severely debilitating mental health conditions that
accompany it are being redeployed as the military dredges up troops
to keep enough boots on the ground in Iraq. By October 2007, the army
reported that approximately 12 percent of combat troops in Iraq were
coping by taking antidepressants and sleeping pills. By January 2009,
the army announced that suicides among U.S. soldiers had risen in the
previous year to the highest level in decades. The suicide rate for
2008 was calculated roughly at 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which for
the first time since the Vietnam War is higher than the adjusted
civilian rate.14In addition, more active-duty marines committed
suicide in 2008 than in any year since the U.S. invasion of Iraq was
launched in 2003, at a rate of 16.8 per 100,000 troops.

Prior to the recent and ongoing collapsing of the U.S. economy, which
by raising national unemployment has driven more people to join the
military, the armed forces were so short of troops that more than
58,000 troops have been "stop-lossed" since September 11, 2001. Under
this policy, soldiers who have fulfilled their contracts are frozen
into the military and redeployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Further
deepening this crisis, more than a quarter of a million National
Guard men and women, who joined the guard to provide aid at home in
times of national emergencies such as hurricanes and earthquakes,
have been deployed overseas.

Attempting to keep enough boots on the ground for both occupations,
on June 22, 2006, the army increased the permissible enlistment age
to 42, from a previous limit of 40. This follows a previous rise in
the age limit from 35 to 40 in March 2005. By summer 2007, the army
had grown so desperate for recruits that it began to recruit
indiscriminately in violation of its own criteria. It accepted
individuals with health and weight issues, lower academic test
scores, and even those with criminal records.

By July 2007, the number of incoming soldiers with prior felony
arrests or convictions had more than tripled over the previous five
years, and in the first half of 2007, the army had accepted an
estimated 8,000 recruits with rap sheets. Former army Private Steve
Green is one such example. He was awarded a waiver for previous
involvement in criminal activity and was found guilty of raping a
14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, and murdering
her and three of her family members in the village of Mahmudiyah.

Economics continues to work in favor of the military, assisted in no
small measure by its all-out efforts at recruiting. By October 2008,
the Army and Marine Corps had spent nearly $640 million in
recruitment bonuses. By the end of 2008, the military was once again
making its recruiting goals. As unemployment rises, the military
lures the desperate offering a sure method of obtaining a paycheck.
In addition, the military has resorted to a tried and tested tactic
of enticing foreigners into the ranks by offering citizenship after
service in the military. For example, on March 3, 2009, 251 U.S.
soldiers from 65 countries became U.S. citizens in a ceremony held in
one of Saddam Hussein's old palaces in Baghdad. Since 2004,
active-duty immigrant soldiers can apply for citizenship without the
normal three-year waiting period and without being inside the United States.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE DRAMATIC change in the political climate of the country following
the election of Barack Obama as president, and his promises to bring
the troops home, has expectedly caused the population to lose what
interest they still retained in Iraq, despite the tardy coverage by
the mainstream media. While President Obama promises to bring troops
home, he aims to leave behind at least 50,000 as a "residual" and
"training" force indefinitely. The end of either occupation
definitely does not seem to be in sight.

Most veterans I spoke with while working on this book feel, despite a
large section of the populace being opposed to the occupation of
Iraq, that the consenting majority in the United States has been
complicit in pushing U.S. soldiers into an unsustainable position by
not doing enough to end the war. Today antiwar veterans have to
muster all the support and resources they can, not only in an attempt
to rebuild their lives, but also to affirm and intensify their dual
resistance to the ongoing occupation of Iraq and to the inherently
dehumanizing nature of the U.S. military system.

I have been impressed by the courage and inspired by the persistence
of these veterans. I recognize the risk their resistance entails.
Their actions jeopardize benefits they have earned, including health
care and funds for college, and can even lead to incarceration.

Working on this book has made me privy to the individual as well as
collective transformation that has taken place in a section of the
population that is commonly known for its rigidity and subservience
to authority. While it was not my initial plan, the voices of
resistance in this work have led me to remain more of an observer in
the book. By often quoting their words at length, I have attempted to
retain the rage, despair, and rawness of their feelings without
interjecting my own.

The environment in the United States today is not one that can
support and sustain a GI resistance movement of significant
proportions, giving it enough power to directly affect the foreign
policy of the country, as it did so effectively in the Vietnam era.
There is much in the military to prohibit a GI resistance movement
from growing anywhere near the proportion that helped end the U.S.
war in Vietnam. Military discipline is much more repressive than in
the past, which makes organizing more difficult. There is less
radicalization of the GI movement, as compared to that in the late
1960s and early 1970s; therefore, passive resistance against the
command is more common than direct resistance. There is a much lower
level of political awareness and analysis among soldiers as compared
to that during Vietnam, when there were hundreds of underground
newspapers that served to inform troops while criticizing the
military apparatus. The all-volunteer military, rather than a draft,
is also responsible for stifling broader dissent.

Despite these factors, dissent in the ranks is happening on a daily
basis. While overall violence in Iraq has dropped, it is escalating
dramatically in Afghanistan, as President Obama begins to "surge"
30,000 troops into that occupation. The overstretched military is in
a state of disrepair, full of demoralized, bitter soldiers whose
reasons for staying in are based on economics and loyalty to their
friends rather than nationalism or patriotism.

These elements, accompanied by the continuing neglect that soldiers
experience upon their return home, are driving larger numbers toward dissent.

This is a book about average soldiers and their brave acts of dissent
against a system that is betraying them. I decided to focus on the
rank-and-file members who actually served in Iraq, rather than those
giving the orders from within safe compounds. I believe it is those
who have followed the orders who have had to pay the highest price.
My main objective in presenting this book is to highlight the reality
that oppressed and oppressors alike suffer the dehumanizing effects
of military action. For soldiers and war journalists like myself who
have lived with this, struggled with PTSD, and reintegrated ourselves
into society, a light at the seemingly endless dark tunnel of the
U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the possibility of the
shifting of these individual acts of resistance into a broader,
organized movement toward justice--both in the military and in U.S.
foreign policy.

.

Army deserter plans to continue speaking against Iraq war

[5 articles]

'I had to do what I felt was right,' Army deserter tells news conference

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/11/1m11long002655-i-had-do-what-i-felt-was-right-army/?metro&zIndex=130395

By John Wilkens
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
July 11, 2009

SAN DIEGO ­ An Army tank crewman court-martialed for desertion after
refusing to fight in Iraq said yesterday he'd do it all again, even
after spending the past year in the brig at the Miramar Marine Corps
Air Station.

"I had to do what I felt was right," Robin Long said at a news
conference outside the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his release Thursday, he
traced his journey from eager soldier to war resister, and wore an
outfit to match: an Army camouflage hat and a black T-shirt decorated
with a large peace symbol.

He said he left his unit for moral reasons, not because he was afraid
of combat. "Nobody wants to get shot at. Everybody is afraid. Anybody
who says they aren't is full of it. But," he said, "that's not the point.

"I was afraid of what I'd have to participate in. I didn't believe in
the mission. I didn't think I could live with myself if I wound up
shooting people who didn't do anything to us."

Long, 25, grew up in a military family in Boise, Idaho. He enlisted
in 2003 for "patriotic reasons." Initially supportive of the war, he
said he was ready to fight but grew convinced that the reasons for
invading Iraq were lies. He said he openly questioned the mission
around other soldiers.

In 2005, he was the only member of his Fort Knox, Ky.-based Abrams
tank unit ordered to join an infantry company in Iraq. He went to
Canada instead.

He spent three years there. He met a woman, had a child and worked in
landscaping, eventually settling in Nelson, British Columbia.

About 200 American war resisters have gone north of the border, an
echo from Vietnam, when about 90,000 draft evaders moved there. This
time, the Canadian government has not been receptive.

After his petition for refugee status was denied, Long was deported
last summer, the first American sent back. At least three others have
been returned to the United States since. Several are in various
forms of appellate limbo.

At his court-martial at Fort Carson, Colo., Long pleaded guilty to
desertion and was given 15 months and a dishonorable discharge.

He worked in the supply room at Miramar and wrote several open
letters calling the war "illegal and immoral." Anti-war activists
rallied around him on the Internet and at the base, where they held
monthly vigils. Hundreds of people sent him letters from as far away
as South Africa.

With time off for good behavior, he was released Thursday after 371
days in custody. At first, he said, he found freedom an overwhelming
swirl of noise, crowds and color.

Now he's busy with plans to start school next month at a holistic
institute in San Francisco. He hopes Renée, his common-law wife, and
Océan, his son, can visit him there while he studies massage therapy.
His goal is to return to Canada.

If he found it incongruous to be making his comments on the steps of
the Veterans Museum – a place dedicated in large part to service
members who fought and died in wars – Long didn't say so.

But Will Hays, president of the museum board and a 34-year Navy
veteran, admitted he found it a little perplexing. He watched much of
the news conference and said he was "ambivalent" about Long's message.

"He's certainly got the right to exercise his freedom of speech,"
Hays said. "It's one of the things we've fought to protect over the years."
--

John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236; john.wilkens@uniontrib.com

--------

Freed Army deserter says he has no regrets

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/10/bn10long123257/?military&zIndex=129988

By John Wilkens
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
July 10, 2009

SAN DIEGO ­ Robin Long, an Army private court-martialed for desertion
after he refused to fight in Iraq, said Friday that he has no
regrets, even after spending the past year in the brig at the Miramar
Marine Corps Air Station.

"I wouldn't do anything differently," he said at a morning news
conference outside the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park.

Wearing both an Army camouflage hat and a T-shirt decorated with a
large peace symbol, Long said his imprisonment was "the hardest thing
I've ever had to do," largely because it kept him away from his
common-law wife and 3-year-old son in Canada.

"But I had to do what I felt was right."

Long, 25, originally from Boise, Idaho, enlisted in 2003. He said he
initially supported the war and was ready to fight, but grew
convinced that it was "illegal and immoral."

He said he started openly questioning the mission there, and in 2005
was the only member of his Fort Knox, Ky.-based Abrams tank unit
ordered to join an infantry company in Iraq. He fled to Canada instead.

About 200 American war resisters have gone north of the border, an
echo from Vietnam, when some 90,000 won refuge there. This time, the
Canadian government has not been receptive. Long was ordered deported
last summer.

At his court-martial, Long pleaded guilty to desertion and was sent
to Miramar for what turned out to be a 371-day sentence. He was given
a dishonorable discharge.

He said he received hundreds of supportive letters, some from as far
away as South Africa, and was treated decently at the brig. "The
other service members there understand what I did," he said. "A lot
of them realize the war is a mistake."

He denied that he only fled to avoid getting shot at in Iraq. "Nobody
wants to get shot at. Everybody is afraid. Anybody who says they
aren't is full of it." he said. "But that's not the point.

"I was afraid of what I'd have to participate in. I didn't believe in
the mission. I didn't think I could live with myself if I wound up
shooting people who didn't do anything to us."

Long said he plans to attend school later this summer in San
Francisco to be trained as a massage therapist. He hopes Renee, his
common-law wife, and Ocean, his son, can join him.

Going to school and having an occupation may make it easier for him
to persuade authorities in Canada to let him back into the country,
Long said. As it stands, with his deportation and conviction, he
probably won't be eligible to return for at least a decade.

In the meantime, he'll continue to speak out. "I don't plan on
stopping any time soon," he said.
--

John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236;

--------

Army deserter returned by Canada freed from brig

http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_12811718?nclick_check=1

The Associated Press
Posted: 07/10/2009

SAN DIEGO ­ An Army deserter who took refuge in Canada to resist
serving in the Iraq war and served 15 months in a military brig said
he has no regrets.

Robin Long, the first Iraq war resister to be deported from Canada
back to the United States, was released from a Navy brig at Miramar
on Thursday.

"I wouldn't do anything differently," he told reporters Friday
outside the Veterans Museum and Memorial in Balboa Park.

Long, 25, a private originally from Boise, Idaho, fled to Canada in
2005. He was deported last summer and pleaded guilty to desertion at
a court-martial last August.

He said imprisonment was the most difficult experience he's ever had
because he was separated from his wife and 3-year-old son in Canada.

"But I had to do what I felt was right," he said.

Long, who was given a dishonorable discharge, said he defected
because he believed the war was "illegal and immoral."

"I didn't believe in the mission. I didn't think I could live with
myself if I wound up shooting people who didn't do anything to us," he said.

About 200 American war resisters have fled north of the border to
avoid going to Iraq, but the Canadian government has not been receptive.

Long said he received hundreds of letters of support, and was treated
fairly at the brig.

"The other service members there understand what I did," he said. "A
lot of them realize the war is a mistake."

He said he plans to resettle in San Francisco and that he'll continue
to speak out against the war.

--------

Soldier who deserted released from Miramar brig

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jul/09/bn09release092152/

By John Wilkens
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
July 9, 2009

A U.S. Army private who refused to fight in Iraq and unsuccessfully
sought refuge in Canada finished his sentence for desertion and was
released Thursday from the brig at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.

Robin Long, 25, originally from Boise, Idaho, enlisted in 2003. He
left his unit when it was ordered to Iraq in 2005. He objected to
participating in a war he considers "illegal and immoral."

An estimated 200 American war resisters have gone to Canada. None has
been granted refugee status. Long, the first to be deported, was sent
back last summer.

He was court-martialed, given a dishonorable discharge and sentenced
to 15 months in the brig. Supporters from groups such as Veterans for
Peace and Military Families Speak Out demonstrated regularly near
Miramar's north gate, calling for his release.

Long has said he would like to return to Canada, where he has a
girlfriend and a son. But his conviction for desertion will make it
difficult for him to cross the border.
--

John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236;

--------

Army deserter tells of his time behind bars

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deserter11-2009jul11,0,2432884.story

By Tony Perry
July 11, 2009

Reporting from San Diego -- Army deserter and antiwar activist Robin
Long said Friday that the most difficult part of his 12 months behind
bars was being away from his young son.

Long, 25, released Thursday from the brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air
Station, said he missed celebrating Christmas and other special
occasions with his 3-year-old son, Ocean.

Meeting reporters outside the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in
San Diego, Long said he wished every morning that he could see his
son running toward him and hear his voice.

"Instead I woke up to reveille and I saw high fences and razor wire,"
said Long, from Boise, Idaho. "This punishment was for having a moral
opposition to the Iraq war."

Long enlisted in 2003 and was trained as a tank crewman but fled to
Canada in 2005 when his unit was on the verge of deploying to Iraq.
He said his views about the war had changed since his enlistment.

Long said that, like much of the American public, he began to doubt
the wisdom of the war when the U.S. was unable to find weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq. Long said he was influenced by a quotation
attributed to Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."

In Canada, Long sought refugee status but was turned down. The
decision by the Canadian government to deport him to the U.S. for
court-martial caused a political furor in Canada. He is considered
the first U.S. deserter to be deported by Canada during the Iraq war.

Long said he plans to enroll in a school in San Francisco to learn
massage therapy. He also plans to reunite in Seattle with his wife,
Renee, and their son and to continue speaking out against the Iraq
war. His wife, a Canadian citizen, has remained in Canada to receive
care for multiple sclerosis.

As a convicted felon, Long may be barred from reentering Canada, but
he said he plans to appeal. Although he was sentenced to a
dishonorable discharge from the Army, he is still on active duty but
not being paid.

Long said he had no major complaints about his treatment in the brig.
"The food was horrible and it was a filthy place to be," he said.
"But I was treated pretty well."
--

tony.perry@latimes.com

.

Fort Hood Soldier Refuses Deployment to Afghanistan

Fort Hood Soldier Refuses Deployment to Afghanistan

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=e31a7ad31bcb5fe23f95f5557fa021fd

Interview with Victor Agosto

by Aaron Glantz
Jul 17, 2009

Editor's Note: President Obama has ordered 21,000 more troops to
deploy to Afghanistan this summer, seeking to more than double the
32,000 deployed in the next few months. The move is controversial
inside the military and a handful of soldiers -- like Specialist
Victor Agosto of Miami, Fla. -- have refused to deploy. Agosto, who
has already served one tour in Iraq, told his superiors that the U.S.
military occupation of Afghanistan is "immoral and unjust" and "does
not make America safer." He faces a Special Court Martial, with a
maximum punishment of one year in prison and a bad conduct discharge.
Agosto spoke with NAM editor Aaron Glantz from the U.S. Army base at
Fort Hood, Texas.
--

--Why did you decide to join the army?

I'd been in college for two years and I was tired of it. I wanted to
be something. I wanted to see the world. I was in Miami Dade College
and I really didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to do. I
was just focusing on my classes for my associate's degree. I had
always wanted to join the army, but I had initially wanted to
graduate from college first so I could have a commission, but then I
just decided to go in and be enlisted.

--Is your opposition to the war in Afghanistan based at all on your
previous military experience in Iraq?

I would say, not really. I was in Iraq when I turned against it, but
it wasn't because I had a traumatic experience or anything like that.
I never shot anyone. I never got shot at. I never felt I was in any
danger or anything like that. I was on the FOB [the base] the whole
time. I was doing I.T. work: configuring computers, routers, servers,
switches, providing customer service.

--So you didn't see or do anything while you were in Iraq that caused
you to have any particular opinion about it one way or the other?

I guess the main thing that got my mind going was seeing how much
money the contractors were making, and how little sense that made to
me. And I guess that just got me thinking, exploring in that
direction. Something is not right here. It's a jump from that to
concluding that the war is not right but that's what got the ball rolling.

--And once the ball got rolling, how did you get to the next step?

Well, I was reading books, like Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival.
That was the one that just totally shattered any conception I had
about moral superiority or good intentions.

--Obviously there are many theoreticians writing various things about
American policy. Why did this resonate with you?

Well it was just that the stated reasons for the war didn't make sense.

--And so the reasons that you concluded after doing your reading were what?

Ultimately, just for more control and to project American power.
Obviously, there's oil in Iraq. And American corporations stand to
benefit a great deal from controlling the oil fields, but the main
thing is just that there are benefits to obtaining control, and it's
the same in Afghanistan.

--But the big difference of course is that there is no oil in Afghanistan.

That's right.

--So how did you go from having this particular feeling about the war
in Iraq to refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, which is of course a
different war. And there are a lot of people who would say 'Iraq is a
bad war but Afghanistan is a good war, because the people who
attached us on 9/11 were based out of Afghanistan.'

Well, to me there really isn't a difference. To me the main thing is
control, just to project power. If you look at what the goal of the
war in Afghanistan was -– to make American people safer -- an
occupation can't accomplish that. Those things can't be accomplished
through military means. The occupation in both places just increases
resentment against Americans and actually endangers the soldiers that
are there because the occupation fuels the insurgency. We go after an
insurgent and kill several innocents in the process and it just
creates more insurgents. And the process would continue like that
indefinitely. And I think that those in power know this. And so the
reason that we're there can't be to make the American people safer.

--And that's what you wrote in a statement to military counselors
that you would not deploy to Afghanistan because it is "immoral and
unjust" and "does not make the American people any safer." What would
make the American people safer in your opinion?

Well I think that the terrorist networks gain recruits from
populations that have been oppressed. Until these grievances are
addressed, there will always be a fresh supply of people who will
join up with these extremist groups and decide that they want to
attack America. There is really no battlefield solution to terrorism.

--People say, 'Look, I know the U.S. military operations in
Afghanistan are not necessarily the most productive, but imagine
there were no American soldiers there -– the Taliban would just take
over again.'

I don't really see that as worse than what we're doing now. As I said
before, until we actually address the grievances of people in that
part of the world, we're really not going to defeat terrorism. Being
there does make things worse. It wouldn't be an ideal situation to
just leave and then perhaps the Taliban would re-establish control
over the country, but that to me would be better than what's going on
right now.

--How do the other soldiers that you interact with at Fort Hood feel
about your decision to refuse to go?

They've been generally positive. I really don't get a lot of negative
feedback from people. I know that negative feeling exists but people
don't usually come up to me and tell me that. And when they have,
they always set it up saying they really respect me and stuff, but
they disagree with what I'm doing. It's never a bitter type of response.

--Why did you decide to contest this head-on instead of just
passively resisting during your deployment to Afghanistan, since as
you describe it, you're more of a back office soldier?

I guess a combination of things. I concluded some time while I was in
Iraq that these wars were wrong, but I wasn't ready to make that jump
because I feared the consequences. But after a while I got to meet a
lot of people in the peace community who would be supportive of me if
I were to take such an action. That, combined with the fact that I
just wasn't sure if I could live with myself if I were to deploy, if
I actually got on a plane and went over there. It made it almost a
no-brainer for me and something I needed to do.

--You're facing a Special Court Martial, where you face a bad conduct
discharge and a year in prison. Suppose you were to get a bad conduct
discharge and some amount of prison time. How would you compare that
to deploying to Afghanistan?

I'd say it's more than a fair deal. I mean, if those are my two
options, I'd say that's a no-brainer right there. I would much rather
go to prison for a year than go to Afghanistan for a year.

,

Iraq war resisters decry Tories' website editing

[2 versions]

Iraq war resisters decry Tories' website editing

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/661072

Jul 05, 2009
Sue Bailey
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – The Harper government is denying claims that it stripped a
section on Vietnam from a federal website to boost its case for
deporting Iraq war resisters.

Text on how both draft dodgers and resisters of the Vietnam War were
ultimately allowed to stay in Canada suddenly vanished from the
Citizenship and Immigration site earlier this year.

"Starting in 1965, Canada became a choice haven for American
draft-dodgers and deserters," it read as it appeared online in February.

"Although some of these transplanted Americans returned home after
the Vietnam War, most of them put down roots in Canada, making up the
largest, best-educated group this country had ever received."

In 2009, the Harper government takes a much dimmer view of dozens of
U.S. soldiers who've come north after refusing to serve in the
invasion of Iraq, which was never sanctioned by the UN.

Some have already been deported to face military jail terms ranging
from about six to 15 months.

An internal document released under the Access to Information Act
summarizes the government's position:

"Unlike American draft dodgers who immigrated to Canada during the
Vietnam conflict, the individuals coming to Canada now voluntarily
joined the United States military and have subsequently deserted."

Ken Marciniec, a spokesman for the War Resisters Support Campaign,
says the Conservative stance is flawed and misleading. In fact, many
Americans volunteered to serve in Vietnam only to recoil from a
horrific mission and flee to Canada, he said. They, too, were allowed
to settle here after 1969 following some initial legal wrangling.

Marciniec has been stonewalled since February in his attempts to
discover through the Access to Information Act why the accurate
history of Vietnam, including the welcoming of both draft dodgers and
deserters, was cut from the government website.

Department officials told the Canadian Press on Friday that the
document in question, called "Forging our Legacy," was indeed removed.

An "accessibility audit" found "it did not comply with (federal)
common look-and-feel requirements" that help viewers use websites,
said spokeswoman Karen Shadd in an emailed response. She did not
immediately clarify how the document failed to meet these standards.

Marciniec says it was likely stripped because "it directly
contradicted the government's claim" that Iraq war resisters are
voluntary deserters who can't be compared with Vietnam draft dodgers.

--------

Federal website changes undermine Iraq resisters: critics

http://www.brandonsun.com/story.php?story_id=146431

July 4th, 2009

OTTAWA - The Harper government is denying claims that it stripped a
section on Vietnam from a federal website to boost its case for
deporting Iraq war resisters.

Text on how both draft dodgers and resisters of the Vietnam War were
ultimately allowed to stay in Canada suddenly vanished from the
Citizenship and Immigration site earlier this year.

"Starting in 1965, Canada became a choice haven for American
draft-dodgers and deserters," said the passage as it appeared online
in February.

"Although some of these transplanted Americans returned home after
the Vietnam War, most of them put down roots in Canada, making up the
largest, best-educated group this country had ever received."

Fast-forward to 2009, and the Harper government takes a much dimmer
view of dozens of U.S. soldiers who've come north after refusing to
serve in Iraq - an invasion never sanctioned by the United Nations.

Some have already been deported to face military jail terms ranging
from about six to 15 months.

Several others expect to receive removal orders at any time.

An internal document released under the Access to Information Act
summarizes the government's position:

"Unlike American draft dodgers who immigrated to Canada during the
Vietnam conflict, the individuals coming to Canada now voluntarily
joined the United States military and have subsequently deserted."

A spokesman for the War Resisters Support Campaign says the
Conservative stance is flawed and misleading.

In fact, many Americans volunteered to serve in Vietnam only to
recoil from a horrific mission and flee to Canada, said Ken
Marciniec. They, too, were allowed to settle here after 1969
following some initial legal wrangling.

Marciniec has been stonewalled since February in his attempts through
the Access to Information Act to discover why the accurate history of
Vietnam - including the welcoming of both draft dodgers and deserters
- was cut from the government website. At first his applications were
delayed, then he received a heavily censored response dated June 26
that offered no explanation, he said.

Department officials told The Canadian Press on Friday that the
document in question, called "Forging our Legacy," was indeed removed.

The reason? An "accessibility audit" found "it did not comply with
(federal) common look and feel requirements" that help viewers use
websites, said spokeswoman Karen Shadd in an emailed response.

She did not immediately clarify how the document failed these standards.

Marciniec says it was likely stripped because "it directly
contradicted the government's claim" that Iraq war resisters are
voluntary deserters who can't be compared with Vietnam draft dodgers.

"The minority Harper government is misleading Canadians about Iraq
war resisters to distract from the fact that they're ignoring the
direction of Parliament, and the will of the majority of Canadians
who want the deportations to stop immediately."

The majority opposition in Parliament has passed a non-binding motion
to let Iraq resisters stay.

And an Angus Reid poll last year found 64 per cent of Canadians want
the removals to end, and would support a program to offer permanent
resident status to the troops.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney drew fire from Amnesty
International and other critics earlier this year when he described
the AWOL soldiers as "bogus" refugee claimants.

His spokesman, Alykhan Velshi, said Kenney had nothing to do with
removing the website material on Vietnam and was not even aware of it.

Marciniec says recent estimates from across Canada put the number of
Iraq war resisters at more than 200. Many are living underground,
afraid of being deported.

Kim Rivera, the first female Iraq vet to publicly seek refuge in
Canada, deserted while on leave from her first tour of duty in February 2007.

"I don't agree with the war," she said in an interview from Toronto.
"I didn't have that opinion until after going there."

She is haunted by the traumatized kids she saw while serving as a gate guard.

"It's like they're looking right into your soul. And they're asking
one simple question: 'Why are you hurting my family? What did I do to
you?' And I couldn't answer that question for the life of me."

Rivera, a 27-year-old mother of three children aged seven, four and
seven months, was ordered to return to the U.S. after her request to
stay in Canada on compassionate and humanitarian grounds was denied.

She will argue in Federal Court on Wednesday that the immigration
officer who ordered her removal didn't comprehend what Rivera faces
back in the U.S.

Soldiers who've spoken out against the Iraq war have received much
stiffer penalties than deserters who keep quiet, said Rivera's lawyer
Alyssa Manning.

A joint letter signed June 26 by the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc
Quebecois urged the Conservatives "to show compassion for those who
have chosen not to participate in a war that was not sanctioned by
the United Nations."

.

Former soldier is walking away from the war

Former soldier is walking away from the war

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x735580818/Former-soldier-is-walking-away-from-the-war

By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jul 03, 2009

FRAMINGHAM ­ Josh Stieber doesn't think he shot anyone.

Sometimes, during his year-plus tour of Iraq, the infantryman would
unleash a barrage of fire during the confusing aftermath of a
roadside explosion or sniper fire. But he does not remember hitting
anybody. Usually the insurgent wreaking the havoc was long gone.

It was not that long ago that Stieber was sitting atop a Humvee,
manning a machine gun turret near Baghdad, fruitlessly rattling off
rounds into an empty countryside.

Now, Stieber is a long way from Iraq, his former Army base in Kansas
and his Maryland home.

The 21-year-old spends the majority of his days literally one step at a time.

Stieber has been walking across America since the end of May,
attending political rallies, visiting philanthropic organizations and
trying to spread a message of peace.

Yesterday, he was walking through a light drizzle along Rte. 9 in
Wellesley, his 6-foot-4 frame loaded down with a 45-pound pack, on
his way to Framingham to crash on a local peace activist's couch for
a couple days.

He plans to press westward. He hopes to walk to the Midwest
Cincinnati or Louisville - then bike to Washington state by this fall.

After that? The soft-spoken veteran merely shrugs. He'll have plenty
of time to figure that out during his crosscountry trek, he figures.

A team of documentarians show up at his various stops.

Lately, he's been making the rounds of left-wing war critics.

Last Monday he was in Cambridge to meet with Noam Chomsky, the war
critic and Harvard linguist. That night he attended a lecture in
Arlington featuring Cindy Sheehan, who gained national notoriety for
camping outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch in protest of
the Iraq War.

He's been mostly couch-surfing his way up the East Coast since he
left his home several weeks ago; he's only had to camp out three times.

On a good day, he can cover 20 miles on foot.

He has traveled to various philanthropic organizations, visiting a
prison reintegration program in Maryland and a cancer research
program in Philadelphia. He's splitting up his Iraq combat pay, which
is just shy of $30,000, among the different causes and charities.

He wants his journey to inspire and promote peace. His blog is dubbed
the Contagious Love Experiment.

While U.S. troops began withdrawing from Iraq cities and towns at the
end of June, Stieber says his message transcends any particular
Middle East development.

"It's a lot more than just that. I want people to be more aware and
evaluate the mindset that drove them to support the war in the first
place," he said.

Of the war in Afghanistan, he said, "Throwing more firepower at a
problem isn't going to solve it."

He did not always run in such liberal circles, nor have a transient existence.

Growing up the oldest of three children to a family "that listened to
Rush Limbaugh," in Gaithersburg, Md., a half-hour north of Washington
D.C., Stieber attended an evangelical megachurch. His schooling fell
under the auspices of his church.

He remembers Bible class justifying the war in Iraq as a battle of
good vs. evil. He spent Friday nights during his teen years
approaching strangers and asking them if they thought they were going
to heaven or hell.

He loved politics. He worked as a volunteer for George W. Bush's 2004
re-election campaign and looked at military service as a good
launching point for a possible career in the GOP.

At his high school, he got the impression the military was all about
"saving lives and passing out soccer balls."

Upon graduation he joined the Army, and was stationed out of Fort Riley, Kan.

He did one 14-month tour of Iraq, from February 2007 to April 2008.

An infantryman, Stieber, grew increasingly uncomfortable with his
role in the military as his stint in Iraq lengthened.

He had a hard time juxtaposing the religious morality of his
childhood and adolescence with harsh reality of warfare. He started
to see the political rhetoric and moral justification of the war as
"talking without action behind it."

"The gap kept getting bigger and bigger," he said.

He read Gandhi and Tolstoy and started to change his mind about the
American presence in the Middle East.

He recalls raiding homes in search of weapons caches and the Army's
capture and subsequent turning of a local politician who had
previously worked for the insurgency.

The defunct ice cream factory where he stayed for more than a year in
Baghdad was blown up the day after his contingent left.

He left the military, filing a request for consideration as a
conscientious objector. It was granted, a relative rarity the
military has granted about 30 such discharges per year since the Iraq
war began.

He was vetted by an investigative officer, chaplain, and psychiatrist
per military procedure before he departed.

Sipping on black tea yesterday in a Natick coffee shop, he says he
was disenchanted with the Army trying to "out-terrorize the terrorists."

"Forcing a country into liberation? That doesn't add up for me," he said.

Tomorrow morning, he will be at Annie's Book Shop in Nobscot speaking
to whoever shows up. His next stop after that will be Northampton.

He's still into Jesus, but has ditched institutional religion.

He hopes to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life,
but mainly wants to communicate a singular message.

"I'm trying to turn a negative into positive. Fear and paranoia
aren't the only way to live," he said.
--

(Dan McDonald can be reached at 508-626-4416 or dmcdonal@cnc.com.)

.

The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent

Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of
Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent"

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/07/03/reviewing-marjorie-cohn-and-kathleen-gil

July 3rd, 2009
by Stephen Lendman

Marjorie Cohn is a Distinguished Law Professor at Thomas Jefferson
School of Law in San Diego where she's taught since 1991 and is the
current President of the National Lawyers Guild. She's also been a
criminal defense attorney at the trial and appellate levels, is an
author, and writes many articles for professional journals, other
publications, and numerous popular web sites.

Her record of achievements, distinctions, and awards are many and
varied - for her teaching, writing, and her work as a lawyer and
activist for peace, social and economic justice, and respect for the
rule of law. Cohn's previous books include "Cameras in the Courtroom:
Television and the Pursuit of Justice" and "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways
the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law."

Her newest book just out, co-authored with Kathleen Gilberd (a
recognized expert on military administrative law), is titled "Rules
of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent." It
explores why US military personnel disobey orders and refuse to
participate in two illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also
explains that US and international law obligate them to do so.

Cohn and Gilberd write:

"Rules of Engagement limit forms of combat, levels of force, and
legitimate enemy targets, defining what is legal in warfare and what
is not. (They're also) defined by an established body of
international (and US) law" that leave no ambiguity.

Nonetheless, in past and current US wars, virtually no "Rules"
whatever are followed. Soldiers are trained to fire at "anything that
moves," place no value on enemy lives, and often treat civilians no
differently from combatants. It results in massive civilian
casualties, dismissively called "collateral damage." It also gets
growing numbers in the ranks to resist - to challenge so-called
"Rules" they believe are illegal and immoral.

"Rules of Engagement" "discuss(es) the laws and regulations governing
military dissent and resistance - the legal rules of disengagement
(and offers) practical guidelines (that include) political protest to
requesting discharge from the service."

Today, growing Iraq and Afghanistan casualty counts are enormous as
well as the disturbing toll on the GIs involved - including long and
repeated deployments, often leaving permanent debilitating effects,
physical and/or psychological.

US soldiers have a right and duty to dissent and resist, and today
it's easier than ever through all the modern ways of communicating,
including blogging, sharing stories, photos, videos, and "developing
new ways to speak out to fellow soldiers and civilians online and in
the media."

"Rules of Engagement" goes into courtrooms where military personnel
"have spoken out, arguing that (today's) wars are illegal (and
immoral) under international (and US) law." It's a "practical guide"
providing "specific discussion(s) of applicable regulations and laws"
for readers "to form their own conclusions and consider their own
options." Above all, it's a way for honorable young men and women to
dissent, resist, and disengage from two illegal, immoral wars, in
hopes many others will follow their example.

Resisting Illegal Wars

Every US war since WW II has been illegal. Article 51 of the UN
Charter only permits the "right of individual or collective
self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the
Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace
and security."

In addition, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (the war powers clause)
authorizes only both houses of Congress, not the president, to
declare war. Nonetheless, that process was followed only five times
in our history and last used on December 8, 1941 after Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor.

Yet many judges won't apply "the law to the wars, and then to service
members' refusal to take part" in them. They say it's "not their
role, not a matter under their jurisdiction, or not 'relevant.' " In
case studies the authors use, court-martial judges, juries, and the
public increasingly accept these arguments but also recognize that
"men and women of conscience have put their futures on the line for
their opinions and actions against illegal wars (and) orders."

It hasn't shown up in court-martial decisions except in more lenient
sentences, indicating growing respect for those brave enough to
resist on matters of conscience and their opinions regarding the law.
Pablo Paredes for one.

The Navy petty officer third class and weapons-control technician
refused duty on the USS Bonhomme Richard as it deployed to the
Persian Gulf on December 6, 2004 to take part in Operation Iraqi
Freedom. He was charged with unauthorized absence and willfully
missing his ship's deployment. On May 10, 2005, Paredes avoided jail
and a dishonorable or bad conduct discharge when the court-martial
judge dismissed the former charge, convicted him on the latter one,
sentenced him to two months restriction, three months of hard labor
without confinement, and reduction in rank from E-4 to E-1.

Lt. Cdr. Robert Klant denied expert testimony on the war's
illegality, but let Cohn testify as an expert witness, at the
sentencing hearing. At its conclusion, Klant astonished attending
spectators by saying:

"I believe the government has successfully demonstrated a reasonable
belief for every service member to decide that the wars in
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal to fight in." Paredes
benefitted from that view. Others have as well, but not often or easily.

Modern Conscientious Objectors (COs)

They're persons who refuse to perform military service, and request
noncombatant status or discharge on grounds of religious, moral,
ethical, or philosophical beliefs with regard to wars and killing.
Objecting on the basis of conscience is 'a long and honorable"
tradition going back to the beginning of the republic. It was used
frequently during the Vietnam war.

Objectors help others by expanding the right to resist and dissent.
Under DOD regulations, "the military must grant CO status to any
service member who (consciously opposes all) war(s) in any form,
whose opposition is founded on religious training and beliefs, and
whose position is sincere and deeply held." This position "must have
developed or become central to the CO's beliefs after entry into the
military," and applicants must provide "clear and convincing evidence
that he or she is a CO."

US Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia was the first Iraq War
veteran to refuse further involvement on matters of conscience after
serving in it earlier from April - October 2003. Following leave, he
failed to rejoin his National Guard unit and filed for discharge as a
CO on grounds that the invasion and occupation were illegal and
immoral. The Army then charged him with desertion to send a strong
message to others who resist.

His May 2004 court-martial was a kangaroo-court show trial, widely
broadcast to all military personnel worldwide on internal Pentagon
television, radio and newspaper outlets. At trial, the military judge
disallowed prepared defense testimony under Army Field Manual 27-10,
the Constitution, and established international law.

Mejia was found guilty of desertion with intent to avoid hazardous
duty. He was sentenced to a year in prison, reduction in rank to E-1,
one year's forfeiture of pay, and a bad conduct discharge after which
Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience, its
highest honor.

After the verdict, international law expert Francis Boyle was allowed
to testify during the sentencing phase - but under strict limitations
imposed by the judge. He cited relevant domestic, international, and
military law, reviewed crimes of war and against humanity under them,
and explained the culpability of commanders and government officials
to the highest levels for abusing and torturing prisoners.

Mejia served nine months in prison and in August 2007 was elected
chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Hundreds of
others have filed for CO status while many more go AWOL or refuse
deployment to combat zones. The military never makes it easy, yet the
illegitimacy of two illegal wars and the immense hardships on young
GIs and their families makes growing numbers resist and dissent.
Still many others aren't aware that they qualify for CO status.

Current CO stereotypes stem from the Vietnam era when they were
viewed as subversives and cowards. Other myths are that wars must be
ongoing for those in the military to apply, the process is lengthy,
discharges, if granted, won't be honorable, and federal benefits will
be lost as well as eligibility for government jobs. "Needless to say,
these myths are not true," but exist to discourage applicants and
impede the process.

Various civilian organizations provide good information on CO rights,
regulations on them, and procedures on how to apply. Also, the "CO
process is one of the most legally protected of discharge proceedings
- COs have greater rights than those who seek discharge for family
hardship or similar reasons." Yet command hostility exists and rights
are often denied. "Success rates vary among the services." Some COs
are discharged for other reasons. Many applications are rejected.
Some go AWOL as a result, and others do or don't succeed through
court intervention. Imperial America doesn't make it easy, so
applicants have to persist all the harder.

Winter Soldier

Iraq and Afghan veterans willing to come forward provide the most
compelling evidence of "war crimes beyond imagination." Yet those
familiar with Vietnam, WW II, and other US wars have heard it before.
John Dower's powerful WW II book, "War Without Mercy," documented how
both sides in the Pacific war depersonalized the opposition,
abandoned the rules of war, and fought with equal savagery.

Later examples include:

-- Winter Soldier 1971 - the Vietnam My Lai massacre killing around
500 civilians was a mere skirmish compared to death squad campaigns
like Operation Phoenix that contributed to an estimated 80,000 deaths
from around 1968 - 1971. Numerous other stories documented mass
murder, torture, rape and other atrocities - the same kinds committed
earlier and today;

-- Winter Soldier 2008 - "traumatized" veterans today tell similar
horrors stories to ones from past wars, including Vietnam, Korea, and
WW II; Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) offer testimonies as
ammunition for their three unifying principles:

(1) immediately ending the Iraq and Afghan wars and occupations and
withdrawing all troops;

(2) paying reparations to Iraqis; and

(3) providing proper medical care for all US war veterans.

Short of these, all imaginable atrocities will continue, including
mass killings, torture, rape, destruction, and much more. Wars are
ugly business, and laws or no laws, the worst of abuses happen
routinely by a military command teaching rank and file soldiers to
commit them with impunity. And they're besides the harm done to GIs,
many of whom are never the same from the experience - if they
survive. Vietnam destroyed an entire generation of American youths,
and today's wars are doing it again.

The rules of engagement are stipulated in various laws of war - the
Constitution, Hague and Geneva Conventions; UN Charter; Nuremberg
Charter, Judgment and Principles; Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; Universal Declaration of Human
Rights; Supreme and lower Court decisions; US Army Field Manual
27-10; and the Law of Land Warfare (1956). They state that nations
must abide by the laws of war. No exceptions are ever allowed, and
failure comply constitutes a crime of war and/or against humanity.

At the Nuremberg Tribunal, chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson cited
wars of aggression as the "supreme international crime against peace
differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within
itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Yet this standard indicts
America on all its wars since WW II.

And young GIs are affected. Winter Soldiers 2008 say "they were
subject to amorphous and contradictory rules of engagement - often
free-fire zones where they could shoot at anything that moved
(including noncombatants). These rules, or lack thereof, led to the
commission of atrocities and war crimes," not occasionally but often.

Aside from the 2001 Afghanistan bombings and March 2003 "shock and
awe" attack, the worst of them took place in April and November 2004.
In retaliation for the killing and mutilation of four Blackwater
mercenaries, the first and second Fallujah Battles waged some of the
fiercest urban combat since the 1968 Battle of Hue in Vietnam.
Several thousand or more were killed, mostly civilians. Major war
crimes were committed. Illegal weapons were used. Vast destruction
was inflicted. The city was held under siege. Free-fire zone rules
applied. A "shoot-to-kill" curfew was imposed, and according to Adam
Kokesh: "we changed our rules of engagement more often than we
changed our underwear."

Winter Soldiers 2008 speak out publicly over what they saw and did in
their tours, including in testimonies to Congress. "So far (none of
them) have been prosecuted for their testimony, though some active
duty witnesses were harassed by superiors."

Dissent and Disengagement

Resistance includes refusing illegal orders, objecting on the basis
of conscience, requesting a discharge, demonstrating, picketing,
dissenting as the Constitution allows, attending rallies, petitioning
Congress, going underground, taking refuge abroad, speaking out
publicly, and through the media. It's acting according to one's
principles and morality and not backing down when the going gets tough.

Lt. Ehren Watada's case is instructive. In June 2006, he refused to
deploy to Iraq and publicly said why - that "as an officer of honor
and integrity, (he could not participate in a war that was)
manifestly illegal....morally wrong (and) a horrible breach of
American law." He became the first US military officer to face
court-martial for his action and was charged with:

-- one specification under UCMJ article 87 - missing movement;

-- two specifications under article 99 - contempt toward officials
(for making public comments about George Bush); and

-- three specifications under article 133 for conduct unbecoming an officer.

If convicted on all charges, he faced possible dishonorable
discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and seven years in
prison. A military equivalent of a grand jury convened on August 17,
2006 to review the charges and rule on their justification. Watada
called three expert witnesses in his defense:

-- former UN Iraq Humanitarian Coordinator (1997 - 1998) Denis
Halliday who resigned under protest because he was "instructed to
implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide (and
already) killed well over one million individuals, children and adults;"

-- US Army Colonel Ann Wright who resigned her commission as a State
Department foreign service officer in March 2003 to protest a "war of
aggression (in) violat(ion) of international law;" and

-- Professor Francis Boyle, international law and human rights
expert, activist, and author of numerous books, papers, and articles
on these topics.

On August 22, the Army reported on the proceeding and recommended all
charges be referred to a general court-martial. It began in February
2007 under very constricted rules - denying a First Amendment
defense, disallowing one's questioning the legality of the war, and
refusing to allow expert testimony, including from Cohn.

However, legal issues couldn't be excluded as they directly related
to charges brought, so the prosecution introduced them at trial. In
addition, Watada firmly stated before testifying that he refused to
deploy because of the war's illegality.

Unable to stop him from saying this, judge John Head declared a
mistrial. He'd lost control of the proceeding, knew Watada was on
solid ground, and had to prevent his evidence from being introduced
to avoid the embarrassing possibility of an acquittal on one or all
charges. If it happened, the war's illegality would be exposed and
its continuation jeopardized.

Under the Fifth Amendment's "double jeopardy" clause, Watada can't be
retried on the same charges. It states no person shall be "subject
for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb."
Watada's triumph by mistrial was a powerful tribute to his
convictions and spirit. It's also an inspiration to civil resisters
and all members of the military to follow in his footsteps.

On October 22, 2008, US District Court Judge Benjamin Settle agreed
with Watada's double jeopardy claim and dismissed three of the five
counts against him. In mid-May, beyond the timeline of Cohn and
Gilberd's book, the Department of Justice dropped plans to retry him
on two remaining counts, but his legal problems continue as the Army
is still weighing further action. Fort Lewis spokesman Joe Piek said
the base's leadership is considering "a full range of judicial and
administrative options that are available, and those range from
court-martial on those two remaining specifications, to nonjudicial
punishment, to administrative separation from the Army."

If they can't win one way, they may keep harassing Watada and make
him pay by attrition. Millions of war resisting Americans may have
other ideas, and organizations like Project Safe Haven, Courage to
Resist, Veterans for Peace, and Iraq Veterans Against the War are
united with others in demanding an end to Watada's persecution as
well as two illegal wars and occupations.

They also support "high-visilbility demonstrations, protests and
street theater," along with the right to resist and dissent. The law
supports them "to speak out on a broad range of issues" using all
means of technology to do it. Military regulations also "can be
powerful weapons for service members who choose to dissent."

DOD Directive 1325.6 Guidelines for Handling Dissent and Protest
Activities among Members of the Armed Forces describes basic rights
for "dissident and protest activities" with guidelines pertaining to:

-- possession and distribution of printed materials;

-- off-base locations allowed;

-- publishing underground newspapers and materials;

-- off-base demonstrations and protests; and

-- rules for military personnel participation.

Resisters have the law and regulations on their side if they conform
to their provisions therein - "consistent with good order and
discipline and the national security." But going up against the
Pentagon and Department of Justice is never easy, and even winning
exacts a great toll.

But fundamentally, "GIs do in fact have the right to express their
opposition to the wars verbally and in writing, share that position
with the media, state it on the Internet, distribute it to other GIs
in newspapers or leaflets, say it from the microphone at national
antiwar rallies, and show it by marching in off-base antiwar
demonstrations and picket lines" - as long as they're off-duty,
off-base, and out of uniform.

Imperfect as it is and getting worse, it's still America, and growing
numbers of GIs, their families and friends are resisting two illegal
wars and occupations, demanding they end, and the nation returned
peace. Those goals are worth everyone's time to fight for, and it's
high time more among us did it..

Challenging Racism

For many decades, young recruits are taught to kill by portraying
enemies as subhuman. So the Japanese were called "Japs" and portrayed
in cartoons as apes or savage gorillas; North Koreans, North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong were called "gooks;" and Arabs are called
"rag-heads," "camel jockeys" and "sand niggers." As a result, extreme
racism is a pervasive problem in the military. But it's a proved
effective way to motivate soldiers to fight and kill by viewing
Westerners as superior to nonwhite enemies globally.

Many Winter Soldiers (2008) "discussed the pervasiveness of racist
behavior," admitted using racial epithets, and "engag(ing) in
brutality that dehumanized Iraqis and Afghanis." However Vietnam-era
history "shows that organizing and protests by African American,
Latino, and other minority GIs (with support from other service
members)" offer the best chance of achieving real change. But success
depends on ending the Pentagon's proven way to teach young recruits
to kill, so getting the top brass to abandon it won't be easy.

Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault in the Military

Teaching recruits "sexism and sexual imagery" works the same way as
indoctrinating racism. Soldiers are taught to equate "strength and
discipline in combat (to) sexual prowess," military violence to the
sexual kind, and "disobedience, nonconformity, or weakness as feminine."

Today, sexism is so embedded in military culture that female soldiers
pay the price. They're discriminated against in training,
assignments, promotion, much else, and are frequent victims of
harassment and sexual assault - the former through "unwelcome sexual
advances, requests for sexual favors," and other similar behavior;
the latter includes "rape and other forcible or unwanted sexual contact...."

In a male-dominated military, this behavior is embedded, ritualized,
and symbolic of male power. The highly-publicized September 1991
Tailhook incident is a prominent example but a rare one that made
headlines. It involved a group of Naval aviators sexually assaulting
26 women at one of their annual gatherings. They cornered and
surrounded them, passed them down a gauntlet, jeered, taunted,
grabbed, fondled, and tried to strip them.

Similar incidents are all too common, and for years top brass knew of
and tolerated them. They have documented evidence that half or more
of women in all branches have been victims of sexual harassment or
assault. It shows a profound contempt many military men (including
top brass) have for women in the ranks, at the enlisted and officer levels.

Complaints, studies, hearings and regulations do little to halt these
practices. Reports surface often about harassment, assaults, rape and
other demeaning behavior in basic training, the service academies,
duty assignments of all kinds, and in combat. The military today is
no safer for women than it ever was. It never will be unless the
Pentagon changes its ideology, how it trains GIs, and if it's willing
to impose stiff penalties to offenders.

The Medical Side of War

The state of the military's health care system is deplorable. Pressed
to fund and fill the ranks for two illegal and unpopular wars,
Congress and the Pentagon pay scant attention to the injured, sick,
and psychologically damaged. It's further testimony to a nation
defiling its principles - ones observed only rhetorically, hardly
ever in practice, and not at all once the usefulness of combatants is over.

The Iraq and Afghan wars have produced an epidemic of psychological
wounds that for many end up permanent. Post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) is frighteningly common, yet care delivered is minimal,
inadequate, and dismissive of a major problem afflicting many tens of
thousands of returning vets.

Others from the Vietnam era retained their scars, and it's happening
again today. Many couldn't find work then or now, abused their
spouses, and too often ended up homeless or committed suicide (before
or after coming home). An uncaring nation didn't notice nor does it
today. The real crime is that the Pentagon and Congress are well
versed on these problems, yet do little to address them. Only
unbridled militarism, advancing imperialism, filling the ranks,
funding numerous weapons systems and munitions, and enriching
war-profiteers matter.

The result for hundreds of thousands returning from past and current
wars is untreated medical needs, an uncertain future, and the
knowledge that the nation they fought for doesn't care when they're
no longer needed. Vietnam vets know it, and so do ones today from
Iraq and Afghanistan.

Without a draft, the military needs volunteers to fill the ranks. The
result is the stop-loss practice of involuntarily extending
enlistment terms and frequent redeployments, even for those with
serious physical or psychological injuries.

The Pentagon denied the affects of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the
existence of Gulf War Syndrome from the first Iraq war. In 1990 - 91
and now, its likely cause was the widespread use of depleted uranium
(DU), the proliferation of other toxic substances, and the illegal
use of dangerous vaccines in violation of the Nuremberg Code on
medical experimentation. No rules apply in our war fighting, nor does
the health and welfare of our recruited men and women matter -
enlisted to be used, then discarded when their service ends. It's
especially evident in the "medical side of war" when those most in
need are largely ignored and forgotten.

How the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) handles disability
claims highlights a problem reaching epidemic levels. In early May
2009, the Veterans Benefits Administration and Board of Veterans
Appeals at VA had a backlog of 915,000 claims, and their rate is
growing so fast it may now be approaching or past one million and climbing.

Things are so bad for returning vets that most face an average six
month wait for benefits and up to four years to have their appeals
heard when they're denied - which is often. It's in addition to the
shameful treatment GIs get for their health needs - many serious and
requiring extensive, expensive treatment, often not gotten from an
uncaring nation.

Discharges

Many GIs become disillusioned when they learn promises made are
hollow. Some seek early discharges that can be gotten honorably but
not easily most often with the nation at war on two fronts and
needing all the troops it can get. Still numerous reasons qualify for
an Expiration of Active Obligated Service (EAOS), including CO
status, disability and illness.

Others include:

-- family hardship or dependency factors;

-- parenthood for single parents or in cases where husbands and wives
are in the military;

-- pregnancy or childbirth;

-- inadequate performance or conduct during the first six months of training;

-- qualification under the "don't ask, don't tell" for gays and lesbians;

-- specific personality disorders;

-- other physical or psychological factors that don't qualify for
medical discharges;

-- erroneous enlistments, including contract violations and recruiter fraud;

-- alien status; especially relevant at a time undocumented Latinos
(mainly Mexicans) are recruited with promises (then broken) of a
green card for them and their family as well as free education,
medical care, and post-service employment;

-- being a sole surviving family member;

-- unsatisfactorily performing duties;

-- "separation from the Delayed Entry Program (DEP)" that entraps
"youths still in school or the Delayed Training Program (DTP)" for
enlistment in the reserves; and

-- less than honorable discharges for misconduct, drug abuse,
court-martial, and other undesirable factors.

Other administrative discharges are also available, all honorable,
including "general" ones under honorable conditions. But recruits get
little information during training. Those requesting them are told
discharges are impossible, so to get the facts civilian sources must
be consulted. It takes time, and following proper procedures is
essential. But the payoff is worth the trouble for those willing to
do it and counseling is available to help.

A GI Rights Network has a toll-free hotline, and there are other
organizations as well. They're in it "for the long haul" to instruct
today's military how to exit honorably from two illegal wars and
avoid the risk of death or disabling injuries.

The Families

America's wars harm families as well as GIs. They must cope with the
same problems of long, repeated deployments, possible death or
permanent impairment, and the lasting affects of war-related trauma
that afflict even those visibly or otherwise unscathed.

Some families go public against the Iraq and Afghan wars, recruiter
lies and misconduct that entrap their loved ones, and as civilians
they're free to speak publicly with no restrictions on what they may say.

Gold star mothers spoke out against the Vietnam War, and today Cindy
Sheehan (whose son Casey was killed in Iraq five days after he
arrived) and other parents who lost sons and daughters founded Gold
Star Families for Peace. They say honor our lost loved ones by ending
these illegal wars and occupations, stop invading other countries,
and return the nation to peace.

Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) is the largest organization of its
kind against the Iraq war with chapters in 29 states. They support
their loved ones, demonstrate, speak out publicly, and lobby Congress
the way some of their members did earlier against the Vietnam war.
"These courageous families....endure unspeakable suffering....join
together to support one another....work to end the war....(and
represent) the power of collection action."

They're "a powerful force in the effort to end these wars. They can
tell the truth to counter recruiters' deceptions." They can
effectively represent their loved ones and help others through a
common effort to free us all from the scourge of war.

Conclusion

America's Iraq and Afghan wars are illegal and immoral. Every service
member is obligated by law to disengage, resist, and refuse any
longer to participate. US and international laws support them, and as
Ehren Watada stated in his defense: "An order to take part in an
illegal war is unlawful in itself. So my obligation is not to follow
the order to go to Iraq."

Increasing numbers of others are deployed as part of America's
permanent war and occupation agenda - continuing no differently under
Obama than George Bush. To know what's planned for Iraq, Afghanistan
and future US targets, think Korea. US forces arrived in 1950 and
never left. Think Japan as well. They've been there as well since WW
II, on the mainland and choicest real estate of the country's
southern-most and poorest prefecture - Okinawa.

Further, since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, America has
had no enemies anywhere - except those invented to advance a global
imperial agenda at the expense of our nation's youths and their
families, other loved ones, and friends at home. Wars guarantee new
ones and a permanent cycle of violence, death and destruction, the
only winners being profiteers who benefit hugely.

As a result, growing numbers of GIs, veterans, families, and the
general public are opting to "disengage" and resist. Together they
represent power enough to impact "whether or not the United States is
able to carry out these and future wars of aggression."

Most Americans oppose the Iraq war and its continued toll on GIs and
their families. It's just a matter of time until opposition to
Afghanistan is as great and with luck whatever new conflicts the
administration plans. Those sent to fight them and their families end
up losers. Their choice is clear and unequivocal - absolutely refuse
any longer to participate and with enough sharing that view, they'll
end. With overwhelming homeland needs unmet at a time of grave
economic crisis, honor and necessity must dictate our future course.
It's up to mass public activism to demand it.
--

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on
Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The
Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday
at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with
distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are
archived for easy listening.

.

The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military

A Secret History of Dissent in the All-Volunteer Military

http://www.lewrockwell.com/engelhardt/engelhardt382.html

by Tom Engelhardt and Dahr Jamail
July 1, 2009

The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) exists for a reason captured in a study
by Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr., author of the "definitive history of
the Marine Corps," published in Armed Forces Journal in 1971. The
U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos. As
Colonel Heinl put it, it was experiencing "widespread conditions...
that have only been exceeded in this century by the French Army's
Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist armies [of
Russia] in 1916 and 1917."

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war
machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare.
Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern
high; small-scale mutinies or "combat refusals" were at critical, if
untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and
strife between "lifers" and draftees was at unprecedented levels.
Reported "fraggings" – assassination attempts – against unpopular
officers or NCOs had risen from 126 in 1969 to 333 in 1971, despite
declining troop strength in Vietnam. According to Colonel Heinl's
figures, as many as 144 antiwar underground newspapers were being
published by, or for, soldiers. And most threatening of all, active
duty soldiers in relatively small numbers (as well as a swelling
number of Vietnam veterans) were beginning to actively organize
against the war.

When, in January 1973, before the war was even over, President
Richard Nixon announced that an American draft army was at an end and
an all-volunteer force would be created, this was why. The U.S.
military was in the wilderness without a compass, having discovered
one crucial thing: you couldn't fight an endless, unpopular
counterinsurgency war with the kind of conscript army a democracy had
to offer. What resulted, of course, was the AVF, a moniker that, as
Andrew Bacevich has written in his book The New American Militarism,
was but "a euphemism for what is, in fact, a professional army...
[that] does not even remotely 'look like' democratic America."
Citizenship and the obligation to serve were now officially severed
and, from the 1980s on, most Americans would ever more vigorously
cheer on the AVF from the sidelines, while it would be a force
theoretically purged of possible Vietnam-style dissent and refusal.

In that sense, it could be considered a success. We've now been at
war seven and a half years in Afghanistan and more than five in Iraq,
two catastrophic counterinsurgency struggles, and yet a Vietnam-style
movement has neither arisen in the military, nor for that matter in
the streets of what's now called "the homeland." But as TomDispatch
regular Dahr Jamail indicates below and in his new book, The Will To
Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, dissent
has proved irrepressible. With the generous support of the Nation
Institute's Investigative Fund, Jamail has produced a report on the
seeds of refusal and dissent in the military that may – in a quagmire
future in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq – grow into something far larger. ~ Tom
--

Refusing to Comply: The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military

By Dahr Jamail

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative
Fund at the Nation Institute.

On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto
wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army memo:

"There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is
immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer.
It has the opposite effect."

Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company
commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling
statement. On that one he wrote, "I will not obey any orders I deem
to be immoral or illegal." Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter,
"I'm not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is
completely wrong. It's a matter of what I'm willing to live with."

Agosto had already served in Iraq for 13 months with the 57th
Expeditionary Signal Battalion. Currently on active duty at Fort
Hood, he admits, "It was in Iraq that I turned against the
occupations. I started to feel very guilty. I watched contractors
making obscene amounts of money. I found no evidence that the
occupation was in any way helping the people of Iraq. I know I
contributed to death and human suffering. It's hard to quantify how
much I caused, but I know I contributed to it."

Even though he was approaching the end of his military service,
Agosto was ordered to deploy to Afghanistan under the stop-loss
program that the Department of Defense uses to retain soldiers beyond
the term of their contracts. At least 185,000 troops have been
stop-lossed since September 11, 2001.

Agosto betrays no ambivalence about his willingness to face the
consequences of his actions:

"Yes, I'm fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in
Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or
people at the top. They're not responsive to people, they're
responsive to corporate America. The only way to make them responsive
to the needs of the people is for soldiers to not fight their wars.
If soldiers won't fight their wars, the wars won't happen. I hope I'm
setting an example for other soldiers."

Today, Agosto's remains a relatively isolated act in an all-volunteer
military built to avoid the dissent that, in the Vietnam era, came to
be associated with an army of draftees. However, it's an example that
may, soon enough, have far greater meaning for an increasingly
overstretched military plunging into an expanding Afghan War
seemingly without end, even as its war in Iraq continues.

Avoiding Battle

Writing on his blog from Baquba, Iraq, in September 2004, Specialist
Jeff Englehart commented: "Three soldiers in our unit have been hurt
in the last four days and the true amount of army-wide casualties
leaving Iraq are unknown. The figures are much higher than what is
reported. We get awards and medals that are supposed to make us feel
proud about our wicked assignment..."

Over the years, in response to such feelings, some American soldiers
have come up with ingenious ways to express defiance or dissent on
our distant battlegrounds. These have been little noted in the
mainstream media, and when they do surface, officials in the Pentagon
or in Washington just brush them aside as "bad apple" incidents (the
same explanation they tend to use when a war crime is exposed).

But in the stories of men and women who served in the occupation of
Iraq, they often play a different role. In October 2007, for
instance, I interviewed Corporal Phil Aliff, an Iraq War veteran,
then based at Fort Drum in upstate New York. He recalled:

"During my stints in Iraq between August 2005 and July 2006, we
probably ran 300 patrols. Most of the men in my platoon were just in
from combat tours in Afghanistan and morale was incredibly low.
Recurring hits by roadside bombs had demoralized us and we realized
the only way we could avoid being blown up was to stop driving around
all the time. So every other day we would find an open field and
park, and call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for
weapon caches in the fields and everything was going fine. All our
enlisted people had grown disenchanted with the chain of command."

Aliff referred to this tactic as engaging in "search and avoid"
missions, a sardonic expression recycled from the Vietnam War when
soldiers were sent out on official "search and destroy" missions.

Sergeant Eli Wright, who served as a medic with the 1st Infantry
Division in Ramadi from September 2003 through September 2004, had a
similar story to tell me. "Oh yeah, we did search and avoid missions
all the time. It was common for us to go set camp atop a bridge and
use it as an over-watch position. We would use our binoculars to
observe rather than sweep, but call in radio checks every hour to
report on our sweeps."

According to Private First Class Clifton Hicks, who served in Iraq
with the First Cavalry from October 2003, only six months after
Baghdad was occupied by American troops, until July 2004, search and
avoid missions began early and always had the backing of a senior
non-commissioned officer or a staff sergeant. "Our platoon sergeant
was with us and he knew our patrols were bullshit, just riding around
to get blown up," he explained. "We were at Camp Victory at Baghdad
International Airport. A lot of the time we'd leave the main gate and
come right back in another gate to the base where there's a big PX
with a nice mess hall and a Burger King. We'd leave one guy at the
Humvee to call in every hour, while the others stayed at the PX. We
were just sick and tired of going out on these stupid patrols."

These understated acts of refusal were often survival strategies as
well as gestures of dissent, as the troops were invariably
undertrained and ill-equipped for the job of putting down an
insurgency. Specialist Nathan Lewis, who was deployed to Iraq with
the 214th Artillery Brigade from March 2002 through June 2003,
experienced this firsthand. "We never received any training for much
of what we were expected to do," he said when telling me of certain
munitions catching fire while he and other soldiers were loading them
onto trucks, "We were never trained on how to handle [them] the right way."

Sergeant Geoff Millard of the New York Army National Guard served at
a Rear Operations Center with the 42nd Infantry Division from October
2004 through October 2005. Part of his duty entailed reporting
"significant actions," or SIGACTS – that is, attacks on U.S. forces.
In an interview in 2007 he told me, "When I was there at least five
companies never reported SIGACTS. I think 'search and avoids' have
been going on for a long time. One of my buddies in Baghdad emails
that nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda, and
shoot at the cans." Millard told me of soldiers he still knows in
Iraq who were still performing "search and avoid" missions in
December 2008. Several other friends deploying or redeploying to Iraq
soon assured him that they, too, planned to operate in search and avoid mode.

Corporal Bryan Casler was first deployed to Iraq with the Marines in
2003, at the time of the invasion. Posted to Afghanistan in 2004, he
returned to Iraq for another tour of duty in 2005. He tells of other
low-level versions of the tactic of avoidance: "There were times we
would go to fix a radio that had been down for hours. It was
purposeful so we did not have to deal with the bullshit from higher
[ups]. In reality, we would go so we could just chill out, let the
rest of the squad catch up on some rest as one stood guard. It's
mutual and people start covering for each other. Everyone knows what
the hell's going on."

Staff Sergeant Ronn Cantu, an infantryman who was deployed to Iraq
from March 2004 to February 2005, and again from December 2006 to
January 2008, said of some of the patrols he observed while there:
"[They] wouldn't go up and down the streets like they were supposed
to. They would just go to a friendly compound with the Iraqi police
or the Kurdish Peshmerga [militia] and stay at their compound and
drink tea until it was time to go back to the base."

As a Stryker armored combat vehicle commander in Iraq from September
2004 to September 2005, Sergeant Seth Manzel had figured out a way to
fabricate on screen the movement of their patrol and so could run
computerized versions of a search and avoid mission. As he explained:

"Sometimes if they called us up to go and do something, we would
swiftly send computer reports that we were headed in that direction.
On the map we would manually place our icon to the target location
and then move it back and forth to make it appear as though we were
actually on the ground and patrolling. This was not an isolated case.
Everyone did it. Everyone would go and hide somewhere from time to time."

Former Sergeant Josh Simpson, who served as a counter-intelligence
agent in Iraq from October 2004 to October 2005, said he witnessed
instances of faked movement. "I knew soldiers who learned to simulate
vehicular movement on the computer screen, to create the impression
of being on patrol," said Simpson. "There's no doubt that people did it."

Saying "No" One at a Time

"There was nothing to be done," Corporal Casler says of his time in
Iraq, "no progress to be made there. Dissent starts as simple as
saying this is bullshit. Why am I risking my life?"

Sometimes such feelings have permeated entire units and soldiers in
them have refused to follow orders en masse. One of the more dramatic
of these incidents occurred in July 2007. The 2nd Platoon of Charlie
Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, in Baghdad had lost
many men in its 11 months of deployment. After a roadside bomb killed
five more, its members held a meeting and agreed that it was no
longer possible for them to function professionally. Concerned that
their anger might actually touch off a massacre of Iraqi civilians,
they staged a quiet revolt against their commanders instead.

Kelly Kennedy, a reporter with the Military Times embedded with
Charlie Company prior to the revolt, described the shape the platoon
members were in by that time: "[T]hey went right to mental health and
they got sleeping medications, and they basically couldn't sleep and
reacted poorly. And then, they were supposed to go out on patrol
again that day. And they, as a platoon, the whole platoon – it was
about 40 people – said, 'We're not going to do it. We can't. We're
not mentally there right now.'"

In response, the military broke up the platoon. Each individual
involved was also "flagged" so he would not get a promotion or
receive any award due.

To this day, troops in Iraq continue to be plagued by equipment and
manpower shortages, and work long hours in an extreme climate. In
addition, their stress levels are regularly raised by news from home
of veterans returning to separations and divorces, and of a Veteran's
Administration often ill-equipped and unwilling to provide
appropriate physical and psychological care to veterans.

While no broad poll of troops has been conducted recently, a Zogby
poll in February 2006 found that 72% of soldiers in Iraq felt the
occupation should be ended within a year. My interviews with those
recently back from Iraq indicate that levels of despair and
disappointment are once again on the rise among troops who are
beginning to realize, months after the Obama administration was
ushered in, that hopes of an early withdrawal have evaporated.

With the Afghan War heating up and the Iraq War still far from over,
even if fighting there is at far lower levels than at its sectarian
heights in 2006 and 2007, with stress and strain on the military
still on the rise, dissent and resistance are unlikely to abate. In
addition to small numbers of outright public refusals to deploy or
redeploy, troops are going absent without official leave (AWOL)
between deployments, and actual desertions may once again be on the
rise. Certainly, there's one strong indication that despair is indeed
growing: the unprecedented numbers of soldiers who are committing
suicide; the Army's official suicide count rose to 133 in 2008, up
from 115 in 2007, itself a record since the Pentagon began keeping
suicide statistics in 1980. At least 82 confirmed or suspected
suicides have been reported thus far in 2009, a pace that indicates
another grim record will be set; and suicide, though seldom thought
of in that context, is also a form of refusal, an extreme, individual
way of saying no, or simply no more.

According to Sergeant Simpson, here's how a feeling of discontent and
opposition creeps up on you while you're on duty: The part of the war
you're involved in, interrogating Iraqis in his case, "doesn't make
any sense. You realize that the whole system is flawed and if that is
flawed, then obviously the whole war is flawed. If the basic premise
of the war is flawed, definitely the intelligence system that is
supposed to lead us to victory is flawed. What that implies is that
victory is not even a possibility."

After finishing his tour in Iraq, Simpson joined the Reserves because
he believed it would grant him a two-year deferment from being called
up, but he was called up anyway. In his own case, he says, "I thought
to myself, I can't do this anymore. First of all, it's bad for me
mentally because I'm doing something I loathe. Second, I'm
participating in an organization that I wish to resist in every way I can.

"So," he says, "I just stopped showing up for drill, didn't call my
unit, didn't give them any reason for it. I changed my telephone
number and they did not have my address." Eventually, he reached the
end date of his contract and managed to graduate from Evergreen State
University in Washington. "I don't know if technically I'm still in
the reserves," he told me. "I don't know what my situation is, but I
don't really care either. If I go to jail, I go to jail. I'd rather
go to jail than go to Iraq."

Unready and Unwilling Reserves

Sergeant Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad with the 57th
Expeditionary Signal Battalion – the same battalion as Agosto, who
served north of the Iraqi capital – recently went AWOL from his
station at Fort Hood, Texas, when his unit deployed to Afghanistan.
He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an
occupation he opposes on moral grounds.

On his blog, he puts his position this way:

"I love my country, but I believe that this particular war is unjust,
unconstitutional and a total abuse of our nation's power and
influence. And so, in the next few days, I will be speaking with my
lawyer, and taking actions that will more than likely result in my
discharge from the military, and possible jail time... and I am
prepared to live with that.... My father said, 'Do only what you can
live with, because every morning you have to look at your face in the
mirror when you shave. Ten years from now, you'll still be shaving
the same face.' If I had deployed to Afghanistan, I don't think I
would have been able to look into another mirror again."

I spoke with him briefly after he turned himself in at his base in
early June. He said he'd chosen to follow Specialist Agosto's example
of refusal, which had inspired him, and wanted to be present at his
post to accept the consequences of his actions. He, too, hoped others
might follow his lead. (He and Agosto, now in similar situations,
have become friends.)

Agosto, whose hope has been to set an example of resistance for other
soldiers, sees Bishop's refusal to deploy to Afghanistan as a
personal success and says, "I already feel vindicated for what I'm
doing by his actions. It's nice to see some immediate results."

His actions, he's convinced, have affected the way his fellow
soldiers are now looking at the war in Afghanistan. "The topic has
come up a lot in conversation, with soldiers on base now asking,
'What are we doing in Afghanistan? Why are we there?' People feel
compelled to bring this up when I'm around. Even the ones that
disagree with me say it's great what I'm doing, and that I'm doing
what a lot of them don't have the courage to do. If anything, the
people I work with have now been treating me better than ever."

On May 27th, rejecting an Article 15 – a nonjudicial punishment
imposed by a commanding officer who believes a member of his command
has committed an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice –
Agosto demanded to be court-martialed.

According to Agosto, the Army has now begun the court martial
process, but has not yet set a trial date. Bishop, too, awaits a
possible court martial.

On June 1st, a day when four U.S. soldiers were killed in
Afghanistan, Agosto told me in a phone call from Fort Hood, "I
haven't had to disobey any orders lately. A sergeant asked me if it'd
be okay if I had to follow orders, and I said no, and they didn't force it."

Agosto and Bishop are hardly alone. In November 2007, the Pentagon
revealed that between 2003 and 2007 there had been an 80% increase in
overall desertion rates in the Army (desertion refers to soldiers who
go AWOL and never intend to return to service), and Army AWOL rates
from 2003 to 2006 were the highest since 1980. Between 2000 and 2006,
more than 40,000 troops from all branches of the military deserted,
more than half from the Army. Army desertion rates jumped by 42% from
2006 to 2007 alone.

U.S. Army Specialist André Shepherd joined the Army on January 27,
2004. He was trained in Apache helicopter repair and sent first to
Germany, then was stationed in Iraq from November 2004 to February
2005, before being based again in Germany. Shepherd went AWOL in
southern Germany in April 2007 and lived underground until applying
for asylum there in November 2008, making him the first Iraq veteran
to apply for refugee status in Europe.

He, too, has refused further military service because he feels
morally opposed to the occupation of Iraq. While he awaits word from
the German government and is still technically AWOL, Shepherd is
being supported by Courage to Resist, a group based in Oakland,
California, which actively assists soldiers who refuse to deploy to
Iraq or Afghanistan.

A counselor and administrative associate at that organization, Adam
Szyper-Seibert, points out that "in recent months there has been a
dramatic rise of nearly 200% in the number of soldiers that have
contacted Courage to Resist." Szyper-Seibert suspects this may
reflect the decision of the Obama administration to dramatically
increase efforts, troop strength, and resources in Afghanistan. "We
are actively supporting over 50 military resisters like Victor
Agosto," Szyper-Seibert says. "They are all over the world, including
André Shepherd in Germany and several people in Canada. We are
getting five or six calls a week just about the IRR [Individual Ready
Reserve] recall alone."

The IRR is composed of troops who have finished their active duty
service but still have time remaining on their contracts. The typical
military contract mandates four years of active duty followed by four
years in the IRR, though variations on this pattern exist. Ready
Reserve members live civilian lives and are not paid by the military,
but they are required to show up for periodic musters. Many have
moved on from military life and are enrolled in college, working
civilian jobs, and building families.

At any point, however, a member of the Ready Reserve can be recalled
to active duty. This policy has led to the involuntary reactivation
of tens of thousands of troops to fight the ongoing wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Lieutenant General Jack C. Stultz, the Chief of the U.S.
Army Reserve and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Reserve Command,
told Congress on March 3rd that, since September 11, 2001, the Army
has mobilized about 28,000 from the Reserves. There have been 3,724
Marines involuntarily recalled and mobilized during that same period,
according to Major Steven O'Connor, a Marine Corps spokesman.
(According to Major O'Connor, as of May 2009, the Marines are no
longer recalling individuals from the IRR.)

Ironically, under a new commander-in-chief whom many voters believed
to be anti-war, the Army is continuing its Individual Ready Reserve
recalls. "The IRR recall has not seen any change since Obama became
president," Sarah Lazare, the project coordinator for Courage to
Resist, says. "It's difficult to predict what the Obama
administration's policy will be in the future regarding the IRR, but
definitely they haven't made any moves to stop this practice."

Needing boots on the ground, according to Lazare, the military
continues to fall back on the Ready Reserve system to fill the gaps:
"Since these are experienced troops, many of them have already served
tours in Iraq and Afghanistan." Lazare adds, "When Obama announced
his Afghanistan surge, we got a huge wave of calls from soldiers
saying they didn't want to be reactivated and to please help them not go."

The Future of Military Dissent

Right now, acts of dissent, refusal, and resistance in the
all-volunteer military remain small-scale and scattered. Ranging from
the extreme private act of suicide to avoidance of duty to actual
refusal of duty, they continue to consist largely of individual acts.
Present-day G.I. resistance to the occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan cannot begin to be compared with the extensive resistance
movement that helped end the Vietnam War and brought an army of
draftees to the point of near mutiny in the late 1960s. Nevertheless,
the ongoing dissent that does exist in the U.S. military, however
fragmented and overlooked at the moment, should not be discounted.

The Iraq War boils on at still dangerous levels of violence, while
the war in Afghanistan (and across the border in Pakistan) only
grows, as does the U.S. commitment to both. It's already clear that
even an all-volunteer military isn't immune to dissent. If violence
in either or both occupations escalates, if the Pentagon struggles to
add more boots on the ground, if the stresses and strains on the
military, involving endless redeployments to combat zones, increase
rather than lessen, then the acts of Agosto, Bishop, and Shepherd may
turn out to be pathbreaking ones in a world of dissent yet to be
experienced and explored. Add in dissatisfaction and discontent at
home if, in the coming years, American treasure continues to be
poured into an Afghan quagmire, and real support for a G.I.
resistance movement may surface. If so, then the early pioneers in
methods of dissent within the military will have laid the groundwork
for a movement.

"If we want soldiers to choose the right but difficult path, they
must know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they will be supported by
Americans." So said First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the U.S. Army,
the highest ranking enlisted soldier to refuse orders to deploy to
Iraq. (He finally had the military charges against him dropped by the
Justice Department.) The future of any such movement in the military
is now unknowable, but keep your eyes open. History, even military
history, holds its own surprises.
--

Tom Engelhardt [send him mail] co-founder of the Nation Institute's
TomDispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project.
His book, The End of Victory Culture, has recently been updated in a
newly issued edition. He edited, and his work appears in, the first
best of TomDispatch book, The World According to TomDispatch: America
in the New Age of Empire (Verso), an alternative history of the mad
Bush years. To catch an audio interview in which he discusses our
airborne assassins, click here. Dahr Jamail, a TomDispatch regular,
has reported from Iraq and writes for Inter Press Service, Le Monde
Diplomatique, and other outlets. He is the author of Beyond the Green
Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq and
the forthcoming book The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight
in Iraq and Afghanistan. His website is Dahrjamailiraq.com.

.