Excerpt
Richard Keene, a Marylander, may have been the first American war resister. The year was 1658 when Keene refused demands from the colonial government that he be trained as a soldier in the Maryland militia. For his defiance, Keene was fined six pounds and fifteen shillings by one Sheriff Coarsey. Their encounter was brief. With his unsheathed cutlass poised for attack in one hand, Sheriff Coarsey used his free hand to hit citizen Keene while insulting him and threatening him with death. “You dog!” spat out the frustrated sheriff. “I could find it in my heart to split your brains!”
Despite that sheriff ’s fury, refusing military service was the well-respected practice of some of America’s founding fathers. They or their parents had risked their lives crossing the Atlantic to escape oppression in Europe. William Penn, for example, the founder of the state named after him, was a pacifist. The concept of rejecting war was so legitimate at the time that George Washington’s call to arms included a critical exemption: “All young men of suitable age [are] to be drafted,” he announced, “except those with conscientious scruples against war.”2 In World War II—the so-called Good War—more than forty thousand men responded to their conscription orders by refusing military service, instead spending the war years as loyal American conscientious objectors. The Vietnam War produced some 170,000 conscientious objectors.
Soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Vietnam War–era battle cry “Hell no! We won’t go!” was heard again, this time from a growing number of U.S. soldiers who had voluntarily enlisted in the military. Other soldiers were returning home shocked by what they saw and did in Iraq and vehemently opposed to the war. Rather than engage in a battle they didn’t believe in, some of these volunteer soldiers filed for conscientious objector status. Others accepted harsh punishment—including prison sentences at hard labor—for refusing orders. Some went AWOL (absent without leave), while others deserted the military and fled to Canada.
This new generation of American war resisters includes professional soldiers such as twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army Private Dan Felushko. “I didn’t want ‘Died deluded in Iraq’ over my gravestone,” explained Felushko about his flight to Canada as a deserter from the war. “I saw it as wrong. If I died there or killed somebody there, that would have been more wrong.”3 Specialist Jeremy Hinzman is another American solider who chose Canada over his military career. When queried about his obligation to follow orders, his answer came fast: “I was told in basic training that if I’m given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it. I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do.”4
The drama of these human stories is intense, the pain deep and palpable. “I don’t know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds,” mourned Hart Viges from his apartment in Austin, Texas. “I have my imagination to pick at for that one.”Viges fought in Iraq as a member of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, then came home and underwent a powerful epiphany: “You can’t wash your hands when they’re covered with blood.” He applied for conscientious objector status. “I’m a Christian, what was I doing holding a gun to another human being? Love thy neighbor. Pray for those who persecute you, don’t shoot them.”5
These are men and women who cannot be written off as political troublemakers or emotional misfits or cowards. Many are, in fact, heroes, individuals with the remarkable strength of character required to reject propaganda and extraordinary peer pressure, to recognize their own personal change and spiritual growth. They made a huge decision not to fight in Iraq. Or they served in the “sandbox”—GI jargon for the Middle East—only to return home disgusted and appalled by their experience and what it did to them. “Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience,” wrote former Army Sergeant Camilo Mejía from the prison where he was locked up for refusing to return to Iraq.6
It’s impossible to tally just how many of the soldiers sent to fight in Iraq oppose the war. Applications for conscientious objector (CO) status, according to official figures, add up to only a few score, which is understandable; in the all-volunteer force, a soldier seeking a CO discharge must somehow prove to the military that he or she experienced a profound personal philosophical change after enlisting. Only a handful of soldiers had sought refugee status in Canada by the end of 2005, but their lawyer was convinced many more were living underground north of the U.S. border.
The Pentagon acknowledges that more than six thousand soldiers have deserted from the armed forces since the invasion of Iraq (as of early 2006),7 but no one knows how many of them went AWOL for antiwar reasons. “I know other people are feeling the same way I am,” said sailor Pablo Paredes, who publicly refused to board his Iraq-bound U.S. Navy transport ship, “and I’m hoping more people will stand up. They can’t throw us all in jail.”8 Paredes was sentenced to three months of hard labor.
What is clear from my research is that many soldiers fighting in Iraq opposed—or at least questioned—the mission there, especially after they arrived in the war theater and were forced by orders and circumstances into situations that defied logic, training, and their fundamental morality. And by the end of 2005, the growing membership of Iraq War veterans in antiwar organizations showed that plenty of soldiers were returning from the Middle East horrified and disgusted with the war.
It’s important, as the years pass, not to forget how the United States ended up invading and occupying Iraq. The nation was still reeling in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The White House was fueling fear and paranoia with its repeated warnings that those responsible for the attacks were on the verge of launching more and that the very survival of the nation was at stake. Mired in Afghanistan after overthrowing the Taliban, U.S. forces were unable to find President George W. Bush’s stated nemesis, Osama bin Laden. (Remember Bush’s tough Texas “We’ll smoke ‘em out!” talk?) Taking advantage of the free hand Congress still offered, the Bush team publicly targeted Iraq, insisting it was a looming and immediate threat.
Successfully forcing attention away from their failing campaign in Afghanistan, yet facing extraordinary opposition worldwide, they intimidated Congress into supporting a radically changed U.S. foreign policy: preemptive military action. Citing Central Intelligence Agency reports that turned out to be both misleading and false, the Bush Administration painted Iraq as a rogue state threatening the Free World. The term “weapons of mass destruction” became common currency as the administration prepared for war and kept up its relentless public relations campaign. Saddam Hussein was on the verge of deploying chemical weapons, it insisted, and developing doomsday germ warfare and building nuclear bombs. Condoleezza Rice, then the national security advisor, and Vice President Dick Cheney famously employed the image of a mushroom cloud over America, courtesy of Iraq. CIA director George Tenet called his agency’s intelligence “a slam-dunk” for war. Vice President Cheney publicly daydreamed about the World War II–like greeting U.S. “liberators” would enjoy from Iraqis after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. At the same time, they worked hard to stitch together another claim that soon proved false: that a direct working relationship existed between the religious fanatics of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and the secular warriors of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.
Predicated on this curriculum of deceit, the United States sent its voluntary army on another failed overseas adventure even while the memory of the Vietnam debacle was so fresh that some soldiers who had served in the Vietnam War were still young enough to be shipped off to its desert cousin in Iraq. When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and when no valid link could be shown between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, further excuses were offered by the White House to rationalize the ongoing war: first, a U.S. obligation to bring democracy to Iraq and prevent civil war, and then, perhaps most shameful of all, to honor the soldiers already killed.
Throughout this book I refer to those in the military generically as “soldiers.” Unless it is germane to their stories to specify their rank and branch of service, I find it more appropriate to think of these men and women as individuals within a monolithic military. Soldiers.
I am pleased to report that no pseudonyms are used in the book, nor are there anonymous sources among my interviewees. The soldiers telling me their stories are on the record. Only Daniel (Chapter Seven) kept his last name to himself, worried that his candid remarks would jeopardize his desperate attempts to regain his veteran’s medical benefits as he suffered from the debilitating effects of combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder. These are all real people laboring with some of life’s most difficult decisions, all now out in the open. One after another they told me that they were motivated to share their stories, at least in part, by their desire to help other soldiers deal with similar predicaments. Many said they hoped news of their experiences would steer vulnerable civilians away from the military. And plenty of them thanked me for listening to them, telling me that speaking publicly is part of their personal healing process.
Some might question the veracity of their stories, but it is worth keeping in mind that these soldiers have no reason to lie about events that often portray them in a grotesquely negative light. Curious too, isn’t it, that so many of them—separated from each other by geography and time—experienced such similar tragedies? Many of the scenarios described cannot be fact-checked with the traditional tools. These are events and experiences that were not necessarily witnessed by anyone approaching the role of an impartial observer. Most are not logged, recorded, or filmed. But more crucial, I think, is the fact that the backbone, heart, and soul of these stories are not so much the specifics of the events recounted, but rather the epiphanies of the soldiers who experienced them. These are stories of coming of age, stories of religious awakening, and stories of coming to terms with morality and immorality, as well as mortality.
These are stories of breakups of relationships with families and country. I’ve looked into these soldiers’ eyes. I’ve listened to their voices. I’ve watched them cry. They may have made mistakes as they recounted events, maybe even embellishing here and there—human nature suggests that’s probable. There may even be some faded or foggy memories. How can there not be? But the overriding truth is clear.
Their stories are worth listening to, because they represent a different reality—an unvarnished and unfiltered reality—than that depicted by our government and much of our media. The horrors the soldiers speak of are better known abroad—in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia—than they are at home in the United States.
Are the Iraqis (and others) who favor violence against the U.S. troops terrorists or freedom fighters? Are some of them demented followers of a perverted version of Islam who feel no remorse about blowing themselves and others to bits? Do others feel they are protecting their country and families by trying to rout out the invaders and occupiers? Are they a resistance, or insurgents, or guerrillas? Are they crazed jihadists? Leftover Saddamists? Common opportunistic criminals? Outside agitators? Are they simply hired thugs doing the dirty work for ambitious politicians and gangsters?
The answer, undoubtedly, is all of the above. Why, then, should these combatants be categorized as a single group? Perhaps, for practical purposes, we need a term to define diverse types collectively. The challenge is to find a term that identifies such people in a summary fashion with the least possible distortion or propagandistic baggage.
“Terrorist,” the catchall word favored by the Bush Administration, dates to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. A terrorist uses terror as a device to accomplish a goal.Terror is fear and fright and dread. One critical shortcoming of the freighted word “terrorist” is that it could just as accurately be used to describe American military personnel in Iraq. Given the U.S. tactics, from the initial threat of a “shock and awe” attack to the assaults on cities whose populations rejected the U.S. occupation, American actions could accurately be termed terrorism.
“Freedom fighter,” of course, is a term completely dependent on point of view.To King George and his British soldiers, George Washington and his revolutionary army were no freedom fighters. “The resistance” often is used as a proper noun, denoting a struggle for liberation in an occupied country. It also carries a heritage that evokes romantic French Resistance fighters opposing Hitler and the Nazis. “Guerrilla” tends to conjure equally romantic images of beret-clad South Americans and others fighting against oppressive authority. The English borrowed the term from the Spanish diminutive meaning simply “little war,” but it has come to mean combatants in an irregular war.
“Insurgent” is perhaps the term most widely used to identify Iraqi attackers. The word comes from the Latin insurgere, meaning “to rise up against,” and in English it can mean one who is rising up against an authority or a government in power. But for those who question the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, “insurgent” may have its own emotional baggage, because it is used by the U.S. armed forces. However correct it may be as a descriptive word, it can cast an unintended negative connotation. A murderous insurgent from an American soldier’s point of view may be a patriotic freedom fighter to an Iraqi who feels oppressed by the occupation.
This semantic challenge is an important one. Words and their definitions are potent; they carry extraordinary power.Who is the U.S. Army fighting in Iraq, and why? Both those questions have been answered by the Bush Administration through the misuse of words. The president muddied the scene further late in 2005 when he chose to identify his foe in Iraq with the vague term “rejectionists.”9
Much of the media accepted the administration’s labels without challenge—as they accepted the very reason for going to war without challenge. The New York Times, in a spotlighted mea culpa published on May 26, 2004, apologized for some of its reporting during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, acknowledging that it had published “information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged—or failed to emerge.”
Other news outlets unabashedly championed the war, using whatever language (and symbolism) they felt best served that cause—and never expressed regret. Fox News inserted an American flag in the upper left corner of its screen and referred to the Iraq War by the moniker chosen at the Pentagon: “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” CBS News anchorman Dan Rather joined the march, telling Larry King on a TV show broadcast on April 4, 2003: “Look, I’m an American. . . .When my country is at war, I want my country to win. . . . I can’t and don’t argue that that is coverage without prejudice. About that I am prejudiced.”
It is critical that the words used to identify those attacking the U.S. military and those being attacked by U.S. forces be precise. Careless use of prejudicial language can heedlessly skew interpretations of news and history, such as the experiences of the soldiers whose stories I recount here.
In late 2003 the Los Angeles Times ordered its reporters to cease using “resistance fighters” when reporting on Iraqi attacks on U.S. forces. Assistant managing editor Melissa McCoy sent her staff an e-mail saying that because “the phrase evoked a certain feeling . . . a certain romanticism or heroism,” she didn’t want it used to describe the
Iraqis resisting U.S. troops. And McCoy issued a credible warning about the possibility of unintentional consequences: “Sometimes certain combinations of words send an unintended signal. You combine these two seemingly innocuous words and suddenly they have this unintended meaning.”10 She assigned her staff to use instead the words “insurgent” and “guerrilla.”
At The Washington Post, foreign editor David Hoffman disagreed. “They are resisting an American occupation, so it’s accurate,” he said about “resistance fighters.” He pointed out the myriad of types striking out at Americans. “We try to be as precise as possible and distinguish whether they are former Baath party, Fedayeen, outsiders, insiders. But that’s not always possible.”11
Perhaps the most neutral words to describe people engaged in armed conflict are “fighters” and “militants” and “combatants,” apolitical words that do not connote good guys or bad guys. But “enemy” is the word I’ve decided to use for the opposing forces in Iraq. “Enemy” is the correct word because, although it may not feel so, the word is neutral, and it includes all of those engaged in conflict in Iraq, armed and unarmed.
The origin of the word “enemy” is the Latin inimicus, literally “not friend.” In modern American English, “enemy” is the best word I’ve found for those who attack U.S. soldiers. It means someone who intends injury to another. Some Iraqi fighters are common criminals, others believe themselves to be dedicated freedom fighters, and still others are crazed jihadists. But they all are the enemy of U.S. armed forces operating in Iraq, and U.S. soldiers are their enemy.
Perhaps Pogo said it best: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Immediately following the September 11 attacks, the unity and support of the world community was best expressed by the headline in Le Monde, the Paris newspaper usually critical of U.S. foreign policy: “We are all Americans.” No longer. The Bush Administration’s war policies not only destroyed that international solidarity, but, as the true stories of unnecessary pain and anguish in this book make tragically clear, those policies also damaged and destroyed too many of America’s and Iraq’s most valuable asset: the next generation.
And for what?
Peter Laufer
Sonoma County, California
February 2006
Notes
1. Richard Keene’s experiences were documented by Joseph
Besse in his 1753 work A Collection of the Sufferings of the
People called Quakers, for the Testimony of a Good Conscience.
2. http://www.pbs.org/itvs/thegoodwar/american_pacifism
.html
3. Dan Felushko made his “Died deluded in Iraq” comments
to CBS reporter Scott Pelley for the program “60 Minutes
Wednesday,” December 8, 2004.
4. Ibid.
5. “You Can’t Wash Your Hands When They’re Covered With
Blood,” Hart Viges, The Independent (London), September
24, 2005.
6. Cited at www.freecamilo.org.
7. “Will War Deserters Find Asylum in Canada?” Yochi J.
Dreazen, The Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2006.
8. “They Can’t Throw Us All in Jail,” Geov Parrish,
WorkingforChange.com, January 27, 2005.
9. In his speech to rally the troops at the Naval Academy,
November 30, 2005.
10. “L.A. Times Bans ‘Resistance Fighters’ in Iraq News,”
Reuters dispatch, November 5, 2003.
11. Ibid.
Print this page.
