Auburn man’s anti-military statements draw reaction

Auburn man's anti-military statements draw reaction

http://www.oanow.com/oan/news/local/article/auburn_mans_anti-military_statements_draw_reaction/82312/

Brittany Whitley
Staff Writer
Published: July 8, 2009

Emotions are running high after Auburn native and antiwar activist
Matthis Chiroux likened the U.S. Army to the Fourth Reich and accused
it of encouraging fear, racism and sexism.

"When you hear somebody compare our military to the Fourth Reich, you
kind of realize that this guy isn't really worth listening to," said
Janine Babbitt, whose husband Maj. Erich Babbitt, an active duty Army
National Guard member, has been deployed in Afghanistan for about a week.

Chiroux, who made headlines a year ago when he refused a deployment
to Iraq, made his most recent comments during a service at the Auburn
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Sunday.

An Opelika-Auburn News story about the event published Monday has
attracted nearly 60 comments as of Wednesday night from people on
both sides of the issue.

"It made me feel embarrassed and sad, not only that he's a
representative of Auburn, but that he's serving with the military and
he would have this stand with our military and country," Babbitt said.

Her husband has been part of the military for the past 15 years, she said.

"This is our first deployment and we have nothing but great things to
say about the Army," she said. "You're hoping that you are striving
for a greater good and a greater cause and to have peace. He (Erich)
volunteered because he felt like it was his turn to serve his country."

Janine points out that America has a volunteer Army, and that it was
Matthis Chiroux's choice to join.

"We're not drafted in this military, we volunteer to join it," she
said. "This gentleman, Matthis Chiroux, he obviously has the right to
say what he wants to say because we live in a free county … We live
in a free county because of the men and women who have fought to make
it a free country."

U.S. Army Capt. David Van Horn, an Alabama National Reservist and
full time AGR soldier who returned from Iraq last year, and Robert
Chiroux, Matthis' father, are among those who took exception to
Chiroux's statements.

Van Horn said Matthis Chiroux is entitled to say what he wants, that
it is a free country, but that being deployed in combat in Iraq is
different from deployment as an Army journalist.

Van Horn said his men saw action about every other day in Iraq, and
they were going "over the wire" almost every day while deployed.

"What this guy is pitching is the ugly American," Van Horn said. "He
would be pitching this if there was a cold war or a hot war. I would
warn strongly against people buying into anything that hasn't been
seen first hand. Until you've been there, you're not going to know."

Sunday, Matthis said he was taught how to kill by the Army.

Van Horn said every soldier goes through basic training, whether he's
going to be in combat or not.

"Everybody has to have the basic skills to be a rifleman in a pinch,"
he said. "He got the standard training everyone gets. If he got
overrun he'd know how to shoot a rifle."

While in Iraq, Van Horn said he and his men did not take part in
intimidation tactics with locals. He said they tried to do right by
them, including providing Iraqis with medical support, shoes and supplies.

He said having good relationships with Iraqis made his men safer.

"The army is not trying to make criminals out of people. It falls on
deaf ears for someone like me who's been out there and run the road
and seen it. American soldiers aren't built to be terroristic… It's
not who we are as people. My guys are too damn good," Van Horn said.

Van Horn said what Matthis Chiroux said is "between him and his God
and his honor."

Matthis' father, Robert Chiroux, Ph.D, is also speaking out. In his
talk Sunday, Matthis accused his father of physical and emotional
abuse. Robert denies the allegations.

"I will remain silent no longer. I respect free speech and the right
to peaceably protest, but I seriously doubt my son's convictions to
the anti-war movement or any other cause except where he can profit
from it. I am disappointed with my son and the effect this has had on
our family…Our family does not condone Matthis' rhetoric and would
caution anyone who might consider providing him financial
assistance," his father said in a statement provided to the
Opelika-Auburn News.

Sunday, Matthis admitted that tangles with law enforcement as a
juvenile landed him in jail and subsequently in the Army. Matthis
contends he did not a have choice in the matter, but his father said otherwise.

In his statement, Robert Chiroux said, "My days as his custodial
parent ended when after yet another infraction Matthis and I met with
his probation officer and an army recruiter whom I had invited.
Matthis choices were laid out for him and he did not hesitate in his
choice to join the army. He was, in fact, quite glib."

.

Former soldier is walking away from the war

Former soldier is walking away from the war

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

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

FRAMINGHAM ­ Josh Stieber doesn't think he shot anyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A team of documentarians show up at his various stops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent

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

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

July 3rd, 2009
by Stephen Lendman

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

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

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

Cohn and Gilberd write:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resisting Illegal Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modern Conscientious Objectors (COs)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Soldier

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

Later examples include:

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

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

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

(2) paying reparations to Iraqis; and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dissent and Disengagement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- possession and distribution of printed materials;

-- off-base locations allowed;

-- publishing underground newspapers and materials;

-- off-base demonstrations and protests; and

-- rules for military personnel participation.

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

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

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

Challenging Racism

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

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

Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault in the Military

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

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

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

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

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

The Medical Side of War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discharges

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

Others include:

-- family hardship or dependency factors;

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

-- pregnancy or childbirth;

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

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

-- specific personality disorders;

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

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

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

-- being a sole surviving family member;

-- unsatisfactorily performing duties;

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

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

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

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

The Families

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.

Peace, What is it Good For?

Peace, What is it Good For?

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=13606

Coming to terms with war in the Obama era

Thursday, July 02, 2009
By Alan Bisbort

It has been said of the 1990s that the world enjoyed a decade of
"peace and prosperity."

In retrospect, this may sound right ­ certainly the decade looks
better given the decade that followed ­ but is it even true? Where,
for example, was the enjoyment of peace in Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia,
Serbia, Bosnia, Liberia, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Colombia, Burma, et
al? That's a lot of government-sanctioned mass murder during a time
of "peace and prosperity," is it not? And what of North Korea? That
nation has not officially been engaged in a war, per se, since the
mid-1950s; yet it can truly be said that the people of North Korea
have not enjoyed a moment's peace in the interceding half century. It
seems almost too obvious to point out that few people alive today
have experienced a sustained period of world peace. There are many in
Connecticut ­ scholars, activists, protestors, educators ­ who've
spent their careers thinking, writing and demonstrating to advance
their various ideas on the subject of war and peace.

Periods of peace at any time in world history have been brief, if
indeed they ever existed outside the Gates of Eden. As evidence of
war's normality, James Hillman ­ in his book A Terrible Love of War
(2004) ­ pointed to its constancy throughout human history and its
ubiquity around the globe. Hillman, a renowned Jungian psychologist
and author who lives in Thompson, Conn., noted that during the 5,600
years of written history, there have been 14,600 recorded wars, or
nearly three per year. No societies, no peoples, no nations, no
historical epochs have been exempt from war.

At the dawn of the 21st century, with 7 billion people clamoring for
resources, land, water and attention, and with nearly 30,000 nuclear
weapons (most of which are a thousand times more powerful than the
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), world peace seems like some
kind of cosmic joke, if not an outright impossibility.

And yet, as the international peace activist Jonathan Granoff noted
at an Albert Schweitzer Institute conference held at Quinnipiac
University last year, we really don't have much choice. Granoff,
president of the Global Security Institute, a nonprofit committed to
the elimination of nuclear weapons, said, "We are the first
generation that really has to decide consciously whether we are going
to be the last."

Like Granoff, Hillman has thought long and hard about war and peace.
In A Terrible Love of War, he posed some painful but obvious
questions, like does a state have an inherent need for enemies? If
war is normal and acceptable, what are war crimes? Will there ever,
really, be an end to war?

To the latter, Hillman emphatically answers no. He believes that war
is "immortal" and, because of this, peace itself is a lie.

"Peace is the beginning of forgetting," he says. "I will not march
for peace, nor will I pray for it, because it falsifies all it
touches. It is a cover-up, a curse. Peace is simply a bad word."

Peace is indeed an elusive word, lulling people into complacency if
not a false sense of security. Perhaps peace itself is an ideal
state, a fantasy that does not actually exist. To get a contemporary
bead on the subject, Wikipedia ­ as unreliable as it can be ­ does at
least reflect the priorities of various subjects of human interest.
The entry for "peace," printed out, comes to five pages. The entry
for "war," printed out, comes to 23 pages and includes an almost
uncountable number of links for "further reference."

This discrepancy may reflect the overwhelming presence of war in the
world, but it also may reflect the nature of the two words, "war" and
"peace." "War" is much more clearly definable. That is, it is pretty
clear when a war is going on. Groups of people have armed themselves
and are killing other groups of people who are armed. It is not war
if the "enemy" is unarmed; it is slaughter. Terrorism, which has been
around in some form as long as war, has changed the nature of war, of
course. When George W. Bush declared a "global war on terror," the
potential for war-making expanded exponentially. Like global warming,
terrorism knows no borders.

"Peace," on the other hand (or cheek), does not automatically exist
when war stops. Peace is not just an absence of war. At least, this
is not how those who work for peace in the world feel about it.
--

Sister Rosemary McKenna and Sister Marie Burke, co-founders of
Waterbury's In The Making, a nonprofit community agency that finds
work for impoverished women, know about trying to shut the war
machine down. They've both regularly taken part in protests at the
Pentagon and at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), the
training facility at Fort Benning, Ga. (nicknamed "School of the
Assassins" by its critics, and now renamed the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation), which trains security personnel
in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. In layman's
terms, this training includes torture, blackmail and executions. SOA
grads have committed some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

The targets of SOA-trained troops are often religious workers, labor
organizers, students, and journalists who work with and for the poor,
including the Salvadorian Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered
in 1980, and six Jesuit priests murdered in November 1989 in El
Salvador. Each year, on the date of the latter massacre ­ committed
on George Bush Sr.'s watch ­ peace activists have organized a protest
at Fort Benning. Sister Marie took part in the protest last November.

"I did get arrested once at Fort Benning with Sister Rosemary. They
put us on busses and dropped us off at a park at midnight. It was
their way of punishing us. We were banned and barred after that. The
whole Fort Benning experience is inspiring to anyone who goes there.
Speakers are planned and the police are quiet. Some people protest us
being there, of course."

Sister Rosemary was also part of a contingent who staged a mock
execution and dug a mass grave at the Pentagon in 1989 into which
"victims" were to be stashed.

Do such peace activists feel as if they've accomplished their goals?
Even if the wars rage on?
--

Dorothea DiCecco and her husband Mario organized a group who for the
past six years staged a peace vigil every Sunday on the Litchfield
Green. The vigil was at first a response to the March 2003 invasion
of Iraq. DiCecco, recently retired after 40 years as a biology
professor at the University of Connecticut in Waterbury, said, "Many
times we wondered if what we were doing was having any impact,
whether what we were doing was making any difference. But then every
time we wondered this, we went back out there and had a Sunday when
we could answer yes. What we did made an impression. People would
stop and talk or join us. But it was difficult to do that and realize
that the war went on and on and on, with thousands more killed."

"Fighting for peace" strikes some as an oxymoron. M.K. Gandhi
addressed this with his concept of Satyagraha, which combined the
Sanskrit words for "truth" and "force." "Truth force" somehow got
turned into the less-forceful-sounding "passive resistance," though
Martin Luther King, Jr. was closer to Gandhi's ideal with his concept
of "militant nonviolence."

King's and Gandhi's efforts of resistance were not the least bit
"passive." They were aggressively active and, indeed, this
contributed to both men's violent deaths. Gandhi used the symbol of a
lever ­ as in a "leverage of truth." Commenting on Gandhi's use of
the lever as a symbol, psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson wrote in
Gandhi's Truth, "For it must be obvious that it is the challenge of
our generation to understand, as far as psychological assumptions
permit, what Gandhi calls truth as an actual force in mental life,
the kind of force that 'moves mountains.' A lever, I admit, is a
hopelessly primitive analogy in an electronic age. But whatever we
will do with it in future settings, Satyagraha did have its origins
in a technological imagery in which the body was still part of the
tool; and it will be seen that even today the more direct uses of
Satyagraha always include the body and the meeting of bodies: the
facing of the opponent 'eye to eye,' the linking of arms in defensive
and advancing phalanxes, the body 'on the line': all these
confrontations symbolize the conviction that the solidarity of
unarmed bodies remains a leverage and a measure even against the cold
and mechanized gadgetry of the modern state."

Anyone who has ever held an unpopular view knows how lonely and
vulnerable that can feel. This is especially so when overwhelming
numbers of people hold the opposite (and, in your mind, wrong) view.
Thus, it takes the strength and stamina to get up in public and
unequivocally state your point of view. In the decade that just
passed ­ a time of toxic partisanship ­ it took the strength of
Hercules and stamina of Cal Ripken, Jr.

DiCecco admits that "fighting for peace" has some strange connotations.

"Yes, it is a contradiction in some ways," says DiCecco. "You have to
be strong, physically and mentally. Many threatening things were said
and done to us. People yelling 'I know where you live,' trucks
swerving and spewing exhaust, things like that. You can't be afraid.
You know what you are doing is right. You just have to ask how anyone
could object to people asking for the killing to stop."

Henry Lowendorf, of New Haven Peace Council, doesn't mind
designations like "fighting for peace" or "militant nonviolence."

"It swivels on the word 'fight' and the word 'militant'," says
Lowendorf, who retired from Yale two years ago and devotes his
energies full time to peace activism. "We may not be using weapons or
intimidation, but there is no question that we are fighting. We are
getting in the way of the war machine any way we can. To say 'fight'
for peace is simply to use the jargon of sports and military that
dominates this country. We're not killing people or breaking arms
and, for the most part, not damaging property."

Not everyone agrees with the terminology though.

"I don't like the term 'fight for peace'," said Barbara Braunstein,
who leads the Winsted Area Peace Action (WAPA), a group that has kept
a twice-monthly peace vigil on the Winsted Green in East End Park
since 1981 (another peace group in Salisbury has kept a vigil going
for as long). "Years ago, I went through non-violence training, to
understand the state of mind you have to be in to do this kind of
peace activism. It comes down to being able to keep cool even though
your blood is boiling mad. One rule we had was that we do not shout
back at people who threaten us. For much of the Bush presidency, we
had very interesting meetings where we could vent, talk and support
each other because we were all really angry at what was going on."

Nobody really stops to talk to WAPA members on the green because the
vigil takes place at a busy intersection. But the reaction,
Braunstein says, has been "very positive" from people in their cars.
"Now that people can drive with their windows down, it's even more
vocal and positive," she says.

Although the Litchfield peace vigil stopped soon after Barack Obama
was elected president, Braunstein's group has no plans to end their efforts.

"We took a consensus vote when Obama was elected," said Braunstein.
"We decided to continue our vigil, because it is so important to
remind people that the war has not ended. And now that Obama has
escalated the war in Afghanistan it is even more important that we do this."

WAPA has, in fact, taken their efforts far beyond waving at passing cars.

"Our presence on the Green is just one component of what we do," she
says. "We have an education program going on now, a
counter-recruiting effort that we've taken into Region 7 schools and
will soon take to Torrington High School."

In the current economic climate, many young people are turning to
military service for lack of jobs in their communities. WAPA members
provide students information about alternatives to military service,
to counter the efforts of military recruiters who are allowed into
the schools. WAPA also has a "basket project" to commemorate the
lives of those 4,000 U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq. The names of
the fallen are held inside a large basket, which has been put on
display at libraries and community centers. Judging from the volumes
of comments in the accompanying remembrance books, the display has
provoked some real soul-searching throughout the Northeast corner.
Soon, another basket with the 600 names of U.S. soldiers killed in
Afghanistan will be circulated in the Winsted area.

"Even though we stopped when Obama got elected, we are now taking a
wait-and-see approach," says DiCecco. "But there are many things
about what he is doing that concern us. Now we're going more heavily
into Afghanistan and the policy isn't clear. We may have to take up
the peace vigil again."
--

Lowendorf, of New Haven Peace Council, steps back a bit before
analyzing the current wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We are fairly frustrated with Obama, it's true," he says. "But the
peace movement always has its ups and downs."

Lowendorf cites the peaks in the movement after the atom bomb
dropping in 1945, which spawned a huge Ban the Bomb movement, and the
Vietnam War, which spawned an equally large antiwar movement.

"But many people dropped out in 1975, only to return in the 1980s
when Ronald Reagan thought it would be a good idea to build more
ICBMs. This continued to build momentum until the Soviet Union fell
apart, and people began dropping out again. But the core peace groups
continued, knowing that wars are always going on."

When George W. Bush made his first pronouncements about going into
Iraq in 2002, a huge peace movement seemed to materialize overnight.

"Perhaps the biggest peace marches this country has ever seen took
place on Feb. 15, 2003, with people thinking they could stop this
insane push for war. There was another wave of record-setting marches
around the world in March 2003 just before the invasion. When,
despite all this outpouring, Bush still started his invasion, a lot
of people lost hope and the movement started to diminish at that
point. You could feel it."

Getting back to Obama, Lowendorf saw many peace activists getting
involved in his election campaign. "People were looking for ways to
make change," he said. "But the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan
is a mess. We are told that Pakistan has its nuclear arsenal secured.
We don't even know if the United States has its arsenal secured. The
Afghanistan and Pakistan situation is endless. There is no end. No
exit strategy. We don't even know why we're there. The biggest
question for us is how to get people to oppose military involvement
in Afghanistan. We need to resurrect words like 'imperialism' again,
because that's exactly what this is."

Among the many efforts supported by the Peace Council is the Mayors
for Peace movement. New Haven is one of 21 cities in Connecticut ­
more than any other state ­ whose mayor has signed on as a member of
this group.

"This is a huge movement to abolish nuclear weapons that includes the
National Conference of Mayors, but it has been censored out of the
media," he said. "Once mayors realize their civilian population is
being targeted with nuclear missiles, this is not war, this is madness."

New Haven is, furthermore, one of the few cities in the U.S. that has
"Peace Messenger" status.

DiCecco and Braunstein continue to work to reach their communities.
In Torrington, DiCecco hosts and produces a peace-oriented show for
local cable access (Channel 5) called "Wake Up America." In Winsted,
WAPA's next big event will take place on "Hiroshima Day," Aug. 6. For
the past 15 years, on the 6th, the group has held a candlelight vigil
on the Green. Among those participating are the staff and students
from Camp Kinderland, a summer camp in Tolland, Mass. (just over the
Connecticut border), dedicated to ideals of social justice and peace.
The camp was founded in 1923, as a retreat for children from the
tenements of New York City. Braunstein, who grew up in Brooklyn,
attended this camp when she was a kid.

"It's something the kids will remember the rest of their lives," she said.
--

"Freedom isn't free," the war makers are always reminding us. Didn't
you know that? If you are reading these words, so the argument goes,
then you have blood on your hands ­ the blood of patriots who died in
battle to ensure that you could read these words. War is a circular
argument that can never be won or lost and therefore the existence of
war can never be questioned. The active pursuit of "lasting peace,"
on the other hand, is an indication of muddled if not dangerous thinking.

And what of "praying for peace"?

Hillman said that often when people are "praying for peace," they're
really praying for victory. "Do people ever pray for surrender?" he
said. "Unconditional surrender would bring immediate peace."

Hartford's own Mark Twain addressed this paradox in his "War Prayer,"
a blistering indictment that was rejected by magazines during his
lifetime and only published after his death by Harper's Monthly in
1916. Twain's prayer closed with:

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with
our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms
of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with
the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste
their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the
hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to
turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the
wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports
of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in
spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave
and denied it ­ for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their
hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make
heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white
snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit
of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the
ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek
His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

Hillman thinks that our only hope for "peace" as a species is to
acknowledge our proclivities toward war.

"The first psychological step in coming to terms with any phenomenon
requires imagination and understanding," he writes. He suggests that
there are lessons that can be learned from understanding our love of
war. Among these are that it offers us a chance to honor war, to
praise and thank Ares/Mars. It also allows us to understand how this
martial spirit is helpful, that it gives us courage, makes us
protective and willing to fight for justice. And it allows us to
respectfully turn to the warriors themselves for advice before
embarking on war. It is here that we would learn how Ares and Mars
offer "the restraint of awareness" and how holding back can be a form
of courage.

Stopping wars once they have begun is infinitely more difficult than
preventing them from ever starting, Hillman said.

Lowendorf points out a fact often overlooked these days: 60 to 70
percent of Americans have, for the past three years, said they want
us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are in the majority, and there is
not reason to be on the defensive!" he says, his voice rising with
passion. "The overwhelming majority of Americans are on our side. And
they came to these views without any help from the media, that is,
they knew a war of aggression was unnecessary. Yet the corporate
media ignores them."

Lowendorf credits this to the fact that defense contractors like GE
own stakes in the media. "It's not in its interest to cover the peace
movement, which is very upsetting because the corporate media and TV
are powerful. They cover Iran protestors in a minute, but will not
even send a reporter to cover peace demonstrations in their own
country. The New York Times didn't cover marches that attracted
50,000 to 100,000 people. Their attitude was that 'well, we have
freedom of speech and assembly and that's what we do in the U.S.' No,
what we actually do in the U.S. is attack other countries and kill
their people. And to have an opposition to that inside the U.S.
should be something that is celebrated rather than vilified. The
media is extremely good at pacifying 300 million people."

Sister Marie, now retired, remains hopeful.

"You have to live in an atmosphere of peace," she said. "You have to
respect the other whether you agree with them or not. That is where
God is. An openness between people and deep, deep respect. There has
to be a whole paradigm shift. And I think it's coming."

.

Peace vigil standees are out every weekend

Peace vigil standees are out every weekend

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_12743971

By Lidia Ryan
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Updated: 07/02/2009

DANBURY -- Anyone who has driven by the Danbury War Memorial on a
Saturday morning has probably seen the Danbury Peace Vigil Standees.

Rain or shine, the protestors are outside the memorial every Saturday
from 10:30 a.m. to noon, wearing signs opposing war.

The group is made up of local residents from various groups,
including Veterans for Peace and Grannies for Peace.

Last Saturday, six people were on hand. There are usually between 10 and 15.

But Mike Toto, of Veterans for Peace, said that no matter what,
someone is always out there. They have not missed a Saturday in the
entire two years they have been demonstrating.

Despite their small number, the standees got many honks from passing
cars. Most were encouraging.

David Stevenson, who held a sign that said "Friends for peace,"
estimates only one of every 50 reactions they get is negative.

"We respect everyone's opinion," Toto said. "But we can't see how
anyone could be against peace."

Getting responses is one of Toto's favorite parts about being a
standee. He said group members often strike up conversations with
people walking by.

The purpose of the Danbury Peace Vigil Standees is to protest war as
a policy, not to protest the military. The standees stress that they
support U.S. soldiers.

Toto, who is a veteran, said he became active in the peace movement
when his military service was over.

"I have seen the ugly side of war," he said.

He served just before the Vietnam War started, but he had friends in
that war and lost family members in World War II.

Veterans for Peace and Grannies for Peace are national organizations
with chapters in the Danbury area.

Although no grandmothers were present last week, Toto and Stevenson
spoke highly of Shirley Smith, a Grannies for Peace leader.

Smith's sister was one of the founders of Grannies for Peace, which
started in New York City.

One of Smith's big accomplishments as a Granny for Peace in Danbury
was getting the Veterans for Peace co-chair, Walter Hrozenchik, a walker.

When Hrozenchik began to have trouble walking, he could not afford a
walker, so Smith lobbied Costco to donate one.

Toto said the group likes to celebrate its accomplishments by eating
at local ethnic restaurants. Many of the standees are
pro-immigration, Toto said.

Danbury Peace Vigil Standees had more members during the Bush
administration, he said. Although most current standees support the
Obama administration, they have problems with it as well.

One of their biggest concerns is Obama sending troops to Afghanistan.

The standees believe that it's important for Americans to be involved
in politics. James Whiteside expressed this with his sign: "Democracy
is not a spectator sport."

Robert Garavel, a member of the workers union, said his biggest
problem is that people don't care enough about the issues.

He said peace is a "spiritual issue," not just a political one, and
there is too much apathy in the country. "Peace is an issue for all
Americans." .

Garavel, standing next to his fellow protestors, wore a T-shirt
quoting John Lennon's famous peace song, "Imagine": "You may say that
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

.

Who's A Low Level Terrorist? Are You?

Who's A Low Level Terrorist? Are You?

http://www.countercurrents.org/spence010709.htm

By Emily Spence
01 July, 2009

When threatened, should we conform with lock-step in perverse
obedience to the State's dictates, outlooks and agendas in an
increasingly Orwellian milieu? If not, then we must constantly remind
ourselves and each other of US Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas's vision: "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the
most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that
could most easily defeat us."
--

Recently, an American Civil Liberties Union report pointed out,
"Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the
Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression
in the form of public protests should be regarded as 'low level
terrorism'." [1]

Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their
educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance
is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate
peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still
exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the
participants of the first antiwar protest against the Vietnam
incursion, put together in the mid-1960's by peaceable Quakers and
FOR members after having discussed Gandhi's Salt March as a model for
a nonviolent demonstration, faced government operatives filming them
face by face from rooftops as they moved en masse down Broadway to
the UN Plaza. (My mother, a pacifist married to a World War II
Conscientious Objector, and I, a child at the time of the march, both
were in attendance. When the film crew focused on us, she stood tall,
faced the agents with their telephoto lens, glared in disdainful
defiance and, simultaneously, throw the corner of her coat over my
face. Afterwards, she muttered, "How dare they try to intimidate us!")

This sort of happening in mind, the treatment of Nobel Peace Award
winner Aung San Sui Kyi in Myanmar is not necessarily all that
different than the response that she'd receive in the USA and, while
it's commendable that American spokespersons publicly object to her
most recent arrest, they, certainly, might seem to be a bunch of
hypocrites. This is due to the fact that a number of Nobel Peace
Award recipients, such as American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
have had difficulties of their own on American soil.

For example, "AFSC's work, always open and resolutely nonviolent, has
been under government surveillance for decades. The Service Committee
secured nearly 1,700 pages of files from the FBI under a Freedom of
Information request in 1976. These files show that the FBI kept files
on AFSC that dated back to 1921. Ten other federal agencies kept
files on AFSC, including the CIA, Air Force, Navy, Internal Revenue
Service, Secret Service, and the State Department. The CIA has
intercepted overseas mail and cables in the 1950s, and some AFSC
offices (and even its staff's homes) have been infiltrated and
burglarized in the late 1960s into the 1970s." [2]

In relation, AFSC associate general secretary for justice and human
rights, Joyce Miller, asked, "How can we speak of spreading democracy
in Iraq while dismantling it here at home?" She further remarked,
"Political dissent is fundamental to a free and democratic society.
It should not be equated with crime."

Add to the AFSC problems, those pertaining to Nobel Peace Award
recipient Nelson Mandela, who only a year ago had the designation
"terrorist" removed from his name, under protest by the State
Department, so that he no longer suffered travel restrictions from
the US government. Yet his travel curtailment was not nearly as awful
as was Ramzy Baroud's blockage. He, the editor of Palestine
Chronicle, had his US passport seized by a consular officer at an
overseas American Embassy [3]. Similarly, Senator Edward Kennedy was,
also, flagged by the U.S. no-fly list.

Then again, Ted Kennedy received much less harassment than did Nobel
Peace Award winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire after her flight from
Guatemala had been directed to Ireland through Houston:

"She was probably tired and ready to get back to Belfast, where her
attempts to bring about an end to The Troubles in 1976 made her at 32
the youngest Nobel Peace Prize-winner ever. Since then, she's been
given the Pacem in Terris Award by Pope John Paul II, and the United
Nations selected her (along with the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu,
Jordan's Queen Noor and a dozen or so other fellow Nobel Laureates)
as an honorary board member of the International Coalition for the Decade.
"Unfortunately for Maguire, her flight back home to Northern Ireland
was routed through Houston, where none of that meant diddly. Federal
Customs officials were far less interested in any of that than they
were in a box on the back of the transit form she filled out on her flight.

"'They questioned me about my nonviolent protests in USA against the
Afghanistan invasion and Iraqi war,' Maguire said later in a
statement. 'They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form
admitting to criminal activities.'

"Maguire was detained for two hours -- grilled once, fingerprinted,
photographed, and grilled again. She missed her flight home. She was
only released after an organization she helped found -- the Nobel
Women's Initiative -- started kicking up a fuss." [4]

On can add to her troubles countless other ones wherein human rights
and environmental supporters have been repeatedly hassled for no
other reason than that they're holding views that don't jive with
positions at any number of U.S. government institutions. One needn't
return in time to the McCarthy Era to find many individuals who have
been investigated and persecuted for holding vilified opinions. For
example, Stephen Lendman, a peace advocate and writer in his
seventies with a permanent knee injury that delimits travel, has been
repeatedly investigated by the FBI.

At the same time, he is joined by myriad others such as assorted
activists in Maryland whose names were put on federal terrorist lists
by state police who infiltrated their groups. [5] As such, their
perfectly legal activities, freedom of speech and right to unhindered
assembly have been criminalized.

Simultaneously, there's a certain inescapable irony and disingenuous
quality presented by the Western government heads who are harshly
critical of the Iran crackdown on dissenting citizens while they,
themselves, condone similar ironfisted policies in their own lands.
Their two-faced position is barely hidden beneath the surface of
their mock concern for the well-being of Iranian protesters as they
urge their own and allied troops into battle, show little (if any)
sincere remorse over the slaughter of masses of civilians that happen
in the process and make sure that demonstrators at home are
disregarded, denigrated or preemptively rounded up as happened at the
2008 Republican National Convention.

Then again, one might find himself in pretty good company if he were
singled out as unpatriotic and treacherous for holding viewpoints or
undertaking actions that go contrary to the perspectives that a
certain hawkish and totalitarian segment of society holds. All the
same, every method conceivable might be used to hunt down the
offenders and, when taken to the extreme, render their seemingly
provocative positions ineffectual by any means possible, including
imprisonment and murder.

Anyone who doubts this to be the case needs only to remember about
what happened to people like Howard Fast; the slain Freedom Riders
Andy Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner; the thirteen shot
students at Kent State University at which Ohio National Guardsman
fired sixty-seven rounds over a thirteen second period, and scores of
others who have stood against mainstream policies.

Meanwhile, stigmatizing dissidents is a fairly common practice. As
such, "There are 1.1 million people on the [U.S.] Terrorist Watch
List and there is a 35 per cent error rate, minimum, for that list,"
according to ACLU's Michael German. [6] Furthermore, the overzealous
and aggressive surveillance tactics used by the National Security
Agency (NSA) to check the public's e-mails, telephone calls and other
communications are the same ones as were in use during George W.
Bush's administration. Likewise, the amount of spying on personal
exchanges is as high as it ever was.

In relation to recent claims by Justice Department and national
security officials that the overcollection was unintentional, House
representative, Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey and Chairman of
the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, commented "Some
actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental." Additionally,
the act of tracking e-mailed transmissions and other interactions has
seemed in violation of federal law according to lawyers at the
Justice Department. Regardless, the practice continues.

At the same time, the decision to designate social activists as
troublemakers, while singling them out for intimidation, threats and
investigations, carries serious legal and political implications in
democratic societies.The further measure of subjecting them to the
sorts of difficulties that Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Ramzy Baroud,
AFSC members and innumerable others have endured is clearly based in
xenophobic, paranoid and despotic thinking. It embodies the kind of
authoritarian mentality and oppressive activities that one finds in
the worst types of tyrannical regimes.

As Harry S. Truman suggested, "Once a government is committed to the
principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way
to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures,
until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a
country where everyone lives in fear." Due to this fear, are we,
then, to all conform with lock-step in perverse obedience to the
State's dictates, outlooks and agendas in an increasingly Orwellian
milieu? If not, then we must constantly remind ourselves and each
other of US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's vision:
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of
all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily
defeat us."
--

References

[1] Pentagon Rebrands Protest as "Low-Level Terrorism"
(http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/pentagon-
rebrands-protest-as-low-level-terrorism/).

[2] American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
(http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0201-03.htm).

[3] "Punishing activists or pursuing terrorists?" by Maggie Mitchell
Salem in Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.
(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GL10Aa01.html).

[4] Nobel Prize Winner Gets Hassled At Bush Intercontinental ...
(http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/29-8).

[5] Police Spied on Activists In Md. - washingtonpost.com
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/07/17/AR2008071701287.html) and Md. Police Put
Activists' Names On Terror Lists - ...

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/
article/2008/10/07/AR2008100703245.html).

[6] One third of FBI Terror Watch List are innocent people
(http://www.russiatoday.ru/Top_News/2009-06-17/
One_third_of_FBI_Terror_Watch_List
_are_innocent_people.html).
--

Emily Spence is an author living in Massachusetts. She has spent many
years involved in human rights, environmental and social services efforts.

.

The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military

A Secret History of Dissent in the All-Volunteer Military

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

by Tom Engelhardt and Dahr Jamail
July 1, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

By Dahr Jamail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avoiding Battle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saying "No" One at a Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unready and Unwilling Reserves

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

On his blog, he puts his position this way:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Future of Military Dissent

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

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

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

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

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