Anti-Warriors

Bradley Manning and GI Resistance to US War Crimes

2011-01-17T15:16:00.002-08:00

Bradley Manning and GI Resistance to US War Crimes

http://www.truth-out.org/bradley-manning-and-gi-resistance-us-war-crimes66791

Saturday 15 January 2011

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail spent nine months reporting
directly from Iraq, where he followed the US invasion in 2003. His
stories have been published by Inter Press Service, Truthout, Al
Jazeera, The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, The Guardian,
Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Independent and
many others. Dahr reports for Democracy Now! and has appeared on Al
Jazeera, the BBC, NPR and numerous other television and radio
stations around the globe.

Jamail is the author of two recent books: "Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist" (2008) and "The Will to
Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse To Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan" (2009).
He also contributed Chapter 6, "Killing the Intellectual Class," for
the book "Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted,
Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered" (2010). Learn more at
www.dahrjamailiraq.com.
--

Angola 3 News: On April 4, 2010, WikiLeaks released a classified 2007 video
http://www.collateralmurder.com/ of a US Apache helicopter in Iraq
firing on civilians and killing 11 people, including Reuters
photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, 40-year-old Saeed
Chmagh. No charges have been filed against the US soldiers involved.

In sharp contrast, a 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst named
Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking the classified video.
Arrested in May and facing up to 52 years in prison for a range of
charges, Manning is now being held under what lawyer and journalist
Glenn Greenwald has termed "inhumane
conditions."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning/index.html

Manning's support website http://www.bradleymanning.org/ declares
that "exposing war crimes is not a crime." Indeed, the Nuremberg
Laws, established after the horrors of World War II, declare that
soldiers have a legal obligation to resist criminal wars. Let's take
a closer look at this issue of US war crimes. What do you think are
the strongest arguments that have been made for why the US invasions
of Iraq and Afghanistan are criminal?
--

Dahr Jamail: To be clear, while I've covered Iraq extensively, I've
not covered Afghanistan. Thus, I'll keep all my answers in the
context of my expertise, that being Iraq.

That said, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq could not have
more clearly violated international law. Even the former secretary
general of the United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan, said in September
2004 that the Iraq war was illegal and breached the UN Charter.

An illegal war is thus the mother of all war crimes, for from that
stems all the rest. What I've seen in Iraq has been a parade of war
crimes committed by the US military: rampant torture, collective
punishment (Fallujah is an example), deliberate firing on medical
workers, deliberate killing of civilians for "sport" and countless others.

Then, there is the fact that both occupations are so clearly about
the control of dwindling resources and their transport routes, that
the excuses given for them by the US government (by both Bush and
Obama) are both laughable and insulting to anyone capable of a
modicum of critical thought.

A3N: How do you rate the corporate media's coverage of the Bradley
Manning story?

DJ: It's been a farce, a classic case of shoot the messenger. When
someone becomes a soldier, they swear an oath to support and defend
the US Constitution by following "lawful" orders. Thus, they are
legally obliged by their own oath to not follow unlawful orders. What
Manning did by leaking this critical information has been to uphold
his oath as a soldier in the most patriotic way. Now, compare that
with how he has been raked over the coals by most of the so-called
mainstream media.

A3N: How do they address the argument that exposing war crimes is not a crime?

DJ: Usually they don't, because the corporate media - and the
government, for that matter - avoid the words "war crime" as though
they are a plague. Thus, they avoid the issue at all cost.

A3N: In your opinion, how do the corporate media present the US
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to the US public?

DJ: With Iraq, the occupation is presented as though it was a
mistake, as though the great benevolent US empire was mistakenly
mislead into the war, but since "we" are there, it is good that at
least Saddam Hussein has been removed - and now, of course, the US
has only done the best it can in a tough situation.

With Afghanistan, the occupation is presented to the public as the
ongoing frontline battle against "terrorism," while in reality, they
should call Afghanistan "pipeline-istan" because it's all about
securing the access corridors for natural gas and oil pipelines from
the Black Sea through Afghanistan - the four main US bases there are
located along the exact pipeline route - to the coast of Pakistan.

A3N: How does the corporate media narrative contrast with what you
have seen firsthand in Iraq?

DJ: The difference is night and day. The whitewashing and outright
lying by the corporate media is offensive to me. It is repulsive, in
fact, when compared to what the reality on the ground is in Iraq. The
brutality of the US military there against the civilian population
would shock people. More than 1 million Iraqis have been slaughtered
because of the US occupation. As you read this, you can know that one
in every ten Iraqis remains displaced from their homes. Can you
imagine that? The US policy in Iraq has been so destructive that one
out of every ten Iraqis is currently displaced from his or her home,
seven years into the occupation.

A3N: Returning now to the issue of soldier resistance, what are the
various reasons that antiwar soldiers give as motivation for their
opposition to the occupations?

DJ: These reasons mostly come from what the soldiers see once they
arrive in the occupation: the buckets of money being made by the
contractors, the lack of goals for the occupation beyond generating
huge amounts of profit for war contractors and the reasons given for
the invasion and occupation being entirely false. So, most seem to
become antiwar when they see that they've been lied to, used,
betrayed, and that they are putting their lives on the line so that
war contractors can get richer.

A3N: What are some of the ways that antiwar soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan have resisted?

DJ: Myriad ways. The most common, and least dramatic, is going AWOL
[absent without leave]. More than 60,000 soldiers have now taken that
route since September 11, 2001. So, often, folks will go do a
deployment, come back for a break, then simply not show up when it's
time for their unit to redeploy.

Some of the more interesting means of resistance I've found entailed
doing what soldiers refer to as "search and avoid" missions. One
soldier told me how they would go out to the end of their patrol
route in their Humvees, find a big field and park. They'd call in to
base every hour to check in and say, "We're fine, we're still
searching this field for weapons caches." And they would sit there
doing nothing until the time was up for their patrol, and they'd
return to base. I met more and more soldiers who shared similar
stories, from all over Iraq, during different times of the
occupation. That's when I realized how low morale was and how
widespread different kinds of resistance had become.

Other soldiers found out how to manipulate their locator beacon on
the GPS unit in the Humvees, so they'd sit and have tea with Iraqis
while someone moved their beacon around so their base thought they
were patrolling.

A3N: How has US military leadership responded to this resistance?

DJ: They don't know about much of it when it's happening, although
there have been times when a unit has been caught doing something
like the aforementioned, and they've broken up the unit, but that has
been quite rare overall.

With AWOL troops, the military doesn't have the manpower to send
their MP's [military police] after them, so the military lets them go
and waits for them to get a traffic ticket, for example. Then the
cops hand them over to the MPs, who throw the AWOL soldiers in the
brig to await a court-martial. Then, often, the soldier is told he or
she can go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, or he or she will be court-martialed.

A3N: In your book "The Will to Resist," you document many different
cases of soldiers that faced criminal charges for their opposition to
US wars. We discussed Bradley Manning's case earlier in this
interview, but can you please tell us about any other recent, ongoing
cases that have begun since the publication of your book in 2009? How
can our readers best support these soldiers?

DJ: Most of the cases I followed that took place after my book was
published have been completed: time was served by the soldiers, and
then they were released into freedom from the military. Two cases of
this type really stand out: Victor Agosto and Travis Bishop. Both of
these men stood up and refused to be deployed, were court-martialed,
served their time and are now free.

There will be more to come as these occupations persist. A group to
follow that regularly supports these resisters is Courage To Resist.
They are based in Oakland, California, and are run by Jeff Paterson,
himself a resister to the first Gulf War. They do a great job of
tracking resisters and what folks can do to support them. Support
includes donations, but also making phone calls, writing letters and
other forms of activism.

A3N: In the months leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the
antiwar movement in the US was relatively strong, but since the
invasion began, the antiwar movement seems to have lost considerable
momentum and strength. On a practical level, what do you think the US
antiwar movement needs in order to be reenergized and finally end these wars?

DJ: At the risk of sounding like a cynic when I feel I'm making an
honest assessment, I don't feel there will be a mass organization of
an antiwar movement. We already live in a police state. What is left
of the antiwar movement is completely infiltrated and is being torn
apart by sectarianism and profiteering, or the peace-industrial complex.

In addition, I feel that the main reason for the failure of the
antiwar movement is that most folks involved in it still believe they
can work within the system to generate change, when the system is
completely corrupted already. By "system," I mean the federal
government. That apparatus is broken beyond repair. It is completely
corrupted and needs to be dissolved. Thus, any movement that seeks to
work within the parameters set by the system - such as weekend
permitted demonstrations, thinking you can effectively pressure your
representative, etcetera - is doomed before it begins, because it is
still playing by the rules set out by those in power. Rules guarantee
never to jeopardize the loss of power by those who hold it.

Only truly radical actions - those meant to subvert the system and
shut it down to a point where business as usual is impossible until
demands are met - are all that is left.

Activists rally to keep U.S. war resisters in Canada

2011-01-17T15:16:00.001-08:00

Activists rally to keep U.S. war resisters in Canada

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110115/activists-rally-for-war-resisters-110115/20110115

Jan. 15 2011

WINDSOR, Ont. Antiwar activists are holding a rally in Windsor
today to drum up support for American war resisters who are seeking
refuge in Canada.

The War Resisters Support Campaign wants the public to tell Ottawa to
stop deporting Iraq war resisters.

Ken Marciniec, a spokesman for the group, says today's rally at
Windsor's Market Square "is not a demonstration so much as reaching
out to people."

The rally kicks off the group's Let Them Stay Week, a series of
events meant to raise awareness of the resisters' plight.

There are about 40 self-styled war resisters in Canada.

So far, two have been deported to the U.S., where they were
incarcerated for deserting the military.

Iraq war resister Rodney Watson stuck in limbo for the holidays

2011-01-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

Iraq war resister Rodney Watson stuck in limbo for the holidays

http://www.straight.com/article-365724/vancouver/war-resister-stuck-limbo

By Travis Lupick,
December 23, 2010

In many ways, the Watsons will celebrate a typical Christmas this
year. They have a tree with gifts beneath it, some last-minute
wrapping to take care of, and plans to cook a turkey dinner on Christmas Day.

But Rodney Watson, his wife, Natasha, and their son, Jordan, are
celebrating the holidays in an unlikely setting for a young family:
the Downtown Eastside's First United Church.

When the Georgia Straight paid a morning visit on December 20, the
church's 200 beds for the homeless were full and its hallways
congested with people preparing for the day.

The week before, Jordan celebrated his second birthday there, taking
a victory lap around the church on his brand-new Toy Story quad. As
happy as the occasion was, Watson said in a meeting room upstairs,
there's nothing he wants more than to take his son to the park.
"That's the hardest part about not being able to go anywhere."

Taking sanctuary, the Watsons have lived in a one-bedroom apartment
in the church since Canadian immigration authorities ordered that
Watson be deported in September 2009. As a former U.S. soldier and
conscientious objector to the war in Iraq, Watson likely faces
charges of desertion in his country. He is one of an estimated 40
such individuals fighting legal battles to remain in Canada.

Parliament has twice passed nonbinding motions to stop the
deportation of war resisters, but the Conservative government has
ignored those measures. On September 29, a private member's bill,
C-440, failed to pass second reading in the House of Commons.

"It was quite shocking because there has been a movement all across
Canada for the war resisters," Libby Davies, NDP MP for Vancouver
East, said by phone from Ottawa. "People like Rodney, he is doing his
best to do the right thing and we should be supporting him."

Davies, who has visited Watson several times, emphasized that the
32-year-old man has a Canadian wife and child, and has proven himself
a benefit to the community.

Rev. Ric Matthews, executive minister for the First United Church,
told the Straight the same thing.

"He has a natural sensitivity to issues around justice and equality
and peace," Matthews said. "His role is very much a healing one."

Watson walked around the First United Church at ease, barely passing
anybody without making a joke or some friendly gesture.

He explained that his objections to the war in Iraqwhere he served
from 2005 to 2006trace back to his childhood.

"I remember when I was five years old, going into the living room,"
he began. Watson's family had just moved into a new neighbourhood in
Kansas City. One night, when his father was at work and Watson was
playing at home with his brothers and sisters, their neighbours let
the family know what they thought of the move.

"I felt glass coming past my face and bricks coming through the
window," Watson recounted. "My brother got hit and we all started
running, and my mom grabbed us all up and all I could hear was, 'Get
out, nigger.' "

A little more than 20 years later, Watson said, he saw the same sort
of thing going on in Iraqexcept this time, he was on the side of the
brick throwers.

"About the third month into my deployment, that's when I started
seeing this vicious racism," he explained, telling stories of
innocent Iraqis being beaten by American soldiers who had had a bad day.

Turning to the present, Watson emphasized that it is because of his
moral objections to the war that he is now faced with losing his
family. "I love them with my heart and my soul, and that would tear
me apart," he said.

Those who want to learn more about how they can support Watson and
other war resisters in Canada can visit the website of the War
Resisters Support Campaign and Watson's Facebook page.

http://www.resisters.ca/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/War-Resister-in-Sanctuary/192332906881

Students show support for war resisters

2010-11-22T17:02:00.000-08:00

Hall students show support for war resisters

http://www.caledoncitizen.com/news/2010-11-18/Front_Page/Hall_students_show_support_for_war_resisters.html

2010-11-18
By Bill Rea

The American military action in Iraq has sparked lots of controversy,
as some argue whether it's justified.

Many students at Robert F. Hall voiced their support for war
resisters Tuesday as they took part in a march around the school.

Roughly 250 took part.

They were joined by Chuck Wiley, originally from Kentucky, who spent
17 years in the U.S. military (most of it in the navy) who left the
forces over problems he had with the way the war was being conducted.

Hall religion teacher Jozef Konyari said the march was an effort to
put Catholic social teaching of participation into practice by
raising awareness of the issue of war resisters trying to stay in Canada.

The kids marched around the school, shouting slogans like "War
resisters Welcome here!" and "Hey-hey, ho-ho The illegal war has
got to go!"

Konyari told the marchers their journey around the school would have
seven stops, in recognition of the seven years the war has been going on.

There were also a number of declarations of why war resisters should
be welcomed.

He cited such facts as how the Trudeau government welcomed draft
dodgers and war resisters during the Viet Nam conflict. He said
between 50,000 and 80,000 people (both dodgers and resisters) arrived
in Canada. Konyari also mentioned the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which guarantees freedom of thought and conscience. As well,
he said the actions of war resisters are consistent with
international law, including the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg
Principles. "Soldiers have not only the right, but the responsibility
to refuse to participate in war crimes," Konyari declared.

He also argued that most Canadians agree that U.S. military personnel
who resist the war should be taken in. He cited resolutions to that
effect that were passed in the House of Commons in 2008 and '09 that
called on the government to start programs to allow resisters and
their families to stay in Canada.

As well, Konyari said allowing them to stay is consistent with
Canadian immigration law, which states those seeking to stay here
should be allowed to remain if they face "undeserved" or
"disproportionate" hardships if they return to their own countries.
He said Wiley could be looking at five years in prison if he's sent home.

He also stated that many soldiers have been experiencing emotional or
psychological problems from their war experiences, such as
post-traumatic stress disorder.

Finally, he said "the war was declared illegal by the United Nations."

Citing statistics from Wikileaks, Konyari said some 109,000 people
have died so far in this war, and about 66,000 of them have been
innocent civilians.

Wiley, 38, said he was serving on an aircraft carrier that was
deployed in 2006 in support of the operation in Iraq. He had issues
with several of the missions and didn't believe he could continue. He
said he eventually requested a transfer, and learned he was heading
to another ship that was soon to be redeployed to Iraq.

Missions he had trouble with included air strikes to demolish
residential buildings that had been abandoned. The concern of the
authorities was that insurgents might move in and start operating
from them. But he said his problem was no one had checked these
buildings in weeks, so no one knew if innocent people were occupying them.

Other missions he cited involved getting populations moving so
insurgents could be captured. The problem was civilians were pushed
into areas where they could be ambushed.

"It created a lot of dangerous situations that didn't need to
happen," he remarked.

He contacted the GI Rights Hotline, and was told if he wanted to stay
in the U.S., he would either have to obey orders or go to jail. He
came to Canada in February 2007. He is now officially absent without
leave (AWOL), and said if he were to cross the border back to the
States, there would be a federal warrant for his arrest waiting for him.

There have been questions as to how legal the U.S. action in Iraq has
been. Wiley said the American government tried to get the backing of
the United Nations Security council and couldn't. He couldn't say if
Saddam Hussein should have been allowed to stay in power, but he
maintained there were other avenues available that were never tried.

Wiley observed that it's "hard to say" what's next for him.

He said he hopes the Canadian government will create a rule that will
allow war resisters to apply for permanent residence. If that doesn't
happen, he said he might be eventually asked to leave the country.

While he's not married, Wiley said he has a partner living in
Toronto. He is working as a facilities engineer at a private school
in the city.

He added his parents are still living in the States. "I have friends
and family back in the States who I miss," he commented.

He added he hopes the American government will eventually declare an
amnesty for war resisters, as was done in the 1970s for draft
dodgers. "I'm hopeful we'll got to that point eventually, but I
really don't know," he said.

He told the students he was impressed with their involvement in the
issue. He praised them for having heard of something that shouldn't
be happening, and stepping out of line to try and do something about it.

"That, to me, is what heroism is all about," he told them. "Doing
something when you don't have to do it."

Konyari also said about 800 kids signed a petition calling for war
resisters to be allowed to stay in the country, and that will be
going to Dufferin Caledon MP David Tilson.

He added an aim of Tuesday's march was to let students actually see
what happens when people follow through with their consciences.

"They walked away with something valuable, in relation to the theme
of conscience and resistance," he said.

Iraq veteran turned peace activist talks about war in Afghanistan

2010-08-11T12:28:00.001-07:00

Iraq veteran turned peace activist talks about war in Afghanistan

http://www.wnewsj.com/main.asp?SectionID=49&SubSectionID=156&ArticleID=185697

JOHN CROPPER
8/6/2010

Calling the war in Afghanistan a "slow but steady train wreck," a
Wilmington College alumnus and Iraq war veteran spoke at the college
on Thursday night about the role of the United States in that conflict.

Matt Southworth, a foreign policy assistant at the Friends Committee
on National Legislation in Washington, D.C., addressed a crowd of 40
peace activists during a discussion about policy updates on Capitol
Hill, about local anti-war efforts and about the future of Afghanistan.

"We're very proud to have Matt, a Wilmington College grad, in D.C.
doing what he's doing, and doing it well," said Ruth Dobyns, director
of the Quaker Heritage Center at WC.

Southworth said it was during his time in Iraq, where he was
stationed as an intelligence analyst in 2004, when he realized he was
against the American occupation there.

"My experiences in Mosul, doing things I didn't expect to do, things
which I considered to be un-American, turned me against the war," he said.

He spoke briefly about his difficulty transitioning back into "normal
life" and about struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After
graduating from WC in 2009, Southworth moved to D.C. to work for
FCNL, a Quaker, anti-war lobbying organization.

He updated the crowd on a recent bill in the U.S. Senate, HR 4899,
which was initially intended to provide supplemental funding for
"summer jobs and disaster relief for Haiti," he said.

"But, as you know, the Senate is kind of backed up and they don't
really do much, so they sat on it," he said. "When they came back,
they said 'Hey, we can take out the summer jobs portion of the bill,
and add-in extra war spending, and jam it through. Done.'"

The bill, passed in March, provides an additional $34.7 billion
toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Southworth then spoke about two "significant accomplishments:" a
recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives which garnered more
votes than ever for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a recent surge
in support for an Afghanistan study group which would advise
President Obama about war strategies there.

"These are significant improvements. There are positive things
happening," he said. "It's all about providing Obama with policy
recommendations and a security review. What that means is it will
create political space for him to withdraw from Afghanistan."

"To give you an example of failed strategy in Afghanistan," he
continued, "right now General [David] Petraeus has begun organizing
training for afghan militias to defend their villages from the
Taliban. But when you arm people, after time they eventually will say
'your objectives are not my objectives,' and they will fight against you."

Southworth called such a strategy a "slow, but steady train wreck.
And this method will accelerate the train."

When a woman asked if he thought the situation would ever improve in
the war-torn region, Southworth responded: "No, I don't. I think
we're going to be in the region for a long time, 30 or 40 years. I
don't think we should leave the Afghans entirely. We need to be a
support role, not a military role. Give them resources, education,
schools, funding, and then get the hell out of the way."

Southworth shifted the discussion to the local level when he spoke
about U.S. Rep. Mike Turner's reported plans to earmark federal
funding for unmanned drone testing at the Wilmington Air Park. Turner
"has the power to slip that in," he said.

"From what I've heard [Wright Patterson Air Force Base] would send
employees here to carry out the research, so few jobs would even be
created," he said.

Asked how he would tell a community reeling from massive job loss to
not support any potential jobs at the airpark, he answered: "I know.
It's a tough sell. Most people think 'Hey, it's better than nothing.'
But, the big deal is drones are unreliable. They cause more
collateral damage than anything else. Troops are regularly put into
risky situations having to retrieve drones that have crashed."

Southworth fielded questions from the audience, which was mostly
made-up of graying peace activists who were on campus for the
week-long National Peace Academy. The audience asked about the size
of FCNL about 25 people, he said about recommendations for
organizing locally and about his thoughts on the firing of General
Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"One of the conduits of change is to organize locally, to organize
within your community," he said. "We're not being loud enough right
now. We need to be louder."

Latest battle for lesbian war resister

2010-06-06T21:03:00.001-07:00

Money is the latest battle for lesbian war resister Skyler James

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Ottawa/Money_is_the_latest_battle_for_lesbian_war_resister_Skyler_James-8733.aspx

'Does the thought of being deported frighten me? No.'

Neil McKinnon
June 02, 2010

Three years ago, Skyler James left the American military fearing for
her life because her fellow soldiers found out she was a lesbian.

Since then, it's been a constant battle, legally and emotionally, to
remain with her newfound home and Canuck friends. But last fall James
won a stay of deportation, thanks to a Federal Court ruling. However,
she has to go back to the refugee board again in August and it
doesn't mean she will be permitted to stay.

On July 15, James and The War Resisters Campaign are teaming up and
holding a fundraiser to help fund her legal battle. Details of the
event are still being arranged, but it will likely hold 120 people
and be held at a downtown bar.

Since we last spoke with James, she was laid off her call centre job
last April. In the meantime, she's looking for work and trying to
enjoy the great weather. She describes our short winter as "wimpy"
and "not as cold as prior winters".

When James came to Ottawa, James says she had three fellow war
resisters to talk to. All that has changed; people have been fleeing
from the law or deported and jailed.

"When I first came to Ottawa, I knew of four people who were American
war resisters. Since then, one guy turned himself in and got let out
from prison early because of his certain situation. Another has gone
underground. The guy I came with has gone also underground," says James.

By 'going underground', James means working under the table using
fake names and living as an illegal immigrant with no healthcare,
fleeing city to city. She asked to leave their names out of this
article for fear of safety.

James' next immigration hearing happens in August. With the legal
help from her lawyer and encouragement from her new Canadian friends,
she says she doesn't fear being deported.

"Does the thought of being deported frighten me? No. People keep
encouraging me, telling me my case has a good shot and I don't give
up," says James.
--

Skyler James' fundraiser to stay in Canada happens Thurs. July 15.
Details will be released shortly. For more information, visit the
Facebook page You Are Home Skyler James. You can also email Skyler at
skyleriseternal@yahoo.com.

Training makes killing civilians acceptable

2010-05-17T10:45:00.001-07:00

[In 4 parts]

[See URLs for video footage.]

Training that makes killing civilians acceptable

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5079

Josh Stieber: In boot camp we trained with songs that joked about
killing women and children

May 12, 2010

Bio

Josh Stieber enlisted in the army after graduating high school. He
was deployed to Baghdad from Feb 07- Apr 08 with the military company
shown on the ground in the Collater Murder video. Upon his return
from Iraq, Josh was granted conscientious objector status.
--

Transcript

Josh Steiber Interview (Part 1 of 4)

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Hi. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. A few
weeks ago, some video of a shooting that took place in 2007 in
IraqApache helicopter shooting a group of men on the ground. And
here's some of that footage. I'm sure most people have seen it already.

VIDEO, WIKILEAKS TRANSCRIPT: 01:09 Yeah roger. I just estimate
there's probably about twenty of them.

01:13 There's one, yeah.

01:15 Oh yeah.

01:18 I don't know if that's a...

01:19 Hey Bushmaster element [ground forces control], copy on the one-six.

01:21 That's a weapon.

01:22 Yeah.

01:23 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight [second Apache helicopter].

01:41 Yup. He's got a weapon too.

01:43 Hotel Two-Six; Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six
individuals with AK47s [automatic rifles]. Request permission to
engage [shoot].

02:43 You're clear.

02:44 All right, firing.

02:47 Let me know when you've got them.

02:49 Lets shoot.

02:50 Light 'em all up.

02:52 Come on, fire!

02:57 Keep shoot'n, keep shoot'n.

02:59 keep shoot'n.

03:02 keep shoot'n.

03:05 Hotel Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six, we need to move, time now!

JAY: Now joining us to explain what we're seeing and why this took
place is Josh Stieber. He joined the armed forces in 2006, was in
Iraq in 2007, and after 14 months applied for conscientious objector
status, which he finally got. And here he is. Thanks for joining us, Josh.

JOSH STIEBER: Sure. Thanks for having me.

JAY: So you grew up in Maryland.

STIEBER: Right. Not too far from here.

JAY: And so before we get into your story, just tell uslet's go back
and look at some of the footage. And first of all, aswe're going to
start playing the footage now. So, as we're seeing it, tell us, first
of all, how atypical is this? Or is this happening all the time, this
kind of instance?

STIEBER: Incidents similar to this, I would say, are not altogether
infrequent. I'm not as familiar with incidents with helicopters,
because I was in an infantry unit, but that common mindset to shoot
first and ask questions later is one that stems back as far as the
very first days of training, and, yeah, that mindset and the things
built on top of that throughout training have these results in combat.

JAY: Now, you're in the company that was on the ground that day. You
weren't there yourself that day. But when the guys came home that
day, was there something remarkable for them that they talked about
it? Or was it kind of just another day out in Baghdad?

STIEBER: It was treated with a little more, you know, maybe, emotion
than usual thatyeah, they came back and were talking about what had
happened and that there waswhat they said was an attack against
them, and just, I guess, the number of people that were killed was
maybe a little larger than usual. So a little bit more, but, you
know, not something extremely irregular.

JAY: Was there any sense that the guys in the Apache helicopters had
done anything wrong? Or this was par for the course?

STIEBER: The people in the video, you know, as you can see, weren't
actually on the scene as they saw what happened from the helicopter.
So you just kind of trust what you're told. If someone tells you, you
know, this is what I saw and this is what I did, then you kind of
take them at face value, 'cause there's really no way to prove or to
examine otherwise. So perspective from the helicopter, without this
video or without other eyewitnesses, really couldn't be verified.

JAY: Now, it's hard to tell from the video whether there were
actually weapons in the guys' hands or not. Apparently they found
some later. I mean, when you watch the video, can you see weapons in
the hands of some of the guys on thepeople on the ground?

STIEBER: I can see things that look like weapons enough that, based
on the training that I went through, I know I would have been
commanded to fire if I was in a position where I observed that. And
then, also, in the 40 minute Wikileaks version of the video, the full
video, the soldiers actuallyyou can hear them coming on the radio,
saying they found weapons on the scene.

JAY: So let's go back to you. I don't know whether this incident or
incidents like this helped to form who you were or who you became,
but start from the beginning. Why did you join? And you told me
off-camera you joined knowinghoping to be sent to Iraq. Why?

STIEBER: I grew up very religiously and very patriotic, in a
selective sense that, you know, I only wanted to hear things that I
wanted to hear and only things that I thought would make my country
look better and make my beliefs look better, and I wasn't very
interested in understanding other perspectives. And the vision I had
of my country was that, you know, we were going all throughout the
world doing, you know, all this great stuff and helping people in
need. And, you know, after 9/11 I was obviously affected by that and
wanted to protect the people that I cared about, and, from everyone I
trusted, was told that the military would be a good way to do that,
and then was also told, you know, there's this country Iraq that's
getting oppressed by this horrible dictator who's also a threat to
us, and if we can get rid of him, not only will we be keeping
ourselves safe, but we'll also be helping this other country in the process.

JAY: How interwoven were your beliefs in America and what America
stands for and your religious beliefs?

STIEBER: They were pretty closely intertwined. I went to a religious
high school. And one example is, in a government class that I was in
at this religious high school, we read a book called The Faith of
George W. Bush. And people like that were held up as, you know,
thesethese are people that are fighting for God's will here on
Earth. So religion was very interwoven with a sense of nationalism.

JAY: But by 2006, when you join, it's already really clear that there
were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Bush and Cheney had
essentially lied to start a war. Like, that wasby 2006 that's fairly
acknowledged. Had that penetrated in to you, to your school?

STIEBER: There, and just thekind of the people I was listening to.
And, again, I wasn't making any kind of effort to really challenge my
thinking. People were saying, you know, whoever it is, the media or
other countries are out to make us look bad, and, you know, we did
the right thing, and we're doing the right thing. And I might have
had a few doubts in my mind, but even I comforted the doubts by
saying, you know, even if the reasons that we're there weren't
completely justified, we're there and we're still in this position,
since we're there, that we can't just pull out, and we need to help
these people.

JAY: So even if there were no weapons and even if the argument for
weapons wasn't legitimate, it's still good versus evil, and they're
evil and we're good, and we've got to fight it?

STIEBER: Yeah. I bought into that lingo a lot.

JAY: So you go to Iraq. You join, you go through boot camp, and
you're sent to Iraq, and you're still more or less the same mindset.
Tell us a little bit about boot camp and the kind of training that
takes place to prepare you for war. I mean, your religious training
is supposed to be about love thy neighbor, and then you're sent to
war. So how do they get you ready for that?

STIEBER: Yeah, I guess that's where I started to see, maybe, some of
these contradictions, just by the kinds of things that we did on a
regular basis in basic training, whether it was the cadences that we
sang as we were marching around, some that even joked about killing
women and children.

JAY: Like what?

STIEBER: One that stands out in my mind isit goes, "I went down to
the market where all the women shop/I pulled out my machete and I
begin to chop/I went down to the park where all the children play/I
pulled out my machine gun and I begin to spray."

JAY: That's as you're marching.

STIEBER: Right.

JAY: So this is, like, an authorized chant, you could say.

STIEBER: Yeah. I mean, the training, they focus on the physical
aspect, or, you know, they say that's the challenging part, but then
they slip all these psychological things in along with it.

JAY: Well, that's got to be shocking for you to hear that the first time.

STIEBER: Yeah. And so I started writing home to religious leaders at
my church, saying what I'm being asked to do doesn't really line up
with, you know, all these religious beliefs I had. And I would get
letters back with explanations that I needed to have more faith in
God, or this is just how the military works.

JAY: They would write back and defend a chant like that, that it's
okay to go down where the kids are playing and start to spray? They
would defend that?

STIEBER: They would either defend it or say that ends justify the
means or say, you know, maybe you personally don't say chants like
that and just march silently, but you still go along with the whole
system. And so I adopted that mindset that even if there were
particular things that troubled me, which there definitely were, then
you can calm that discomfort by saying, well, you know, even if I'm
uncomfortable with these certain practices, in the long run we're
still getting rid of the bad guys, and we're still keeping our
country safe, and we're still spreading freedom and democracy around
the world, so you shouldn't focus on the smaller things.

JAY: So at this point, to what extent do you start to question your
faith? 'Cause it's all about faith, and faith is about not
questioning. So once you start to question, it leads you to places
you haven't been before. So does thatand does it begin in boot camp?

STIEBER: Yeah, I would say that it definitely did. And kind of the
more I saw the things that seemed like they were in contradiction, I
would kind of have less and less faith in my faith and just start
doing things lessthatI guess that idealism or that religious
motivation started to fall away, and it became more about doing
things to either fit in with the crowd or to take on this nationalism
that, yeah, we're still a good country, you know, even if I don't
like these particular things, and we're still spreading freedom and
democracy around the world.

JAY: Now, I've been told byI have never been in the military, but
I've been told to get people ready to kill it's quite an intense
psychological process. Humans actually, apparently, don't like
killing each other. How did thatwhat was that for you, and what was
the impact on you?

STIEBER: I would say it's very calculated. It starts with bayonet
training, even though bayonets haven't been used in any war since, I
believe, the Korean War. But, you know, they first start out by
getting you used to stabbing a dummy with a bayonet, yelling "kill,
kill, kill" as you do it. And if you can get comfortable with that,
then it's slightly more comfortable to shoot at a target from further
away. And just the nature of the training, as the military's gone on,
as I've gone back and studied it, that has changed. Before, targets
just used to be circles, and now the targets look like actual people.
They just get you just to thinking in those dehumanizing terms that
this is a target, and people that look like this are targets, rather
than this is what a human looks like.

JAY: And to what extent was the actual politics of Iraq talked about,
or what to make of Iraqis, what to think about Arabs? To be able to
go and kill people, do they have to dehumanize all the people you're
about to meet?

STIEBER: The common mindset that I would say was coming towards
Iraqis were, one, just kind of, you know, how they were referred to.
They were always referred to "Hajis", you know, similar to "Gooks" in
Vietnam or other phrases and other words. So there was that mindset,
combined with this mindset, that if you don't do everything you're
trained to do and if you're not being the best soldier that you can
be, then these Iraqis, you know, at some point or another, are going
to attack you, or, you know, if you're in a combat situation and
you're not doing everything that you were taught, then you're
exposing yourself and your friends to being open to attack. So that
was very much fear mongering, from that point of view.

JAY: Well, in the next segment of our interview, let's talk about you
as you get to Iraq and how that helps to shape you. Please join us
for the next segment of our interview with Josh Stieber on The Real
News Network.

--------

Training makes killing civilians acceptable [Pt2]

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5085

Josh Stieber: They put us through psychological tests to see if we
were willing to shoot civilians

May 13, 2010

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay in Washington. We're talking to Josh Stieber. He was a
member of the Army company in Baghdad that day that everyone has now
seenand we'll play a few more seconds of it, just so yougive you
some context what we're talking about. This is the video where Apache
helicopters attacks a group of Iraqis on the ground. Josh was a
member of that company, not there that day. But now we're talking
about how Josh came from joining the Army to, a couple of years
later, applying for conscientious objector status. Thanks for joining
us again, Josh.

STIEBER: Sure. Thanks for having me.

JAY: So let's just pick up the story where we left off. So you're
more or less finished boot camp. What comes next?

STIEBER: A couple of more months of training with the company that I
eventually deployed with.

JAY: And in terms of this arc of how you get from joining to
conscientious objector status, what took place before you go to Iraq?
Is there another kind of moment there for you?

STIEBER: I guess another big moment in training that really started
making me ask questionsand again I found a good excuse not to ask
too many, but what initially disturbed me was our leaders would take
us into a room one at a time, take the new soldiers, and they would
ask us a series of questions leading up to this big question, that if
somebody were to pull a weapon in a marketplace full of completely
unarmed civilians and there's only one person with a weapon, would
you return fire towards that person? And not only did you have to say
yes, but in this exercise if you even hesitated in your answer, then
you get yelled at for not being a good soldier and not prepared to do
what it took to keep your fellow soldiers safe.

JAY: So when they asked you, what did you say? And did you hesitate?

STIEBER: I hesitated, and after a second or two of hesitation they
really ripped into me.

JAY: Saying what?

STIEBER: Again, that I needed to be prepared to fire, you know,
whenever I was told and that I had to keep ityou know, always be
aware of these threats, and that any hesitation could potentially
mean the lives of the other soldiers.

JAY: So the idea of killing women and children is an actual part of
the training, that you have to kind of internalize that this is
acceptable in the right circumstances.

STIEBER: Yeah. I mean, it's not specifically said, you know, we're
going to go out today and kill women and children, but if it should
happen in the process of doing what we're supposed to.

JAY: But when you put that together with what you told us in the
first segment of the interview, that one of the marching chants was,
you know, killing women and spraying children with bullets, it seems
to be something they know you're going to get into these situations
with civilians, and so part of the training is that accepting the
killing of civilians is part of your job.

STIEBER: Yeah. Again, it's all very psychological. And I'd even take
that beyond just military training and say there's aspects of our
society, going back and looking at my history class when I learned
about the atomic bombings or bombings in other wars that either
intentionally targeted civilians or there were a lot of civilian
casualties in the process, just that same mindset that, you know,
this was unfortunate and we don't intentionally do this most of the
time, but if it should so happen that it happens as we're
accomplishing our greater goals, then so be it.

JAY: Yeah, sure, and you get nothing more than how indigenous people
were treated here, native American Indians. Like, part of history is,
you know, the slaughter is part of the building of the society, its
westward expansion and all. And in terms of how you saw going to
Iraq, is it part of that same kind of tradition that the insertion of
these American values is simply good for the world?

STIEBER: Yeah. I mean, you hear it all the time, freedom and
democracy and how horrible their systems are, and, yeah, there's a
lot of things from that angle.

JAY: So you leave that interview, just being screamed at for not
being a good enough soldier for wanting to accept the killing of
civilians quickly enough. How long before you go from there to Iraq?
And what's happening in terms of your own thinking? Like, my
understanding of boot camp is one of the prime objectives of boot
camp is to get you to stop thinking for yourself; you need to accept
this is the way the world is and do what you're told. You're already
starting to think for yourself here in ways you hadn't before.

STIEBER: Right. I mean, I would have these concerns, but I would
always have a good excuse, whether it was, you know, as I saw things
in basic training, saying, yeah, the ends justify the means, that
even if I don't like this particular thing, you know, in the long run
we're doing all this great stuff, or with this other training I was
saying things like, you know, maybe this is an extreme example, or
surely something like that is never going to happen, and just
anything kind of to take you out of personal responsibility to act on
that, to say that I know this is wrong and I'm going to do something
about it. Instead my natural reaction at the time was just to find an
excuse for why I didn't need to act on it.

JAY: So tell us. So you get to Iraq. And how long before you see
action? And talk about the first action.

STIEBER: It was probably a couple of months before we saw action. And
kind of the process of how I remember things in Iraq is that one of
the first big milestones is that we moved from the larger base that
we were living in, first to one building in the middle of a district,
and then into an even more remote area in the poor industrial part of
town. And as we were moving in to the poor industrial part of town,
in to this factory, the whole district came out and held a large
peaceful protest and were actually waving signs and flags and banners
and telling us peacefully but very explicitly that they don't want us
in their neighborhood.

JAY: This was a neighborhood protestget out of our neighborhood.

STIEBER: Yeah.

JAY: And how did that affect you? And what was the response?

STIEBER: All these things slowly started to trouble me more and more
and just kind of changed how I was seeing things.

JAY: 'Cause you were supposed to be there, you know, to stop
sectarian violence, and people wanted you there, supposedly.

STIEBER: Yeah, exactly.

JAY: So it was a little surprising for you to see the protest.

STIEBER: Yeah. I mean, here I was thinking that I was doing all this
great stuff for their country, and, well, if we're really helping
them out so much, why are they asking us to leave?

JAY: So did you just discuss this with some of the other guys in the
company? Were you able to talk about this stuff?

STIEBER: A little bit. I mean, people didn't really want to think
about it a whole lot. And as time went on, people were more open to
talk about it. And I'd say, later on, down the road, the majority of
people I knew said that what we were doing there was at the very
least a waste of time, if not morally wrong, and some people even
went as far as to say that if roles were reversed, that they
themselves would be insurgents.

JAY: So when do you see your first action that involves shooting?

STIEBER: I don't remember a specific date, probably a couple of weeks
or maybe a month before this video took place in July.

JAY: And, again, this is that video of the Apache shooting the [inaudible]

STIEBER: Right, the WikiLeaks video. And most of our contact was from
IEDs or the roadside bombs or from snipers.

JAY: So are you ever in aso what starts to lead you towards saying
this is wrong? What's your experiences?

STIEBER: One thing that really troubled me that I was thinking about,
on a practical level and a moral level, was this policy that we
started practicing that when a roadside bomb would go offsince that
started happening pretty frequently, some of our leaders, from a
somewhat high level, started saying that every time a bomb went off,
anybody standing in that area was open game to fire upon, with the
logic that, you know, if we can essentially out-terrorize the locals
and make them more afraid of us than of the people planting the
bombs, then they're not going to plant the bombs, even if they
weren't directly involved in the process.

JAY: So the order came down that when a bomb goes off, you're there,
you look around, you can shoot anybody in sight standing around there.

STIEBER: Yeah.

JAY: And that could be men, women, or children.

STIEBER: Correct.

JAY: So were you in a situation where you and your guys fired at men,
women, and children after a bombing run?

STIEBER: Yeah, I was in that situation, and I specifically was told
to fire. And there was one night when that happened and a bomb went
off, and our truck pulled ahead a few feet, and the trucks in front
of us kicked up a lot of dust, and the last thing I had seen before
the dust went up were children running in the street. And my leaders
were yelling at me to fire my weapon, and I said, "No. The last thing
I saw were children running around. I'm not going to do that." And
that didn't go over so well. And that was not long before this video
happened. And that's the reason why I wasn't on the mission that day
is because when I started refusing orders like that and saying, look,
not only is it morally wrong to just open fire for the reasons that
were being given, it practically doesn't make sense thatyeah, you
might scare a few people, but it's probably going to do a lot more to
motivate people who might have had neutral feelings towards us to now
be justified in becoming our enemies, and I wouldn't blame them if they did.

JAY: So you're standing there, there's dust all around, you knew
there were kids. You didn't fire, but other guys did.

STIEBER: In that situation, yeah.

JAY: And kids were killed.

STIEBER: I don't know specifically on that.

JAY: People were killed.

STIEBER: Yeah, yeah, at various times people were killed. And, you
know, other soldiers refused to fire, too, and some people I know
would shoot their weaponsand I did this a couple times before I just
straight up said, you know, I'm not going to do this anymorebut some
people, we would fire our weapons at an open field, you know, to not
get our leaders mad at us, but to also make sure that we weren't
hitting anything.

JAY: So this is just a couple of weeks before the Apache shooting video.

STIEBER: Right.

JAY: So just keep going. So you're there for 14 months. So there's a
lot of instances where this happens.

STIEBER: Right. So I was seeing these things go on. I made that
decision that I wasn't going to fire my weapon. My leader got really
upset at me, and I firmly defended myself.

JAY: Now, you wouldn't fire your weapons in those situations, or you
wouldn't fire your weapons, period?

STIEBER: At the time I was in that situation, and that was primarily
the times when I would be commanded to fire my weapon. At the time I
still had it in my head that, you know, if there were a more
justifiable situation, then I would, but I didn't find that situation
justifiable. So when I said that and would make my arguments to my
leaders, it didn't go over so well, so they took me off the gun that
I was on, off the gun on top of the Humvee, and my job switched to
that I was following around our platoon leader and officer and
relaying the radio back and forth with them. And so I still had a
weapon, but my primary job was to be on the radio. And that started
tothe things I saw with that started to influence me, too.

JAY: Okay. Well, in the next segment of our interview, let's talk
about what you heard on the radio and how that moves you towards wanting out.

STIEBER: Alright.

JAY: Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Josh
Stieber on The Real News Network.

--------

Training makes killing civilians acceptable Pt3

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5091

Josh Stieber: I refused to shoot where civilians might be killed and
questioned why we were in Iraq

May 14, 2010

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay in Washington. And joining us again is Josh Stieber. He
was a member of the Army company that was in that famous WikiLeaks
video in 2007. He wasn't there that day, but his comrades were.
Thanks for joining us again, Josh.

JOSH STIEBER: Sure. Thanks for having me.

JAY: So why don't we pick up from the last. You had more or less
refused to stop firing your gun [sic] because you were being asked to
fire at civilians, and so you got assigned to be on radio detail with
one of the officers. So talk about that. And how does that lead you
on your journey towards applying for conscientious objector status?

STIEBER: Well, with the job of being on the radio, I got to see more
of the behind-the-scenes stuff going on. So I would be in meetings
with the different officers and with local officials. And one thing
that was really huge for me was was one of the people that we met
with regularly, who was the mayor of the district that we were living
in, an interesting thing about that was how we established our
relationship with him. We actually arrested him one night when we
found out that he had been involved in some attacks against us, and
we were all set to send him off to jail, until we found out that he
was the mayor. So instead of sending him to jail we started
negotiating with him. And here I had been, you know, hearing all
these things, from as high up as the president, saying we will not
negotiate with terrorists. And for me at the time, that epitomized
strength that, you know, I have the right answerswhy would I take
the time to sit down and talk with somebody that disagrees with me?
And weakness was negotiation, because if I'm right, then I shouldn't
need to depend on somebody else for help. But I was seeing that my
definition of strength was hurting people; and here is my definition
of weakness, of negotiating with people who are my enemies, starting
to create some progress. We would make deals and say things like
we'll give you school supplies or medical supplies if you tell your
guys not to blow us up for a certain amount of time. And violence
went down, and supplies get distributed.

JAY: And were these Shia? Sunni? Or did it make any difference?

STIEBER: I believe it was Shia, but I'm not 100 percent positive.

JAY: So you don't know which insurgent, quote-unquote, "insurgent
forces" that he was connected to.

STIEBER: We got very little training or information as far as the
cultural situation went.

JAY: Yeah, what did you know a who you were fighting?

STIEBER: We knew that the primary force in the area was the Jaish
al-Mahdi, who was under the control of Muqtada al-Sadr. So people
recognized his name. But to pretty much get any kind of idea of what
was going on culturally, you had to talk to the interpreters.

JAY: Right. So these are Shia Sadrist forces, which are mostly, if I
understand correctly, mostly poor people.

STIEBER: Yeah. Yeah, it was a pretty impoverished part of town.

JAY: So what do you start to hear then, other than the negotiations,
that starts to make you further question what's going on?

STIEBER: Well, as I saw my definition of strength begin to hurt
people and my definition of weakness begin to create progress, for a
while I didn't know what definitions to have or didn't know what to
think. And then I guess another very telling moment that really
forced me to take all this confusion I had and really ask myself the
difficult questions that I didn't want to ask was one night when.
[snip] One night, a friend of mine that I had gone to church with
before we deployedand, again, religion played a pretty important
role in my life. So I'd gone to church with this guy, and we're
sitting there one night guarding a prisoner that we'd been assigned
to watch over, and my friend started saying some threatening things
about what he wants to do to this prisoner. And, again, I'd been
sorting through all these different ideas of who I was. I was an
American, I was a Christianall these different things. And so my
first thought was this American ideal that I had grown up hearing,
and I asked him about it, and I said, "Isn't this man innocent until
proven guilty?" Alright. So my friend and I are guarding this
prisoner, and my friend, who I had gone to church with before I
deployed, started saying some threatening things about what he wanted
to do to this guy. And I had been, you know, thinking through all
those ideas of who I was as an American or as a Christian and just
trying to find my identity. So I started to ask him this ideal that I
connected with my American identity, that isn't this man innocent
until he's proven guilty? And my friend said, echoing the racism that
we're trained with, well, this man's Iraqi; there's no way he's
completely innocent; surely he's contributed to the problem in some
way; so I want take out my frustration on him. And then I started
thinking about all the things that we had heard sitting next to each
other in church and said, well, you know, what about these direct
quotes from the man that supposedly our religion is founded on, of
loving your enemy and returning evil with good and turning the other
cheek? And my friend said to me, very sincerely, I think, he said,
you know, I think Jesus would have turned his cheek once or twice,
but he wouldn't have let anybody punk him around. And as I heard him
say that, it sounded really ridiculous, but then I thought about it a
little further and I started to realize that what I was doing through
my actions and the things I was putting my faith in was pretty much
that exact same mindset. I just had a lot fancier terms to attach to
it. And when I started to think about it and how bluntly my friend
had put it, he was right, that here I was saying that, you know, I
was putting self-defense or putting national security at the top of
my priority list, whichyou know, that canthat's something you can
legitimately debate. But if you try and connect that to a man who
died on a cross trying to practice love, rather than defend himself
and not go through that, you know, horrible suffering that he did,
then those are two separate things, and I don't think they have a lot
of common ground, so that really, when I heard him say it that way,
really started to make me think, you know, which one am I going to
follow? Because I don't think it can be a combination.

JAY: And is there anyone you can talk to about this? And do you?

STIEBER: There was one friend I had who would listen to me and we
would have a lot of good conversations.

JAY: What about army chaplains or priests? I mean, they're actually
there, in a sense, to bless the union of the nationalism and the
religion, or they wouldn't be there.

STIEBER: Right. Yeah.

JAY: But were you able to talk to them about these questions?

STIEBER: I didn't see any value in talking to our chaplains, 'cause
he, you know, would, yeah, say why God was blessing what we were
doing, and said some ridiculous stuff like that we should be
interpreting everything that's going on, or the perspective we should
have on our experience in Iraq, is think of it like summer camp, and
just stuff that he didn't seem to have much connection with what was going on.

JAY: And at what point do you think back to that book The Faith of
George Bush and start to wonder whether that's a faith you want to be part of?

STIEBER: It's still a faith that I guess I want to be part of, but
not in those terms. Again, that I feel like, you know, George Bush
might have felt like he was justified to do what he did. You know,
the more I study, the harder that is for me to reconcile. But giving
him the benefit of the doubt, even if I say that, you know,
everything he said and did was completely justifiable in terms of
national securitystill doesn't match up with, you know, the way that
Jesus lived his life. And so I can either choose to have faith in
someone like George Bush or a political leader trying to, you know,
defend his country or whatever he's trying to do, or I can have faith
that, you know, if it comes down to it, that sometimes practicing
love might mean that you don't make it through alive, and that I'd
rather go down living with that love then go down input in
situations where, like this video, where you might be harming, you
know, innocent children in the process.

JAY: So do you write home? Do you talk on the phone to your parents?
Your parents are quite religious. So do you start to come out with
your questioning?

STIEBER: Yeah, I would start to write home about, like,
contradictions of the things that I saw, or say that, you know, I
think we need to look beyond just the flag and say that the flag or
whatever America puts its stamp of approval on, that that doesn't
necessarily make it good, or even if it's good in terms of
self-defense or whatever value that is, that maybe that's not the
same as carrying out our religion.

JAY: And how did your parents respond? I mean, Americanism is part of
the religion.

STIEBER: Yeah, it didn't go over so well. And kind of the mindset it
seemed that they would have or that other people I would talk to had.
And I didn't get very into the different details specifically of what
was going on, what I was seeing on a day-to-day basis. It was more of
the theories, you know, which I think should be enough. But the
mindset that I would get from them and from other people was, you
know, you're in this really intense situation and, you know, you're
not able to reconcile everything, or maybe you should wait to try and
figure out these huge philosophical questions and just do what it
takes to make it home alive.

JAY: Did the officers you were reporting to have any idea about what
was going on inside your head and heart?

STIEBER: They knew, I think, that I was starting to question things
more and more and to feel less and less idealistic about the things
that we were doing.

JAY: And how do you think they dealt with the same questions? 'Cause
they came up with a lot of the same kind of training and education
you did. And why do you think this kind of made such impact with you
and they kept soldiering on?

STIEBER: I mean, I think the big thing was that, like I said before,
that they were questioning what we were doing, but it became about
this mindset of fighting to make it home alive, which I'm not going
to judge someone for taking that mindset, but, you know, I had to ask
myself some very serious questions, you know, of what's justifiable.
And I think a lot of people think that different things, like human
beings are naturally violent, or war is always going to exist, or
these other very underlying philosophical beliefs that affect how
they act. And if you think that war's always going to exist or that,
you know, you need to use violence to stand up for yourself, you
might, you know, even have problems with a particular situation but
then justify it in terms that, you know, this is just the way the world works.

JAY: Well, in the next segment of our interview, let's talk about the
day you decided to apply for conscientious objector status. Please
join us for the next segment of our interview with Josh Stieber on
The Real News Network.

--------

Training makes killing civilians acceptable Pt4

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5100

Josh Stieber on the journey from studying "The Faith of George Bush"
to refusing to fight in Iraq

May 15, 2010

Transcript

Josh Steiber Interview (Part 4 of 4)

Transcribed from file JoshStieberPT4_0516_08-H.264 for
ARCHIVING-1.mov. Runtime 11:20:07 (SMPTE drop, 29.97 FPS).

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network.
I'm Paul Jay in Washington, and we're talking with Josh Stieber about
his journey from religious school, where he studied a book called The
Faith of George Bush, to joining the Army, going to Iraq, and then
applying for conscientious objector status. Thanks for joining us again.

JOSH STIEBER: Sure. Thanks.

JAY: So talk about that day or the few days or whatever leading up to
that application for conscientious objector status. This must've been
quite dramatic.

STIEBER: Yeah. Well, I actually didn't know what conscientious
objection was until I got back from Iraq and I knew I had to act.

JAY: So you finished your tour of duty.

STIEBER: Right, I finished my tour with all these questions going on
in my mind and knew I had to start changing things but wasn't sure
how extreme I would go with this until we got back and I got to spend
a month back home with my family. And that process for me literally
brought everything back home as I started to imagine all the
different things that we have done to other people's families for the
last 14 months going on to my family, and not just these big headline
catchers like, you know, what you see in the WikiLeaks video.
Obviously, that stuff goes on, but sometimes even the smaller things
of what we were doing on a day-to-day basis.

JAY: Like what?

STIEBER: Of searching through people's homes, and people would often
be disrespectful and that, and just, you know, you're told to search
for weapons, so you go in a house and you tear it apart looking for
weapons or anything suspicious. And I know, you know, people in my
neighborhood growing up who, if that happened to their home, they
would have some, probably, pretty passionate responses to that; and
other little things like, you know, if we were driving down the
street, somebody might think it was funny to swerve into a mud puddle
and splash an old lady with mud, or when we were going into a house
to pull the head off a baby doll that a kid was holding and hand it
back to the kid. And, again, it's like that's not going to make, you
know, the front page of the newspaper, but you start to think, well,
what if that was my mom that got splashed with mud, or what if that
was my little sister whose baby doll got ripped apart? How would I
feel about that? And so I got down to this very simple idea of doing
unto others, and I knew I wouldn't want other people to do to me.

JAY: Now, in this kind of culture that, you know, it's relatively
acceptable to shoot civilians, we've been told of stories that during
these house searches there's been quite a few killings, that people
thought there were weapons, or maybe they didn't and they shot
anyway. Did you experience any of that?

STIEBER: Not that I can remember offhand of something specifically in
a house search, but, again, it was sometimes even the smaller things
that would affect me, like just how we treated the locals when we
went into their house, and knew that if that kind of thing went on
back here, that, you know, most people I know would be up in arms
about that. You know, even some of the relatively minor things would
set people off.

JAY: So you're reaching kind of a crunch point for you, 'cause you're
going to have to decide if you're going back or not.

STIEBER: Right.

JAY: You start to discuss this with your parents. And what's the
reaction of your family?

STIEBER: Well, I knew that I had to do something, and this was still
before I knew what conscientious objection was. So the plan I had was
I was going to walk to the military pay headquarters in Indianapolis
and take enough time to be counted as AWOL, and turn myself in and
turn the money I had earned in, and say what I did was wrong, getting
paid for it was wrong, and if I need to finish my enlistment in
prison, then that's where I need to be. So I told my parents about
it, and then they kind of scrambled and tried to alert me of other
options and told me about conscientious objection and went through a
pretty big debate with myself about which option to go with and ended
up feeling that that was the right one.

JAY: And so what happens?

STIEBER: So I go back to the military base in the States, in Kansas,
and make the application and fill out all this paperwork and get
interviewed by a chaplain and a psychologist and an investigator, and
just go through all these interviews and all this writing. And then,
at the same time, I'm expected to carry out most of your normal
military duties. And that started towell, the first couple of weeks
went smoothly until it came time to go out to the ranges to train to
kill again. And like I had said earlier, part of that training was
that we would shoot at targets that looked like our stereotypical
Middle Eastor stereotypical enemy, a Middle Eastern man. And as I
had been debating with myself about this idea of conscientious
objection, and if it was ever justified to kill, or when I would
kill, and went back and again looked at the person who I claim to
have faith in and who Christianity is based off of, to paraphrase
him, he said, you know, it doesn't even matter if you physically
killed somebody; that if you even looked at somebody with hatred or
with judgment, then psychologically and spiritually you've already
killed that person. And so I tried telling my leaders that if I
believe that was true, then going out to the ranges and building this
racism towards the stereotypical-looking enemy and being told this is
what your enemy looks like, practice shooting him, practice killing
him, told them I couldn't reconcile the two. And that didn't go over
so well with one of my leaders, and he got really upset with me and
started calling me a terrorist and a traitor and a lot of interesting
names along with that that he knew. But it was actually a really
important challenge, I think, for me to see if I was going to live up
to all these things that I had been preaching and talking about. And
I just thought back to the lessons that we had learned in Iraq, that
every time we got confronted with violence and with anger and we
tried to respond in the same way, it might have solved the problems
for a day or two, but then it would eventually lead to an even more
intense attack. And so taking that same idea, I was definitely
tempted to yell back at my leader who was yelling at me, but I knew
it would make him yell louder and I would yell louder and nothing
would get accomplished. So just like I had seen, trying to understand
people who, again, thought very differently and had attacked us, I
had seen that create progress. I tried to take that same mindset in
dealing with this leader and tried to understand where he was coming
from and tried to work together with his concerns.

JAY: So you applied and received conscientious objector status. But
you did more than that. You started speaking out publicly about where
you've been, interviews like this. Why'd you go public? 'Cause you
must get some feedback from this. Okay, it's one thing not to do
something in terms of your own conscience, but by going public,
people must be accusing you of harming the military, perhaps even
saying you're going to endanger soldiers, talking this way.

STIEBER: Well, a lot of it had to do with the eventual reaction of
this particular leader whoI had never seen a person that angry as he
had been with me. But by trying to live out these things that I said
I believed on a day-to-day basis, ten months after I had made my
application he went from being absolutely furious at me to being able
to give me a hug and wish me good luck on my life after the military.
So I had seen that, you know, by practicing these things, that it had
transformed this big, you know, tough, high-ranking military guy. And
these ideas like compassionate and love and understanding have more
value than I think a lot of times we like to give them credit for. So
that's what started to motivate my speaking publicly. And I started
speaking publicly right after I got out, and wanted to say that not
only do I think war is the wrong answer, I think that so many people
who are in the military think that war is the only answer, and if I
am saying that war is wrong, I need to point people to other answers.
So I started a journey across the United States and spent three
months walking and three months on bicycle, visiting different
charities across the country, and trying to point people to other
ways of going about handling their issues and towards just being
proactive and trying to address issues before.

JAY: And what kind of reaction have you gotten from other military
people that are either out or still in?

STIEBER: For the majority, people have been pretty supportive. You
know, my friends who are still in the military have some fundamental
differences of belief with me, but still have respect for what I'm
doing and what I've said, and, you know, I have respect for their
desire to try to serve their country and try and do what they feel is
right. And seeing their dedication inspires me all the more to try and solve.

JAY: Are people surprised when they hear the stories of this, from
boot camp and once you're there, this sort of creation of the culture
of the acceptability of killing civilians?

STIEBER: Well, when I did this cross-country trip, the way I framed
it, I tried to really get people to think about it, but the way I did
it was that. I did a lot of public speaking, and the way I would
start my talks was I would get in front of an audience and ask them
if they cared about their family or their friends, and if they did,
to stand up with me. And the whole room would, you know, stand up.
And then I'd say, this was an important factor in the decisions that
I made, and along the way I was told a number of different things
would be in my best interest to say, and I'm going to pass that
wisdom along to you and tell you, by repeating after me, that it'll
be in your best interest. And I would lead them in that cadence about
killing women and children.

JAY: What is it again?

STIEBER: The whole thing? I went down to the market where all the
women shop/I pulled out my machete, and I began to chop/I went down
to the park where all the children play/I pulled out my machine gun
and I began to spray. And I could get rooms full of the most
dedicated peace activists and the most hardcore religious folks to
repeat these horrible lyrics, and it was really telling for me about
just the human psychology, that in a relatively low-stress
environment like that, they were saying these things because I was
telling him to and because of the peer pressure around them, and that
if we want to change things, it has to start out with something that
is very fundamental as just starting to ask questions and not going
along with everything that we're told to do. So I used that exercise
to, one, put people in the mindset of a soldier a little bit, that
here you stood up because you wanted to do something positive, to
care about the people around you; and then before you know it, you're
being asked to say these different things, and you start to
understand how people get to the point where they say those things.

JAY: And then do it. Thanks for joining us.

STIEBER: Sure. Thanks for having me.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Amnesty for Military War Resisters and Veterans

2010-04-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

Berkeley Supports Amnesty for Military War Resisters and Veterans

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2010-04-01/article/34966?headline=Berkeley-Supports-Amnesty-for-Military-War-Resisters-and-Veterans

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday April 02, 2010

The Berkeley City Council recently sent out letters to President
Barack Obama, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and Congressperson Barbara Lee recommending amnesty for
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan war military resisters and veterans.

The council approved the recommendation on a 7-0 vote March 9, with
two councilmembers, Gordon Wozniak and Susan Wengraf abstaining on
various grounds.

Although the resolution had initially been scheduled for vote on Feb.
23, it was postponed after some councilmembers said they had concerns
about the way it was worded.

A subcommittee comprised of councilmembers Kriss Worthington and
Linda Maio was formed to edit the language, which when finally
adopted said that the council supported "Universal and unconditional
amnesty for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan War military resisters
and veterans who acted In opposition to the war for matters of conscience."

The final resolution has some changes from the original passed by the
Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission last November.

The Berkeley City Council's resolution recommends that "all military
personnel, serving since Oct. 7, 2001, be granted universal and
unconditional amnesty amounting to forgiveness for all convictions or
pending charges of desertion or Absence Without Leave (AWOL) or
Unauthorized Absence (UA) if such leave or absence is determined to
be caused by matters of personal conscience in opposition to the
illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

It also recommends that military personnel convicted due to charges
resulting from exercising free speech about their opposition to the
wars in Iraq and Pakistan since Oct. 7, 2001 be granted amnesty for
those convictions.

The resolution supports amnesty for all veterans with less than
honorable discharges for absence offenses stemming from personal
conscience regarding opposition to the wars starting on or after Oct.
7, 2001. It calls for those veterans to have their "discharges
automatically upgraded to honorable discharges or to general under
honorable conditions and that those veterans be granted all benefits
otherwise due to them."

According to Peace and Justice Commission Chair Bob Meola, the
Berkeley City Council's resolution is the first time the topic of
universal unconditional amnesty has been approached since former U.S.
President Jimmy Carter granted unconditional amnesty amounting to
"full, complete and unconditional pardon" to draft resisters during
the Vietnam War."

"I hope this resolution will serve as a model and inspire cities and
towns across the United States to pass similar resolutions and ignite
a movement which will result in universal and unconditional amnesty
for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan war resisters and veterans," said
Meola, who wrote the original resolution. "The troops who have had
the courage to resist have been traumatized enough. They have
followed their consciences and deserve healing and support and
appreciation from people everywhere. The GI Resistance movement is
growing. Its members are heroes and heroes should be treated as
heroes as they are welcomed back into civilian society."

Wozniak, who abstained from voting, said that the original resolution
had been "very badly worded essentially giving any serviceman
unlimited amnesty for current or future violation of military rules."

"We currently have an all volunteer army; thus the analogy to the
Vietnam war is inaccurate, since during that conflict there was a
conscript army," Wozniak said. "Although the revised resolution was
more narrowly worded, I still disagree with some of the language.
While I believe that conscientious objectors have the right to refuse
to serve in combat, they also should bear the consequences of their decision."

Berkeley, which has been a sanctuary city for conscientious objectors
since 1991, became a sanctuary city for military resisters to immoral
and illegal wars in 2007.

U.S. Army deserter says he'd do it again

2010-03-23T15:54:00.001-07:00

[3 articles]

War deserter released from U.S. prison

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/01/16/cliff-cornell.html

January 16, 2010

An American soldier who had been serving time in a U.S. military
prison for desertion and who was granted an early release on
Saturday said he stands by his decision to oppose the war in Iraq
and wants to return to Canada.

"If I had to do it again I would, because I'm not killing innocent
people," Cliff Cornell told CBC News on the phone from Fayetteville,
N.C. "I still stand behind my decision 100 per cent.

"I am going to spend a few months with my family and then try to head
back to Canada. I have friends up there and a whole community for me
to come back to," he said.

Cornell, who held the rank of specialist, pleaded guilty to desertion
last April and was sentenced to one year behind bars at a prison at
the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

"Prison was rough," he said.

At the time of his sentencing, Cornell said he fled to Canada in
January 2005 a month before his 3rd Infantry Division unit was
scheduled to deploy to Iraq because he feared for his life and
couldn't stomach the thought of killing anyone.

Cornell, 28, spent four years in British Columbia before the Canadian
government denied him asylum as a war objector.

On Saturday, his Canadian supporters said they believed that a letter
writing campaign on Cornell's behalf helped shorten his time behind bars.

"Canadians successfully campaigned for the U.S. military to reduce
Cliff's sentence," Michelle Ribidoux of the War Resisters Support
Campaign said in a media release on Saturday.

The statement said the letter writing campaign began last May and
helped win "a slight but important reduction for Cliff."

--------

U.S. Army deserter says he'd do it again

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/01/17/US-Army-deserter-says-hed-do-it-again/UPI-60421263767988/

Published: Jan. 17, 2010

A U.S. soldier who opposed the Iraq War and was jailed for desertion
says he stands by his decision.

Cliff Cornell was released Saturday after spending less than a year
in prison on desertion charges. He told the Canadian Broadcasting
Corp. he would do it again because he is opposed to "killing innocent people."

The CBC said Cornell, 28, spent four years in British Columbia
starting in 2005 after deserting the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry
Division as it was readying to deploy to Iraq. The Canadian
government in February denied him asylum as a war objector and he was
imprisoned at the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Despite that, Cornell said from Fayetteville, N.C., "I still stand
behind my decision 100 percent," adding, "I am going to spend a few
months with my family and then try to head back to Canada. I have
friends up there and a whole community for me to come back to."

"Canadians successfully campaigned for the U.S. military to reduce
Cliff's sentence," Michelle Ribidoux of the War Resisters Support
Campaign said in a release issued Saturday.

--------

Army deserter who fled to Canada freed from U.S. prison

http://www.kelowna.com/2010/01/17/army-deserter-who-fled-to-canada-freed-from-u-s-prison/

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

An American army deserter who was deported from Canada thanked his
supporters in this country Saturday as he was released from a U.S.
prison adding he hopes to return to B.C.

Clifford Cornell was let out of his yearlong jail sentence about a
month early on the weekend following a letter-writing campaign that
he says probably helped secure his freedom.

"The support I got has been really overwhelming," Cornell told
Canwest News Service on Saturday.

"I very much want to try to come back to Canada."

Cornell, 28, made headlines as an army deserter and critic of the war
in Iraq while seeking refuge in Canada.

The 28-year-old grew up in the depressed Ozark mountain region of
northern Arkansas.

In 2002, while looking for work, he said he was lured by slick army
recruiters with money and the promise he wouldn't have to fight in a
war. He spent almost two years at Fort Stewart, Ga., before finding
out his 39th Artillery Regiment was about to ship out for Iraq.

Saying he didn't want to kill Iraqis, Cornell deserted and headed to Canada.

In this country, he spent nearly three years working at a grocery
store on Gabriola Island in British Columbia, making fast friends
with residents there.

Cornell applied to stay in Canada but was deported, then subsequently
jailed in the U.S. for desertion. He was sentenced to a one-year jail
term, a felony conviction that would have blocked his re-entry to Canada.

However, the U.S. Military Clemency and Parole Board granted him a
rare clemency reducing his sentence by a month after his lawyer
submitted an application with 63 letters of support from Canadians attached.

"I really think it helped," he said Saturday of the Canadian support,
several hours after his release.

"It's a bit overwhelming," he said. "It's been eight months of being
told what to do 24/7."

One of his first orders of business after his release was a meal and a movie.

"I went out to see the movie, Avatar, in 3D," Cornell said.

The time behind bars didn't change his mind about the war, Cornell said.

"I support the troops, but I don't support the war. I don't think
being over there in Iraq or Afghanistan is helping."

Cornell said he has no immediate time frame for when he might be able
to move back to B.C. First, he's headed home to Arkansas.

But he says he definitely wants to come back.

"I got a job waiting for me back in Gabriola," he said. "I have
really good friends, who are like family."

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Serve

2010-02-15T14:58:00.001-08:00

A Queer View on Why Gays Shouldn't Serve in the Military

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Serve

http://counterpunch.org/lucas02102010.html

By CECILIA LUCAS
February 10, 2010

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is bad policy. It encourages deceit and,
specifically, staying in the closet, which contributes to
internalized as well as public homophobia, thus perpetuating
discrimination and violence against LGBT people. Banning gay people
from serving in the military, however, is something I support. Not
because I'm anti-gay, nope, I'm one of those queer folks myself. I'm
also a woman and would support a law against women serving in the
military. Not because I think women are less capable. I would support
laws against any group of people serving in the military: people of
color, tall people, people between the ages of 25 and 53, white men,
poor people, people who have children, people who vote for Democrats
-- however you draw the boundaries of a group, I would support a law
banning them from military service. Because I support outlawing the
military. And until that has happened, I support downsizing it by any
means necessary, including, in this one particular arena, sacrificing
civil rights in the interest of human rights.

Civil rights would dictate that if a military exists, everyone,
regardless of race, gender, sexuality, class or religion, should have
an equal opportunity to serve in it. But human rights dictate
otherwise. Human rights do not support the equal right of everyone to
kill. They support the right of everyone NOT to be killed. (Or
occupied and exploited, another key function militaries carry out.)
As such, human rights are anti-military by nature.

I want to be clear that I'm not one of those knee-jerk anti-soldier
types. I grew up in a military family, spent many years bagging
groceries in an army commissary, lots of time on military bases – the
point is, as individuals, military personnel are as diverse a group
of people as are academics or artists, the other two groups of people
I've spent a lot of time around. Racism, sexism, homophobia,
poverty-by-design – these problems are institutionalized throughout
this country and you'll find people who accept the status quo as well
as those fighting the long slow battle against injustice in all
institutions, including the branches of the military. What makes the
military unique is not the individuals in uniform but the fact that
their job description, in the final instance, is to kill people.
Legally and explicitly. Killing is not the exclusive or even the most
frequent activity performed, but it is the ultimate threat, the
ultimate purpose of having armed forces.

It's sad that advocating for the outlawing of the military is widely
seen as naïve and utopian: after all, there are threats out there and
without a military we would be defenseless. It's ironic that many who
make that argument in support of the military also consider
themselves Christians. Even though, to my understanding, being a
Christian means "walking the Jesus path." And didn't Jesus refuse to
use arms (or to let family or friends do so on his behalf) even in
self-defense, even though that commitment resulted in his death? When
it comes down to it, though, I'm not as principled as Jesus. I
support the use of violence in slave uprisings and anti-colonial
movements. I imagine that I would kill someone who I witnessed in the
act of attempting to kill, torture or rape others or myself, if I had
the means and if that were the only way to stop that act from
happening. But what all of those situations have in common reflect a
way in which the U.S. military is rarely used: to stop brutality as
it is happening.

Queerness, broadly speaking, is a challenge to mainstream common
sense. Why should we buy into the mantra of it being necessary to
have a military? Or of American lives being so much more worthy than
the lives of others that "collateral damage" in the course of
preventing a possible attack on the U.S. is acceptable? Let's take
the Orwellian factor out of the term "defense" and restore that word
to its actual meaning: let's create a defense force that is ready to
respond and is only utilized when actual attacks are in-progress. Not
to enforce the unequal trade policies from which we benefit, not to
enforce the installment or removal of politicians to better serve
U.S. interests, not to prevent attacks on the U.S. And certainly not
to attack people who are not actively killing, enslaving, colonizing,
or torturing anyone. You can shoot down the plane as it is heading
for the World Trade Center, but not bomb targets you suspect of
harboring terrorists planning future attacks. Yes, that means risking
the possible death of innocent Americans in a future attack. But the
alternative is to guarantee the death of innocent non-Americans based
on conjecture.

There is a lot of talk about the military "protecting" Americans.
Frankly, a much better job of that will be done if the funds diverted
from scaling back the military to an actual defense force are
invested in universal health care, education, job-creation,
living-wage legislation, cancer research, and the like. Eradicating
poverty and ensuring health care will save far more lives every year
than so-called "national security." There are far too many Americans
who do, indeed, lead insecure lives. But terrorism is the least cause
of their condition – the more significant threats are domestic
policies that see their lives as acceptable collateral damage to an
increasingly unregulated capitalism of every man for himself. In
fact, the majority of young people who join the military do so out of
their own sense of insecurity and a desire to make a difference in
the world. They cite the military as the only option they see to
afford college and/or to receive a steady paycheck, and as a source
of meaningful work. Propaganda ensures that they can pursue this path
without going insane, by being led to believe that they are heroes,
nobly serving their country. But I believe that our country (not to
mention many other places in the world) is actually being done a
grave disservice by sacrificing such a large portion of our material
and human resources to the military. And it is a tragedy that so many
young people's desires to do good are preyed upon, manipulated
through fear-mongering nationalist ideology, and diverted into the
destruction of lives, the devastation of the planet, and the
perpetuation of inequality.

Instead of fighting for the right to serve in the military, let's
fight for the right of military service being prohibited. To increase
our national security. And for the protection of all our human
rights, globally.
***

Afterthought:

It is tricky to write an essay that accepts discrimination as a means
to an end. In what remains a homophobic, racist, sexist society, I
fear enabling a slippery slope of arguments for identity-based
discrimination. Although, of course, the entire notion of citizens
who are "protected" by a military discriminates against people based
on the identity factor of nationality. Hence my point about human
rights trumping civil rights. My argument that we should be fighting
against, not for, gay people's inclusion in the military is not
actually about gay people at all. Nor is it about wanting others to
do our dirty work for us. As I said, I think everyone should be
banned from military service. But if the goal is demilitarization,
fighting for even more people to have the right to join the military
makes no sense. There are plenty of other civil rights denied gay
people for which we still need to fight -- civil rights that do not
trample on others' human rights.
--

Cecilia Lucas lives in Oakland, California.

Veterans Call On Soldiers to Refuse Orders

2010-02-10T17:15:00.001-08:00

[2 articles]

A Real Anti-War Movement

http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2009/12/19/a-real-anti-war-movement?blog=226

12/19/09

March Forward!, www.marchforward.org a group of veterans and
active-duty members of the military, has called for all military
personnel to refuse deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their
objective is "to ensure that no more soldiers or civilians lose their
lives in these criminal wars."

March Forward!'s December 3rd announcement came in response to
President Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan. By
following in the footsteps of leaders of both major political parties
who have been culpable over the years for instigating illegal wars,
Obama's move signals that he, too, is choosing to put the interests
of an imperial elite above the needs of those who elevated him to the
presidency. No change here.

March Forward!'s call, on the other hand, represents a significant
change from the failed strategy of peace organizations who have been
petitioning our government to end these wars. March Forward! takes
anti-war efforts to a new level by recognizing that we, the people of
this nation, must take matters into our own hands.

March Forward! declares that they support "the right of all service
members to refuse illegal and immoral orders. Orders to deploy to
Afghanistan and Iraq are just that: illegal and immoral. We have no
reason to fight in these wars, and we have every right to refuse to
be a part of them."

Many Americans, however, have no understanding that there is a firm
legal basis for opposing these wars of aggression.

A key component, then, to galvanizing a massive resistance, both
within the military and without, might well be the launching of a
national campaign that uses a documentary film to connect the
violations of our Constitution to the misuse - and abuse - of our armed forces.

Such a film could interweave footage from the testimony of Winter
Soldiers delivered at a veterans' gathering in Silver Spring,
Maryland, in March 2008, with readings by ordinary Americans of
pertinent sections from our Constitution and relevant excerpts from
international agreements.

A recruit might open the film by reciting the oath of enlistment that
every inductee repeats upon entering military service. There is a
widespread belief, even among the armed forces, that a soldier's
primary duty is to obey the commander-in-chief, the president of the
United States. But the oath says otherwise. As has each president
upon his inauguration, every inductee swears, first and foremost, to
uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Winter Soldier testimony would set the stage for reading Article I,
Section 8, of our Constitution that clearly says that the legislative
branch has the power to declare war. Article VI states that treaties
signed by our presidents are the law of the land. This article binds
us to the Charter of the United Nations that spells out the two
conditions under which member nations may go to war.

A March Forward! vet might be the one to read the section from
Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that tells us that
the military is only obligated to obey lawful orders.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, which have been incorporated into the
U.S. Army Field Manual 26-10 (1956) are also pertinent because they
specify what an occupying force may or may not do while on foreign
soil. For instance, the execution of Saddam Hussein was illegal as
were the indiscriminate bombings of Iraq, the selling off of
state-owned enterprises, the construction of military bases, and the
setting up of a puppet government. To name a few.

March Forward! undoubtedly speaks for the 50,000 military personnel
(Pentagon figures!) who have gone AWOL since 2001 as well as the
thousands who have been quietly discharged.

The film might conclude by asking civilians to organize solidarity
rallies in their communities, to request that local governments pass
supportive resolutions, to find churches that would agree to be
sanctuaries, to set up discussion groups, and to demonstrate at
embarkation points.

An informational campaign like this has never been undertaken. Even
during the Vietnam War. However, we have new tools at our disposal.
Let's use them. Put this film up on YouTube. Use FaceBook and Twitter
to spread the word. Make DVDs to hand out wherever people gather.

When people both inside and outside the military share a common basis
of understanding about the legal and moral issues confronting us
then, and only then, will we have a resistance movement powerful
enough to stop these crimes against humanity.

--------

Veterans Group Calls On Soldiers to Refuse Orders to Deploy to
Afghanistan and Iraq

http://www.truthout.org/1214091

Monday 14 December 2009
by: Dahr Jamail

In response to President Barack Obama's announcement on December 1 to
deploy 30,000 additional troops to the occupation of Afghanistan, the
organization March Forward!, comprising both veterans and active-duty
members of the US military, has called on all soldiers to refuse
their orders to deploy.

"March Forward! calls on all service members to refuse orders to
deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq," reads a press release from the group
from December 3. "We offer our unconditional support and solidarity.
Join us in the fight to ensure that no more soldiers or civilians
lose their lives in these criminal wars."

Michael Prysner, a former corporal in the Army who served from
2001-2005 and a veteran of the occupation of Iraq, co-founded the
group with another Iraq war veteran, James Circello.

Truthout asked Prysner how he responds to those who believe a soldier
should always follow orders, no matter what.

"In my experience the majority of people joining the military today
join out of necessity, like money, jobs, help for their family, etc.,
so most don't join for ideological or patriotic reasons. Most are
driven into the military by economic conditions. We see this playing
out now, as people are joining in droves because of the economy."

Prysner added, "Yes, people do sign a contract to follow orders, but
those orders are wrong and unlawful. We want to educate people to the
fact that these are immoral orders, and they [soldiers] are being
used as muscle for corporations, to colonize the developing world,
and it's not legitimate. People who join and take this oath seriously
who think they are in [the military] to defend the US, this is not
what we are being used for in the military today."

Prysner has written about his experience in Iraq, "... there was no
computer screen separating me from the suffering civilian population.
I spent 12 months in Iraq, doing everything from prisoner
interrogations, to ground surveillance missions, to home raids. It
was my firsthand experiences in Iraq that radicalized me. I believed
I was going to Iraq to help liberate and better the lives of an
oppressed people, but I soon realized that my purpose in Iraq was to
be the oppressor, and to clear the way for US corporations with no
regard for human life."

After he separated from the Army in 2005, Prysner "understood that
the occupation I was a part of was a crime against humanity. I
understood that illegal conquering of Iraq was for profit, carried
out by a system that serves a tiny class of super-rich whose endless
drive for wealth is at the expense of working people in the United
States and abroad."

According to Prysner, the lessons he learned from being part of the
US occupation of Iraq taught him that, "I still had the same drive to
fight for freedom, justice and equality as I did when I joined, and I
understood that fighting for those things meant fighting against the
US government, not on behalf of it."

To those who call him and his organization "anti-American" and/or
"unpatriotic," Prysner has this to say:

"I would say that I have more in common with my sisters and brothers
in Iraq and Afghanistan than I do with these people in DC who've sent
us to war. If that's unpatriotic, then yes, I am. But patriotism and
racism are the only things the military has to fall back on to
convince people to do the things we are being asked to do today."

March Forward! was founded in 2008, and the aim of the organization
is "to unite all those who have served and who currently serve in the
US military, and who want to stand up for our rights and for that
which is right."

"We are new and growing," Prysner explained. "We have seen somewhat
consistent growth, and we're expecting this to accelerate now."

The group's statement from December 3 adds, "On December 1, we got a
clear order from President Obama. For many more years, we will be
sent to kill, to die, to be maimed and wounded, in a war where
'victory' is impossible, against a people who are not our enemies.
For over eight years, we have come home in coffins, in wheelchairs,
with our skin burned and with our days and nights haunted by the
trauma of war. We return home to a VA whose services are so
inadequate that active duty soldiers who succumb to suicide outnumber
those killed in combat."

James Circello is a former Army sergeant and veteran of the US
occupation of Iraq. Circello, who joined the military in 2001,
describes his experience in Iraq as follows:

"During the occupation of Iraq, the truth about what the United
States government has done to the country of Iraq became more
apparent. Open wastewater flowed through neighborhood streets where
children played soccer. Families were thrown out of their homes with
simple accusations from others. Vehicles were taken on sight by the
military if individuals couldn't provide proper documents claiming
they own the vehicle. These events and others helped in strengthening
my opposition to the so-called 'War on Terror.'"

In April 2007, Circello left his base in Vicenza, Italy, and went
absent without leave (AWOL) in protest of US policy in the Middle
East. In November 2007, he turned himself in to the military at Fort
Knox and was discharged within three days.

Circello has remained very active with his work against US Foreign
Policy, having worked with Iraq Veterans Against the War and the
group Courage to Resist before joining March Forward!.

Circello's decision to go AWOL was his way of refusing to deploy to
Afghanistan.

I had been fighting myself internally after my time in Iraq, about
whether to deploy again," he explained to Truthout, "I ended up back
in my old unit that was preparing to deploy, so at that moment I took
it into my hands, and decided I wasn't going to go kill Afghans that
had done nothing to me, or the American people. It was a defining
moment for me."

According to Pentagon figures, since October 2001, more than 50,000
soldiers from all branches of the military have gone AWOL.

John Raughter is the communications director for the American Legion,
an organization that describes itself as "a patriotic, war-time
veterans organization, devoted to mutual helpfulness," according to
its web site.

Raughter is clear about his stance on the rights of soldiers. "We
have an all-volunteer force," he explained to Truthout, "These are
not draftees. They swore an oath to obey the orders of the Commander in Chief."

According to Raughter, the American Legion does not, in any way,
support AWOL soldiers or those who refuse to deploy to Iraq or
Afghanistan. "Within reason, the military should be able to enforce
obedience. Obedience and order are critical for the military to do
its mission. People can't pick and choose which orders to obey and
which not to [obey]. If it's a lawful order, they are obliged to obey."

Yet the oath enlisted soldiers must take before being deployed, reads:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and
defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,
foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to
the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the
United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me,
according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So
help me God."

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, is the
co-author of "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of
Military Dissent" with Kathleen Gilberd. In the book, they write,
"Rules of Engagement limit forms of combat, levels of force, and
legitimate enemy targets, defining what is legal in warfare and what
is not. (They're also) defined by an established body of
international (and US) law that leaves no ambiguity."

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

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

Nevertheless, Raughter believes soldiers who are dissenting against
the occupations should have never joined the ranks. "If they are
ethically opposed to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would say that
most of these people have enlisted or reenlisted since the beginning
of the war. These wars were occurring when they made this oath of
enlistment. It should have come to their minds."

Circello's response to those who refer to their tactic of encouraging
soldiers to refuse deployment orders as being "unpatriotic or un-American?

"This is a tactic of demonization and we reject it," he explained,
"The corporations profiting in these wars don't care about America or
the American people. Is providing mercenaries to kill innocent people
overseas, and bombs to kill innocent people, is that American and
patriotic? The people who use these terms are demagogues. We can't
forget that America was a land of institutionalized slavery, slavery
was American, and folks like Dr. Martin Luther King, when they stood
up to racism were called un-American ... so the same thing happens
today. When you protest war, or call on soldiers to desert based on
their own interest, you are called un-American."

Prysner and Circello's organization has stated, "March Forward!
supports the right of all service members to refuse illegal and
immoral orders. Orders to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq are just
that: illegal and immoral. We have no reason to fight in these wars,
and we have every right to refuse to be a part of them."

Request to intervene in Hinzman appeal refused

2010-02-08T16:10:00.000-08:00

Quaker-Mennonite request to intervene in Hinzman appeal refused

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2010/02/c5900.html

TORONTO, Feb. 2 /CNW/ - Mennonite Central Committee Canada (MCCC) and
Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC) (Quakers) express
disappointment that the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) has rejected a
request to intervene in an appeal by US war resister Jeremy Hinzman.

Hinzman and family applied for permanent resident status in Canada on
humanitarian and compassionate grounds, but their application was
rejected. An upcoming appeal to the FCA will focus on whether
punishment for desertion from the military - if it was motivated by a
"deeply held" objection to war - could amount to "undue hardship" for
the purpose of a humanitarian and compassionate application.

The FCA refused CFSC-MCCC's intervention stating that they weren't
directly affected by the issue, wouldn't provide a "fresh
perspective", and that the Hinzmans' legal counsel could raise
relevant concerns.

Jane Orion Smith, General Secretary of CFSC, said, "The Court's
decision is profoundly disappointing. Quakers and Mennonites, the
core base of historic peace churches, have a unique and influential
role in establishing rights for conscientious objectors over several
centuries in Canada and internationally. During conscription, most of
our members sought exemption as conscientious objectors.
Conscientious objection is an issue of the present, not just history.
Jeremy Hinzman and his family are an active part of the Toronto
Quaker Meeting. Despite this setback, we will continue to educate and
advocate for the realization of this much misunderstood right which
is protected in domestic and international law."

CFSC and MCCC argued that because Jeremy Hinzman's conscientious
objection is rooted in his freedom of religion (and conscience),
there should be a different test for assessing his punishment for
holding those beliefs. It should not have to amount to "undue or
disproportionate" hardship. Any hardship for his beliefs could
potentially breach his religious rights, and the immigration officer
deciding his case had to consider his case in light of these rights.

Tim Wichert of Jackman & Associates, counsel for CFSC and MCCC, says:
"The Federal Court has specifically said that the issue of
conscientious objection still raises a host of outstanding questions,
begging for resolution. Because of their extensive experience with
this issue, we argued that Quakers and Mennonites had a unique
perspective to offer."

For further information: Tim Wichert (counsel), (905) 932-8914 or
(416) 653-9900 ext 228; Jane Orion Smith (CFSC), (416) 920-5213 or
(416) 356-5213

Canada No Longer a Haven for War Resisters

2010-01-13T16:03:00.001-08:00

Canada No Longer a Haven for War Resisters

http://www.truthout.org/canada-no-longer-a-haven-war-resisters56020

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/canada/100106/war-resisters

12 January 2010
by: Sandro Contenta

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is determined to send back the some 200
American asylum-seekers who have fled the Iraq war.

Toronto, Canada - Canada has long been a haven for Americans escaping
their wars.

During the American Revolutionary War in the late 1700s, an estimated
50,000 colonists who wanted to remain loyal to Britain fled north to
what would later become Canada. Thousands more crossed the border
during the Civil War, using an underground railroad that led escaped
slaves to freedom.

Canada's role as a sanctuary during the Vietnam War is well known.
The conflict spurred an estimated 50,000 Americans old enough for
military service to immigrate north, according to sociologist John
Hagan, author of "Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in
Canada." Hagan was among the draft dodgers and military deserters that did so.

Many Canadians would consider this tradition a noble one. But it has
come to an end.

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, some 200 American soldiers
have fled to Canada looking for asylum. The Conservative government
of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is determined to send them back.

Most war resisters in Canada are in hiding. The few who have applied
for refugee status have been turned down and ordered deported.

Two have so far been sent back: Robin Long, of Boise, Idaho, was
convicted of desertion by a military court in August 2008, sentenced
to 15 months in military prison and given a dishonorable discharge;
Cliff Cornell, of Mountain Home, Ark., pleaded guilty to desertion in
April and received a year sentence and a bad conduct discharge.

To avoid a similar fate, deserter Rodney Watson, a native of Kansas
City, was given sanctuary at Vancouver's First United Church on Sept.
18, a day after his request for refugee status was denied. Church
officials say Watson can stay as long as he likes.

On Christmas Eve, Watson published a letter in the Toronto Star. He
said he joined the army "for financial reasons" in 2004, after losing
his job. A recruiter, he says, promised he could work as a cook and
stay out of combat duty.

However, once deployed to Iraq in 2005, he spent a year scanning
vehicles and civilians for explosives. He says he witnessed incidents
where American soldiers treated Iraqis in a racist and physically abusive way.

Back in the U.S., he was told he would be "stop-lossed" redeployed
to Iraq and forced to stay beyond the time he signed on for. He fled
to Vancouver in 2007 and has since fathered a son with a Canadian he
plans to marry.

"I think being punished as a prisoner of conscience for doing what I
felt morally obligated to do is a great injustice," he wrote of his
failure to receive refugee status.

"I appeal to the Canadian government to honor your country's great
traditions of being a place of refuge from militarism and a place
that respects human rights by supporting my decision, and the
decisions taken by my fellow resisters to refuse any further
participation in this unjust war," he added.

Resisters commonly describe themselves as conscientious objectors to
an unjust war, one launched on false pretext, without the backing of
the United Nations. Amnesty International Canada describes freedom of
conscience as a fundamental human right, protected by international treaties.

Stephen Harper, when in opposition, supported the Iraq war. Now he
says it was "absolutely an error." But that doesn't cut war resisters
any slack with his government.

"Being a deserter from voluntary military service in a democracy does
not, in anyway, meet the standard international U.N. definition of a
refugee," Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told reporters recently.

On another occasion, he said: "We're not talking about draft dodgers,
we're talking about resisters. We're talking about people who
volunteer to serve in the armed forces of a democratic country and
simply change their mind to desert and that's fine, that's the
decision they have made, but they are not refugees."

Kenney has backed decisions made by the Immigration and Refugee Board
whose adjudicators are appointed by the government and shrugged
off widespread support to have the resisters stay.

An Angus Reid poll from June 2008 said 64 percent of Canadians
favored giving these U.S. soldiers the opportunity to remain in
Canada as permanent residents.

Harper's minority government is also disregarding two non-binding
motions passed by a majority of Members of Parliament in June 2008
and again in March calling on the government to stop all
deportation proceedings and allow resisters to stay.

A private member's bill that would have bound the government to do so
was stalled when Harper suspended Parliament last week until March 3.
Bills presented by individual Members of Parliament have
significantly fewer chances of being approved than government sponsored bills.

The Vietnam War years in Canada were a time of active nationalism.
The Liberal governments of the day made a point of demonstrating the
country's sovereignty, and its autonomy from American policy. Those
days are long gone.

Since 2003, when then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to join
the Iraq war, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have
bent over backward to assure American administrations that Canada
isn't a weak link in the "war on terror." American war resisters are
one of the groups paying the price.
--

Editor's note: This story has been corrected. The private member's
bill on deportations has stalled, not died. In addition, Cliff
Cornell received his sentence in April 2009.

Army deserter hopes for release

2010-01-11T15:47:00.001-08:00

Army deserter hopes for release

http://www.canada.com/Army+deserter+hopes+release/2293634/story.html

Cliff Cornell, jailed in a North Carolina military prison, hopes to
return to Gabriola Island

By Darrell Bellaart
December 2, 2009

A jailed U.S. Army deserter who spent more than three years on
Gabriola Island is waiting for word on a possible pre-Christmas
release from a North Carolina prison.

Cliff Cornell, who fled the U.S. for Canada to avoid serving in the
Iraq war, was sentenced to one year in jail for desertion in April,
but his lawyer, James Branum, recently applied for clemency and an
early release.

Under U.S. military rules, his commanding officer has the authority
to reduce his sentence.

Cornell, who grew up in a troubled family, ended up working for
Village Foods grocery store on Gabriola, where he was warmly welcomed
by the community.

He wants to return there. The one-year sentence is a problem because
in many U.S. states it's considered a felony, which would block his
return to Canada.

Branum applied for a sentence reduction earlier in November. He
included letters of support, many penned by Gabriola and Nanaimo residents.

That support hasn't waned on Gabriola as Cornell makes the best of a
bad situation.

Cornell hopes to spend Christmas in his native Arkanasas, then he can
start planning for his return to Gabriola.

"That's probably not going to happen but we can request it," said
Branum, whose company, GIRightsLawyer.com, works exclusively on the
behalf of military personnel.

"Our second request, if they won't allow that, at least knock one day
off his sentence, to less than one year and not be a felony."

Cornell, a quiet, reserved man, is getting along with guards and
staff at a military prison near Fort Bragg, N.C., but he is "cut of a
different cloth" than the "rough and ready" Marines who make up the
bulk of the prison population, said Branum.

"He's safe and all but he's not making any friends there."

Cornell's clemency application was sent about three weeks ago and
with it Branum attached 63 letters of support. Of those, 40 were
written by mid-Island residents, mostly Gabriolans.

Sheila Malcolmson considers herself a supporter and said she's
against deporting Cornell and other war resisters from Canada.

"I think we're very sympathetic to peace issues," Malcolmson said.

The Flying Shingle newspaper has taken an editorial position in
favour of allowing Cornell to stay, which is something publisher
Chris Bowers said resonates with the majority of Gabriolans.

"One thing I understand, Cliff was tricked into joining in the first
place because he was told he wouldn't have to go to Iraq so his trust
in authority was abused," Bowers said.

John Hall counts himself among the minority of Gabriolans in that he
"didn't disagree" with Cornell's deportation. But even Hall agrees
blocking Cornell's return to Canada would go too far.

"I think that would be too harsh a sentence to make him a felon,"
Hall said. "If he got a year less a day as far as I'm concerned he's
paid his price."

Branum said he hopes to hear back on the clemency application soon.

Iraq Veteran Finds Sanctuary in Canadian Church

2009-12-31T15:25:00.001-08:00

Iraq Veteran Finds Sanctuary in Canadian Church

http://www.truthout.org/1230095

30 December 2009
by: Gerry Condon

Rodney Watson is one of the bravest and nicest men I have had the
pleasure of meeting. He is an African-American from Kansas City,
Kansas. He is a very religious young man, 32 years old. His dream was
to one day have his own restaurant. In 2004, when an Army recruiter
told him he would be trained as a cook, he signed up for a three-year
hitch. When Watson was deployed to Iraq in October 2005, his
superiors told him he would be supervising the dining facility.
Instead, he was given an M16 rifle and told to search for explosives
on the perimeter of his base in Mosul.

The Army had not trained Watson to inspect or detonate explosives, so
he was unhappy with this assignment. But this was not all that was
bothering him. He was appalled at the blatant racism of some of his
fellow soldiers in Iraq. He saw US soldiers spitting upon and kicking
the Koran and beating Iraqi, even civilians. "I had to sit there and
watch it," he told the Vancouver Courier, "and my hands were tied."
He did not report the abuses. "I didn't want to be labeled a snitch -
not with people walking around with machine guns."

Watson finished his twelve-month tour of duty in October 2006 and
returned home, only to be told he would be going right back to Iraq.
His three-year contract with the Army would have ended in the spring
of 2007, but the Army was unilaterally extending it so that he could
complete another tour of Iraq. Rodney Watson was being "stop-lossed."

On a two-week leave, Watson pondered his situation and decided he
would not be a slave to the US Army or cannon fodder for the war in
Iraq. Instead, he left a goodbye note in his father's Bible and made
his way to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. The Army has since
charged him with desertion.

With the aid of the War Resisters Support Campaign in Vancouver,
Rodney Watson sought sanctuary in Canada as a political refugee who
would be persecuted for his beliefs if he were forced to return to
the US. Despite widespread support in Canada for US war resisters,
Watson was denied refugee status and the Conservative government of
Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered him deported.

The Canadian people have been much more welcoming than the Canadian
government. So Rodney spoke with Ric Matthews, pastor of the First
United Church in downtown Vancouver, a progressive congregation that
opens its doors every night to homeless people who would otherwise be
sleeping on the streets. Canadian churches have a long tradition of
granting sanctuary to refugees who are rejected by the politicized
refugee board but who truly do face persecution in their homelands.
Two US war resisters who have been deported from Canada, Robin Long
and Clifford Cornell, were court-martialed by the US Army, convicted
of desertion, and sentenced to 15 months and 12 months in prison,
respectively, as well as dishonorable discharges.

Pastor Matthews spoke to his congregation and they agreed to provide
Watson with sanctuary, the first time a Canadian church has done so
for a US war resister. Since mid-September, Watson has been living in
a custodial apartment in the church, where he has received a steady
flow of supporters, journalists and even Members of Parliament. So
far, the Canadian government has respected his church sanctuary.

Last week, Gerard Kennedy, a Liberal MP from Toronto, flew to
Vancouver to meet with Watson. Kennedy has introduced a bill in the
House of Commons that would grant sanctuary to US war resisters who
would not fight in the illegal US war and occupation of Iraq. If his
bill passes, it will be legally binding, unlike two similar
parliamentary motions that the Conservative government has chosen to ignore.

Watson's Canadian fiancé and their one-year old son are joining him
for the holidays and beyond.

I have had the good fortune of visiting Rodney Watson several times
in Vancouver, and I spoke with him recently to see how he is doing.
Although many Canadians know his story, very few people in the US are
aware of the stand that Rodney Watson is taking on behalf of all war
resisters. I asked Rodney if he would elaborate his story for an
American audience and he graciously agreed to do so.
--

Gerry Condon: Rodney, as an African-American man, you certainly
recognize racist behavior when you see it. How were you affected by
the racism you witnessed in Iraq?

Rodney Watson: The racism I witnessed in Iraq was something that
really angered me ... the mistreatment and abuse that some racist
soldiers or civilian contractors would afflict upon the Iraqi
civilians. The Army is full of good soldiers, but, as we all know,
there are some that just don't deserve to wear the uniform because of
their racial hatred.

At the same time as I was witnessing these crimes in Iraq, my fellow
Americans were still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina
- mostly poor black people. As I watched the military spend millions
of US dollars in a country that had no weapons of mass destruction,
people back home were begging for help after the storm from a
government that moved very slowly to aid those in need.

I now wish that President Obama, being African-American, will help
the youth that are killing each other every day in the streets of
America and concentrate on helping the American people that are in
need of jobs, housing, food and health care. Because I think these
problems are more important right now than WAR!

I pray that God will direct the steps of the president and change his
mind on certain issues and for him to use the Love and popularity he
has received to rebuild America instead of "nation building" in the
Middle East.

What part of your story are the media not telling?

Watson: The media are not telling the story of the racism that I
witnessed directly. There was a soldier in my unit in Iraq who was
caught dealing drugs to an undercover military C.I.D. agent and the
result was that every black soldier in my unit had to report to a
formation to be questioned and fingerprinted by the FBI. Why didn't
they just detain him when the deal went down instead of treating all
the black men in my unit like potential CRIMINALS!!!!!!!!!

What would you like to say to the American people?

Watson: My message of PEACE to the people of the US is that we can
achieve Peace if we truly reach out to our enemies with diplomacy and
stop fighting, instead of risking the lives of these Brave Men and
Women to fight low-level fighters who attack and then run and hide.

To take the notion that America is ONE NATION UNDER GOD seriously and
rebuild the US into a land of equal treatment among all of the
different races of America with Love and true unity. In all honesty,
the KKK are Terrorists. Those who would kill their fellow man over
money or drugs are Terrorists. The people in power who sit in their
big fancy houses and just watch black youth kill each other are
Terrorists. What I'm saying is that we have a lot of problems in our
own country that are of a GREAT EMERGENCY. The people are crying out
for HELP!!!

Do you have a message for your fellow soldiers?

Watson: My message to the soldiers is that I pray for your safety,
even the ones who might think I'm some kind of coward or traitor. I
pray that the Lord of Lords and King of Kings Jesus Christ will keep
you all under his protection and your families as well. It has been
an honor to serve alongside most of you I have encountered in the
Army. And I know the bad apples will have to answer to God one day.
Even the ones in high places who led us into battle based on lies
will answer to God almighty for their LIES. Last but not least, I
pray that the Lamb of God will put an end to wars that you all are
involved in, for JESUS is the Prince of Peace and not The Prince of War!!

What kind of support are you receiving and what are your immediate needs?

Watson: I have the basics here living in Sanctuary, but if any
creative minds can and want to help me, I would highly appreciate it.
I have a son who is one year old. He and his mother are my heart and
soul and they are put before any of my needs. It is hard for me to
ask for help when I know there are many people in the US who are in
greater need than I. But if there are those who wish to give a
helping hand, I would be ever so grateful.

What would you like for Christmas?

Watson: All I want for Christmas is to turn on the TV after helping
my son open his gifts, to be joined together by his mother on the
sofa with maybe some hot cocoa, and see President Obama say that he
changed his mind and that he is bringing our men and women HOME!!!!!!

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Watson: I signed up for three years in the Army and served over two
and a half years and completed a one-year tour in Iraq. When I
returned to Fort Hood, Texas, my unit was informed that we were to
redeploy again to Iraq or Afghanistan within four months. I must say
that I was upset about risking my life again for a war I did not
understand or agree with, especially after seeing the things I saw
over in Iraq. I am not a coward, I would not have a problem fighting
a war against anyone who is a direct threat to our borders or who
could harm my family or fellow Americans. I would be on the front
lines for that.

My prayers go out to the soldier who is now imprisoned for a rap song
he made that expresses his anger about being stop-lossed, because,
just like him, I signed up for three years and I left before the
military could stop-loss me. I feel his pain because while at Fort
Hood I would see young men and women whose dreams of being civilians
again were stolen from them when they were ordered to redeploy. Some
took it with stride, while many others talked about suicide because
they wanted out that badly.

I have laid down my sword and I have taken up my cross. Now my fight
is for Love, Peace and Freedom. I no longer walk by sight but by
Faith, and I Know God is the only one who can truly Judge me.
--

Rodney Watson is one courageous man, indeed. But none of us can make
it alone. He and all the war resisters need and deserve our active
support. By supporting war resisters, we can also speed the end of
the illegal wars and occupations being pursued by the US government
and military and their corporate sponsors. And we begin to heal the
wounds of war that are affecting our entire society.

Please send Rodney Watson a New Year's card and maybe a gift for his
son. His mailing address is: Rodney Watson, c/o First United Church,
320 East Hastings St., Vancouver, BC V6A 1P4, CANADA. You can also
say hi to Rodney on his Facebook page, War Resister in Sanctuary.

The US Military is 'Exhausted'

2009-12-27T12:30:00.001-08:00

The US Military is 'Exhausted'

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/26-1

by Sarah Lazare
Published on Saturday, December 26, 2009 by Al-Jazeera

The call for over 30,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan is a
travesty for the people of that country who have already suffered
eight brutal years of occupation.

It is also a harsh blow to the US soldiers facing imminent deployment.

As Barack Obama, the US president, gears up for a further escalation
that will bring the total number of troops in Afghanistan to over
100,000, he faces a military force that has been exhausted and
overextended by fighting two wars.

Many from within the ranks are openly declaring that they have had
enough, allying with anti-war veterans and activists in calling for
an end to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some active
duty soldiers publicly refusing to deploy.

This growing movement of military refusers is a voice of sanity in a
country slipping deeper into unending war.

"They shifted me from one war to the next"

Eddie Falcon, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran
The architects of this war would be well-advised to listen to the
concerns of the soldiers and veterans tasked with carrying out their
war policies on the ground.

Many of those being deployed have already faced multiple deployments
to combat zones: the 101st Airborne Division, which will be deployed
to Afghanistan in early 2010, faces its fifth combat tour since 2002.

"They are just going to start moving the soldiers who already served
in Iraq to Afghanistan, just like they shifted me from one war to the
next," said Eddie Falcon, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War
(IVAW), who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Soldiers are going to start coming back with Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD), missing limbs, problems with alcohol, and depression."

Many of these troops are still suffering the mental and physical
fallout from previous deployments.

Rates of PTSD and traumatic brain injury among troops deployed to
Iraq and Afghanistan have been disproportionately high, with a third
of returning troops reporting mental problems and 18.5 per cent of
all returning service members battling either PTSD or depression,
according to a study by the Rand Corporation.

Marine suicides doubled between 2006 and 2007, and army suicides are
at the highest rate since records were kept in 1980.

Resistance in the ranks

US army soldiers are refusing to serve at the highest rate since
1980, with an 80 per cent increase in desertions since the invasion
of Iraq in 2003, according to the Associated Press.

These troops refuse deployment for a variety of reasons: some because
they ethically oppose the wars, some because they have had a negative
experience with the military, and some because they cannot
psychologically survive another deployment, having fallen victim to
what has been termed "Broken Joe" syndrome.

Over 150 GIs have publicly refused service and spoken out against the
wars, all risking prison and some serving long sentences, and an
estimated 250 US war resisters are currently taking refuge in Canada.

This resistance includes two Fort Hood, Texas, soldiers, Victor
Agosto and Travis Bishop, who publicly resisted deployment to
Afghanistan this year, facing prison sentences as a result, with
Bishop still currently detained.

"There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan," wrote Agosto, upon
refusing his service last May. "The occupation is immoral and unjust."

Within the US military, GI resisters and anti-war veterans have
organised through broad networks of veteran and civilian alliances,
as well as through IVAW, comprised of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

This organisation, which is over 1,700 strong, with members across
the world, including active-duty members on military bases, is
opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and openly supports GI resistance.

"Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on Obama to end the war in
Afghanistan (and Iraq) by withdrawing troops immediately and
unconditionally," wrote Jose Vasquez, the executive director of IVAW,
in a December 2 open letter.

"It's not time for our brothers and sisters in arms to go to
Afghanistan. It's time for them to come home."

No clear progress

GI coffee houses have sprung up at several military bases around the
country. In the tradition of the GI coffee houses of the Vietnam war
era, these cafes provide a space where active duty troops can speak
freely and access resources about military refusal, PTSD, and veteran
and GI movements against the war.

"Here at Fort Lewis, we've lost 20 soldiers from the most recent
round of deployments," said Seth Menzel, an Iraq combat veteran and
founding organiser of Coffee Strong, a GI coffee house at the
sprawling Washington army base.

"We've seen resistance to deployment, mainly based on the fact that
soldiers have been deployed so many times they don't have the
patience to do it again."

As the occupation of Afghanistan passes its eighth year, with no
clear progress, goals that remain elusive, and a high civilian death
count, this war is coming to resemble the Iraq war that has been
roundly condemned by world and US public opinion.

The never-ending nature of this conflict belies the real project of
establishing US dominance in the Middle East and control of the
region's resources, at the expense of the Afghan civilians and US
soldiers being placed in harm's way.

The voices of refusal coming from within the US military send a
powerful message that soldiers will not be fodder for an unjust and
unnecessary war. By withdrawing their labour from a war that depends
on their consent, these soldiers have the power to help bring this
war to an end, as did their predecessors in the GI resistance
movement against the Vietnam war.

And the longer the war in Afghanistan drags on - the more lives that
are lost and destroyed - the more resistance we will see coming from
within the ranks.

Sarah Lazare is an anti-militarist and GI resistance organiser with
Dialogues Against Militarism and Courage to Resist. She is interested
in connecting struggles for justice at home with global movements
against war and empire.

The Best Way to Stop a War ...

2009-12-23T12:08:00.001-08:00

Get the Soldiers to Refuse to Fight It

The Best Way to Stop a War

http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs12222009.html

By RON JACOBS
December 22, 2009

I read today (December 22, 2009) that the last bunch of US Marines in
Iraq are scheduled to leave early next year. As everyone knows, this
means that more than 120,000 US troops will still be in Iraq after
that Marine unit's departure. In addition, there will be tens of
thousands of US-paid mercenaries, CIA operatives and other
personnel. No one knows when or if these people will leave that
country. It's hard to believe that the United States has been waging
some kind of war against that nation since 1991. Whether it was the
original attack on January 16, 1991 that ended in the slaughter on
the Highway of Death, the years of deadly sanctions or the renewal of
outright hostilities and occupation that began with the shock and awe
attacks in March 2003, the people of Iraq have felt the wrath of US
military power. This nineteen-year campaign has destroyed the
infrastructure of the Iraqi nation and much of the social fabric of
its people. What follows is a reflection on one of the earliest
protests against the war in 1990.

December 8, 1990 was a beautiful day in Olympia, WA. Once again,
people throughout the world were massing in large numbers to express
their opposition to what seemed to be an inevitable war in the
Persian Gulf. In Olympia, over five hundred people had gathered in
Sylvester Park. This was almost twice the number that had made it to
the October 20th demonstration.

As antiwar organizer and Army veteran Greg Bye wrote in his report
for the local left-wing monthly Works In Progress: "the rally and
march was spirited˜and well received [as] leaflets were taken by most
everyone who was offered one." Many of the speakers were familiar
faces by now, yet one of them-a young man I'll call Hugo-gave the
most powerful talk of the day. Hugo was one of those guys who still
believed that America was a good country. He had joined the Marines
because he wanted to and had served proudly. However, he couldn't
deal with a war that was so obviously about markets and profit. This
led him to decide that not only would he refuse to go should his
reserve unit be activated, he would also oppose the war as loudly as
he could. As time went on, it was apparent that he had an innate
ability to reach young (and older) folks who were nervous around the
more garishly outfitted and culturally extreme protesters and
organizers. In other words, he was best at reaching people from
middle America who liked being from middle America. The part of his
speech that sticks in my mind to this day went like this:

"I'm here today with a troubled heart. This morning one of my best
friends from Evergreen (college) left; not because he doesn't want to
be here; not because he is not intelligent enough to be here; not
because it's the holiday season and school's out so he can go home to
his family. He left because he serves in the reserves and George
Bush has decided his life is less valuable than words like oil. He
must leave the peace of home because George has decided to send our
armies overseas to make the world safe for feudal monarchy. Some
would claim that my friend must be a warmonger to enlist, so why
should the peace movement worry? But those of us who are his friends
know this is wrong. He must go because he does not have the money to
be in college without the GI Bill. Not having money for an education
should not be a death sentence in our society."

Hugo had hit it right on the head. Many folks in the antiwar
movement, whether they were anarchist or some kind of liberal
pacifist, assumed a moral superiority over those in the
military. This had been a problem during the Vietnam war as well,
yet most organizations overcame it. Without the military draft,
however, this arrogance had returned. Many folks who held this
opinion either did not understand the economic reality of a system
that forced working class young people to choose between a dead end
job and the military once they left high school, unless they somehow
lucked into a substantial scholarship for college. Those folks who
had developed a working class consciousness knew that this lack of
choice constituted what some on the Left termed an economic draft.

Having lived in a military environment the first eighteen years of my
life made it easy for me to sympathize with most service women and
men. Hell, my parents had hired GIs to babysit us when I was a
youngster on a small USAF station in Peshawar, Pakistan. When I was
in high school over in Germany I used to listen to rock concerts and
smoke hash with several GIs. After all, we were only two or three
years apart in age. This identification with their situation,
especially after working with antiwar servicemen and women in
Frankfurt am Main as a newsletter distributor for the local chapter
of Fuck The Army (FTA) and later as a friend of some of the members
of the Laurel, Maryland chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War
(VVAW), led me to quickly defend GIs whenever some movement person
started to call them baby killers or something similar. The best way
to stop a war is to get the soldiers to refuse to fight it.

On the other side of the coin, however, the yellow ribbon campaign to
support the troops (which was just in its infancy in December) was
difficult to swallow. If one was against the war, then it was
ridiculous to suggest that (s)he could support the troops' presence
in the Gulf since they were there to fight a war. As for the
government and the media behind the yellow ribbon phenomenon, their
call was pure hypocrisy. They cared less about the troops than
anyone, otherwise they would not have supported their going to the
Middle East in the first place.

Celebrating desertion

2009-12-20T12:10:00.001-08:00

Celebrating desertion

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/celebrating-desertion-219

By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 12 Nov, 2009

IT may seem sinister but it is commonplace. Frenzied soldiers shoot
their fellow officers, also comrades, all the time. Or they desert
armies they otherwise served loyally. The more senior officers plot
military coups.

Sven Kempe and his wife Ann-Charlotte would favour desertion any day
to bloodletting. In the 1960s, the Swedish couple ran a virtual
asylum though they called it a commune for American army
deserters. It was located in a scenic spot in Uppsala, not far from Stockholm.

Sven belongs to a wealthy industrialist family and heads a textiles
business in Sweden. His burly frame and capitalist pedigree mask a
gentle, giving human being. He speaks with nostalgia about the days
when a successful anti-war movement raged from Europe to the United
States. And he became an important part of it. The commune they ran
won the couple many friends from far and near.

Among them was their last week's host in Delhi, a common friend at
whose farmhouse I met the couple over a lazy late afternoon lunch. My
interest was mainly to find out what opinions the more neutral
observers had managed to form of Major Nidal's murder of 13 fellow
soldiers at Fort Hood. What I got in return was a glimpse into the
tragic story of the US army's Major Jerry Bhagwan Das.

Bhagwan Das was an Indian orphan who somehow found himself cleaning
ships in Thailand. That was when an American naval officer and his
childless wife spotted him. They adopted the boy and brought him up
as an American patriot who would join the army. Jerry, as he came to
be called, was so good at his work that he was inducted as a member
of an elite force in Vietnam. He killed many Vietcong guerrillas and
civilians; too many, as he later told his friends.

During an R&R break in Germany in 1969, Jerry escaped to Stockholm,
which had become a sanctuary for deserting soldiers from the US army.
Often when the soldiers subsequently wanted to return home, even when
they were prepared to face the stigma and punishment (as pugilist
Muhammad Ali did for dodging the draft) they were set humiliating
conditions. They had to say their return was prompted by their
mistreatment in Sweden, which was a lie.

At the commune, Jerry befriended a Swedish girl and both were happy
together. Then, very quietly, almost stealthily, he one day doused
his body with kerosene and set himself on fire. His friends rushed to
save Jerry but he perished in hospital after a brief struggle. Sven
doesn't quite know why the young officer took his life but their
horrific deeds in Vietnam did haunt many of his guests from the
world's most powerful army.

Sven and Ann-Charlotte celebrated the desertion by the soldiers
because they were opposed to the Vietnam War. If asked, they would
also consider desertion the only proper way for the licensed killers
to atone for their deeds. The alternative is too forbidding to
contemplate. There must be so many Major Nidals lurking inside the
most disciplined armies across the world. They are just waiting to be
provoked.

It would be interesting to find out if there were peaceful ways for
Major Nidal Malik Hasan to say 'no' to a proposed assignment in
Afghanistan without being branded a deserter, an option he did not
choose. This is assuming that he is not an Al Qaeda-like fanatic,
which he is being made out to be.

Al Qaeda and Taliban, though they lend themselves easily to the
description, are not the only fanatics in the business of
bloodletting. Not too long ago it was routine for violent military
coups to be staged at the behest of powerful democracies. A lot of
innocent blood was spilt and still continues to be wasted.

Desertion and killing of fellow officers has a history. Patriots in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh rejoice in the great sepoy mutiny of
1857 against the British. On their part, the British bribed or
coerced local chieftains to switch sides not always without a bloody
mess. There is at least one familiar instance of a Gandhian leader
who exhorted the military to revolt, albeit peacefully, against a
rival civilian despot.

The exact phrase that Jaiprakash Narayan used in urging India's
security forces to rebel against Indira Gandhi's authoritarianism is
a matter of dispute. But bereft of the semantics involved it was
nothing short of a call to mutiny. However, Mrs Gandhi found a good
ruse in the exhortation and suspended democracy before she realised
her mistake and called elections, which she lost.

In India, it is not infrequent to hear of regular soldiers and
paramilitary troopers, particularly in the punishing terrain of
Kashmir, turning their guns on fellow officers. The Sikh rebellion in
Punjab of the 1980s shook the Indian army to its core but that was
not the end of the matter. It was Mrs Gandhi's vetted security
guards, in the sanctum sanctorum of the state's authority, who
murdered her in revenge for a military assault on the Golden Temple
in Amritsar.

Pakistan of course lost a large chunk of its army when many of its
officers became embroiled in the political turmoil that led to
Bangladesh. From the 1951 Rawalpindi case, which involved officers
and communist leaders in a plan to overthrow the state, to a more
eerie assassination plot against Gen Musharraf, Pakistani soldiers
have had their share of infidelity and bloody-mindedness. Reported
desertions by Pakistani soldiers during their ongoing war with the
Taliban were probably a more agreeable statement to make than the
unimaginable horrors of bloody subversion from within.

Of all the desertions that took place in history, the First World War
saw possibly the highest toll. As the seemingly endless war went on,
desertion and mutinies became an increasing problem. To deal with the
problem, commanders began tying deserters and mutinous troops to
poles where they would be executed by firing squad. The British shot
320 men and the French 700. The Germans shot about 50, according to
one estimate.

While it will deal with Major Nidal according to its sovereign laws,
the United States has been less than generous with rebels even from
rival armies. It induced large-scale desertions from the Iraqi army
following their 1990-91 conflict. Around 4,000 Iraqi deserters were
sent back to Iraq against their will in 1992 only, according to a
Canadian document.

"Some countries of resettlement, such as the US, were sensitive about
the security risk involved in the operation and were conducting
extensive background checks for criminal elements among the
candidates for resettlement," the document by the Immigration and
Refugee Board of Canada stated. "For example, the US decided to
refuse all Iraqi army officers." Sven and Ann-Charlotte still have a
job to do. They can start refurbishing their fabled commune.
--

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

AWOL in Vancouver

2009-12-15T16:21:00.001-08:00

AWOL in Vancouver

http://www2.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=6490531e-b2d9-4e1e-ab9a-511a51ef106e

Facing a second tour in Iraq, U.S. army corporal Rodney Watson fled
to Canada and now lives in the First United Church on East Hastings
while his government presses for his return

Janaya Fuller-Evans
November 13, 2009

Rodney Watson, a fugitive soldier originally from Kansas City, Mo.,
stands in the cramped kitchen of his one-bedroom apartment at the
back of The First United Church on Hastings Street.

A stocky black man with a chin-strap beard, 31-year-old Watson is
dressed casually in a black shirt and jeans, and sports a burgundy
baseball cap. A dog tag with the impression of a cross dangles from
his neck as he browns ground beef in a pot on the small stove. He is
making spaghetti for one.

It is a far cry from preparing food in his own restaurant, which was
Watson's dream when he joined the army and became a corporal at the
beginning of 2004. Instead, the American soldier was deployed to Iraq
in October 2005.

He was put on guard duty, carrying an M16 rifle and surveying the
perimeter of his base in Mosul, searching for explosives under
vehicles, and guarding Iraqis. When he signed up at the recruiting
station in Connecticut, he was told he'd be a cook. "I asked my
higher ups before I went," Watson says. "They said I'd be supervising
the dining facility."

He never made it to the kitchen. He was given a weapon, a
walkie-talkie and told to keep the peace between Sunni and Shiite
Muslims in the Iraqi holding area on his military base. "Some of them
had knives on them," Watson says, "these traditional, curved knives
that they carry."

Watson hadn't gone to Iraq thinking he'd be safe--dining facilities
have been targeted and blown up--but he joined the U.S. Army as a
career move. He thought working as an army cook would be a good first
step to owning a restaurant, as he didn't have restaurant experience.

The economic climate changed after 9/11, he says. Previously, he'd
been the supervisor at Calibre Auto Transport in Kansas City, but was
laid off. He went to Connecticut to find work.

Watson wasn't trained to physically inspect or detonate explosives
during basic training in the spring of 2004 and never expected that
would be his job once he got to Iraq. It wasn't just the assigned
duties that made him question his decision to join. It was the
blatant racism he says he saw in Iraq--U.S. soldiers spitting on and
kicking the Koran, and beating Iraqis, even civilians. "I had to sit
there and watch it," Watson says, "and my hands were tied."

He didn't report what he saw because of the hostility he'd face. "I
didn't want to be labelled a snitch--not with people walking around
with machine guns."

Watson finished his 12-month tour of duty in October 2006 and returned home.

He was informed at the end of 2006 that he was going right back, even
though that would extend his service beyond his three-year contract,
part of the U.S. military's stop-loss policy. Watson's contract would
have ended in the spring of 2007.

Watson fled to Canada at the end of a two-week leave, living first in
north Burnaby and then moving to Vancouver's East Side. He has since
been charged with desertion.

Watson encountered a very different political climate in Canada than
what he expected.

Fugitive soldiers from the U.S. are discovering that Canada's welcome
mat has disappeared since Vietnam. Whereas thousands of Vietnam draft
dodgers (approximately 20,000 to 30,000 draft-age men immigrated to
Canada during the Vietnam War) were given permanent resident status,
few Iraq War-era soldiers have been allowed to stay.

Watson was eventually ordered to leave the country Sept. 11, 2009,
after two deportation stays during the summer.

A fugitive in Canada and the U.S., Watson sought refuge at the First
United Church on East Hastings after meeting Rev. Ric Matthews at a
press conference. Matthews says taking Watson in is part of church tradition.

Watson asked Matthews for sanctuary to avoid deportation. Matthews
offered him a former caretaker's apartment in the church, noting the
church is well known for providing refuge to those who need it in the
Downtown Eastside, primarily through the on-site emergency shelter.
"This is not a new concept for First United," Matthews says,
mentioning a Fijian woman who asked for sanctuary in 1998 and stayed
for more than 10 months. "It is 2,700 years old as a church tradition."

The church board and congregation supported the decision, Matthews
says. "It is about whether justice would better be served by putting
a pause in the momentum of what's happening to an individual."

Canada has a history of supporting conscientious objectors, Matthews
says, and Parliament voted twice last year on non-binding motions to
allow conscientious objectors of wars not sanctioned by the U.N. to
stay in Canada. The Conservatives did not support the motions.

Because of this, Watson's situation deserves further consideration,
he argues. "It would seem there's a least a prima facie case that it
might be unjust," he says, "that it at least be reconsidered."

This reasoning was also behind the formation of the War Resisters
Support Campaign following the arrival of former U.S. soldier Jeremy
Hinzman in Toronto in 2004. Hinzman was the first U.S. soldier to
file a refugee claim in Canada because of the Iraq War. There are
about 50 soldiers in Canada who entered the country after going AWOL
in the U.S., according to the group, though numbers are hard to track
because there may be more in hiding.

They are considered war resisters by their supporters, and deserters
by the American military. However, until they have been legally
convicted of desertion, it is difficult to know what to call the
fugitive soldiers.

The U.S., like many countries, doesn't allow selective conscientious
objection as a reason to leave the army or avoid serving overseas.

Sarah Bjorknas, Vancouver coordinator for the War Resisters, says the
point is to support former soldiers who don't want to be part of an
illegal war. "The U.S. military doesn't allow people to say, 'I won't
participate in this action'," she says, adding that this policy
requires soldiers to be part of a war even if the UN doesn't sanction it.

In September of 2004, then United Nations secretary general, Kofi
Annan, declared publicly that the Iraq War breached the UN Charter.
Watson joined the army a year later.

The group also supports soldiers who have had stop-loss contract
extensions, like Watson, which the War Resisters view as unfair.

The War Resisters have provided support and advocacy for 12 U.S.
soldiers trying to stay in Canada, including Hinzman, convicted
deserter Robin Long and Kimberly Rivera, the first female U.S.
soldier to flee to Canada.

Rivera arrived in Ontario in 2007 with her husband and two children.
Now a mother of three living in Toronto, Rivera was granted a
temporary stay in August so she can have a new pre-removal risk
assessment done to review her risk of punishment as an opponent of
the Iraq War.

The campaign is supporting Watson's application for permanent
residence based on humanitarian or compassionate grounds. Watson has
also been supported by a number of local politicians. On Aug. 12,
seven B.C. NDP members of Parliament wrote the Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration, Jason Kenney, asking him to intervene in
Watson's case. Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East, was one of the
signatories and says she will continue to support Watson in his fight
to stay. "I believe he has a legal reason to seek refugee status in
Canada," says Davies, noting that Watson's situation is more
difficult than it appears. "He's taking on this whole system. It's
obviously a very hard decision to make."

Many people support his decision, Davies says. She points to an Angus
Reid poll conducted in June 2008 with 64 per cent of Canadians
supporting permanent residence for fugitive soldiers. "Canada has a
history of welcoming war resisters," Davies says.

But, she adds, the current government, particularly Immigration
Minister Jason Kenney, does not. "But I'm an optimist. I hope that,
with all these efforts combined, Rodney will be able to stay in Canada."

Kelli Fraser, Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokesperson, says
there is a thorough process for determining permanent residence
claims on the basis of humanitarian or compassionate grounds.
"Refugee protection claims, including those made by U.S. military
deserters, are generally referred to the Immigration Refugee Board
which is an independent decision-making body," Fraser explains.

Decision-makers must determine that the applicant has a well-founded
fear of persecution.

Or, "if removed, would be subjected to a danger of torture or a risk
to life or of cruel and unusual treatment or punishment."

Fraser said Watson could have his case reviewed by a federal court,
even if he is staying in Canada after ignoring a deportation order.
The Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for removing Watson
following the deportation order.

Lt. Col. Nathan Banks, spokesperson for the Pentagon, said Watson
faces immediate arrest from customs as soon as he enters the U.S. He
would be taken to the county jail, and an extradition team would be
sent to pick him up within 30 days.

He would be read his rights and charges, and returned to his home
unit in Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 people were killed and another 29
wounded last week in a shooting spree. An army psychiatrist, Maj.
Nidal M. Hasan, has since been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder.

But his commanding officer would ultimately decide how his case would
be handled--he could be ordered to return to his unit, or court martialed.

"They may determine the soldier committed the offence but the best
punishment is for him to stay in the army," Banks says in a phone
interview. "This is not a cookie cutter situation."

Desertion is considered such a serious offence because it damages the
unit, Banks says. "In times of war, the maximum penalty is death,
that's how serious it is."

It can damage morale and degrade continuity, he adds.

"Someone else has to pick up the slack," Banks says. "You're letting
down your unit."

Even if the U.S. completely pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan
tomorrow, Banks says, Watson would still be arrested.

"He still deserted his unit."

Anyone who joins the army is told they have to defend their country
and serve as soldiers, no matter the job description, Banks says. "We
all have jobs. But we're soldiers first."

The U.S. withdrew its forces from Iraqi cities last June, leaving
131,000 troops in non-populated areas. An agreement signed by former
president George W. Bush in his last days in office states American
troops will be completely withdrawn by 2011.

There has been nothing to suggest U.S. president Barack Obama would
then pardon soldiers who deserted because of the Iraq War, as former
president Jimmy Carter did following the Vietnam War.

And while draft dodgers and resisters were welcomed into Canada by
Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government during Vietnam, there is a big
difference with the current fugitive soldiers: they were not drafted.

It is a crucial point for those who oppose allowing those charged
with desertion to settle in Canada. But Rev. Ric Matthews says it is
not that simple.

"There are documentaries showing [people] don't really have a
choice," Matthews says, pointing to economic and cultural
limitations, particularly in the case of black soldiers, like Watson.

While media have focused on the targeting of poor, black
neighourhoods by recruitment officers, it is unclear what effect
recruiting has had. U.S. Defense Department statistics show that the
percentage of black enlistees decreased sharply between 2000 and
2007. In 2000, 20 per cent of new recruits were black. However, in
2007, only 14 per cent of new military enlistees identified
themselves as black. The army has seen the sharpest decline of all
the branches of the military.

Watson voluntarily approached a recruiting station and offered his
services as a cook.

"I thought it was something good I could do to support my country,"
Watson says.

He now regrets the decision, though he's glad he met some of his
fellow soldiers.

Others he says are evil, and wishes he never encountered them, after
seeing them abuse Iraqi civilians.

As for Canada, Watson says he now has a life here. He has a fianc?e
and an 11-month-old son in Vancouver and would like to settle in B.C.
permanently. He met his fianc?e after arriving in Vancouver in September 2007.

"One night, she caught my eye," Watson says, "and that's all she wrote."

But if all his legal avenues are exhausted, Watson says he'll return
to the U.S., serve his time and try to move his family there. For
now, he's happy living at the church, with friends and his fianc?e
dropping by regularly to see him.

The couple went through a rough patch, breaking up and getting back
together in September. "[The situation] put a strain on our
relationship," Watson says.

Their son was in foster care at one point, though Watson wouldn't
explain why, saying only that it was being sorted out.

His next step is to consult legal counsel about his options. Watson
plans to fight his deportation. "I'm not a coward," he says. "I'm
here, right now, fighting for my life. I believe I'm doing something right."
--

janayafe@gmail.com

Lesbian soldier seeks asylum after death threats

2009-12-10T14:04:00.001-08:00

Lesbian soldier seeks asylum after death threats

http://salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/12/07/bethany_smith/index.html?source=newsletter

Private Bethany Smith became a deserter after colleagues said they
would kill her in her sleep

By Kate Harding
Dec 7, 2009

A couple of months after learning that she was about to be deployed
to Afghanistan, Private Bethany Smith received an anoymous death
threat. Smith, a 21-year-old lesbian who enlisted in the Army in
2006, was stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., the same base where Barry
Winchell was murdered in 1999. Like Winchell, Smith was continuously
harassed about her sexuality, "receiving hundreds of anonymous
"gay-bashing" notes," according to Women's eNews. She was also
"grabbed, shaken and thrown on the ground by a male soldier daily."
The taunts of "dyke" had started as soon as she arrived, but "the
abuse worsened exponentially after a soldier spotted her holding
hands with another woman at a local shopping mall." So when she got a
note in 2007 that described how some of her fellow soldiers planned
to steal keys to her room and beat her to death during the night,
Smith fled Fort Campbell to seek asylum in Canada. "It was at that
point," she says, "that I knew I was more afraid of the people who
were supposed to be on my side than people we were supposed to be
fighting overseas."

Although Smith's first appeal for protected status was rejected,
Federal Court Justice Yves de Montigny recently ruled that Canada's
refugee board should reconsider her case. He noted Winchell's murder,
the fact that gay sex violates the military code, and "evidence that
[Smith] was afraid that her superiors may have been involved in the
harassment and threats targeted at her" as reasons to give her
another hearing, after the original findings stated that somehow a
written death threat on top of regular beatings and hundreds of
lesser threats did not constitute "a risk to her life or risk of
cruel and unusual treatment or punishment upon return to the United
States." Smith's lawyer, Jamie Liew, emphasizes that Smith is not
looking to avoid going to Afghanistan, but to avoid going there with
people who mean her harm. "The idea that she would be deployed with
people who were giving her death threats is a problem. If people in
your unit are not there to have your back, you would be killed in a
war and you wouldn't even know if it was because of friendly fire, of
enemy fire or because of someone deliberately firing at you . . . Her
situation is unique in that way."

It may be, in that she's the first to seek asylum because of
persecution from fellow soldiers, but what drove Smith to Canada is
far from unique. The Human Rights Campaign's website says in its FAQ
about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, "Although gay, lesbian and
bisexual service members have been held to the 'Don't Tell' portion
of the policy, reports show that the 'Don't Ask, Don't Pursue, Don't
Harass' parts of the policy are often ignored. A 2000 Defense
Department inspector general survey showed that 80 percent of service
members had heard offensive speech, derogatory names, jokes or
remarks about gays in the previous year, and that 85 percent believed
such comments were tolerated. Thirty-seven percent reported that they
had witnessed or experienced direct, targeted forms of harassment,
including verbal and physical assaults and property damage.
Overwhelmingly, service members did not report the harassment. When
asked why, many cited fear of retaliation." And speaking of DADT, in
October, the University of California, Santa Barbara's Palm Center
released data that showed, in the words of Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory,
"women are disproportionately punished under the military's
fingers-in-your-ears policy toward homosexuals." Meanwhile, violence
against female soldiers in the military is rampant, and questions
often surround the deaths of gay soldiers, like Ciara Durkin, whose
death was ruled a suicide by the Army, even though shortly before she
died, she told her family another soldier had pulled a gun on her and
asked them to investigate if anything happened to her.

Even if Smith had no evidence of specific threats to her life, it's
reasonable to conclude that her being a lesbian would pose serious
risks to her safety in such a hostile environment. We can hope
Canada's refugee board recognizes that and allows her to stay, but
until the U.S. does something to address a military climate that
supports harassment and violence against female and gay soldiers,
many more will remain in danger.

Ehren Watada: Free at Last

2009-11-28T13:12:00.001-08:00

Ehren Watada: Free at Last

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/brecher_smith

By Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
October 26, 2009

On June 7, 2006, a 28-year-old Army lieutenant named Ehren Watada
released a video press statement announcing that he was refusing to
deploy to Iraq because the Iraq War was illegal and his
"participation would make me party to war crimes." After three years
of trying to convict him by court martial, the Army has finally given
up and allowed Lt. Watada to resign. Despite his direct refusal of an
order to deploy, Watada did not spend a single day in jail.

Watada's Story

A former Eagle Scout with a degree in finance, Watada volunteered for
military service after 9/11. His motives could hardly have been more
patriotic. For himself and his fellow soldiers, he said, "the reason
why we all joined the military" and "the commitment we made to this
country" is "to sacrifice everything--sacrifice our lives, our
freedom--to ensure that all Americans live in a country where we have
true democracy."

When he learned that he would be shipped to Iraq, Lt. Watada began to
read everything he could find about the war, on all sides, so that he
could better motivate the troops under his command. One of the books
he read was James Bamford's A Pretext for War. In a film made about
his story, In the Name of Democracy, Watada described shock at what
he learned: "Our country, and we as a military, had been deceived.
There's no other way of putting it. Whether they misrepresented the
truth, or they told half-truths or misled--it's a lie." The Iraq War
was "a war not out of self-defense but by choice."

Watada is not a pacifist, and he based his stand not just on the
falsehood of the justifications for the war but on the usurpation of
legitimate constitutional authority by the officials in the George W.
Bush administration.

"There came a time when I saw people with power, and they held that
power absolute and they did not listen to the will of the people," he
says in In the Name of Democracy. "That was the leadership of our
country. Those were the people who were in charge of our lives, and
yet they did what they wanted to do with impunity, and nobody was
willing to stand up and challenge them."

Watada offered to resign or to be deployed to Afghanistan; the Army
refused. He felt bound by his military oath to do what his conscience
abhorred. Then he had an epiphany: his military oath actually
required him to refuse orders he believed were illegal, and his
loyalty was owed to the Constitution, not to the officials who were
perverting it.

"I believe the only real God-given right we have is the freedom to
choose," Watada says. "And when we take that away from ourselves,
then we put ourselves in an invisible prison that nobody else imposes
on us except for ourselves. When you tell yourself again that you do
have a choice--I could go to prison for it, I could be tortured, I
could die for it, but I have that choice and I can make it--then that
invisible prison kind of lifts off, and you feel free. I felt so free
when I told myself that I have a choice."

On June 7, 2006, Watada issued a statement announcing his refusal to
deploy: "It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that
the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of
American law. Although I have tried to resign out of protest, I am
forced to participate in a war that is manifestly illegal. As the
order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well,
I must as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order."

Crucial to his argument was the unconstitutionality of the decision
to go to war. "We had people within our country with tremendous
amounts of power who were doing whatever they felt they wanted to,"
Watada explained. "There were no checks and balances like our
Constitution espouses."

His disobedience was also his duty under international law: The UN
Charter and the Nuremberg principles "bar wars of aggression." As
treaties, they are US law as well.

Watada was aware that imprisonment was the likeliest consequence of
his action. But he planned to put the war on trial in the process: "I
will try to argue the legal merits of the war: that it is illegal,
that it is immoral and that officers and soldiers of conscience
should not be forced to do something that is illegal and immoral."

The Army charged Lt. Watada with failure to deploy to Iraq with his
unit and began court martial proceedings. There began the torturous
process that ended with Watada's recent victory--a process that
echoes the old saying, "Military justice is to justice as military
music is to music."

Watada and his supporters prepared to put the war on trial. But
Military Judge Lt. Col. John Head refused to allow Watada's
motivation for refusing the order--the war's illegality--even to be
considered. Judge Head maintained that when Watada stipulated that he
had disobeyed an order, he was actually confessing guilt, making any
defense irrelevant.

The court tied itself in knots trying to maintain the paradox that a
soldier has a duty to disobey illegal orders while Watada could not
argue that the order he disobeyed was not a lawful order.

When the judge called for the prosecution and defense lawyers to
request a mistrial on the grounds that Watada must have misunderstood
his own statement, both sides told Judge Head that they disagreed
with him. At that point the judge virtually instructed the lawyer for
the prosecution to ask for a mistrial, which he immediately granted.

Judge Head proposed to retry Watada on the same charges. But, as
Watada's lawyer Eric Seitz said in a press conference after the court
martial, since both prosecution and defense had presented their full
cases, that would be an obvious breach of the Constitution's
safeguard against double jeopardy--trying anyone twice on the same
charges. The Army, Seitz said, should realize that "this case is a
hopeless mess."

Three military courts rejected Watada's double jeopardy claim; but as
soon as the case was appealed to a civilian court, US District Court
Judge Benjamin Settle issued a stay blocking the retrial and charging
that "the military judge likely abused his discretion." The Army
announced it would appeal but then did nothing for eighteen months,
leaving Watada in limbo. Finally, after a campaign by Watada's
supporters, the Obama administration's Department of Justice nixed
the Army's appeal. The Army threatened to court martial Watada on
other charges but finally decided to accept defeat.

Deeper Questions Remain

Ehren Watada is now free to go on with civilian life. But as the
Obama administration goes into arrears on its pledges to withdraw
from Iraq, plunges further into quagmires in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and threatens to escalate conflict with Iran, the questions
Watada's action posed continue to haunt us. Here are a few:

Is there a right and obligation to resist?

Watada raised the fundamental question of whether authority--in the
military or in society more generally--is something to be blindly
accepted, or something to be subject to rational moral and legal
examination. He asserted that "the American soldier must rise above
the socialization that tells them authority should always be obeyed
without question. Rank should be respected but never blindly followed."

Gen. Peter Pace, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was
asked in 2006, "Should people in the US military disobey orders they
believe are illegal?" He answered, "It is the absolute responsibility
of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or
immoral." If so, what are the implications for soldiers, for the
military and for the rest of us?

Should the military hear claims that orders are illegal?

Watada stated, "I understand that under military law, those in the
military are allowed to refuse and in fact have the right to refuse
unlawful orders--a duty to refuse. In a court of law they should be
given the opportunity to bring evidence and witnesses to their
defense on how that order was unlawful. In this case I will not be,
and that is a travesty of justice."

Should the law recognize selective objectors?

The Selective Service Act provides conscientious objector status to
those who oppose all wars on grounds of moral conscience. But it
takes the position that objectors can't pick and choose their wars.
Yet today there are strong moral grounds to oppose many, if not most,
of the wars that occur, even for those who might admit in principle
that some wars might be justified. Amnesty International takes the
position that there is a right to such "selective objection" and that
those who are punished for refusing to participate in a war they
consider immoral are "prisoners of conscience."

Watada recognized that "in opposition to my position, the argument
will be made that soldiers don't have a right to pick and choose
their wars." But, he maintained, "I would respond that it is not only
our right but our constitutional and moral duty." Is it time to
recognize conscientious objectors to particular wars?

How can illegal wars of aggression be prevented?

There is currently a broad debate on torture in policy circles, the
public and to some degree in the courts. But torture is only one war
crime, and it's not the most severe. Yet there is virtually no effort
to question or establish accountability for the most important war
crime by the United States in Iraq: illegal pre-emptive war.

As Watada said, "I think the greatest crime that the leaders of a
country could commit--the leadership of a country--would be to take
their people, their country, into war, based upon false pretenses."

In a statement that won him an additional charge from the Army,
Watada told a Veterans for Peace convention, "To stop an illegal and
unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it." Is such
action disloyalty, or a much-needed addition to our system of checks
and balances?

The Army vented its own frustration at its failure to convict Watada
by insisting that his resignation was "under other than honorable conditions."

Lt. Ehren Watada honorably sacrificed much and risked more "to make
sure that all Americans live in a country where we have true
democracy." The Army should honor him as a military hero.

Cyber Resistance [by Dahr Jamail]

2009-11-16T15:17:00.001-08:00

Cyber Resistance

http://www.truthout.org/10230910

23 October 2009
by: Dahr Jamail

If technology has transformed warfare into a spectacle of shock
and awe, its contribution to the cause of dissent has been no less
remarkable. It has enabled solidarities across borders and
facilitated networks and forums dedicated to impartial communication
of ground realities beyond the sanitized projection of mainstream
news. True, technological advances have not brought an end to either
occupation, but it has certainly helped alternative voices and views
to be heard.

During the Vietnam War, over 100 underground newspapers, run by
soldiers themselves, sprouted across the United States. The modern
version of this has taken root within the Internet, largely in the
form of blogs.

Many American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been
confounded by the wall of censorship they confront, jointly
constructed by the military and the corporate media. The Internet
offered them a convenient and powerful channel through which to get
their stories out to the public. Constrained by slow military mail
service from Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention overt attempts by
superiors to curtail their interaction with journalists, soldiers
have long since taken to blogging, posting photographs and uploading
videos online, all related to their experience of the occupations.

"Fight to Survive," one of the first soldier blogs from Iraq,
had its origin before the bloggers were deployed to the country. The
site's mission statement declares, "The E-4 Mafia was a group of
soldiers deployed in Iraq between January of 2004 and March of 2005.
The posts from this period are an expression of our raw emotions and
thoughts while serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Since being
honorably discharged in the summer of 2005, we've continued to post
additional journal entries, poetry, and reflections from our time
served and our current lives as veterans as we continue our fight to survive."

Garett Reppenhagen, Jeff Englehart, Ben Schrader and Joe Hatcher
were stationed in Germany, where they happened to attend a concert by
a band called Bouncing Souls and befriended its members.
Post-deployment they were desperate to process the grief, violence
and frustration that they were experiencing in Iraq, so they started
pouring their emotions into e-mails to the band members. The Bouncing
Souls, impressed with the e-mails - which included powerful poetry -
began posting them on their own website. In 2004, Hatcher created
"Fight to Survive."

Englehart later told a reporter, "We were opposed to the war
before we went. And we got together and said, 'You know what we
should do? We should write about this shit.'"

Reppenhagen, the first active-duty soldier to have joined Iraq
Veterans Against the War, was pulling a shift at Tower Guard in Fort
Collins, Colorado, when Truthout phoned him. Tower Guard is an action
designed to spread awareness about the occupation of Iraq. Veterans
pull together scaffolding, cover it with camouflage and, donning
their desert gear, take shifts atop the tower - this one twelve feet
high - to maintain a presence where people can ask them questions,
and in response they can provide information.

For him, the motivation for the blog had come from having to
participate in an occupation he didn't believe in. "We were already
against the war before going, and didn't know why we were going, and
it didn't look good. There was no resistance to speak of within the
military. But I found a purpose with the writing. I didn't want to
let my friends down there by not serving, and nobody knew what would
happen if you refused to go out, because nobody had done it yet. So
the blogging began. As a high-school dropout I wasn't a strong
writer," he explains, but I had all these ideas I just couldn't stop,
and writing them down was a huge release.... Having people read them
was therapeutic. This then became my mission, to have people read
about what we were doing. After a while, Joe Hatcher, whom we met in
basic training, created the blog website. This was summer of 2004,
and I'd never heard of a blog earlier. The idea caught on and sparked
something, and as far as I know, ours was the only antiwar blog from
soldiers in Iraq at the time. We used aliases; mine was "heretic" or
"soldier X," Jeff Englehart was "hEkLe," Joe was "Joe Public." We
used these because we were unsure of the consequences of revealing
our identities."

Postings from Iraq on "Fight to Survive" ranged in content from
asking people to sign petitions against stop-loss, to expressing
disbelief at how persistent the military was in trying to get
soldiers to renew their contracts, to posting graffiti and commenting
on it. An entry posted in September 2004 by heretic titled "My
Struggle For Reason" reads:

"Souls, Friends, and Conspirators,

"The temperature dropped to sixty degrees last night while I huddled
in a ditch near Diyala Bridge. The breeze off the river crawled into
my heart and the sudden chill reflects my current mood. I found out
earlier that night that I had been extended an additional two months
on top of my previous stretch. It now appears that I will be in the
service until July, while my original date of release is supposed to
be next month. All this, and my recent two-week taste of the civilian
world on leave, is leaving me empty and detached. It is so much
easier to live in slavery if you had willingly accepted your fate. I
am not sure if my mental fortitude is prepared for a whole extra year
in oppression. And, I still don't have a certain time when I will be
finished with this war.

"Three soldiers in our unit have been hurt in the last four days and
the true number of Army-wide casualties leaving Iraq is unknown. The
figures are much higher than what is reported. We get awards and
medals that are supposed to make us feel proud about our wicked
assignment. We feel privileged when we are given the smallest perk.
Like a dog that is beaten everyday and then thankfully adores it's
owner when he skips a day of punishment. I have more trust with some
of the Iraqi locals than my own command sometimes. I know that my
higher chain of command hates me for my political opinions and my moral views.

"I am called a "faggot pink-o" or a "bleeding heart traitor." It
doesn't take a liberal to realize the moral wrongs involved with this
or any war. Why should I feel ashamed of caring about all of
humanity, even the people that ignorantly hate me? Is wanting a
better standard of living for all the world so negative? In a way,
deeper than sexuality, I love my friends and brothers and for that I
am labeled a deviant of some kind. Does everyone buy into this Arnold
ideal of fear that they are not strong enough, so they have to
over-compensate and become an asshole? I believe that all weapons
should be laid down [by] choice of the individual. It is the same
fear I have of my bigot neighbor that causes Americans to support a
war against a possible US threat. If we are all responsible enough to
handle firearms, is it not sensible to allow countries like Iran and
N. Korea nuclear weapons? If we think these countries are less
responsible than the drunk-driving redneck or the crack-dealing
gangster, I think we need to take a longer look at American society.
Sure, a nuke can destroy the world, but an automatic weapon can kill
my daughter and she is the world to me. I don't believe that taking
away people's rights is the proper step to world peace. However, we
overspend on national defense and cut education when we need to be
more concerned about raising a generation of problem solvers, instead
of mindless warriors.

"So I finally find the drive to get out and try to make a difference
in the world, and I am stuck freezing in a Middle Eastern desert.
What state will the earth be in if I ever escape this combat zone?
What little changes I can make, I do through the networks I have
built up with my close friends. The Bouncing Souls have given us
soldiers a voice and forum to express the hardships and our feelings
on the Iraq occupation. All my friends, some new and some old, listen
and support our efforts and they have my deepest respect and thanks.
I could not survive this in any sane manner without the backing of
all of you. I cannot promise that I will have a positive effect on
current issues that plague our planet, but I can promise I will never
give up, if you never give up on me."

Another moving entry from August 22, 2005, titled "Finding
Closure," posted by Jeff Englehardt (hEkLe) after exiting Iraq, reads in part:

"There is nothing that I feel can alleviate the guilt for being
directly involved with our illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. I
ask myself from time to time, "Why was I so afraid to resist the
order to go to war? Why didn't I object to the whole damned thing?" I
have been told many times not to be ashamed for my service to this
country, but I can't help a genuine intuition that this war is not
designed to promote freedom and our beautiful American way of life,
but instead only carried out to proliferate Western imperialism and
corporate profits every time a bullet is fired. My guilt is
synonymous with the sentiment that I was indeed on the wrong side of the wire."
--

As the blogging continued, the audience expanded. Radio
personality Randi Rhodes, who at the time brought Air America Radio
its largest audience to date, began reading their dispatches on air.

As was to be expected, the military began to crack down on the
writers. "It was not difficult for them to track what base and unit
the writing was coming from and they were able to narrow it down to
me," says Reppenhagen. "My sniper section leader walked into my room
and asked if I was writing something stupid on the Internet. I
admitted I was posting writings, but whether it was stupid depended
on the readers' views, and he told me to report to the colonel who
wanted to ask me questions about this shit I was writing."

All along, Reppenhagen felt he was leading a dual existence:

"I was living two lives, going outside the wire, but still writing
on the blog, all the time looking over my shoulder. I was afraid of
our e-mails being monitored, and there was a lot of isolation." He
rarely crossed paths with the other members of the E-4 Mafia, and
knew that he would have to deal with the colonel alone. From his
perch on the tower, he recounted, "I did the whole thing, saluting
him, doing the full pivot, and coming to at-ease, and he has a stack
of everything we had written, and copies of personal e-mails I had
written. He asked me if I had written it and I said yes. He told me I
should stop writing, that I was going to be investigated by Military
Intelligence and if found to have violated operational security, I
would be tried for treason. I was scared."

Undeterred, he kept blogging and was soon summoned by the
colonel once again.

"I told him I had a right to continue. They pulled my computers,
tried to limit my access, took me off sniper duty, and put me on
guard duty of Iraqis on base. The last two months were lonely and
difficult for me. I was afraid I would be court-martialed. In the
end, it was determined that nothing I wrote had violated operational
security and that I had committed no treason and, since there were no
rules prohibiting blogging, I had broken no rules either. But I was
continually hazed by my superiors as long as I was there.... They
were constantly looking for ways to trap me. I was made to fill
sandbags and do other menial jobs. However, I was finally awarded an
honorable discharge in May 2005, and gained a lot of respect from
most of my fellow soldiers. Many would give me the peace sign as they
passed me by."

Reppenhagen dove headlong into activism after being discharged.
He took a job with Veterans for America, in Washington, DC, and
volunteered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Coming full circle,
Reppenhagen had one of his poems set to music by the Bouncing Souls.
They called it "Letter from Iraq."

In 2007, he moved to Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, and
enrolled in a community college to study to become a history teacher.

He shares his plans: "I continue now to work at helping veterans
get the mental and physical health care they deserve. And I want to
teach history in high school.... One of my dreams is to teach on a
Native American reservation. After coming back from Iraq, I traveled
around a lot, and saw many reservations, and saw this grinding
poverty there similar to what I saw in Iraq, and decided that that is
where I can help the most."

On being discharged, the other E-4 Mafia members also moved to
Colorado: Schrader to Fort Collins, Hatcher to Cascade and Englehart
to Denver. They continue blogging, alongside antiwar activism.
--

Casey J. Porter, a specialist from Austin, Texas, served one
year in Iraq and in fall 2008 was on his second deployment after
having been stop-lossed. His contract ended January 21, 2008, but he
was redeployed on March 9, although diagnosed with PTSD by a civilian
doctor. As he says on a YouTube video, "I am making the best of it by
making short films about what really goes on over here."

A post from him on a blog called "Soldier Voices" reads: "Some
of you might already know me through my films. I am a Stop-Lossed
Soldier currently in Iraq." There is a website for his work:
http://www.youtube.com/caseyjporter."

Porter's films feature raw footage coupled with a compelling
background score. Scenes include mortar attacks against bases,
military personnel running for cover during mortar attacks as
explosions echo in the background, gun battles, destroyed Humvees and
soldiers talking about their low morale. One film, "Area of
Operations," reveals a new weapon of the Iraqi resistance, Lob-Bombs,
which are created by cutting open an oxygen tank and packing it with
ball bearings, screws and bolts as shrapnel before welding it back
together and pressurizing. The film also shows a Lob-Bomb attack that
killed two soldiers, which the Associated Press reported as having
been caused by small-arms fire. Truthout spoke with Porter by
telephone when he was at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah. He said
there were two versions in the military and corporate media reportage
of the deaths: "One reported it as small-arms fire and the other as
indirect fire. Indirect fire is obviously a very general term, so the
Army can say, 'Oh, it is indirect fire, it's not an accurate weapon.'
But when the public hears of indirect fire, they think some guy is
shooting at you with a machine gun."

There is a clip in the film that has audio recordings from
military radios after the attack. It presents a soldier saying, "The
K.I.A. [killed in action], I can't tell you who they are, they're in
pieces, break ..."

Later in the film, a soldier in Iraq says to the camera, "Would
this country be the way it is right now had we done anything close to
what we promised before we came over? The Humvees we drive, they are
not doing the drive over here as protection ... not even the
slightest. The MRAP [mine resistant, ambush protected] still won't
stop an EFP [explosively formed penetrator]. But it's a big vehicle
and makes a lot of noise and that's what the American people want,
apparently." The camera goes on to show Humvees destroyed by roadside
bombs, then returns to the soldier who says, "I won't be surprised if
they turn this place into a duty station. I mean look at all the
nations that we've liberated. Look at Germany, Korea. I'm pretty sure
at one time somebody thought, 'Hey, we're only going to be here for a
couple of months.'"

Another of Porter's films, "What War Looks Like," shows scenes
of destroyed military hardware. Pictures of blown-up tanks and
Humvees crushed by roadside bombs are seen flashing across the
screen. Other scenes show burnt-out Bradley fighting vehicles atop
transport trucks, decomposed bodies of fighters, and then the names
and photos of "friends we lost," US soldiers killed in Iraq. After
photos of a body being loaded for shipment back to the United States,
the screen goes black as the text reads, "It's not politics, it is
saving soldiers' lives, bring us home now."

Truthout asked Porter what had made him decide to make the films.

He said, "After coming back from my first tour, I was so against
the war that I started speaking out and showing videos I'd made from
footage I'd shot during my first deployment. Then when I got
stop-lossed, I decided I'm not going to be another American who
complains about the situation and then does nothing. Going AWOL
wasn't a realistic option for me, so instead of being complacent
about something I feel is wrong, I decided to make films to show
people what they're not seeing on television, and to show people that
I'm not the only soldier that feels this way. Along with very
realistic combat footage, I showed real threats facing soldiers, some
of the financial traps, and other issues they must deal with during
deployment."

Porter talks of the morale in Iraq being poor and more soldiers
than ever beginning to question the mission. However, he added, "One
thing that disappoints me about American soldiers is the apathy, the
'what can you do?' mentality. But they are more or less speaking
their minds by not reenlisting though they are afraid of the
consequences of actively speaking up. More of them are doing it, but
still not as many as should. The Army seems like such a big giant,
and the threat of, well, if you do this we're going to punish you,
and we own you, and all this and that. Then this gets into soldiers' heads."
--

Iraq war veteran and former Marine Adam Kokesh also maintains a
blog, "Revolutionary Patriot" where he has written about being
assaulted by undercover FBI agents in Washington, DC, about his
thoughts on the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in
2008, and about dealing with PTSD.

Not a shy man, Kokesh did not hesitate to upload onto his blog a
video of his speech during a march in DC, where he is seen exhorting
a boisterous crowd, "The time is now. The threat is clear. The bands
of tyranny are tightening around America. It is our duty to resist!"

Kokesh was part of a team of vets who met with Representative
John Conyers in July 2008 to push Conyers to file Articles of
Impeachment against George W. Bush. In a video of the meeting posted
on his blog, Kokesh used his time at the microphone to tell Conyers,
who was undecided about filing the articles:

"And I get the feeling that what you're doing and what the
Democratic Party is doing is telling this country, as we are being
bled dry by tyrants, that we're just going to be OK. That the only
promises we get from Democrats are Band-Aids over these far deeper
wounds that anyone is willing to admit to publicly. I hear one of the
arguments against impeachment, that it would harm the Democrats in
the upcoming elections. And I hope that you realize, because you
didn't communicate this when I asked you the question, that there are
real consequences to not impeaching that are far, far worse than not
having Democrats in the Congress or Senate, or a Democrat in the
White House. You said you've made thousands of decisions, many of
them very respectable, many of them very courageous. But by your own
admission, it seems that what is holding you back from this one is
your own indecision. You said that I might be surprised by your
plans. You haven't put forth any. And frankly, I'm not surprised."

Aside from blogging, testifying to representatives, leading
marches and getting arrested, Kokesh has participated in Operation
First Casualty (OFC), a tactic of street theater in which vets don
their camouflage and take to the streets of US cities to carry out
public patrols, realistic mock arrests, home raids and tower watches
to raise awareness of the occupation. After an OFC action on March
19, 2007, the fourth anniversary of the invasion, he received an
e-mail from the Marine Corps Mobilization Command that oversees the
Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) to which Kokesh reported.

The e-mail accused him of violating the Uniform Code of Military
Justice (UCMJ) by wearing his uniform during a political event. "I
was like, wait a second, I'm in the IRR, the UCMJ doesn't apply. This
is bullshit." The scathing response that Kokesh sent back is posted
on his blog. It concludes:

"I fail to see how reminding me of my 'obligations and
responsibilities' helps you achieve either of these. It seems that
while accomplishing our mission in Iraq, every corner we turn sends
us further down the spiral, but there is still much that you can do
to bring our fellow Marines home alive.

"So no, I am not replying to your email in order to acknowledge
my understanding of my obligations and responsibilities, but rather
to ask you to please, kindly, go fuck yourself."

In the chain of events that followed, the military threatened to
give him a less than honorable discharge, which would affect his
education benefits, but so far the military has not followed through.
His case was helped by appearing on several major media programs,
including "Good Morning America."

Kokesh thinks the future of GI resistance holds great
possibility for social change. He told Truthout, "It's kind of a
battle for the hearts and minds of the troops between resistance and
obedience. And if the military power structure keeps fucking up and
putting people off, then resistance is going to start winning a lot
more hearts and minds, you know, and we're doing what we can to
further that." Yet he is realistic.

"The forces at play here are far greater than any organization,
bigger even than the military itself. It's social, it's cultural ...
and I think it is great in terms of what we can do to foster a
broader civilian resistance, and develop a culture of questioning
authority.... Whether the GI resistance movement is actually going to
be enough to end the war, I don't think you can consider it in those
absolute terms. We're building pressure. And there are a lot of
forces maintaining pressure to keep the war going. If nothing else,
we need to be a countervailing force to those and, who knows, maybe
that's going to stop the next war."

Liberal MP introduces war resisters bill

2009-09-20T15:49:00.001-07:00

Liberal MP introduces war resisters bill

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/697332

Sep 17, 2009

THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA – A Liberal MP has introduced a private member's bill aimed at
letting American "war resisters" stay in Canada.

Gerard Kennedy's bill would allow foreign military deserters – or
those who refuse mandatory military service – to stay in Canada if
their action is based on "sincere moral, political or religious objection."

MPs have already voted twice to support war resisters, but that was
through motions that are not binding on the government.

Kennedy's bill would be binding because it would amend the
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Private members' bills rarely become law, but passage is more likely
in the current minority government situation.

Most war resisters in Canada are U.S. military personnel who have
refused to participate in the Iraq War on the grounds that it's
illegal and immoral.

At least two have already been deported to the U.S.

Free the Fort Bragg 50

2009-09-08T12:48:00.001-07:00

GIs face Army's repression, mass punishment

Free the Fort Bragg 50

http://www.workers.org/2009/us/fort_bragg_0910/

By Dee Knight
Published Sep 7, 2009

The resistance of conscientious objector Dustin "Che" Stevens has
sparked a national petition campaign to free Stevens and the 50-plus
other GIs currently held in the 82nd Holdover Unit at Fort Bragg,
N.C., awaiting absent without leave and desertion charges. The
petition says these GIs "live in a legal limbo of poor living
conditions, verbal abuse and arbitrary punishments while waiting for
up to a year to be actually charged and brought before a court
martial. The result is that these soldiers are subjected to many
months of unjust and illegal punishment prior to their day in court."

The petition requests that the Army "improve living conditions,
reassign sadistic supervisors, end all informal punishments, and
expedite resolution for these soldiers so that they can return home
to begin rebuilding their lives as soon as possible." It also
requests that the time they spend in the Holdover Unit count as part
of any sentence they might receive.

Signers include Mike Ferner, national president of Veterans for
Peace; retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright; Marjorie Cohn, president
of the National Lawyers Guild; historian Howard Zinn; leaders of Iraq
Veterans Against the War and Courage To Resist; organizers at GI
coffee houses at Fort Hood and Fort Lewis; and many more. The
petition is directed to the Fort Bragg Commanding General and the
Commanding Officer of the 82nd Holdover Unit, 82nd Airborne Division,
Fort Bragg, N.C. (To sign and contribute to this campaign, go to
Couragetoresist.org.)

Conditions at Fort Bragg were exposed recently in articles by Courage
To Resist project coordinator Sarah Lazare and Dahr Jamail, author of
"The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and
Afghanistan." Their report, "Echo PlatoonWarehousing Soldiers in the
Homeland," appeared in "Tom Dispatch" on Aug. 10. (It is online at
Couragetoresist.org.)

According to the Echo Platoon report, soldiers who have gone AWOL and
then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned,
"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-lifebut only if they
agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq."

"Echo is like jail with some privileges," says Spc. Kevin McCormick,
21. He was held there for more than seven months on AWOL and
desertion charges, then offered release if he would accept deployment
to Iraqdespite being suicidal.

"You're less than human to the commanders," Spc. McCormick said,
adding that 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."

A Fort Bragg spokesperson, Capt. Ronald Thaxton, said, "I can't
confirm or deny verbal abuse. It depends on if a person is angry."

Spc. Dustin "Che" Stevens, whose decision to publicize his own
resistance led to the exposure of conditions at Fort Bragg, said:
"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. ... 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."

Sgt. Travis Bishop sentenced at Ft. Hood for resisting

Fort Hood, Texas, is another base where there has been a recent surge
in resistance. Sgt. Travis Bishop became the second GI in two weeks
court martialed there for resistance, and was sentenced on Aug. 13 to
12 months in military prison. A strong support delegation was present
at the court martial from Under The Hood, a GI coffee house in nearby
Killeen, Texas, as well as Students for a Democratic Society
representatives and other supporters who came from Austin, Texas.

Travis based his defense on the failure of the Army to notify
soldiers of their right to apply for conscientious objector status.
Neither the judge nor the jury of "peers"all many ranks higher than
Sgt. Bishoppaid attention to this argument. But Bishop's attorney,
James Branum, who is co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild's
Military Law Task Force, said he plans to take the appeal through all
military courts and "if necessary, the Supreme Court."

Camilo Mejia Appeals Bad Conduct Discharge

2009-08-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T16:14:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-27T16:58:00.001-07:00

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'

2009-08-27T15:30:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-17T10:06:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-10T11:03:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-10T10:55:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-08T12:44:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Dodgy manoeuvres

2009-08-06T18:20:00.001-07:00

Dodgy manoeuvres

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/2009/07/24/10249826-sun.html

Are American soldiers seeking to stay in Canada heroes or villains?

July 27, 2009
By Lyn Cockburn and Kerry Thompson, SUN MEDIA

Should U.S. soldiers who flee to Canada to avoid fighting be allowed
to stay? Columnist Lyn Cockburn says yes, in the spirit of Vietnam
draft dodgers. But Sun Media's Kerry Thompson gives that argument a
one-finger salute.

THOMPSON: A lot of people compare this situation to Vietnam,
reminding us that Canada welcomed U.S. draft dodgers. What they
forget to mention is that these most recent war resisters weren't
drafted, they knew what they were signing on to and the consequences
if they decided to leave their units.

COCKBURN: Rubbish. No one knew they were signing up for a war based on lies.

George W. Bush promised weapons of mass destruction and there were none.

This was an unjust war that prompted some soldiers to refuse to serve
in Iraq. Some went to the stockade, some to Canada and we ought to
have supported their decision.

THOMPSON: I'm not going to argue this wasn't an unjust war, but I
don't think signing up for military duty means picking and choosing
where you go.

I would hope every person joining the military thinks about what they
might be called on to do, and the consequences if they refuse.

COCKBURN: Volunteer soldiers are morally bound to go where they're
told? I don't think so. Neither does Brandon Hughey, a deserter
ordered deported from Canada. "I feel if a soldier is given an order
he knows to not only be illegal, but immoral as well, then it is his
responsibility to refuse that order," he said. Exactly.

THOMPSON: Fine, refuse the order, but accept the consequences and
take responsibility for your actions in your own country. The
"persecution" these deserters claim they'll face if they're sent back
to the U.S., and not granted refugee status, is minor compared to
what some refugee claimants would face if ordered home.

COCKBURN: Canada rightly did not send soldiers to Iraq, so logically,
Canada ought to step up and support those American soldiers who
refuse to participate in an immoral, if not criminal, war. It is
disingenuous to suggest that it's OK to deport these Americans
because they'll face less persecution than say, Iranians.

THOMPSON: If the deserters want to make their voices heard on the
Iraq war, they can take a stand - at home. There are guidelines that
are in place for granting refugee status. The persecution the
deserters say they'll face (jail, one deported deserter is already
out after serving a 12-month sentence in the U.S.) does not meet the criteria.

COCKBURN: Bargain! If a soldier refuses duty in an immoral war he
should man up and do 12 months in the slammer as penance. Something
is missing here, it's called logic. Any soldier with the courage to
say no to injustice should be given a medal - or at least haven in
another country!

THOMPSON: Then let an anti-war organization in the U.S. give them a
medal - when they return and accept responsibility for their
decision. Again, they signed up, voluntarily, and would have known
the consequences for deserting.

There are plenty of other refugees who need our help and on whom
resources would be better spent.

COCKBURN: Why is Canada wasting money trying to find and deport war
resister Brad McCall, 23, who refused to go to Iraq to "commit war
crimes." Now he's gone into hiding near Vancouver after seven RCMP
officers showed up at his apartment. Is Canada a little too eager to
appease our American big bro?

THOMPSON: Oh, so you'd rather we spend money providing services to
deserters who have been ordered home after numerous fair hearings,
court cases and every other avenue of appeal they could find? That
doesn't sound much better. A deportation order is a deportation order.

COCKBURN: All three opposition immigration critics recently urged the
government "to show compassion for those who have chosen not to
participate in a war not sanctioned by the United Nations." Instead,
the Tories prefer to waste time and money during a recession chasing
after principled young people who are harming no one.

THOMPSON: And if we show compassion for the U.S. war deserters, who's
going to deal with the other deportees who want to stay because we
sympathize with their plight, even if they don't fit the bill for
refugee status? Calls for compassion need to be directed to the U.S. military.

COCKBURN: And if we don't show compassion for war resisters, whom
will we feel free to deny next? Czechs and Mexicans? Maybe we can
find some fine print to keep out everyone we don't quite approve of.
We have made exceptions to refugee rules in the past and we need to
do so again.

THOMPSON: We can show compassion, and I do feel for these people, but
their refugee claims simply don't fit the bill. We'd just be opening
the door to every American soldier who doesn't want to serve anymore,
because of a moral objection to whatever it is they've been asked to
do. That's not our job.

COCKBURN: What good is compassion without action? Canada has a great
opportunity here to take a moral stand and let these resisters stay -
if only as guests for a year or so. But no, we've already deported at
least six and we're chasing a couple more. Seems vindictive, not to
mention a waste of resources.

THOMPSON: What's the use of letting them stay for a year, so they can
get even more comfortable here? Sorry, but it's time to shape up and
ship out - home.

COCKBURN: Rounding up those big bad deserters instead of
acknowledging the Iraq war is based on lies and has resulted in
countless needless deaths is so easy, so NIMBY. Instead of hiding
behind our present arbitrary refugee policy, we ought to rethink it.
Show some moral backbone, Canada!

Injured Hearts, Injured Minds

2009-08-06T17:26:00.001-07:00

[See URL for embedded links.]

Injured Hearts, Injured Minds

http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/killeen

Forrest Wilder
August 7, 2009

In March, Army Spc. Michael Kern, 22, returned to Fort Hood after a
year and a day in Iraq.

Shaken by his experience and disgusted with the war, Kern, a native
of Riverside, Calif., tried to readjust by getting as hammered as
possible. "Put it this way: For the first month, I was drunk at work,
I was drunk 24/7."

In Iraq the violence had been fast and furious. "We were going
through all sorts of bad shit: mortars, IEDs, indirect fire. Anything
you can think of we experienced the first day."

On his second mission, Kern drew the short straw to drive the lead
vehiclea "mine resistant ambush protected" vehiclein a convoy
looking for a weapons cache near Baghdad. An IED exploded next to his
vehicle, damaging his door. The platoon pulled back to base. The next
day, April 7, on an identical mission, insurgents came after his unit
with AK-47s, machine guns and IEDs. During the nine-hour firefight, a
sniper killed Kern's buddy, Sgt. Richard A. Vaughn. Two others,
including Kern's lieutenant, were seriously injured.

Kern tells me his story over two days in July at Under the Hood Café,
a new GI coffeehouse and soldier-outreach center that opened in
February. Since mid-May, when a drunken Kern first dropped in, Under
the Hood has become his second home. While awaiting a medical
discharge for PTSD and traumatic brain injury, he's here almost every
day, working out what happened to him in Iraq, planning anti-war
events and helping other soldiers come to terms with their combat
experiences. The coffeehouse provides a support network, friends
who've helped him quit drinking, people he can call on day or night,
and provides what Kern appreciated most about the military: a sense
of camaraderie.

"If it wasn't for this place, it's sad to say, I feel like I would be
dead. I feel like I would have killed myself," Kern says.

Under the Hood is a rifle shot from the east gates of Fort Hood in a
grim commercial zone of tattoo parlors, pawnshops, car lots, payday
lenders, bars, strip clubs, and a place advertising "gold grillz" for
teethestablishments eager to drain young soldiers of their earnings.
In this garrison town, the café has become a gathering place for
dissident GIs, peace activists, veterans and active-duty soldiers who
need help.

Inside, the walls are decorated with peace propaganda, including a
map of the world pinpointing U.S. military interventions and a poster
that reads, "You Can't Be All that You Can Be if You're Dead." A
bookcase is stocked with anti-war literature. For entertainment,
there's a dartboard, a foosball table and a big-screen TV with
PlayStation. No alcohol is allowed, but there's no shortage of cigarette smoke.

I came here to suss out efforts to build an anti-war movement within
the Army. Fort Hood, the largest military installation in the
country, has produced a smattering of war resisters in recent years.
I met some of them at the coffeehouse, including Victor Agosto, an
Iraq War veteran who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan, and Casey
Porter, a mechanic who did two tours in Iraq. Porter, preparing to
attend film school in Florida, recorded local life in Iraq, posting
interviews with military personnel, battle footage and unvarnished
street scenes.

Over the past four years, I've come into contact with scores of
military personnel through my involvement with the Austin GI Rights
Hotline, a group of volunteers trained to counsel service members
about their rights.

Once a week, I sit on my couch and talk on the phone to soldiers,
Marines and airmen who call with a dizzying array of issues, from the
mundane to the impossibly complex. Many are stationed at Fort Hood.
We get AWOL cases, people with untreated PTSD, 18-year-old enlistees
who've found out their recruiter lied to them, middle-aged soldiers
who've been stop-lossed, moms and dads calling on behalf of their
kids, gay officers who've been outedyou name it. Some have made poor
decisions; others are victims of a sometimes capricious, even cruel
military system.

I got into it through my girlfriend. Katherine was in the news some
years ago for being the first female conscientious objector to emerge
from the war in Afghanistan. The military refused to recognize her
as a conscientious objector, and after a long and painful process she
was court-martialed and sentenced to 120 days in the brig. She ate
lunch every day with Lynndie England, the young West Virginia woman
best known for holding the leash in the infamous Abu Ghraib photos.

Joeie Michaels, Michael Kern's roommate and an Under the Hood
regular, used to dance at Babes, a Killeen strip club popular with
GIs. Performing there, she made sure the troops left with a flier for
the coffeehouse.

Under the Hood's signal event was a Memorial Day peace march in the
streets of Killeen, the city's first since Vietnam. The Killeen
newspaper reported about 70 participants. Cindy Thomas, the military
spouse who manages the coffeehouse and plays den mother to the young,
often-raucous soldiers, estimates about 10 to 15 were locals,
including veterans and active-duty soldiers.

"It's like a mother with a child," Thomas says. "It's unconditional
love, and we help them any way we can."

The building housing Under the Hood's local antecedent, the Killeen
coffeehouse Oleo Strut, is a few blocks away; it now houses an office
complex. The Oleo Strut had a four-year run from 1968 to 1972,
according to a history on Under the Hood's Web site. Run by civilians
and veterans, the Oleo Strut plugged Fort Hood soldiers into the
Vietnam anti-war movement and spread their ideas in the barracks. An
underground newspaper circulated from the coffeehouse, and the crowd
there organized demonstrations and teach-ins. Musicians passed
through, purportedly including a young Stevie Ray Vaughan.

"The tinder was very dry," says Tom Cleaver, an Oleo Strut alum,
Vietnam veteran and Hollywood screenwriter who helped raise money to
start Under the Hood. "They ended up in '69 and '70 having big
demonstrations there, a thousand guys marching in Killeen against the war."

Fort Hood at that time was a holding station for soldiers returning
from Vietnam with less than six months left on their enlistments.
Before being discharged, many were deployed to suppress domestic
riots and protests, including those at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago.

"Here they come back to America, and what does the Army want them to
do?" Cleaver asks. "Fight a war in America. That radicalized a lot of
guys. They came back with bad feelings about the war, and now they
were supposed to go defend the war."

There's no draft now, nor is there a broader social counterculture,
to tap into. Given that, Thomas says, one of Under the Hood's primary
functions is giving soldiers a place to speak openly.

"The military, they don't want you to think for yourself," Thomas
says. "They don't want you to be informed; they don't want you to
know that you have support because they function by fear and
intimidation over these soldiers. So when you have a space where you
can talk freely and find out what your rights are, you have that
support, you have that kindness. It is a threat to them."

One coffeehouse regular, Spc. Ben Fugate, told me that after his
commander spotted his name in a Killeen Daily Herald article about
the Memorial Day peace march, his unit was lectured for two hours on
the dangers of protesting.

Fugate, who describes himself as "very conservative," had been quoted
in the paper saying, "I lost three buddies in my platoon in Iraq, and
for what? Why lose more when we don't have to?"

Kern, seated on a couch in a cozy back room at Under the Hood,
explains how he became a coffeehouse fixture. It's a Thursday in
July, and he's wearing a T-shirt that asks, "Got Rights?" He's pale
and swallowing tranquilizers to suppress panic attacks.

"I'm fucked up," he says. "I know it." Later, he says, "You know how
they say a teenage boy thinks about sex every eight seconds. Every
eight seconds I think about Iraq."

Kern, a tanker, says his unit averaged about two and a half missions per day.

At first, Kern says, he was gung ho: "I was an excellent soldier. I
took joy out of killing people in Iraq. It was such an adrenaline
rush. I craved it."

Over time, bravado faded into depression, guilt and a strong feeling
that the war was wrong. When Kern deployed to Iraq he took a small
handheld digital video camera and a laptop with editing software. He
fixed the camera to his vehicle's turret and captured hours of patrol footage.

Some of that raw video has been distilled to a 10-minute film called
Fire Mission that's available online.

In the film's last minutes, Spc. Steven Pesicka, a soldier in Kern's
unit, narrates what he calls a "mortar mission for shock and awe"
near an Iraqi village. The first mortar lands near a house, and the
forward observer calls for the next one to be targeted 200 meters
farther from the village. The mortar team thought that was too far
away, Pesicka says. The film shows the second mortar hitting the
town. "Oh fuck," the forward observer is heard to say. "They did not
drop 200 [meters], over. They hit the town."

Minutes after the explosion, the soldier describes dead bodies being
loaded into the back of trucks.

Such experiences led Kern to a radical form of empathy.

"If you just take a step back and you think, I mean, I'd be doing the
same thing if Iraqis were in the United States," Kern, dressed in
battle fatigues, says in Fire Mission. "I'd be the dude trying to
plant a bomb under the road. I'd be trying to kill them. Oh, hell
yeah, get the fuck out of my country."

Beginning in May or June, Kern started having nightmares, sometimes
while he was awake. On several occasions he hallucinated an Iraqi
child with half his skull missing, as real to him as the desert heat.
His psychiatrist says the child might represent guilt, but all Kern
knows is that it scared the shit out of him. In January, on his
birthday, while his unit was on patrol, he told a commanderin
confidencethat he was going to see a mental health specialist. The
doctor prescribed Zoloft and sent him on his way. Back with his
platoon, Kern discovered that the commander had ratted him out to his
platoon sergeant.

"I was called out in front of the entire platoon, was made an example
of, saying why are you going to mental health. This isn't a war. This
isn't bad." The next day, on a mission, Kern talked openly of
suicide. "Still to this day, my buddy doesn't know he talked me down,
but I really wanted to kill myself on that mission. I had three
loaded weapons sitting right next to me. I could have done it real easy."

Back home, Kern avoided his demons, drowning them in drink. Thomas
and Michaels encouraged Kern to open up.

"They'd be like, 'How was Iraq?' I'd say 'Oh, it was just Iraq.' I
kept brushing it aside and stuff. They kept telling me, 'You're gonna
break, you're gonna break. You need to get help.' " Kern relented.

Michaels found a psychiatrist in Austin whom Kern has been seeing
twice a week for free. In May he visited Fort Hood's mental health
services office, but was told he'd have to wait six weeks to see a doctor.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi child had followed Kern back to Texas. On the
first of June, Kern was in the bathroom at Under the Hood when the
child made an appearance. Afterward, Thomas and Michaels found Kern
sitting outside under a tree. "The look on his face was just empty.
His eyes were hollow," Thomas says. Kern entered the 12-bed
psychiatric ward at Fort Hood's military hospital. He spent the next
week there, emerging with a diagnosis of PTSD and traumatic brain
injury. Doctors put him on five medications, including tranquilizers,
antidepressants and antipsychotics, which he carries in a small
orange pillbox.

A week after being released, Kern started a blog, "Expendable
Soldier." In his first post he wrote, "I still hate myself and
everything I do. No matter what I am doing any day of the week I some
how am still reminded of the things I did while I was in Iraq, and
sometimes it gets so bad that I believe I am still in Iraq. ...
Sometimes I wish I never came back."

Still, Kern reports for duty at the coffeehouse every day. He's
working on restarting an Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter in
Killeen and talking to other soldiers about the coffeehouse. Does he
feel like he's become part of an anti-war movement? "I am part of an
anti-war movement," he says. "There's no 'feeling' about it."

Soldier Who Didnt Obey Is Jailed

2009-08-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

[2 articles]

Soldier Who Didn't Obey Is Jailed

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/us/06soldier.html

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: August 5, 2009

HOUSTON A soldier at Fort Hood who fought his deployment to
Afghanistan and stopped obeying orders was sentenced to a month in
jail and demoted to private in a military court on Wednesday morning.

Victor Agosto, a 24-year-old signalman with the III Corps, ripped a
patch showing his specialist rank off his uniform after an emotional
hearing in front of an Army captain in which he had told the court he
believed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan violated international law,
his lawyer, James M. Branum, said. Later, about 20 antiwar protesters
cheered Private Agosto as he was taken to jail, the lawyer said.

"He's not opposed to all wars; he is opposed to this war, because it
is not a war of self-defense," Mr. Branum said.

Under a plea agreement, Private Agosto will be discharged after he
serves his time in jail in Belton, Tex., Mr. Branum said.

Col. Benton Danner, a spokesman for Fort Hood, said Private Agosto
technically never refused an order to go overseas. Rather, in May, he
refused to report to an office that takes care of the paperwork for
overseas deployment, a relatively minor offense. Refusing an order to
deploy or deserting during a battle carry much stiffer penalties, he said.

Private Agosto said he lost faith in the war efforts abroad after
returning in late 2007 from a 13-month stint in Iraq, in which he
worked with computers and saw no combat.

"I realized that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with making
Americans safer," he told The Associated Press in an interview this
week. "After I got back, I started feeling guilty about my part in
the occupation."

This year, the Army informed him he would not be discharged in June
as he had expected but would be deployed to Afghanistan. He stopped
obeying orders then and was assigned to pulling weeds and sweeping
up. He also became active in local antiwar protests.

Mr. Branum said Private Agosto's stand against the wars was unusual
in that he informed his superiors of his objections. Other soldiers
who disagree with the wars simply break Army regulations to be discharged.

-------

Fort Hood Soldier Refused Deployment to Afghanistan

http://www.truthout.org/080509S?n

Wednesday 05 August 2009
by: Angela K. Brown

Fort Hood, Texas - A Fort Hood soldier was sentenced Wednesday
to a month in jail for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan over his
beliefs that the war violates international law.

Spc. Victor Agosto, 24, of Miami, pleaded guilty to disobeying
lawful orders and was sentenced at the central Texas Army post. The
judge also reduced his rank to the Army's lowest level, a private,
which also was part of the maximum penalty he faced in his plea
agreement with the military.

Also, Agosto cannot be discharged at a level lower than
other-than-honorable conditions, an administrative discharge. A
discharge was not mentioned in the hearing, but Agosto is expected to
be released from the Army after completing his jail term.

Before he was sentenced during the hourlong military hearing, he
told the judge he should not be jailed because he posed no threat to anyone.

He said he had remained on post and went to work every day since
refusing to deploy after learning a few months ago that the Army was
keeping him beyond his enlistment date. He said he did not use drugs
or go absent without leave, as other soldiers have done to avoid deployment.

He said he did not apply for conscientious objector status
because that requires opposition to all wars, and he does not believe
that all war is wrong.

"I really had no Army way of being consistent with my
conscience," Agosto said. "The courts haven't recognized soldiers'
rights to refuse an order they believe to be illegal.... I believe
future courts will find that the Afghanistan war is illegal because
it violates international law."

His attorney, James M. Branum, said he plans to appeal for a
lesser sentence on the grounds of legal errors. Agosto gave an
unsworn statement, which means cross-examination is not allowed.

But after Agosto spoke, Capt. Theresa Santos, acting as the
judge in the hearing, asked him several questions, including his
opinions about the war before he joined the military.

Agosto said that when he enlisted in 2005, he felt invading Iraq
was wrong but that troops had a mission to complete. He said he began
to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after he served a 13-month
tour in Iraq, which ended in late 2007.

Wednesday's proceeding was a summary court martial, in which a
soldier's guilty finding will not show up as a felony conviction if
an attorney does not represent him during the hearing. Branum said he
was there to advise Agosto and did not speak on the record or object
to anything.

Earlier, Agosto called one witness to testify on his behalf.
Cynthia Thomas, who said she's been an Army wife for 17 years, said
Agosto made a hard decision to follow his conscience although he
would lose his military benefits and be ostracized by his peers.

"I have not met a soldier with more integrity than Victor
Agosto," she said. "He has served this country in a time of war with honor."

A tribute to soldier resistance against the war on Afghanistan

2009-08-05T12:02:00.001-07:00

A tribute to soldier resistance against the war on Afghanistan

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/804/41357

Peter Boyle
26 July 2009

The heroic act of resisting an order to serve in a war that is wrong
has shaped the political views of many people. I remember the
powerful impression draft resisters made on me as a young student
during the tail-end of Australia's military involvement in the war on Vietnam.

It was me to make a life-long commitment to the movement for radical
social change.

Today, other young people are taking similar brave stands from the
ranks of the US armed forces. Their resistance can help foster a new
generation of political rebels.

"There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is
immoral and unjust," US army specialist Victor Agosto scribbled on a
disciplinary warning issued by his military superiors in Fort Hood,
Texas. "It does not make the American people any safer. It has the
opposite effect."

Agosto wrote this on May 1, a July 16 column on TomDispatch.com said.
Ten days later, Agosto refused to obey a direct order from his
company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second
"counselling statement". On this he wrote: "I will not obey any
orders I deem to be immoral or illegal."

Agosto had already served in Iraq for 13 months. "It was in Iraq that
I turned against the occupations. I started to feel very guilty. I
watched contractors making obscene amounts of money. I found no
evidence that the occupation was in any way helping the people of
Iraq. I know I contributed to death and human suffering. It's hard to
quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it."

This young soldier faces a Special Court Martial, and the prospect of
a prison sentence and a bad conduct discharge. But he's willing to
take the consequences of his act of resistance. A growing number of
soldier resisters agree with him.

"Yes, I'm fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in
Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or
people at the top. They're not responsive to people, they're
responsive to corporate America.

"The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is
for soldiers to not fight their wars. If soldiers won't fight their
wars, the wars won't happen. I hope I'm setting an example for other
soldiers."

When I heard that the 11th Australian soldier was killed in the
latest war on Afghanistan just last week, I wondered how long it
would be until the first Australian soldier deployed in Afghanistan
follows the example of Agosto and becomes a war resister.

Green Left Weekly supports and helps build the anti-war movement. We
know a powerful anti-war movement can not only mobilise public
protest but also encourage the breakdown of even the most powerful
imperialist armies. We saw this in the Vietnam War and we'll see it
again in Afghanistan War.

Please make a donation today to our fighting fund at: Greenleft,
Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, account no. 00901992. You can also
post a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or
phone in a donation through on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206
(within Australia).

So far our supporters have raised $121,037 this year. We need your
help to get to our target of $250,000 by the end of the year.

Inside the soldiers' resistance

2009-07-18T11:57:00.001-07:00

Inside the soldiers' resistance

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

July 9, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Army deserter plans to continue speaking against Iraq war

2009-07-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

[5 articles]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--------

Freed Army deserter says he has no regrets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236;

--------

Army deserter returned by Canada freed from brig

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

The Associated Press
Posted: 07/10/2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--------

Soldier who deserted released from Miramar brig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Wilkens: (619) 293-2236;

--------

Army deserter tells of his time behind bars

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

By Tony Perry
July 11, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tony.perry@latimes.com

Anti-Warriors

Bradley Manning and GI Resistance to US War Crimes

Activists rally to keep U.S. war resisters in Canada

Iraq war resister Rodney Watson stuck in limbo for the holidays

Students show support for war resisters

Iraq veteran turned peace activist talks about war in Afghanistan

Latest battle for lesbian war resister

Training makes killing civilians acceptable

Amnesty for Military War Resisters and Veterans

U.S. Army deserter says he'd do it again

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Serve

Veterans Call On Soldiers to Refuse Orders

Request to intervene in Hinzman appeal refused

Canada No Longer a Haven for War Resisters

Army deserter hopes for release

Iraq Veteran Finds Sanctuary in Canadian Church

The US Military is 'Exhausted'

The Best Way to Stop a War ...

Celebrating desertion

AWOL in Vancouver

Lesbian soldier seeks asylum after death threats

Ehren Watada: Free at Last

Cyber Resistance [by Dahr Jamail]

Liberal MP introduces war resisters bill

Free the Fort Bragg 50

Camilo Mejia Appeals Bad Conduct Discharge

Army Resister Victor Agosto Speaks Out

As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Book Excerpt, 'The Will to Resist'

Resisting a war by running away

Putting the war in Afghanistan on trial

Echo Platoon

Afghan MP calls for international demonstrations against war

US soldier who opposes Afghan war sentenced

GI Resistance Under the Radar

Dodgy manoeuvres

Injured Hearts, Injured Minds

Soldier Who Didnt Obey Is Jailed

A tribute to soldier resistance against the war on Afghanistan

Inside the soldiers' resistance

Army deserter plans to continue speaking against Iraq war

Soldier Who Didnt Obey Is Jailed