Camilo Mejia Appeals Bad Conduct Discharge

Camilo Mejia, 1st GI to Publicly Resist Iraq War, Appeals Bad Conduct Discharge

http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/8/5/camilo_mejia_1st_gi_to_publicly

August 05, 2009

Camilo Mejia is the first GI who served in Iraq to have publicly
resisted the war. He was imprisoned for refusing to return. Today, he
is appealing his bad conduct discharge from the military. We speak to
Mejia along with his attorney, Anjana Samant of the Center for
Constitutional Rights.
--

Guest:

Camilo Mejia, the first soldier to refuse to return to fight in Iraq
and the chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War. His memoir is called
The Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Camilo Mejia.

Anjana Samant, Staff Attorney at Center for Constitutional Rights.
--

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to turn now to Camilo Mejia. I think he
knows exactly how Victor feels right now. Camilo is the first GI who
served in Iraq to have publicly resisted the war and was imprisoned
for refusing to go back for almost a year. Camilo Mejia is the chair
of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has written a memoir called The
Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Camilo Mejia.

Today Camilo joins us from Washington, DC, on his first day of the
Veterans for Peace conference in College Park, Maryland.

We're also joined here in our firehouse studio by Camilo's attorney,
Anjana Samant from the Center for Constitutional Rights. She is
filing an appeal today regarding Camilo Mejia's bad conduct discharge
from the military.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Camilo, I know you just flew in
to Washington. What is it exactly that you are asking for today in
this appeal? And your thoughts as you listen to Victor? It sounds
like you were in a similar position a while ago.

CAMILO MEJIA: Yes, Amy. We find ourselves in the same situation as,
you know, 2003 and 2004, when I took my stands, having returned from
Iraq. And that's basically­you know, I mean, you had Jeremy speak
about the situation in Iraq and how we continue to use mercenary
forces there and how we continue to act with absolute impunity. And I
think that, you know, when you have the commission of war crimes and
torture and other war atrocities, and you prosecute people who blow
the whistle on that, you're actually encouraging that behavior to
continue to happen. And I feel that it's necessary not only for GIs
to continue to take stands in the way that Victor is doing today, but
also for people to continue to support war resisters and to continue
to fight, you know, our battles, in the courtroom as well as, you
know, in the battlefields and the military bases.

AMY GOODMAN: Anjana, can you explain what it is you're filing in
court today and where you're filing it?

ANJANA SAMANT: Absolutely. We're filing an appeal with the United
States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The court-martial,
which took place in 2004, was the first trial level of the process.
After the panel members, which is the jury in a court-martial,
convicted Camilo, there was an intermediary appeal that was filed.
That court affirmed the conviction and the sentence.

At this point, we're going to be asking the Court of Appeals for the
Armed Forces, which is a five panel judge court­five panel judges­in
Washington, DC, to review the actual trial and certain rulings by the
judge for error. And specifically, the issues that we're concerned
about is the fact that the military judge did not permit Camilo to
launch a full defense, based on his argument that in light of the
orders that he was given, in light of the conduct that he was asked
to commit, the actions that he was required to do with respect to
Iraqi detainees and as part of carrying out his combat duties, those
actions violated international law. Those actions violated
international law as embodied in Army Field Manual 27-10. And this is
one of the strongest defenses we felt that Camilo had, which is that
when he left his unit, when he refused to redeploy, he did so
because, based on his firsthand inexperience, based on his knowledge
of what he would be asked to do when he goes back, would violate
international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Camilo, for viewers and listeners who are not familiar
with your case, go back in time. Explain the time you served in Iraq
and what happened when you returned.

CAMILO MEJIA: Yes, Amy. This was in the very beginning. We arrived
in­well, actually, we arrived in the Middle East, and in the
beginning of March, we first served two months in Jordan. And then we
went to Iraq at the end of April of 2003.

And the first mission we had there was to run a POW camp in a place
called Al Assad. And at this place, our job was basically to,
quote-unquote, "soften up" prisoners for interrogation. And the way
that we did that was by utilizing certain psychological torture
techniques to keep them sleep-deprived for periods of up to four
days, and we did that by performing mock executions and using
explosion-like sounds to scare the prisoners and just inflicting fear
in their hearts in order to keep them awake.

AMY GOODMAN: You did this, Camilo?

CAMILO MEJIA: We did some of that; we didn't do all of it, not
because we objected to it enough to refuse, but because we didn't
have the equipment. For instance, we didn't have the nine-millimeter
pistols to perform the mock executions. But we did use the sound, and
we did use the sleep deprivation and lie deprivation. We deprived
them of a sense of space. And we were trained on how to do certain
things in order to basically break their notions of just every­just
about every psychological notion, in order to break down their morale
and, you know, through exhaustion, you know, get them to do whatever
it was we wanted them to do.

AMY GOODMAN: When did you decide this wasn't the right thing to be doing?

CAMILO MEJIA: When I came home. This mission was followed by more
intense combat missions. I was an infantry squad leader, a staff
sergeant in Iraq. So we, unlike Victor, you know, we were out there,
you know, doing missions, raiding homes, and doing things like that.
And the environment was so intense that it was really difficult to
take stances, you know, morally or philosophically, because you were
just really concerned with survival.

But once I came home and, you know, had a little bit more time to
think about everything that happened and also, you know, carrying my
political opposition from before deployment, I just realized that I
had to make a choice between obeying my commanders or obeying my
conscience. And in the end, you know, I decided that I could not in
good conscience continue to be a part of the war.

AMY GOODMAN: So, two things. You offered to testify before Congress
about what you saw in Iraq, and you also went underground?

CAMILO MEJIA: I did went­I did go underground in the beginning,
because I was very afraid of what the military would do to me. And at
that time, the antiwar movement was deactivated largely, I think. We
were all very demoralized by the fact that over ten million people
took the streets, and yet we invaded. So there wasn't really a whole
lot of support in the beginning, other than my family's support and a
few organizations that were coming together. I had moral and
intellectual clarity on what path I should follow, but I was very
afraid of what the Army would do to me. So it took me five months to
go public, and once I did, you know, I felt really empowered to do
so. And I have no regrets about it.

I'm sorry, I forgot the second part of your question.

AMY GOODMAN: You offered to testify before Congress?

CAMILO MEJIA: Yes, part of my case was that we tried to bring my
conscientious objector claim into the evidence. And part of that was
actually a detailed account of what we did in Al Assad in terms of
torture of prisoners. And we offered Senator Clinton, at the time,
the evidence and my testimony before Congress, and, you know, they
declined. They said that, no, that they would wait for the military
to conduct their own investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: And how long did you serve, and where did you serve time
in jail, in the brig?

CAMILO MEJIA: I was given a twelve-month sentence, but I only did
nine months, or just eight months and about a little bit over three
weeks in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

AMY GOODMAN: Camilo, you're now the chair of the board of Veterans
for Peace. It's having its annual convention at University of
Maryland, College Park?

CAMILO MEJIA: The chair of the board of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

AMY GOODMAN: Iraq Veterans Against the War, sorry. The numbers of
soldiers who are resisting right now­can you put your experience,
Victor's experience, in context? What are the numbers? Thousands of people?

CAMILO MEJIA: Tens of thousands of people. It's difficult to put a
real number to it, because you don't really know what happens to
them. You don't know if they go back to the military and then get,
you know, re-sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, or if they get
administratively discharged. Obviously, it doesn't look good for the
military to discharge, you know, forty or fifty thousand
conscientious objectors or send forty to fifty thousand people to
jail. So it's really hard to, you know, put a hard number on it.

But to put this in context, you know, when I first came back from
Iraq, there were only twenty-two cases of desertion from the war
effort, and that number had risen to 500 by the time I surrendered
myself five months later, and to 5,500 by the time I got out of jail
some ten months later or eleven months later. And now it's in the
tens of thousands. So resistance has grown a great deal; it's just
not being reported.

AMY GOODMAN: And your message­the same question I asked Victor­to US
soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and here at home on bases
all over or even soldiers who are AWOL right now?

CAMILO MEJIA: The same that Victor just said, you know, that I
cannot­I could not agree more with Victor that following one's
conscience is, you know, the greatest thing that you could do, is the
greatest way to assert your freedom as a human being. And if you
follow your path, whatever that path is, you can't­you just can't go wrong.

For Victor, that meant, you know, taking a stance at Fort Hood and
say no and not applying for conscientious objection. For me, it took
a little bit more time. It took me five months to come to terms with
my fear and take a public stance. And my route was conscientious
objection, because I do object to all wars. But whatever the case may
be, I think that once you follow your conscience, you assert your
freedom in a way that you can't by following orders that you disagree with.

AMY GOODMAN: And are you surprised you're doing this during this new
administration? I mean, you were punished under the Bush
administration. Victor is doing this under President Obama.

CAMILO MEJIA: I'm not surprised at all. I think that Victor said it,
you know, before, that Obama said that he was going to increase our
presence in Afghanistan, but also because the promise of hope, at
least in my opinion, has been very­has been quite superficial. For
GIs, the situation has not really changed, in terms of the care that
we are receiving, in terms of the repeated deployments, you know, the
lack of time in between deployments, all of these things. It's a
little bit harder to fool GIs into believing in real change, when the
reality does not change for us. So, for us, there's not been a real
promise of change. And I agree with Victor. I could not agree more
with him that if we want real change to happen, it has to be effected
from the bottom up.

AMY GOODMAN: Camilo Mejia, I want to thank you for being with us.
Anjana Samant, thank you, from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The case will be filed­the appeal­today in court here in New York.
Camilo Mejia, going off to the University of Maryland, College Park
campus for the annual meeting of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He's
chair of the board. His book is called The Road from Ar Ramadi: The
Private Rebellion of Camilo Mejia. Our break will be the music of
Camilo's father, Mejia Godoy, known as the musician of the Sandinista
revolution.

.

Army Resister Victor Agosto Speaks Out

Hours Before Court-Martial,
Army Resister Victor Agosto Speaks Out on Why He's Refusing to Fight
in Afghanistan

http://i3.democracynow.org/2009/8/5/hours_before_court_martial_army_resister

US Army Specialist Victor Agosto faces up to one month in jail for
refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. After returning from thirteen
months in Iraq, Agosto became a victim of the stop-loss program that
has extended the tours of more than 140,000 troops beyond their
contracts since 9/11. Just hours before his court-martial, Agosto
speaks out from his military base at Fort Hood, Texas.
--

Guest:

Spc. Victor Agosto, US Army specialist who refused to deploy to
Afghanistan. He will be court-martialed today and faces jail time.
--

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the growing movement of GI resisters in
this country. A US Army specialist who refused to deploy to
Afghanistan faces a court-martial today and up to a month in jail.
Twenty-four-year-old Specialist Victor Agosto from Miami spent
thirteen months in Iraq with the 57th Battalion. When he returned to
the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas last November, he
thought his contract with the Army would end this summer. But Agosto
became a victim of the stop-loss program that has extended the tours
of more than 140,000 troops beyond their contracts since 9/11. After
nearly four years with the Army, Agosto was told he would be deployed
to Afghanistan.

When he returned to base, Agosto had become a member of Iraq Veterans
Against the War and decided not to go to Afghanistan. He went public
with his decision, saying, quote, "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," he said.

Well, Victor Agosto will be court-martialed in just over an hour from
the time of this broadcast. He joins us now by telephone from Fort
Hood, Texas.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Victor Agosto. Tell us where you are and
why you have made this decision not to go to Afghanistan, after
having served for more than a year in Iraq.

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Well, right now I'm on Fort Hood. And I decided
that I just­I couldn't, in good conscience, deploy to Afghanistan. I
don't believe that we're actually there to fight terror or that
terror can even be fought on the battlefield. And then that's
basically­that's basically it. I just­I don't­I just can't do it.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you come to this decision?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: When I was in Iraq, I had done some reading. I
thought about why I was actually there, why were we involved in these
wars. And I read Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, and it was from
there that I realized that the concept that I had that we were there
to help the people of Iraq, that America had some sort of moral
superiority, was completely shattered from what I read there.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you applying for conscientious objector status?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: No, I decided against that, because as far as the
Army is concerned, a conscientious objector is someone who is opposed
to all wars, and that's not me. I believe that sometimes war is
necessary in cases of legitimate self-defense and legitimate resistance.

AMY GOODMAN: You just feel Afghanistan is wrong.

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Yes, I don't feel that we're making the world any
safer by doing that. We're just killing people and spreading
suffering with no real justification.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain. You were supposed to­your tour of duty
should have ended, or your service in the military, when?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Yesterday, actually.

AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday.

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So why are you being sent back, or why are they trying to?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Why­I suppose they just need more people, so they
stop-lossed me.

AMY GOODMAN: "Stop-loss" means they can just call you back, even
though your term is supposed to end.

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Yes. They can retain me past my original
enlistment in order to deploy again.

AMY GOODMAN: Our next guest, Camilo Mejia, is the first GI who served
in Iraq to have publicly resisted the war, and he was imprisoned for
refusing to go back. We're going to speak with him in a minute. He
went underground. You've chosen, Victor Agosto, not to go
underground, but actually to remain at Fort Hood. Why is that?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: As I struggled with my decision, I learned of the
effect of the GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War. And I
thought that if I were to go AWOL, my commanders could tell other
soldiers that­you know, that I left because I was scared, that, you
know, I had other reasons, whereas if­whereas by staying on base, I
can set an example for other soldiers to see that, you know, that I
think this war is wrong, and I'm just not going to do it and that,
you know, I think they should do the same.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the response of others on Fort Hood, as you've
become this public symbol of GI resistance?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Well, they've generally been positive or neutral.
I've had fellow soldiers come and want to shake my hand or flash me a
peace sign or something like that. Some people have expressed their
disapproval, but usually they'll say something­they'll start out by
saying how much they respect me, but they disagree with what I'm
doing. But I don't really encounter a lot of­I don't really encounter
any bitterness towards my decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Victor Agosto, can you talk about your time in Iraq?
Where were you stationed? What did you do there?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: I was stationed at Forward Operating Base Q-West,
and basically I worked at what's called a technical control facility,
where I configured computers, routers, switches, servers. But I
never­I was never in combat. I never felt any danger. I never felt
the need to fire my weapon. And that's it.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you feeling right now? In just about an hour's
time, how exactly does the process happen?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: I'll be tried and­you know, be tried and likely
convicted of refusing the order of a noncommissioned officer to SRP,
which is a process that every soldier has to go through before they
deploy. And then they'll immediately take me to Bell County Detention
Center, where I'll probably serve thirty days.

AMY GOODMAN: Did it surprise you that President Obama has escalated
the war in Afghanistan?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: No. No, it doesn't, because he said he would do
so during his campaign. Part of why I'm doing what I'm doing is
because I don't believe that any politician can end this war. I think
that it has to be ended at the grassroots level. Soldiers, by
refusing to fight, can bring about the end of the war.

AMY GOODMAN: What message do you have for other GIs, for other people
in the military?

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: I would say that you would never­you'll never
regret following your conscience and that adherence to an oath is not
a valid excuse for betraying your conscience.

AMY GOODMAN: US Army Specialist Victor Agosto, served a
thirteen-month deployment in Iraq, is now refusing to go to
Afghanistan. He is expected to be court-martialed in the next hour.
And we will continue to follow his case, as we turn now to­best of
luck to you, Victor Agosto.

SPC. VICTOR AGOSTO: Thank you, Amy.

.

As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/as-long-as-the-wars-continue-we-must-resist-them/

by Ron Jacobs
August 7th, 2009

As the casualty figures climb in Afghanistan and dip in Iraq and
support for those wars plummets, the question of troop resistance
remains on the table. According to US military estimates, desertion
and AWOL rates have climbed since the resistance in Iraq began its
armed campaign against the US occupation. In addition, recruitment
numbers dropped drastically, although they have began to climb since
the economy began its collapse in Fall 2008. Soldiers and Marines
have been stop-lossed and their tours of duty in the combat zones
were extended. In addition, many troops serve not one, but two or
three consecutive tours with as little as one month stateside between
tours. All of these phenomena have created increased levels of stress
and depression among the troops, leading to one of the highest known
suicide rates among veterans and active duty troops ever.

Many readers know at least one man or woman who has done time in Iraq
or Afghanistan. Although most vets seem to adjust to civilian life
once they are through with their military duty, many others do not.
indeed, even those who appear to be adjusting just fine often cause
concern among their friends and relatives because of changes in their
behavior. The Veteran's Administration (VA) is notoriously inept and
callous in its treatment of vets, despite the best efforts of some
individuals within the organization that struggle against the
overwhelming bureaucratic odds and inadequate funding endemic in the
agency. Newspapers run stories regularly about veterans lacking care,
lashing out at family members or others, and most tragically of all,
killing themselves. Yet, the Pentagon continues to push for an
escalation of the war in Afghanistan while carrying on what appears
to be a heated debate over whether or not to withdraw from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the US antiwar movement founders in the wake of a
substantial part of its membership giving their collective soul to
the Democratic Party. Since November 2008, it's as if the bloodshed
perpetrated by US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is okay because
Barack Obama is leading the charge instead of George Bush. Besides
the National Assembly's call for local and regional protests against
the Iraq occupation and Afghan war in October, there has been barely
a peep from other national antiwar organizations. This is despite the
fact that Congress and Obama have approved several more billion
dollars for the wars and the size of the US force in Afghanistan has
nearly doubled while the promised withdrawal of US forces in Iraq has
not even begun.

It is the opinion of many anti-warriors that veterans have a key role
to play in any organized resistance. After all, it was their presence
in the movement against the Vietnam war that shook the conscience of
the US public in that war's later years. However, as Dahr Jamail and
his subjects point out again and again, the strength in numbers and
the political power of the GI movement against the war in Vietnam was
directly related to the strength of the greater antiwar movement. So,
despite the commitment of today's GI and veteran resisters profiled
in Jamail's book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in
Iraq and Afghanistan, that commitment is limited by the weakness of
the antiwar movement as a whole.

Jamail highlights the various organizations organizing GI resistance,
from the Iraq Veterans Against the War to the group Courage to
Resist. He also commits a chapter to each of the primary forms of
resistance and reasons for that resistance. He describes instances of
individual resistance and the refusal of entire units to carry out
missions. He also explores the nature of the sexist culture of the
military and the immorality of the wars themselves. One of the most
interesting chapters in The Will to Resist is titled "Quarters of
Resistance." It describes the mission and interior of a house in
Washington, DC run by a couple veterans. The purpose of the house is
to operate as a sort of clearinghouse for the GI resistance movement.
At times, the house has provided shelter for veterans and GIs
attending antiwar activities in DC. It is also a place that the
founder of the house, Geoffrey Millard, calls a "training ground for
resistance." In addition to these quarters, Jamail discusses the
beginnings of a coffeehouse movement slowly developing outside major
US military bases.

Jamal's book is also about his learning to understand and appreciate
the humanity of the US soldier. Originally inclined to consider them
all killers without conscience, his conversations and other
interactions with the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and
Afghanistan to kill in America's name have led him to understand that
many of these folks struggle with their souls on a daily basis. With
this growing understanding of folks who are essentially his
contemporaries, The Will to Resist becomes more than just another
collective biography of troops who discover their conscience under
the duress of war.

If the current commander of US troops in Afghanistan has his way,
there will be more than 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end
of the summer in 2010. Already, Barack Obama has approved adding
20,000 more active duty troops to the 1,473,900 already on duty.
Without public protest, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is
certain to continue. In addition, General Odierno in Iraq insists
that US troops remain in that country, as well. Furthermore, the
likelihood of combat against other foes chosen by Washington
increases. Resistance is never easy, as the men and women in The Will
to Resist can tell us. However, if the people who poured into the
streets to protest Bush's war are truly opposed to war, then they
should also make an appearance in those same streets now that the war
is Obama's.
--

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the
Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is
published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

.

Book Excerpt, 'The Will to Resist'

Book Excerpt, 'The Will to Resist'

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6323

Dahr Jamail
August 4, 2009

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from Dahr Jamail's The Will To
Resist: Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan
(Haymarket Books). The testimonies below were collected at a national
conference, "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan," held by Iraq
Veterans Against the War.
--

The name "Winter Soldiers" refers to people who stand up for the soul
of their country, even in its darkest hours. Thomas Paine, the
revolutionary who rallied George Washington's troops at Valley Forge,
trying to keep them from deserting in the face of a bitter winter and
mounting defeats at the hands of the British, said: "These are the
times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot
will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he
that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

The phrase "Winter Soldiers" was adopted by Vietnam Veterans Against
the War (VVAW) when they organized the first Winter Soldier event in
response to the human rights violations that were occurring in
Vietnam. The event, called "Winter Soldier Investigation," was held
in Detroit from January 31, 1971, to February 2, 1971, and was
intended to publicize war crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the
U.S. Armed Forces in the Vietnam War. VVAW challenged the morality
and conduct of the war by exposing the direct relationship between
military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering
of 109 veterans and 16 civilians included discharged servicemen from
each branch of military service, civilian contractors, medical
personnel, and academics, all of whom presented testimony about war
crimes they had committed or witnessed during 1963–1970.

A smaller, modern-day incarnation of VVAW is IVAW (Iraq Veterans
Against the War), which was founded in 2004. It seeks to offer a
platform to those who have served in the military since September 11,
2001, to speak out against what they see as an unjust, illegal, and
unwinnable war in Iraq. At the time of this writing, IVAW had more
than 1,400 members in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and on
military bases overseas. IVAW held a national conference called
"Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan" outside Washington, D.C., in
March 2008. The four-day event brought together more than 200 Iraq
and Afghanistan veterans from across the country to testify about
their experiences in both occupations. Although largely ignored by
the corporate press, the event was of historical significance. For
the first time since the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, former and
current members of the U.S. military had organized with the specific
purpose to make public the truth of their experience. It was hoped,
in vain as it turned out, that the testimonies of veterans would
provide the press with sufficient information to report on the truly
catastrophic nature of the occupations and rouse people to take action.

At this first modern-day Winter Soldier event, I spoke with scores of
veterans during breaks in the powerful panels of testimony. A
constant refrain I heard was that individuals who had joined the
military for honorable reasons were disillusioned upon sensing how
they were being misused by the government of the country they had
sworn under oath to serve and defend.

Hart Viges had felt compelled to join the U.S. Army the day after
September 11, 2001, in the genuine belief that he could help make the
world a safer place. Like other speakers at the Winter Soldier event,
he admitted that U.S. troops routinely detained innocent people
during home raids. "We never went on the right raid where we got the
right house, much less the right person ­ not once." He said it was
common practice for troops to take photographs as war trophies. "We
were driving in Baghdad one day and found a dead body on the side of
the road. We pulled over to secure the area and my friends jumped off
and started taking pictures with it, smiling. They asked me if I
wanted to join them, and I refused. Not because it was unethical, but
because it wasn't my kill. Because you shouldn't make trophies of
what you didn't kill. I wasn't upset this man was dead, but just that
they shouldn't be taking credit for something they didn't do. But that's war."

Speaking on a panel about the rules of engagement (ROE) was Adam
Kokesh, whom I had met at the veterans' house in D.C. He had served
with the marines in Fallujah for about a year from February 2004. He
held up a small card for the audience to see, the ROE issued to
soldiers in Iraq, which stated, "Nothing on this card prevents you
from using deadly force to defend yourself." He elaborated on the
condition of "reasonable certainty" that allowed for the use of
deadly force under the ROE and led to countless civilian deaths. "We
changed the ROE more often than we changed our underwear. At one
point, we imposed a curfew on the city [Fallujah], and were told to
fire at anything that moved in the dark. I don't think soldiers
should ever be put in situations where they must choose between their
morals and their instinct for survival."

Kokesh testified that during two ceasefires in the midst of the siege
of Fallujah, the military decided to let out as many women and
children from the embattled city as possible. "For males to be
released, they had to be below fourteen years of age. It was my brief
to go over there and turn the men back, separated from their women
and children. We thought we were being gracious."

Steve Casey served in Iraq for more than a year, from mid-2003. "We
were scheduled to go home in April 2004, but due to rising violence
had to stay in with Operation Black Jack. I watched soldiers firing
into the radiators and windows of oncoming vehicles. Those who didn't
turn around at checkpoints were neutralized one way or another. Well
over twenty times I personally witnessed this."

Jason Hurd, posted in central Baghdad from November 2004 to November
2005, testified how, after his unit took "stray rounds" from a nearby
firefight, a machine gunner responded by firing more than 200 rounds
into a nearby building.

We fired indiscriminately at this building. Things like that happened
every day in Iraq. We reacted out of fear for our lives, and we
reacted with total destruction. Over time, as the absurdity of war
set in, individuals from my unit indiscriminately opened fire at
vehicles driving down the wrong side of the road. People in my unit
would later brag. I remember how appalled I was that we could be
laughing about such things, but that was the reality...We're
disrupting not only the lives of Iraqis but also the lives of our
veterans with this occupation. If a foreign occupying force came here
to the United States, do you not think that every person that has a
shotgun would come out of the hills and fight for his right for
self-determination? Ladies and gentlemen, that country is suffering
from our occupation, and ending that suffering begins with the total
and immediate withdrawal of all of our troops.

Marine Vincent Emmanuel was posted near the northern Iraqi city of
Al-Qaim from 2004 to 2005, and disclosed in his testimony that
"taking potshots at cars that drove by happened all the time and were
not isolated incidents. We took fire while trying to blow up a
bridge. Many of the attackers were part of the general population.
This led to our squad shooting at everything and anything in order to
push through the town. I remember myself emptying magazines into the
town, never identifying a target." Co-panelists nodded in agreement
as he confessed to abusing prisoners he knew to be innocent. "We took
it upon ourselves to harass them, sometimes took them to the desert
and threw them out of our Humvees, kicking and punching them even as
we did so."

Others testified that it was not uncommon to justify accidental
killings of civilians by planting weapons on them. Corporal Jason
Washburn of the marines served three tours in Iraq, the last one in
Haditha from 2005 to 2006. "We were encouraged to bring 'drop
weapons' or shovels, in case we accidentally shot a civilian so that
we could drop the weapon on the body and make it appear like that of
an insurgent. By the third tour, if they were carrying a shovel or
bag, we were allowed to shoot them. We carried these tools and
weapons in our vehicles, so we could toss them on civilians when we shot them."

In 2004, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton wrote an article for the
Nation. Sharing his insights about the invasion and occupation of
Iraq he writes about, "atrocity-producing situations," which occur
when a power structure creates an environment where "ordinary people,
men or women no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit
atrocities...This kind of atrocity-producing situation...surely
occurs to some degree in all wars, including World War II, our last
'good war.' But a counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting,
especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is
particularly prone to sustained atrocity ­ all the more so when it
becomes an occupation."

At the same hearing, an emotional Jon Michael Turner pulled his
military medals off his shirt and ung them down as the audience
cheered. He had served two tours as a machine gunner in Iraq.

I was taught as a marine to eat the apple to the core. April 18,
2006, was the date of my first confirmed kill. I called him "the fat
man." He was innocent. I killed him in front of his father and friend
as he was walking home. My first shot made him scream and " look into
my eyes, so I looked at my friend and said, "Well, I can't let that
happen," and shot him again. After my first kill, I was
congratulated...I want to apologize for the hate and destruction that
I and others have in icted on innocent people. It is not okay, and
this is happening, and until people hear of what is going on, it is
going to continue. Today I am no longer the monster that I once was.

The impact of the rst Winter Soldier event inspired other veterans to
organize similar events across the country. The rst of these was the
Northwestern Regional Winter Soldier at the Seattle Town Hall, in
June 2008. The 850-seating capacity was nearly full on the occasion.
Veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq had converged there to
share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq. Endorsed
by dozens of local and regional antiwar groups, including Veterans
for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society, the meeting drew
local and some international media attention. The testimonies of the
U.S. service members who had participated in the occupations of Iraq
and Afghanistan were intended to establish to the public that the
occasional stories of wrongdoing in both countries that the
mainstream press chose to expose were not isolated incidents limited
to a few "bad apples," as the Pentagon claimed.

"We've heard from the politicians, from the generals, from the media
­ now it's our turn," announced Iraq war veteran Kelly Dougherty, who
served in Iraq as a military police of cer in 2003. "It's not going
to be easy to hear what we have to say. It's not going to be easy for
us to tell it. But we believe that the only way this war is going to
end is if the American people truly understand what we have done in
their name."

With a view to drawing mainstream media coverage, the earlier Winter
Soldier event in D.C. had been closed to the general public. The
hoped-for mainstream media coverage did not materialize, but IVAW
experienced a burst of growth, its membership expanding rapidly in
the months following the event. The strategy for the Northwest
Regional Winter Soldier, in contrast, was to be inclusive. The
organizers were keen to involve not just the community in Seattle,
but also in surrounding areas, in the event. In order to energize
public antiwar sentiment and capitalize on it, the veterans led a
determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets of downtown
Seattle, following the hearings at the Town Hall. Traf c was halted
for nearly an hour by protestors chanting slogans of "U.S. out of the
Middle East," "No Justice, No Peace," and carrying placards that
read, "You Can't Be All You Can Be If You're Dead!"

Iraq war veteran Chanan Suarez Diaz was stationed at Okinawa, Japan,
immediately after serving in Iraq. Diaz started exchanging e-mails
with his tenth-grade drama teacher to pour out his discontent about
what he had experienced in Iraq. His teacher told him about a
veterans' group, and Diaz joined the group online, while still active
duty. Simultaneously, he launched into a self-education program,
reading political books and progressive news online. By the time he
returned to the United States, he was ready to begin organizing,
giving talks and raising awareness about the occupation. He was
involved in the rst "Fund the wounded, not the war" protest outside
his local VA in Seattle, and has also been involved in shutting down
military recruiting stations around the Seattle area.

Of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and all others complicit in orchestrating
the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Diaz says, "I think they should
be tried, by members of the American community, and also by the Iraqi
people. What they have done is inexcusable, and whatever is done to
them, no matter how harsh, will still not suf ce to bring justice to
the Iraqi people and the American people after what they have suffered."
Diaz believes,

It is very important to read history and draw the lessons from other
movements. We must learn from what worked then and what did not. We
must know the facts and the depth of the G.I. movement in the '60s
and '70s. That gives me hope. I also feel hopeful about the different
forms of resistance popping up today, like more soldiers refusing to
ght, the dissent, the more thinking that I see a lot of active-duty
people do. The longer this continues, the riper the conditions for
more soldiers to refuse to ght.

Despite what the Pentagon and its chief agent, mainstream American
media, project about the overwhelming national and international
support that legitimize the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,
there is enough evidence to indicate otherwise. The question that
begs introspection is whether the American public will put this
evidence to use to build sufficient pressure on the government to
change America's foreign policy.
--

Dahr Jamail, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, has reported from
Iraq. He is also the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from
an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

.

Resisting a war by running away

Resisting a war by running away

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/30/matt-gurney-resisting-a-war-by-running-away.aspx

Posted: July 30, 2009
by Matt Gurney

Kimberly Rivera, a U.S. soldier, was sent to Iraq in 2006. Like many
other American soldiers deployed since 9/11, she eventually came to
have doubts about the mission. In February of 2007, while on a
two-week leave home from Iraq, Rivera and her husband packed up their
children and drove to Toronto.

There, they found a small but welcoming group of natural allies.
Rivera is not the first American soldier to desert the military and
seek asylum in Canada. The fate of these errant soldiers has stirred
controversy here, with many recalling the tens of thousands of draft
dodgers that fled north to escape the Vietnam War. Many of those
Americans have lived productive lives in Canada ever since. This,
plus the distaste felt by many Canadians for any military mission
nastier than peacekeeping, has led some to conclude that Rivera and a
handful of others like her should be permitted to remain.

Last June, opposition parties combined to pass a motion urging the
Harper government to let American deserters stay in Canada. The
motion was reaffirmed after last fall's election, but Immigration
Minister Jason Kenney has been less than impressed, deeming the war
resisters "bogus refugee claimants."

The Conservatives must consider the practical cost of accepting U.S.
war resistors: provoking the United States at a time when the Harper
government is doing its best to keep the borders open and defeat Buy
American sentiments. Now is a poor time to antagonize the Americans,
and accepting the war resistors would be fairly considered in
Washington to be a slap to the face.

While there are enormous diplomatic considerations, the deserters'
right to remain in Canada is fundamentally a legal issue and must be
decided in the courts. Upon return to the United States, soldiers
absent without leave face trial by courts-martial, and, if convicted,
would likely be handed bad-conduct discharges and prison sentences of
approximately one year. (Supporters of the resistors' right to remain
point out that the more public noise a resistor makes, the longer his
or her sentence.) While bad-conduct discharges and possible prison
time are certainly unpleasant, it is hardly torture or risk of
execution. Canadian courts must decide whether or not that
constitutes sufficient reason to permit the resistors to remain.

It's a messy issue, to be sure. No one wants to force the unwilling
to fight, but the American military has been all-volunteer for a
generation. These people, whatever their moral and legal qualms with
the war, have at the most basic level broken a legally binding
contract and, in so doing, have violated military law.

Moreover, it is difficult for many Canadians to accept that these
soldiers are genuine refugees. As likable as they may be as
individuals, it's hard to condone desertion from the American
military at a time when other American soldiers are backing up
Canadian troops, also volunteers, in Afghanistan.

The story of American soldier Victor Agosto makes an interesting
comparison to the war resistors residing in Canada. The Iraq veteran,
a non-combat computer technician, was due to leave the military but
was stop-lossed and ordered to deploy to Afghanistan. His experience
in Iraq soured him on the war on terror and he decided he could not
go. Rather than fleeing to another country, however, Agosto (who did
not return calls seeking comment) notified his commanding officer in
writing that he would not deploy to Afghanistan, and refused, again
in writing, a subsequent direct order to ship out with his unit. He
remains on duty pending trial, and has stated that a year in prison
is a price worth paying to live within the dictates of his conscience.

Even while refusing a direct order, Agosto is able to embody the
stoic self-sacrifice we expect from soldiers. Besides, as he himself
concedes, his likely term in prison is about as long as his
deployment to Afghanistan would be, and he'd rather be in jail than
fighting a war he doesn't believe in.

One doesn't have to agree with Agosto's politics to respect his
determination. Under military law, soldiers have a duty to refuse
orders they consider unlawful, and Agosto is doing that while fully
aware of the probable consequences. The story of this man casts the
war resistors in a different light. Their objections are the same,
but how they've conducted themselves does much to set them apart.
--

matt@mattgurney.ca

.

Putting the war in Afghanistan on trial

Putting the war in Afghanistan on trial

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/10/putting-afghanistan-war-on-trial

Holly Lewis reports from the court-martial of war resister Victor
Agosto, who won even before his trial for refusing to deploy to
Afghanistan began.

August 10, 2009

Through the looking glass

THE MORNING sun beat down on the entrance to Fort Hood, the Army base
in Killeen, Texas, where Spc. Victor Agosto faced a summary
court-martial for refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan. Carloads
of antiwar activists passed through the checkpoint despite warnings
from base officials that only a handful would be permitted inside the
courtroom.

While the checkpoint clearly marks the line between the civilian
world of Killeen and the militarized zone of Fort Hood, there is no
abrupt shift in consciousness after crossing the barricade. In fact,
the base seems like any generic working-class suburb in Central
Texas; what most distinguishes it from the civilian world is its
almost total prohibition against intensity. Everything--from the
buildings to the combat gear to the dying grass--is the color of
concrete, sand and mud.

Spc. Agosto's court-martial was scheduled to take place at 9 a.m. on
August 5 inside the offices of the 41st Fires Brigade. Antiwar
activists and reporters stood around the parking lot smoking
cigarettes and chatting on cell phones, fanning themselves in the
baking sun. As Victor suddenly arrived in an unmarked white van, his
supporters raised their fists in solidarity. They offered hugs as he
walked toward the courtroom. The sergeant accompanying him frowned at
the activists, saying, "Well? Don't I get a hug too?"

The summary court-martial itself was already a win for both Victor
and the antiwar movement. When he decided to become a public resister
against the war in Afghanistan, Victor was fully prepared for a long
sentence. What's more, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, head of Fort Hood's
command, seemed eager to meet Victor's expectations of harsh
treatment: he ordered a special court-martial where Victor would face
up to a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge.

But as Victor and his civilian lawyer, James Branum, prepared to
publicly put the war itself on trial, Fort Hood decided to cut a
deal. Victor was offered a lesser, summary court-martial with the
maximum penalty of 30 days in jail, two-thirds reduction of pay,
reduction of rank and an "other than honorable" discharge.

"Thirty days in jail?" Victor Agosto seemed incredulous. "Basic
training is longer than that."

The show

THE PRESS and Victor's supporters were herded into a cramped
conference room that had windows for walls and an American flag
sagging in the corner. The soldiers assigned to the trial made small
talk with antiwar activists as Fort Hood's public relations officer
stood quietly on the other side of the glass, monitoring the situation.

Capt. Theresa Santos entered the room, followed by two officers and
the prosecutor, Capt. Kuskie. Forget cinematic images of stern,
graying men saluting one another in their Class A dress uniforms. The
event was remarkably casual, with everyone dressed in standard-issue
digital camouflage combat gear. No one on the judicial team seemed
much older than Victor himself.

Capt. Santos explained that she would be Victor's judge, prosecutor
and defense--proving that the summary court-martial was little more
than military theater. Victor's actual lawyer, James Branum, was
present only as an advisor; he was not permitted to intervene on
Victor's behalf.

After answering a battery of procedural questions, Victor pled guilty
as charged. There was nothing to deny. He has, indeed, refused orders
to deploy to Afghanistan.

Every now and then, Capt. Santos and the other officers interrupted
the proceedings to whisper among themselves about court-martial
protocol. When most confused, they flipped through the 1,000-page
legal tome on the table in front of them--even as more supporters
filled the hallway and stared at the prosecution through the glass walls.

Because Victor pled guilty, he was allowed to call witnesses to
testify to his character. He chose to call Cynthia Thomas, manager of
Under the Hood, an antiwar coffeehouse for GIs.

Thomas, a military wife of 17 years, trembled a little as she read
her statement on Victor's behalf. "I have not met a soldier with more
integrity than Spc. Victor Agosto," she said. "I have seen him
struggle with the question that plagues many of our soldiers and
family members: whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just."

Her face red with tears, she continued: "The suffering of the Iraqi
and Afghan people, as well as the suffering of the American troops,
would finally come to an end if more soldiers had Victor's courage
and conviction."

Thomas looked up from her script and stared straight into the eyes of
the judge and prosecuting officers: "Present company included."

The war on trial

THE JUDGE called a five-minute break, ostensibly to change rooms in
order to accommodate the growing number of supporters in the hall,
but perhaps also because someone inside the court-martial was spotted
with a recording device. The trial resumed with a poster image of the
patron saint of field artillerymen hanging on the wall in a cheap
plastic frame above Victor's head.

Then, he began his self-defense:

"I have a good conduct medal. I have never before refused an order
and I have only refused orders relating to my illegal deployment. I
believe that this war is a direct violation of international law. The
people of Afghanistan have not attacked us and this war has not been
authorized by a United Nations Security Council resolution."

Victor then submitted a petition with the signatures of more than
2,000 people, as well as a letter of support from renowned U.S.
foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology with more than 30 honorary doctorates.

"Many soldiers feel the same way I do," explained Victor. "But
instead of honestly coming forward, they smoke marijuana in hopes of
getting discharged." Capt. Santos nodded her head, almost
sympathetically, as Victor spoke. "If I were resisting this war
through becoming a pothead, I would almost certainly be leaving with
an honorable discharge." Santos continued to nod. "But because I am
being honest and forthright about my convictions, I am facing a jail sentence."

Capt. Santos presented no evidence against Victor Agosto and began a
brief cross-examination. It was illegal for her to do so, but in the
convoluted world of military justice, if a civilian defense attorney
objects to a judge's violation of military procedure during a summary
court-martial, the defendant is punished with a criminal record.

Regardless, Santos' cross-examination did not serve the prosecution
well. She inquired into Victor's formal date of release from the
military. Victor, like so many other soldiers, had been
"stop-lossed"--in other words, compelled to stay in the military
beyond the date that his enlistment was due to expire. He was
actually scheduled to separate from the Army two days before the
court-martial itself.

Then, Santos asked a seemingly unscripted question that baffled many
in the room: "Spc. Agosto, did you bother to tell your superiors that
you felt this way about the war?"

Victor answered that, yes, he informed his superiors about his deep
conviction that the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal
and immoral. Santos did not pursue the question any further.

After a short recess, Santos returned to announce her decision.
Claiming that Victor has presented no mitigating criteria to reduce
his sentence, she awarded him the maximum punishment possible.

Victor responded by ripping the rank off his uniform. He stared at
the judicial team. His face bore no trace of anger, yet he seemed
thoroughly repulsed--perhaps at the mindlessness of it all.

Fort Hood's public relations officer then attempted to misdirect the
press, announcing, "They're taking [Agosto] out the back door to
avoid publicity." Most of the antiwar activists ignored the PR
official and waited in the lobby by the front door.

Cynthia Thomas wondered whether they would take Victor out in
shackles. "I've seen it with other GIs," she said. "They immediately
put handcuffs and leg irons on them. Sometimes they have to
physically lift them into the van. I don't know if they take the
shackles off at the hospital when they do their examination."

Active-duty members of the new Fort Hood Chapter of Iraq Veterans
Against the War confirmed Thomas' experience. "They always put the
shackles on."

Victor, however, was taken out the front door, closely flanked by
guards but without restraints. He turned around to wave goodbye, but
one of the guards shoved him angrily, saying, "Move it!"

Cameras rolled as he took a seat in white van. Supporters raised
their fists in solidarity.

Victor gave a peace sign through the darkened window. Or perhaps it
was a "V" for "Victory."

A rally in small-town Texas

MEANWHILE, A protest rally was being organized at the East Gate
entrance to Fort Hood. A crowd of about 50 people chanted: "They're
our brothers, they're our sisters, we support war resisters."
Children in bright colors waved banners and active-duty troops in
black T-shirts held up signs reaching out to other GIs who also might
be questioning the war.

An underground antiwar newspaper, written by local vets and
active-duty soldiers, was circulated through the crowd. Passersby
joined the protest, and drivers waved and honked their horns in
support. Even a local police officer slowed his cruiser to
surreptitiously flash the crowd a peace sign.

At the end of the rally, James Branum read a prepared statement by Victor:

"I have learned that nothing is more frightening to power than a
direct and principled challenge to its authority. The truth is on our
side and those who have incarcerated me know it. This is something
that no amount of pro-war propaganda can change.

My only regret is that I did not begin refusing orders sooner. My
only apologies are to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope that
someday they can forgive me for my contributions to their distress...

I am humbled by your demands for even greater concessions by the
United States Army. I am completely content to spend a month in jail
for the sake of my conscience. But it seems that reducing my sentence
from a year in jail to 30 days in jail is just not enough for you
people. This dedication to justice is something that draws me to
people in the peace movement...You have treated me with a compassion
and kindness that I do not deserve. Your dedication to the cause
inspires me to continue struggling for world peace. "

.

Echo Platoon

Echo Platoon

http://www.countercurrents.org/jamail100809.htm

By Dahr Jamail & Sarah Lazare
10 August, 2009

Echo Platoon is part of the 82nd Replacement Detachment of the 82nd
Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers in the
platoon are relegated to living quarters in a set of dimly lit
concrete rooms. Pipes peep out of missing ceiling tiles and a musty
smell permeates beds placed on cracked linoleum floors.

For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then
voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the
detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the
inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal
limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a
year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate.
Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military
half-life -- but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Specialist Kevin McCormick, 21, who was held in Echo Platoon for more
than seven months on AWOL and desertion charges, was typically
offered release, subject to accepting deployment to Iraq, despite
being suicidal. "Echo is like jail," he says, "with some privileges.
[You are] just stuck there with horrible living conditions. There's
black mold on the building [and] when I first got there, there were
five or six people to a room, which is like a cell block with cement
brick walls. The piping and electricals are above the tiles, so if
anything leaks or bursts, it goes right down into the room. "

Specialist Michael St. Clair went AWOL because he could not obtain
treatment from the military for his post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). On turning himself in, he ended up consigned to Echo Platoon.
As he recalls it, "The number fluctuates all the time, but on an
average you have 50 people sharing two functioning toilets and a
single shower… Except for a couple of rooms none have doors, and
there is minimal privacy with four or more people to a room. It's
stressful not knowing what's going to happen to you."

Former military recruiter Staff Sargeant Jeffrey Nelbach went AWOL in
2004 in hopes of salvaging his family life. (It is not uncommon for
soldiers to remain AWOL for years at a time.) Now, he's paying for it
with a stint in Echo. He confirms the awful conditions. "It is an
old, moldy building with bad ventilation. Fifty-plus people use the
same latrine. And more and more people are going there."

Nelbach, who is quick to say that he's "not really for the war and
not really against it," has lost his house and is struggling to
support his children with no income during his first few months in
Echo, a limbo-land where even military pay can be suspended. His
experience has convinced him that "military justice is arbitrary and
if your chain of command is bad, it means everything up is bad."

"Not Many Have This Opportunity."

According to Major Virginia McCabe, spokesperson for the 82nd
Airborne Division, AWOL soldiers are confined to the holdover section
at the 82nd Replacement Detachment at Fort Bragg if they are deemed a
flight risk. She offered no criteria, however, for just how that is
determined. "Each AWOL soldier has his or her own special
circumstances," she said. "They stay in a holding platoon until a
legal decision is taken. Or they might say they made a mistake and
return to serve."

Normally, soldiers on a legal "hold" of some kind end up in platoons
like Echo. It may be because he or she is seeking a medical
discharge, switching assignments, or waiting for a court martial to
be convened.

Echo Platoon, however, seems to be made up of a contingent of wayward
soldiers the military does not know what to do with. Captain Kevin
Thaxton, commander of the 82nd Replacement Detachment, of which Echo
Platoon is a part, offers this explanation:

"While the entire replacement detachment contains 500 soldiers, there
are 40 AWOLs in Echo and about 20 in for holdovers/personnel issues
and post-UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] Punishment, totaling
about 60 people.

"Some are given the opportunity to go back with their unit and
deploy. Those who accept do not exactly have their records cleared,
but they do get to start over, keeping in mind we know this person
has had problems before. We don't advertise that they went AWOL, but
the commanders and the NCOs know about it. Not many have this
opportunity. It depends on how long they've been AWOL. You have to
say OK, would I trust a person who decided they didn't want to serve
at one time, someone who is always on the fence?"

"Having a Head Full of Insanity"

One soldier in Echo Platoon, Specialist Dustin Stevens, had gone AWOL
before the invasion of Iraq, and did so because he was opposed to all
wars. On turning himself in, he's been in the holdover section for
six months now awaiting AWOL and desertion charges. He may not be
halfway through his purgatory. Others in the platoon have been held
for more than a year in a no man's land of small-scale arbitrary
punishment in which, according to soldiers in Echo Platoon, officers
in charge regularly verbally abuse them as well as make physical threats.

Kevin McCormick describes his experience this way: "You're less than
human to the commanders. [They act as if] you don't deserve to be
alive. A sergeant told us he wanted to take us out and shoot us in
the back of the head. We get threatened all the time there."

On being questioned about such threats, Captain Thaxton played it
safe. "I can't confirm or deny verbal abuse," he responded. "It
depends on if a person is angry after something has been done."

On average, two new soldiers are assigned to Echo Platoon every week,
according to Stevens. Resigned to a long wait, Stevens sums up life
in the platoon this way:

"I've been here almost seven months, and only a few people have
gotten out during that time. There was a Purple Heart veteran who was
here and is now serving a 15-month jail sentence. One guy, gone for
10 years, got two years in prison without pay, although he had a
newborn daughter. It doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, our sentence
does not take into account the time served here. Some of us get paid,
albeit the E1 or entry level wages, but I'd gladly give them the
money back if I could go home...

"[Soldiers in Echo Platoon] don't... get the benefits others get. You
are pretty much a prisoner. You can't do anything. They say you are
not confined, but you can't go more than 50 miles off post. It's
almost impossible to get leave unless in dire emergency, so we're
just sitting here, day by day."

Downplaying the punitive nature of the platoon, Captain Thaxton
admits only that "people who get in trouble are restricted to post.
It keeps them from getting in fights with other soldiers. However,
they are allowed access to Post Exchange [shopping], the chapel and
dining facilities along with a 50-mile radius for travel."

Thaxton repeated several times that soldiers in Echo Platoon "can go
to behavioral health [care]." While the soldiers themselves admit
this is true and that they do have access to mental-health care, they
say it is of very poor quality. Doctors, they claim, just focus on
"drugging them up," rather than giving them adequate therapy in order
to help them deal with their specific problems. The platoon's
soldiers regularly confide suicidal urges to each other.

In Echo Platoon the deleterious effects the U.S. occupations of Iraq
and Afghanistan are having on ordinary soldiers are clearly visible.
By December 2006, it was already estimated that that 38% of all Army
personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan had served multiple tours of duty.
By October 2007, the Army reported that approximately 12% of all
combat troops in Iraq were coping by taking antidepressants and/or
sleeping pills.

In April 2008, the Rand Corporation, a military-affiliated
think-tank, released a study stating: "Nearly 20 percent of military
service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan --
300,000 in all -- report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder
or major depression."

Like others who have turned against America's wars after multiple
deployments to Iraq, Michael St. Clair has his regrets:

"I had always idealized the military, like we were going out to fight
the Nazis, and had real moral high ground. When I got over [to Iraq],
I was shocked by the brutality. My whole first tour, I can honestly
say I never saw an Iraqi guy who deserved to die, who had weapons or
was attacking us or anything. In many instances American soldiers
took really bad decisions that killed innocent Iraqis. I had a hard
time reconciling that with what I had thought I would be doing. By
the time my second tour was over, I had morphed into a killer. A lot
of people don't understand what war actually is. I don't know what's
worse: being charged with felony or having a head full of insanity."

On St. Clair's return from his second tour, the military did a
post-deployment health assessment, and six months later a
reassessment. That is when his PTSD symptoms began to appear, and he
was prescribed medication for depression. According to St. Clair,
when he reported a panic attack, he was told he would not be sent to
sniper school, and that he would not be given any further training
because he was considered too unstable, which made him a danger to
the country. Nevertheless, his military psychiatrist was, he claimed,
pressured by higher ups to declare that he had a pre-Army personality
disorder and was not suffering from PTSD. In despair, he went AWOL
for 10 months before turning himself in.

His story is one more instance of the troop-unfriendly and skewed
practices of the military machine. Diagnosed with PTSD, he was
finally given a medical discharge for a personality disorder in an
effort by the military to continue their systematic denial of the
psychologically destructive effects of war.

Staying AWOL

After his deployment to Iraq, Kevin McCormick went AWOL because he
felt suicidal and wasn't getting the help he needed. While in Iraq,
he says, "I had a lot of problems back home. My mom had recently
passed away. When I asked for help it got pushed back in my face.
Even the Inspector General denied me treatment." (Essentially, the
Inspector General represents a soldier's last recourse in attempting
to correct a problem. If the IG refuses to help, there are few
alternatives available.)

When, after four-and-a-half-months AWOL, McCormick turned himself in,
he was offered absolution if he agreed to serve again, an absurdity
not lost on him. "They offered me that deal," he exclaims, "when it
was a known fact that I had issues with my mental care. They offered
me a chance to go back to the unit!" His refusal to do so left him
languishing in Echo Platoon for eight months until he finally
received a medical discharge.

Even though his decision to go AWOL was in no way a protest against
the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he is now opposed to it. "I personally
don't feel we need to be in Iraq and I've been there and seen it
firsthand. I think the U.S. being there is pointless."

His blunt advice to soldiers who go AWOL and intend to turn
themselves in is, "If you're AWOL, fuck going back."

Staff Sergeant Nelbach will have spent over nine months in Echo
Platoon by the time he is tried in October. His court martial will in
all likelihood bring further punishment. Due to his higher rank and
the fact that he was a platoon leader, Nelbach is in charge of making
sure that soldiers in the platoon follow through on their work
assignments. He also accompanies people to medical appointments and
does necessary paperwork. He is thus seen by other platoon soldiers
as the one who runs the place. Yet he is aware that none of this will
help him when he comes to trial. "It's inhuman," he insists. "There's
no fairness to it. It's always been mass punishment there."

Warehousing Soldiers

Assigned to Echo Platoon in January 2009, Dustin Stevens continues to
bide his time awaiting charges that might still be months away.
"[It's] horrible here. We are treated like animals. We're all so lost
and wanting to go home. Some of us are going crazy, some are sick.
And the way I see it, I did nothing wrong. By reading or talking to
people all of the time I try to stay out of this place in my mind…
There are people here who should be in mental hospitals."

James Branum, Stevens' civilian lawyer, is also the legal adviser to
the G.I. Rights Hotline of Oklahoma and co-chair of the Military Law
Task Force (MLTF) which offers training to the legal community and
information about G.I. Rights and military law to service members and
their families. He says AWOL troops make up three-quarters of Echo
platoon and that medical cases are the bulk of the remainder.
Accustomed to inordinate delays from the military, he says, "People
are in this unit for months and months. The [authorities] take
forever to do anything. You are going to be there six months if
you're lucky, twelve if you're not."

On the legality of such detention without trial, Branum comments:

"I think there are some illegal elements about how they are running
the place, but the general concept is not illegal. You have people
there with legitimate medical and psychological issues, but instead
of proactively helping them, the military shuffles them off to this
replacement [detachment] to be treated like dirt. They are told they
have no rights when they do have a right to talk to their commander,
to have an attorney, and to talk to Congress. Echo, if run properly,
would be a good thing. Not so when people are being warehoused and
told repeatedly they have no rights. That is illegal."

As for the military's goal in running Echo Platoon and other similar
units at military bases around the country:

"To me it doesn't seem productive. Oftentimes, the military doesn't
know what it is doing. There isn't a logical explanation for this.
Maybe deterrence is one. Other soldiers see these guys being ill
treated and don't want to resist. They also want to break and wear
people down so they'll deploy rather than keep resisting. The Army
isn't true to its own processes at times. If their goal is to get
folks deployable, this isn't the way. You don't want guys with
physical or psychological issues to deploy."

In 2008, USA Today revealed that more than 43,000 troops listed as
medically unfit had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.

A Yardstick of Desperation

In a discussion of her group's role in dealing with the legal holding
of soldiers, MLTF co-chair Kathleen Gilberd commented:

"Fort Bragg is not an isolated situation. Placement in legal-hold
[detachments] where soldiers languish for months is common to all the
services. What we're seeing is the command not making up their minds.
Their indecision has severe consequences for those with open-ended
medical issues because they cannot avail themselves of help until
their legal situation is resolved."

Chuck Fager, the director of the Fayetteville Quaker House (the town
of Fayetteville adjoins Fort Bragg) claims that the military is
primarily focused on "making numbers" for the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. "Orders from the Pentagon say you have to send X [number of]
troops," he points out. "The military does not have them and is
constantly looking around for where to get them. One potential pool
is the mass of soldiers gone AWOL. Eventually they either go back or
get picked up... We are guessing [military officials] think they can
persuade a significant number of these AWOL soldiers to deploy to
Iraq or Afghanistan. "

The U.S. still maintains more than 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and, by
year's end, will have at least 68,000 in Afghanistan, a figure likely
to rise in the years to come.

Think of Echo and other platoons like it as grim yardsticks for
measuring the desperation in which a military under immense strain is
now operating. Looking up at that military from Echo's airless limbo,
from a world of soldiers who have fallen through the cracks of a
system under great stress, you can see just how devastating America's
two ongoing wars have been for the military itself. The walking
wounded, the troubled, and the broken are now being pressured to
reenter the fray.

If Chuck Fager is right, the future is bleak for the members of Echo
Platoon who endure deplorable conditions with little idea about
whether their future involves charges, trial, deployment, or medical
release. It is a painful irony that some of those who volunteered to
serve and defend our nation are now left particularly defenseless and
vulnerable as a direct consequence of its ill advised foreign adventures.
--

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of The Will to
Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan
(Haymarket Books, 2009) and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an
Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007).
Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey over the last five years. His
website is Dahrjamailiraq.com.

Sarah Lazare is the project coordinator for Courage to Resist, an
organization that supports troops who refuse to fight in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and is also a freelance writer.

Bhaswati Sengupta contributed to this report.

.

Afghan MP calls for international demonstrations against war

Afghan MP Malalai Joya calls for the international anti-war movement
to demonstrate against the war in Afghanistan

http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/1379/1/

British soldier says he faces court martial for refusing to return to
Afghan war

By Feyzi Ismail
24 July 2009

On Thursday 23 July, the Stop the War Coalition held one of its most
electrifying rallies in its eight year history. The inspirational
anti-war Afghan MP Malalai Joya was joined on the platform by Lance
Corporal Joe Glenton, a serving British soldier who was speaking in
public for the first time against the horror caused by the war in Afghanistan.

Malalai Joya has been called one of the bravest women in Afghanistan.
She told the 300-strong audience that she's survived five
assassination attempts and is still not safe with personal security
guards or by wearing a burkha to cover her identity. Yet she
continues to campaign against foreign occupation and fundamentalist
warlords, and for women's rights and education. She believes all NATO
troops must leave Afghanistan immediately.

Elected to the Afghan parliament as its youngest MP in 2003, her
first speech called on the Afghan government to prosecute the
warlords and criminals also present in the assembly. But she had
barely started her speech when her microphone was cut off, angry men
were raising their fists towards her and she had to be escorted out
by a human chain of supporters and UN officials around her.

In 2005 she told the assembled parliament that it was "worse than a
zoo." Two years ago she was suspended from the parliament.

Afghans against occupation

She told the audience of the suffering of Afghans, and in particular
women, at the hands of both occupation forces and the warlords who
benefit from the occupation. If the war was ever about eradicating
opium, 93% of global opium production now comes from Afghanistan, and
£500m goes into the pockets of the Taliban every year because of the
drug trade. Afghans have lost almost everything, she said, except
that they have gained political knowledge. And they are against the occupation.

She holds little hope for the upcoming elections in August. She said
the ballot box is controlled by a mafia of warlords and criminals,
and that even if the democrats in Afghanistan could put up a
candidate, they would inevitably become puppets of the US and NATO,
or they wouldn't survive in office. NATO could not possibly provide a
solution because the troops are despised for the carnage they have
brought to the country.

As Malalai repeated a number of times in the meeting, no nation can
liberate another nation, and only the oppressed can rise up against
their oppressors. The only solution, she said, was for the anti-war
movement internationally to speak out and demonstrate against the war
in their own countries, "because our enemies are afraid of
international solidarity." It will be a prolonged and risky struggle,
she continued, but the Afghans must liberate themselves.

Soldier ashamed and disllusioned

The other highlight of the meeting was the testimony of a serving
British soldier. While Malalai fights against the war in Afghanistan,
more and more British troops - who equally risk their lives fighting
in Afghanistan - are realising the futility of this project. Lance
Corporal Joe Glenton, who fought in Kandahar in 2006, told the
audience that he came back ashamed and disillusioned. He said the
army and the politicians never explained why they were there or what
was going on, only that British troops were helping the Afghan people.

When he found that the Afghans were fighting against them, this came
as a real shock. He spoke of the discontentment in the ranks, which
he described as dangerous, and the need for Britain to withdraw its troops.

Two years ago when Glenton heard he was being posted back to
Afghanistan, he decided the only sensible thing to do was to leave
the army, even illegally, as he did not believe that Britain was
doing anything constructive in Afghanistan. He now faces up to two
years in a civilian prison. Stop the War Coalition declared it would
support Glenton and any other soldier who faced the courts on account
of being against the war.

Andrew Murray, Chair of Stop the War, opened the meeting by reminding
us that the Stop the War Coalition was founded eight years ago in
response to the threatened invasion of Afghanistan. Now that the
British government has shifted its focus to Afghanistan - discussing
the possibility of sending more troops, as the death toll rises past
that in Iraq - so the anti-war movement will step up its campaign to
mobilise public opinion to demand that all the troops are brought
home as soon as possible.

Public opinion in Britain has indeed shifted against the war in
Afghanistan. Whatever support the war had initially - for reducing
opium production, for the reconstruction taking place, for keeping
the Taliban in check, for defending women's rights and bringing
democracy - people are now cutting through the media spin. They know
this is an unwinnable war, that there is no reconstruction taking
place and that the longer we stay the more death and destruction we
cause. As Malalai put it, the war being waged by the British
government in Afghanistan not only causes untold suffering for the
Afghans, but it takes away from our humanity too.

In the event of the 200th British soldier that is killed in
Afghanistan, Stop the War will call on all its local groups across
the country to organise street protests. The current death toll
stands at 188 and is rising at an average of about one per day.
--

Stop the War will also be announcing shortly details of a major
national demonstration in November to mark the anniversary of the
Afghanistan invasion in 2001.
--

Malalai Joya's new book Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of
the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out has just been published by Rider Books.

.

US soldier who opposes Afghan war sentenced

US soldier who opposes Afghan war sentenced

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/agos-a08.shtml

By Jack Cody
8 August 2009

A US Army Specialist and veteran of the war in Iraq will face jail
time for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. The non-commissioned
officer objects to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on principle,
claiming the US military occupies both countries in violation of
international law.

Spc. Victor Agosto, 24, from Miami, served a 13-month tour in Iraq
with the Army's 57th Battalion. Although his four-year enlistment
should have ended August 4, Agosto received orders in May to report
to an Army office to begin the paperwork for overseas deployment to
Afghanistan. He was informed that his military service was to be
involuntarily extended under the "stop-loss" program.

When he received his reporting orders, Agosto wrote a letter refusing
deployment. "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan," wrote
Agosto. "The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the
American people any safer. It has the opposite effect."

Agosto has now been court-martialed. After a one-hour hearing August
5, a military court in Ft. Hood, Texas, demoted Agosto to the rank of
private and sentenced him to 30 days in jail. When he heard the
sentence, Agosto ripped from his uniform the patch displaying his
specialist rank, symbolically embracing his demotion. After
completing his jail sentence, Agosto will likely receive a
less-than-honorable discharge.

The stop-loss program originated in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,
coinciding with the elimination of the draft in the US. Conscription
fueled mass opposition to US militarism among civilians and soldiers
alike, which in turn contributed to the American government's
inability to continue prosecuting the Vietnam War. Ultimately, the US
was forced to withdraw from Vietnam in 1975.

Conscious of the effect popular discontent could have on its ability
to carry out future imperialist adventures, the US ruling class
eliminated the draft in 1972. Congress passed the stop-loss
legislation in an effort to maintain a semblance of voluntarism
without incurring chronic, debilitating troop shortages in the
process. Since the beginning of the current war in Iraq, over 140,000
soldiers have had their terms involuntarily extended under the
stop-loss policy.

The extent to which soldiers oppose the war in Iraq and Afghanistan
is difficult to gauge, in part because most resisters either simply
go AWOL (absent without leave), or purposely defy army regulations in
order to be discharged. According to the Courage to Resist web site,
"Since 2002, the Army has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for
desertion and other unauthorized absences per year than for each year
between 1997 and 2001. AWOL rates in the Army are at their highest
since 1980, with the desertion rate having jumped 80 percent since
the start of the Iraq War, according to the Associated Press."

Agosto, conscious of the consequences he faced, made his objections
public in an effort to mobilize resistance to the wars among the
military rank-and-file.

"I learned of the effect of the GI resistance movement during the
Vietnam War," Agosto explained in an interview given to the
"Democracy Now!" radio program on the day of his trial. "I felt that
if I were to go AWOL my commanders could tell other soldiers that I
left because I was scared, because I had other reasons. Whereas by
staying on base I can set an example for other soldiers to see that I
think this war is wrong, and I am just not going to do it, and I
think they should do the same."

Agosto is unapologetic about his refusal to deploy. In a statement
issued to the press after he was sentenced, Agosto said, "I have
learned that there is nothing more frightening to power than a direct
and principled challenge to its authority. The truth is on our side,
and those who have incarcerated me know it.... My only apologies are
to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope that someday they can
forgive me for my contributions to their distress."

Asked by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" if he would apply for
conscientious objector status, Agosto replied that he would not. "As
far as the army is concerned," said Agosto, "a conscientious objector
is someone who is opposed to all wars, and that is not me. I believe
that sometimes war is necessary in cases of legitimate self-defense
and legitimate resistance.... We're just killing people and spreading
suffering with no real justification."

Agosto argues that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan violate
international law. In the case of Afghanistan, to which Agosto
refused to be deployed, the US ruling elite justified the occupation
on the grounds that the country was harboring Osama Bin Laden and
other Al Qaeda leaders, who were allegedly responsible for the
September 11, 2001, attacks.

Nearing the end of the eighth year of the war and occupation, any
pretense of hunting for Bin Laden has been dropped. The Afghan war
has been escalated by Obama, who was elected in large part because of
popular hopes that he would bring the disastrous conflicts in the
region to an end.

Asked by Goodman whether it surprised him that Obama had escalated
the war in Afghanistan, Agosto replied, "No. No, it doesn't, because
he said he would do so during his campaign. Part of why I'm doing
what I'm doing is because I don't believe that any politician can end
this war. I think that it has to be ended at the grassroots level.
Soldiers, by refusing to fight, can bring about the end of the war."

Agosto is quite correct to argue that both the US-led wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan violate international law. His advice to other
soldiers? "I would say that you would never­you'll never regret
following your conscience and that adherence to an oath is not a
valid excuse for betraying your conscience."

Agosto told Courage to Resist that he has received support from
fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood. "Some of the people in my unit will
flash me peace signs when they walk by me," he explains. "The other
day when I was coming back from the shop, this soldier stopped me and
said he wanted to shake my hand. He told me he looked up to me for
not going to fight a war I don't believe in."

.

GI Resistance Under the Radar

GI Resistance Under the Radar

http://www.truthout.org/080309T?n

Monday 03 August 2009
by: Sarah Lazare

An interview with two former soldiers who describe how they helped
prevent their unit from deploying to a war zone.
--

What do you do if you are a soldier being asked to fight a war
you do not believe in?

For two former soldiers whose unit was ordered to deploy to Iraq
in April 2005, the answer came in the form of work slowdowns,
letter-writing campaigns, and one-on-one organizing with fellow
soldiers. The result: they helped prevent their unit from deploying
to a war zone.

In this interview, Skippy and Robert, who did not give their
full names for fear of military retaliation, share their stories,
telling how they convinced several in their unit to deliberately fail
physical training, called public attention to the insufficient
training and gear they were being asked to fight with, and found
creative ways to encourage soldiers to "drop the military before the
military drops you." They tell how they dealt with the fear and
intimidation of standing up to their command, and about friends and
comrades who fell victim to "broken Joe" syndrome.

These stories give a glimpse into the world of GI resistance -
the oft-hidden side of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the military is not forthcoming with information about the
number of troops refusing to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan,
statistics suggest military resistance overall is on the rise. Since
2002, the Army has court-martialed twice as many soldiers for
desertion and other unauthorized absences per year than for each year
between 1997 and 2001. AWOL rates in the Army are at their highest
since 1980, with the desertion rate having jumped 80 percent since
the start of the Iraq War, according to The Associated Press.

Skippy and Robert's experience shows that while some GI
resisters go public, much resistance happens silently, under the
radar, in circles of trusted friends, in the small acts that fly in
the face of military obedience and command. Their stories serve as a
reminder that there are multiple ways to resist military control, and
despite military efforts to quash dissent, these varied forms of
resistance are as ongoing as the wars themselves.

Sarah: I know that you two were involved in an unconventional
form of GI resistance where you essentially ... organized your unit
not to deploy to Iraq. Can you tell me the story of how that happened?

Robert: Sure; we were in Fort Polk, Louisiana, in an area called
"the box," which is a large training area that is meant to resemble
different areas of Iraq or Afghanistan. They basically employ
civilians from outside the base and bring in interpreters to try to
make a realistic training situation. We were training to go in and
basically rebuild UNAID, which is military assistance to the United
Nations operations. It can be very dangerous, because the Rules of
Engagement that govern soldiers under the command of the UN are very
limiting and create fear because they are unrealistic in the
battlefield - they'll get you killed.

We weren't as a unit prepared for that, and that's where Skippy
and I started to look for other actions. We were against the war and
were hoping just to ride out the rest of our military career. We both
knew that after that deployment, by the time the next deployment came
up, we'd be getting out. As we started to gear up for going to Iraq
we started to explore actions for getting out of the military. Skippy
went towards a hardship discharge, and I went conscientious objector.
And basically you could say we agitated several other soldiers to
take other means to get out of the military.

Skippy: As concerned citizens and concerned soldiers, we were
looking at the situation in front of us and saying, you know, this
just doesn't seem right to us. And so we started to talk to our
fellow soldiers about this to get a sense of, "are we alone on this,
what's going on," and we did quickly realize that everybody else had
the same kinds of feelings as us. They either felt that there was
something really fishy about the war, in general, or particular, they
would start to say that our leadership was incompetent, that we're
totally dependent upon a leadership that obviously doesn't know what
they're doing.

The other thing was we didn't even have the proper equipment to
train, let alone mobilize. So it was like, "hey, here's this super
dangerous mission, how about let's mobilize the guard for it, they've
been in the box for a while, they might be able to handle this." But
the reality was, we totally couldn't handle something like that, and
we were actually struggling to do a good job in "the box" in my opinion.

So we endeavored to talk to our fellow soldiers, and we told
them to call their parents and let them know what was going on and
complain about it. So that's where the letter-writing campaign really
came in handy, and the parents are really the backbone of this whole
thing. Rob, maybe this is a good time to go into how you helped set
up initially that conference call with Dick Durbin, senator from Illinois.

Robert: Ok, sure. So it was set up by my fianc ©e, who was
working with different groups who were doing antiwar work, and they
were able to set up a conference call, and basically we carried forth
some of the demands of the soldiers there. You know, complaints about
no body armor, our leadership was absolutely horrible - for example,
in our infantry unit, our sergeant major had been a cook his entire
military career.

Same thing with our company commander, who was absolutely
horrible - there was no confidence, at least within our platoon, in
his ability. You know, within the military it's very interesting,
because you have a lot of the lower enlisted, you could say,
specialists and below, basically people who aren't in a leadership
position, for the most part coming from working-class communities.
The military was a way to advance. For them it was pretty easy to get
in discussions in which we were able to challenge the concept of
authoritarianism a little bit. So we did seek out senators to help
us, including Durbin and to my understanding other letters went to
Obama, but we also sought self-empowerment amongst everyday enlisted
soldiers. Within our platoon, if not at that deployment, shortly
after, when we returned from Fort Polk, we had about seven people who
sought some form of discharge, and that's almost an entire squad in a
platoon. Within a platoon, you have four squads. For us I think it
was a pretty big victory.

Skippy: It was during kind of this dialogue phase, we would cut
out the various pictures in the magazines and we'd make these flyers
and we'd put them up as another sign of resistance. Initially I think
we would just distribute them in random places. I actually found this
advertisement for the National Guard from way back when, and it was a
guy's head yellin' "hoo-wah" so I cut his head out with the hoo-wah
phrase kind of echoing from his mouth and I put it in the center of
the toilet. We cut out these letters you know so that it says "drop
the Mili before the Mili drops you."

It's really strange in the military, you almost feel like you
shouldn't do these things, because somebody might catch you, but then
when you start talking to people, it's like they have the same ideas
that you do, in a way, so it's like you find yourself in this weird
position where you feel like you're alienated but then there's signs
that maybe you're not. So we wanted to create another sign to say
that you're not.

Sarah: The latest study that was done, which was in 2006, showed
that 72 percent of all the troops in Iraq are against the war and
want immediate pullout. Do you think there was an organic natural
sentiment against the war or at least skepticism within the ranks?

Skippy: I guess from my humble perspective it did seem like that
was out there and a lot of that had to do with what people were
getting from the news, mixed with what they actually saw on the
ground. Since we were in a training scenario, it was a little
different for us, because we weren't actually in country. We were
just in Fort Polk, Louisiana. But I think the premise is the same
because we were out there trying to mimic what was going on in
country, so a lot of our missions would be very similar to what
missions were like over there. So we could still connect the dots in
a similar way.

Sometimes people would understand that a lot of the training
scenario just seemed really bizarre in and of itself. We would play
the bad guys some rotations and then we would play the good guys some
rotations, so we would really get this juxtaposition of perspectives.

So when we did eventually engage in dialogue at chow or
whatever, or when we were in down time, talked about how messed up
would it be to go over there, how unfair that would be, how
ridiculous this scenario was, etc. It starts to click together that
all that's really going on is that there's this deep network of
factions warring and backstabbing each other while we get caught in
the middle. Folks didn't really want to be a part of that.

It reminds me a lot of how people felt about isolationism; it's
like an isolationist kind of perspective. Like, "Well, what's our
business over there, why is that our responsibility" kind of thing,
like; "Why can't they just deal with their own issues." But Robert
and I were relatively enlightened on these matters. At least in our
small circle of influence, were able to put out the idea that this is
sort of systemic. We'd make sure to point out that this has deep
roots in capitalism and history, and that these are patterns that
extend between nations and over time, and so we were kind of bringing
that flavor to it.

Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't, I don't know, but I know folks
really did begin to pick up the idea that they could resist. We did
do something akin to a slow-down strike. I know personally I did
encourage troops to not qualify as best as they could. When you get
mobilized you have to qualify with your weapons and that kind of
thing and we realized that we were just so ate up anyway that it
really didn't matter anyway how well we did on these things because
it's not going to really accurately reflect who we are. Our rationale
was to just do the bare minimum, don't try to prop up what we look
like on paper any more than it's already distorted.

It was kind of scary because we didn't want to publicly
broadcast that we were doing these things to anybody, but we wanted
to make sure that it was kept within like teams or squads, so I don't
know how far it did get out. Then there were soldiers who were not
too motivated necessarily against the war. For example, this one guy,
you know that wasn't his big thing, I don't think that was really
even on his mind, but his thing was, he just hated the military, and
he wasn't gonna try.

There's this peculiar broken Joe syndrome you could call it,
it's like where folks kind of see the despair already so they just
kind of reiterate it in their own individual ways. It's like "Oh
well, like the war is bullshit anyway it's not as if it's legitimate
and I can feel ashamed, it's actually illegitimate and I can feel
proud to dog it."

Sarah: Can you talk about the outcome of your organizing and
what happened? You ended up not having to deploy, right?

Robert: Skippy got out on a hardship discharge for
family-related reasons. I went out on conscientious objection; once
the investigation started, things went really sour. Two weeks after I
went conscientious objector, somebody else from another platoon
within our company went conscientious objector too. I think they were
kind of fearing that people are really looking for a way out. While
we were there within our platoon, one or two people got out for
drug-related reasons. Afterwards two more got out for the same
reason. They would kick people out for, say, smoking pot. People
would be like, well, do I stay in the military and go to war or smoke
some pot?

After I left, I don't think there was a lot of momentum left
within resisting; it was hard to have other people take initiative
and be a strong voice against it. I'm not sure exactly how strong
that sentiment against the military is within our old unit, but when
we got back, about a year or two years after, there were people
getting out or finding ways to get out. So that continued for sure,
and then there were people who would have re-upped and stayed in the
military decided not to.

Sarah: So the letter-writing campaign played some kind of role,
in at least pressuring the military to not deploy you all; could you
explain a little bit about that?

Robert: We don't know 100 percent if that's exactly the case. So
the letters go in and we get a meeting at Durbin's office and we're
basically on video cameras with some of his representatives in DC. I
believe that there was around 2,000 letters sent out within a week,
so for them it was probably like "OK, why are we getting hit with so
many letters, what's going on, it's something we'll probably have to
address." And then within our company and battalion, basically our
entire leadership was constantly being brought out on these meetings,
there was definitely a lot that was going on, you'd hear people
talking about the letter campaign.

Skippy: Remember that time we came back on leave and then they
put the whole battalion into formation? They were like "who's
writing, whose calling back home telling their family that the
weapons are broken and the unit's messed up?" And meanwhile we're
just standing there like [muffled laughter].

Robert: They brought a company in at a time to a church, and
then they gave everyone an hour-long speech on how the unit is
prepared, how you're not supposed to be calling home about this
stuff, you have a chain of command, don't go writing home. Sergeant
Major the cook, who all of a sudden became infantry, he was like you
know, "When I call home I tell my wife I have a good weapon and I'm
prepared to use it and I know how to use it. And I'll be safe." And
I'm thinking well, maybe you have a weapon, but we don't have a weapon.

I was on CQ duty, which is, basically within the company they
have a headquarters and the CQ sits there, you're at the desk if they
need you to do something, you'll do it. It's a 24-hour watch, so I'd
kind of hear what's going on with the other companies and they'd have
their battalion meetings in there. And they'd be like "We've got to
find out whose doing this," and I'm just sitting there like "Oh man,
I know who it is."

Skippy: I believe there's another component to it. Remember when
Private Joe shot himself in the guard tower? Private Joe was in
another company, but in the same battalion. He had a lot of mental
issues. He had gone to the Army shrink and everything, and for
whatever reason they told him he was fine. So he's on guard duty in
this guard shack and he convinces the other soldier to go grab the
sergeant for something. Then he puts the barrel of his weapon into
his mouth and blows the back of his brains all over the guard shack.
So when Private Joe shot himself, that's when all of the leadership
just went apeshit, I don't know how, maybe that played a factor too
in our getting denied the deployment as well. I remember distinctly
the next day being appalled by just the regularity of the military
machine and it just not giving a damn about Private Joe for one
second. It was almost like it was a joke to them, and they cleaned it
up and everything marched right on; it was very surreal. They did
eventually honor him and say something, but it took a while; it
wasn't like an immediate concern of theirs, it seemed.

Robert: When you go conscientious objector the first thing you
have to do is announce it; you have to tell your company commander. I
was supposed to get promoted to sergeant like the next day and that
got scrapped. The second part is you basically have to state your
beliefs or reasons, motives of why you're going conscientious
objector, and then you have to see the chaplain and then from there
you have to see a psychologist. Then you have almost like a hearing
within your company, with an outside company commander. In general I
was trying to get basically diagnosed as having depression and
anxiety. So the process says you have to first go to see the
chaplain, which is interesting because on one hand it's a party
that's outside of your chain of command, but at the same time it's
also a chaplain, so if you're not very religious or whatever or a
different religion, who really wants to go talk to a chaplain? I
didn't. Then I tried to see a private psychologist, and I was able to
see one in Chicago and basically was able to have myself diagnosed.

Skippy: A lot of the depression, I think, was real. You were
close to broken Joe syndrome as well.

Sarah: Skippy, you were out already on hardship discharge when
you heard that your unit was not going to be deploying, right?

Skippy: Yeah, I was long gone. It was in March 2005 that I
officially got out. When I heard the news from Rob, I guess even then
I really didn't kind of connect our resistance with the canceled
deployment, because what we were doing kind of felt more instinctual
than anything. A lot of our resistance just kind of felt like the
thing that we should do at the time. Even though we did kind of have
a broad articulated strategy between each other and amongst some
sympathizers, it still felt like anything could happen at any moment.
The atmosphere was totally precarious, and the uncertainty just made
all of us so anxious. I remember Rob and I were coming up with just
alternatives; we had like 100 alternative plans, like "If this goes
wrong, if the other thing goes wrong ..." I remember us just
revisiting it to each other constantly and now it just reminds me of
how anxious we really were and how scary everything really was. So it
was definitely a sigh of relief but really hard to put what caused it
into a direct line.

Sarah: What do you hope GI's and the peace and antiwar movement
can learn from your experience?

Robert: My reasons for going into the military were, I had a 1.9
GPA in high school, and right now, next semester at school I'll be
student-teaching to fulfill the requirements to become a history
teacher. But when I was younger I had no confidence in myself. I came
from a working-class family, my dad worked at the post office and was
a Nam vet, in the infantry. That was the reason I didn't at that time
go active Army, but I had considered it. But looking back at it,
there's a feeling of wanting to get ahead, of wanting to not be in
such a precarious situation that my family was in. Not that we were
poor, but we basically just got by. With having a 1.9 GPA in high
school I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself. My
parents can't afford to put me in school, so what I'm seeing in my
future is just getting by, just working your ass off so hopefully you
could retire.

So I looked at the military as a way of basically thinking that
it would solve my problems. Whether you go in the military or not,
the situation's gonna remain the same. There's much broader and
larger economic forces at play.

So then from there it's like, who are you fighting for? Who is
benefiting from Iraq? And then I think from there the question is, do
you have agency in your life; are you empowered? You know, was my
family empowered at work, in our community? In short, there's no
running away from these authoritarian social relationships, and if
you really want to make things better in your community then you have
to take part in community struggle. And you have to take part in
struggle at your job. I think that whether or not they're in the
military, people need a sense of agency and empowerment.

If you look at WWII, and you ask people who were flipping the
switches at Auschwitz, they say they were just following orders. It's
a common thing in the military to say, "Hey, I'm just following
orders, I'm just a soldier," and that's not the truth. You can
determine what you're gonna do, you can take control of your life and
you can do something. What fascinates me about history is if you look
at pictures of the civil rights movement and you look at the National
Guard's original role, it was breaking the strike movement. Shooting
striking families, you know like literally mowing them down with
machine guns. Of course the assumption is you're just following
orders. So if a soldier wants to question or a soldier's opposed to
war, then they need to find, or should be encouraged to find, ways to
resist. You need to take control of your own situation, to take
control of your life, or somebody who really doesn't care anything
about you is going to control your situation and they're going to
control your life. You have to take some accountability for what
you're gonna do and stop just following orders and being some drone
or little duck in a row.

Skippy: Echoing what Robert was saying, I certainly agree with
the agency part and I certainly think that's the best message to get
to GI's right now. To question everything and be critical; the trend
in the military is to not be critical. In order to survive properly,
you actually have to be very critical. That's the biggest one piece
of advice I could or would give any soldier or GI in the military
now. And then the second would be, you have to investigate different
ways to get out of the military, and encourage others to get out of
the military. You can do similar things that we talked about here
today, which is just to slow down things, talk to your fellow
soldiers, and just begin to realize that you're not alone in that
sentiment and you can do something to get out of the situation.

I think that the peace movement can learn a lot from what we've
said here, because they have a really important role to be playing
that they seem to want to play, but really haven't articulated. In
our little micro-scenario, you could say those parents who wrote
letters were part of the antiwar movement just in that brief instance
of time and space. They represented what a lot of people are trying
to replicate in different places at different times. So it's really
just about finding those opportunities for people to resist and then
supporting them 100-110 percent all the way and responding to their
needs and trying to play an auxiliary force to what the troops want.
It's hard to communicate to the troops because they're either in
country or on leave. If you can get veteran groups, I think antiwar
movement people - if they're serious about antiwar - they would
volunteer or get involved with organizations that are already formed
for that purpose. Why reinvent the wheel when this stuff's been tried
a lot? We also need to get our heads together to come up with new and
surprising projects and tactics.

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