You can jail the resistors, but you can’t jail the resistance. George Bush, take notice as U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada is court-martialed next week. Congress, take heed. Young people in harm’s way are leading the way out of Iraq. It is time you followed.
Watada was the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. He joined the military in March of 2003. He believed President Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/11 and al-Qaeda, and that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States.
After signing on, he studied intensively to be well-prepared to lead troops in Iraq. His studies, and the daily news coming out of Iraq of civilian deaths and no WMDs, led him to the conclusion that the war was not only immoral, but also illegal.
On June 6, 2006, Watada said: “My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders. … As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must, as an officer of honor and integrity, refuse that order.”
He refused to deploy. The Army charged Watada with missing the troop movement, contempt toward officials and conduct unbecoming an officer. Watada hoped that his court-martial would be a hearing on the legality of the war. He was not claiming conscientious objection; rather, he says, he simply refused an illegal order. He offered to resign his commission. He offered to serve in Afghanistan. The Army refused his offers. A military judge ruled Watada cannot present evidence challenging the war’s legality nor explain what motivated him to resist his deployment order.
Watada recently said of his Feb. 5 court-martial, “it will be a non-trial. It will not be a fair trial or a show of justice. I think that they will simply say: ‘Was he ordered to go? Yes. Did he go? No. Well, he’s guilty.'”
Several journalists to whom Watada spoke were subpoenaed in order to testify, first at his pretrial hearing, then at the court-martial. The journalists fought back, and in each case, the Army backed down. Sarah Olson, one of the independent journalists involved, said, “I am glad the growing number of dissenting voices within the military will retain their rights to speak with reporters.”
Dissent within the military against the war in Iraq is growing. Iraq Veterans Against the War has quadrupled in size in the past year. More than 1,200 soldiers have signed on to an “Appeal for Redress,” with which active-duty soldiers can appeal to Congress for an end to the war with legal protections against retaliation from the military. The appeal simply reads:
“As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.”
Sgt. Ronn Cantu signed the Appeal for Redress, which soldiers can do confidentially online at www.appealforredress.org. In a recent radio interview, Cantu spoke over a crackly cell-phone connection from the front lines in Iraq: “I’m scared out of my mind right now. … It’s a belief of the soldiers I’ve talked to that any troop increase over here, it’s just going to be more sitting ducks, more targets.”
Since Watada and other active-duty resistors are facing years in military prison, I recently asked two of the most progressive members of the new Senate, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, what Congress could do for the soldiers facing court-martial. Both replied, “I don’t know.” As Congress wrangles over nonbinding resolutions condemning Bush’s war-making — or as he calls it, his “surge” — these brave young patriots are making binding decisions.
Without Congress taking decisive action, these soldiers are left to fend for themselves. How many must die, how many must be sent to prison or flee to Canada, before the U.S. Congress ends this war?
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2007.
And to not recognize that you must willfully ignore the obvious. For example: the war is illegal and therefore an order to deploy to Iraq is illegal? “The war is illegal” makes a fine slogan, but as a legal issue it requires more than a bumber sticker opinion. It requires that the deployment of troops to Iraq violates a specific law. IT would be a bit difficult for this fellow to cite the statute violated in deployment of troops to Iraq, since there is none. And too it is a bit difficult to overlook the fact that this young fellow completed college AFTER the invasion of Iraq, enter Officer Candidate School AFTER the invasion of Iraq, and took the oath as an Army officer AFTER the invasion of Iraq. Unless he claims to have been completely non compus mentus during this period, and then to have evolved into a well informed scholar, he knew when he joined, the circumstances of our involvement in Iraq. To claim after the fact that he had suddenly had the revelation that the war was illegal is just a bit thin. Especially since he is unable to cite the statute being violated that makes the war illegal.