Holly Near and the Winter Soldier Witnesses to War -March, 2008

Hundreds of veterans of war gathered at Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan - Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations to hear and give testimony about these wars. The hearings - largely ignored by mainstream media - were held from March 13-16, 2008 at the National Labor College, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Videos of testimonies may be viewed at the website of Iraq Veterans Against the War which also has related materials.

Thank you to Holly Near for giving permission to use her song - "I Am Willing" - as the musical background for this video. "I Am Willing" by Holly Near is © 2003 Hereford Music (ASCAP). It was used by permission; all rights reserved. http://www.hollynear.com

I offer my personal thanks to the veterans and others who testified at Winter Soldier. It took courage to give testimony on first hand accounts of these wars. And, I thank IVAW for giving me media credentials to cover this historic event.

I dedicate this video to the victims of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and do so in memory of the over a million who have been killed in these wars.

This video was recorded and edited by Charles Jenks and is © 2008 Charles Jenks; all rights reserved.

Ithaca area activist calls on Ithaca Sanctuary Supporters to engage in the debate in Bellingham...

...not only out of solidarity, but also to hone our own arguments for what may lie ahead.

June 15th, 2009

The Bellingham Sanctuary Movement is facing a big challenge. In her op-ed, Sanctuary city Pro: Support for troops should mean all of them, published June 13 in the Bellingham Herald, Marie Marchand, executive director of the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center, writes:

Given Bellingham’s reputation, it is an especially stinging affront that four AWOL soldiers of conscience have been housed in our jail. Most of us in this city consider people like Robin Long and Cliff Cornell heroes for their refusal to bear arms and kill. … As it stands, law enforcement is under no obligation to report AWOL soldiers to the military. We are asking our city to abstain from doing the military’s job. These individuals have broken no law. Our local resources should not be spent on their apprehension and detention.

On October 9, 2006, Bellingham became the first city in the state of Washington to pass a Troops Home! Resolution. The issue now is a sanctuary resolution. “The ordinance is not about adjudication” states Marie Marchand in her op-ed. “The Sanctuary City Movement … is not asking police to break the law.” Tim Carpenter, a Whatcom County resident and Vietnam veteran who wrote the opposing view, Sanctuary city Con: Sanctuary idea would do more harm than good, has a different take on the question of law:

Federal law provides, under the category of Treason, Sedition and Subversive Activities, that it is a crime for any person to advise, counsel or urge insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of service; to conspire to commit those acts; or to harbor any person who commits such an act. Does the city council’s involvement facilitate and abet treason?

He attempts to paint proponents of the sanctuary resolution as “emotional rather than rational” and finds that their arguments “rely on unsubstantiated statistics, or attempt to reach a logical conclusion built upon an inherently false premise”. He really doesn’t cite anything to support this, just innuendo.

On the issue of Free Speech (around which Ithaca’s Sanctuary Resolution turned) he writes that “This is not a ‘free speech’ issue. The right of free speech is not absolute. Speech that advocates the commission of a crime is not protected.”

The attendant legal questions appear to be the most productive ones to pursue, and it would be well worth the effort for sanctuary supporters in the Ithaca area to engage in the debate in Bellingham not only out of solidarity, but also to hone our own arguments for what may lie ahead. It is easy to imagine a similar scenario developing in Ithaca were war resisters jailed here, or were the city sanctuary resolution strengthened to explicitly instruct law enforcement not to arrest anyone on the basis of their military status when had not broken the law. (As an aside, I recall that Trevor Loope was arrested in St. Lawrence County on bogus charges of bounced checks, not for being AWOL). It would be really good to solicit wider legal opinion on this debate over what the law requires.

Wing-nuts seem to dominate the story chat on the Bellingham Herald (just like in Ithaca). It only takes a few minutes to register in order to comment. Please consider doing so.

You can follow posts on the website/blog of Veterans For Peace Corporal Jonathan Santos Memorial Chapter 111 in Bellingham. –Cris McConkey

-thanks to Cris McConkey at Tompkins County Against War & Occupation

If you are interested in discovering the essence of this "wing-nut" ranting you might try the Facebook page for the Bellingham GI Sanctuary City. Although it's frustrating attempting to discuss with rude individuals who make up things that you said (even though it's all in the record to check ), you will have an opportunity to see what you're up against. I tried to discuss the issue and learn about the the opposition's arguments, but it seems like a useless endeavor. They only continue to trash resisters and people who support them.

However, there is a whole community of resister supporters out there and if you can just hold your breath, by-pass the narrow-focussed, hostile individuals and share ideas with those who came to share, jump in.

War Resisters Held in Legal Limbo

Tuesday 16 June 2009

by: Sarah Lazare, t r u t h o u t | Report

Two soldiers that are facing court-martial for desertion. (Photo: Brian Harkin / The New York Times)

At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, AWOL soldiers find themselves detained for months under difficult conditions in an extended legal limbo they cannot escape.

Dustin Stevens is one of about 50 soldiers being held at Fort Bragg awaiting likely AWOL and desertion charges that seem like they will never arrive, he says.

A former soldier who refused to continue military service seven years ago because he did not want to fight a war, Stevens says that he and his colleagues are being held in legal limbo - a no man's land of poor living standards and arbitrary punishments - while awaiting charges and possible court-martial. Stevens has been in a holdover unit for five months without charges, and he says that others have been held for up to a year in conditions he describes as harrowing.

The unit is overcrowded and filthy, he says, with four people to a room. The command verbally abuses the soldiers, with one commanding officer proclaiming, "We should just shoot you all," according to Stevens. Troops are not receiving the medical and mental health care they need. "People around me are literally going crazy. I hear people threaten suicide on a daily basis," says Stevens. "They won't give us leave passes unless it's a dire emergency, so we're just sitting here, day by day."

The command offered the soldiers a free pass if they agreed to deploy to Afghanistan, according to Stevens. About ten people took up the offer, he says. Those who decline must find a way to endure.

At least 50 AWOL troops are being held right now in the holdover unit at the 82nd Replacement Company, constituting about three-quarters of its population, with the rest medical holdovers, says Stevens, who is corroborated by his civilian lawyer, James Branum. A holdover unit is a special unit for people who are on a legal hold of some kind, whether it is because they are seeking medical discharge, switching assignments or, as in Stevens's case, waiting for charges.

Branum says that at this particular holdover unit, AWOL soldiers are being held for long stretches of time before receiving charges. "People are in this unit for months and months. They take forever to do anything," says Branum. "You are going to be there six months if you're lucky, 12 if you're not."

Maj. Virginia McCabe, 82nd Airborne Division spokesperson, confirmed that AWOL soldiers are in the Holdover unit at the 82nd Replacement Company at Fort Bragg, but could not say how many are there, how long they are being held, or what their conditions are like. She acknowledged that soldiers are confined to the unit if they are deemed a flight risk, but could not provide details on how that is determined. "Each AWOL soldier has his or her own special circumstances," she says. "They stay in a holding platoon until a legal decision is made. Or they might say they made a mistake and are ready to serve."

Kathy Gilbert, head of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, says that holdover units can be very unpleasant. "In reality, a lot of times these units are run by senior enlisted personnel who are obnoxious and give people a hard time," she says.

Gilbert also says that legal hold makes it structurally difficult to make complaints. "People on restriction would have to request to see a commanding officer, the person officially in charge of restriction, if they wanted to make a complaint. There is not an official way to do that," says Gilbert. "Most people who are on restriction don't even know whose authority places them on restriction and don't know that senior enlisted personnel don't have the authority they often claim to have. Command doesn't have an open door policy or encourage people to speak up."

In a military where desertion is still technically punishable by death, Stevens says he has found military "justice" to be cruel and arbitrary.

In May 2002, after five months in the Army, Stevens refused to stand in formation at his Airborne graduation and declared that he no longer wanted to serve. Stevens had joined the army to escape a broken home, thinking he had few other options. Yet, since day one, he had been having panic and anxiety attacks, finding himself morally opposed to his service, and to the prospect of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan sometime in the future. "I knew in my heart and in my mind, I couldn't kill anybody and couldn't be a part of an organization that did so," he says. Upon his refusal, Stevens's command told him to simply go home and wait for his discharge papers, he says. The papers never showed up, but he didn't think anything of it, he says.

Seven years later, during a routine traffic stop, Stevens was told that there was a warrant for his arrest and he was whisked off to military custody, torn away from his girlfriend and his job. "This whole time, I've been living my life. I've been working, paying taxes, had a car and apartment," he says. Since January 15, 2009, he has been in a holdover unit, biding his time while he awaits charges that might be months away. These months of detention will not count toward his sentence.

Stevens says that the people being held in the 82nd Holdover Unit went AWOL for various reasons, some because they were opposed to the war, some because the Army wouldn't let them leave to tend to family problems, and some because of medical problems.

"It is horrible here. We are treated like animals," he says. "We're all just lost, wanting to go home. Some of us are going crazy, some were already crazy, some are sick," he says. "I'm bouncing on a pin needle. I read all of the time, I talk to people all of the time to try to stay out of this place in my mind. It's really hard."

"AWOL troops being held in a replacement unit is totally absurd and unusual and is an example of how the command has plenty of ways to punish people and enforce discipline, bypassing the formal justice system. Smoking people, giving them unofficial duties, mistreatment, and in this case, making an example out of people and segregating them, are all informal mechanisms of punishment commonly used in the military." says Carl Davison, Iraq war resister and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "People who follow their consciences deserve our support, and there needs to be a highly vocal community out there to let them know they are not alone."

"Every single person here should not be here. There are people here who should be in mental hospitals, who are just sitting here. This place is hell, it really is," says Stevens. "And in my mind, I didn't even do anything wrong."

-thanks to Truthout

No armed occupation of Akwesasne

photo from Native Pride

Anonymous said... June 12, 2009 8:53 PM

Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish political theorist, determined that the use of violence and force were signs of weakness. A truly powerful people would not have to resort or stoop to such needs.

Our use of civil disobedience cuts at the core necessity of an oppressive state; the need for obedience. We don't have to stand together to fight, only to resist, only to stop obeying the oppressors.

Those among us that insist on preaching the rightness of US and Canadian law are only serving those that would do us harm and seek to eliminate us as a distinct people. Not one shot needs to be fired, not one punch thrown. In '97, it wasn't so much the violent confrontations as much as it was the potential for conflict that turned things in our favor.

The next road or bridge or train that is disrupted should not lead to injuries, to us or them. I hope the next time, our people disperse only to reassemble later or in a different location. They are weak. They need the violence. Our strength is that we are home. We can kiss our kids, grab a bite, catch some Z's and come back to disobey some more. It costs us nothing and them millions.

So I say go ahead block the hi-way and when their fifty cruisers show up, go home and take a nap. We'll see you later at the next one.

Posted by ohnkwe ohnwe on Native Pride

Our War Resisters living in Toronto

Toronto Life:  Human interest story on five of the seventy-five known War Resisters living in Toronto.

-thanks to We Move To Canada

Chronicles of the Good War: the significance of civilian casualties

The following diary is from the Daily Kos: The State of the Nation. I think this does a good job of tracking everyone's responsibility for each civilian killed.

 (At the end he has a poll if you wish to participate)

by Marcion

 

Tue Jun 09, 2009 at 01:12:46 PM PDT

This diary completes a series regarding the significance of the constant infliction of civilian casualties by American and other Western forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  I chronicle the functioning of the Pentagon machinery of denial and obfuscation that kicks in after every instance of a mass civilian casualty attack that attracts Western media attention.  I also attempt to make clear that when civilian casualties are anticipated, planned for, and when entire departments exist to spin them away, then they can no longer be described away as "accidental." These casualties constitute an inevitable and planned for result of American policy.  

The truth is that thousands of civilian casualties a year from American actions may be regrettable but do not rise to the level of negative consequence necessary to motivate the Pentagon to change its tactics, or to motivate the Obama Administration to alter its strategy, or to motivate the American public to put any pressure on its leadership to change its policy. As such, they must be viewed as an accepted consequence of American actions, and anyone who still supports the "AfPak" war must admit that they too view this as a small price to pay to achieve America's goals in the region.

• Marcion's diary :: ::

1.  Treatment of civilian casualties by the Pentagon

On May 3rd, a group of about 200-300 Taliban fighters entered two Afghan villages in the western province of Farah and then ambushed a police patrol sent to dislodge them.  Government reinforcements arrived the next day but were pinned down. Then the Americans pulled up, but quickly got pinned down themselves, with a Navy corpsman getting wounded.  By this time it was already dark, and the Taliban slipped out of the villages and departed for points unknown. The villagers, exhausted by two days of fighting, huddled into the sprawling compounds of the major village clans, where they could all be together and safer than in their individual homes.  Some others took refuge in the mosque.  Alas, modern warfare does not allow for safety in numbers or taking sanctuary in a place of worship. Not long after the Taliban departed and the exhausted villagers had gone to sleep, two F-18s and a B-1 bomber (because sometimes when you are confronted by guys fighting on foot with AKs and RPGs, a few jet fighters just won’t cut it) appeared overhead.  They proceeded to drop a total of 13 bombs on the two villages, with the B-1 making repeated bomb runs, targeting, you guessed it, the main clan compounds and the mosque. The warheads used for such occasions are designed to create a fireball that travels down hallways and around corners, killing every living thing inside the building and then causing the building itself to cave in, burying any horribly burned survivors. That's exactly what happened in this case.  

On the next morning, distraught villagers began streaming into the provincial capital, driving trucks loaded with dozens of bodies, because they knew that without such evidence, their stories would be dismissed by the Americans out of hand. Several investigative teams were sent to the site, with the International Red Cross being one of the first, confirming the estimate of the villagers, that 140 civilians, mostly women and children died.  However, the Americans were still dubious.  How could the most humane army in the world have done that much damage, especially after having done the exact same thing so many times before?  It seemed unlikely, and probably an enemy trick, unscrupulous Taliban playing on a gullible media.  

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Francis Ricciardone vowed to help the families of any civilians killed in the strikes, but said it is first important to try to establish what happened.

"The first reports are almost always wrong, one way or another," Ricciardone said. "We also know that the insurgents, the Taliban, exploit them and sometimes usually fabricate in very sophisticated ways. So I think we have to wait and see what the facts are."

Defense Secretary Gates continued in the Pentagon’s almost Cartesian exercise in universal doubt: ""We all know that the Taliban use civilian casualties and sometimes create them, to create problems for the United States and our coalition partners. We will have to wait and see what happened in this particular case."  Despite these official statements that basically, the Americans did not know what happened, an anonymous Pentagon official nevertheless put forward the following bold version of events:  "What we do have is strong evidence to support that a number of women and children were killed by the Taliban and their bodies were driven by locals as evidence of U.S. bombing."   Surprisingly, the Afghan villagers did not react well to this excretion of doubt and conjuncture about their eyewitness accounts, backed up by the bodies they were holding in their arms, and rioted in the provincial capital.  Afghan soldiers fired on the crowd, leaving several wounded.  Initial Pentagon reports on the incident implied that it was probably the Taliban who killed those civilians to make the US liberation forces look bad, such as by tossing grenades, but then toned that down to blaming the Taliban for putting the civilians at risk by making them into such alluring targets for American bombs. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and American Ambassador General Eikenberry came out to express their condolences and vowed to cut down on civilian casualties. General Eikenberry, who was commander of American occupation forces in Afghanistan under Bush before being promoted to ambassador by Obama, made a personal, solemn pledge to do, err, something.

After a few weeks, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, who has become the most reliable tally keeper for America's latest atrocities, came out with a report that placed the casualties at 97 dead, including 65 children and 21 women. However, the Americans still felt the need to correct everybody, despite the fact that previous such denials and minimizations of body counts by the Pentagon have infuriated the Afghan population. On May 20, a preliminary Pentagon report, presented to journalists along with video footage taken by the bombing aircraft (because as we all know, those grainy attack videos really liven up a briefing), stated that no more than 30 civilians were killed along with about 60 Taliban. The estimate of 30 civilian deaths, which disregarded all evidence produced by the villagers themselves as well as by the Afghan government, the International Red Cross and the Independent Human Rights Commission, was evidently based on the fact that American soldiers reported seeing some 300 villagers fleeing before the fighting, and so no more than 30 would likely have remained.  I wonder if it has now occurred to somebody in retrospect, that those 300 fleeing guys might not have been villagers after all given in the initial estimate of 300 Taliban fighters involved in the battle and the fact that only 3 have been confirmed killed.

Finally, the final Pentagon report is in, although it still has not been made public, but instead is being leaked selectively by press secretary Geoff Morrell, in an effort to spread out the negative revelations and prevent an explosion of outrage in Afghanistan and to cause the few Westerners following the situation, other than the professional human rights organizations, to lose interest.  I don’t think it’s worthwhile waiting for the full report, I’m sure there were numerous irregularities but any major fuckup would have been leaked by now, and I don’t know how much longer they’ll delay it, so I’ll just cover it now and update you all if a real bombshell comes out later.  The key statement in Geoff Morrell’s retelling, in response to a question regarding what the Pentagon now believed the body count to be, was this:

The numbers in terms of Taliban killed and civilians who perished in this attack are very similar to those that the Afghan – some of the Afghan defense officials – believe are accurate.

Morell is trying to be maximally vague here employing the Sarah Palin grammatical structure, and did not state the actual numbers, but since he refers to the numbers of the Afghan defense officials, the tally arrived at by the Americans would seem to be closer to the 140 civilians and 3 Taliban killed numbers that the Afghan government announced than even the lower number estimated by the Human Rights Commission.  Despite making this fairly clear statement, Morrell then demonstrated why he makes the big bucks by immediately pointing out that the number of Taliban killed vastly exceeded the civilian loss.  It is impossible to reconcile these two statements in light of the Afghan defense figures Morrell had just admitted had been found to be correct, but, in a Pentagon briefing, it’s considered simple journalistic politeness to let such blatant lies pass, otherwise you’ll be there all day.   
Also, "There were some problems with some tactics, techniques and procedures or ... the way in which close air support was supposed to have been executed in this case." Morrell said.  For example, there was a short period during which the B-1 bomber pilot lost touch with ground control during his approach to the target, creating the risk that the bombing order could have been countermanded without the pilot realizing it.  But in this case, the order had not been countermanded so the pilot's error did not change the outcome of events. Everything proceeded as planned, as the bomber expertly guided several heavy thermobaric bombs precisely into the village mosque and the large residential compounds.  So the irregularities are simply being noted out of an abundance of honesty, which typifies Pentagon internal investigations.

"It was just noted as one of the problems associated with these events, not that it was the cause of the civilian casualties," Morrell said.

The investigation was "exhaustive" and it shows "the guys on the ground who are involved in this incident took great pains to limit civilian casualties, to target those who had attacked them," he said.

So in fact the irregularities in the exhaustive back and forth that precedes any strike of this type actually prove America’s commitment to protecting the Afghan population from itself, like the exception that proves the rule.

2.  The view from the future top commander for Afghanistan

Of course, the soon to be new Afghan commander, Lt. General Stanley McChrystal's is also well aware of the pesky civilian casualties issue, as evidenced by his recent testimony in his pro forma confirmation hearing (that little Tlllman, snafu not withstanding).  

This is a critical point. It may be the critical point. This is a struggle for the support of the Afghan people. Our willingness to operate in ways that minimize casualties or damage, even when doing so makes our task more difficult, is essential to our credibility.

Nothing that hasn’t been said dozens of times before, it’s probably in the Confirmation Prep handbook given to all generals before their hearings or press conferences. But this is the takeaway Orwellian quote:

The measure of effectiveness will not be enemy killed, it will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence.

Now that's a very positive way to look at it, General. Let's do the math for a moment.  The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 2,118 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008, the highest civilian death toll since the end of the initial 2001 invasion. This represents an increase of about 40 percent over UNAMA's figure of 1,523 civilians killed in 2007. Bummer. According to NATO forces only about 1,000 civilians were killed during the whole year. Better, but still disturbing. Now let's use McChrystal's math: The population of Afghanistan in 2008 was about 32 million, all but a thousand to three thousand of whom we shielded from violence. That’s a much more positive and American way to look at it, don’t you think?

3. View from the grunts on the ground

As Obama’s escalation gets underway, the major developments are going to be coming out of Helmland province, which is the Taliban stronghold and opium production hub in the south of Afghanistan.  It had been previously assigned to the British, who were only able to deploy a small and quickly overmatched force with dismal results.  So far about 10,000 Marines have arrived, with 7,300 of them now in the process of setting up a major base at a dusty outpost called, appropriately enough, Camp Leatherneck, with smaller units fanning out to forward operating bases deeper in the Helmland desert.  And these soldiers have also been made aware of the sensitive topic of civilian casualties, and know just what they’ll do to reduce them:

Several [soldiers told the reporter that] Marine commanders have drilled into them the need to respect the local culture and not barge into villages, kicking down doors and alienating residents whose support they need to win the war.

"They have told us to be more friendly with the locals," said Lance Cpl. John McCall, who was marching in full battle gear around the base with two buddies to get in shape. "We are not to shoot first and ask questions later."

After only 8 years into America’s 11th major war in its 230 year existence (not counting minor conflicts such as the Indian Wars/Genocide, the Philippine Insurrection, the Cuban Rebellion, the hundreds of Cold War conflicts, Panama, Somalia, and the recent attacks on Pakistan), the soldiers have finally been instructed "not to shoot first and ask questions later."  A bit troubling that they had to be instructed not to kill people first and then figure out who they were killing, one would have hoped that this is something that would have been obvious to them as moral human beings, but nevertheless, it’s good that somebody mentioned the concept to them.

4. Let’s cut the bullshit

I have been previously accused of trumping up the rare occasions (well, rarely publicized occasions) of American mass casualty attacks on occupied civilian populations simply to get people outraged at the carnage in order to advance my twisted anti-war agenda.  And this is fair, I am disgustingly, unpatriotically anti-war.  Sometimes I even read antiwar.com, even though I know it’s not a trusted progressive resource.  The tone of my diaries can also create the impression that I’m merely some anti-Pentagon, anti-American loon that’s only interested in making the military look bad.  So, to clarify, here is the point I’m trying to make with these diaries, in all seriousness:

When you as a belligerent power anticipate inflicting a certain number of civilian casualties as part of your airstrike, regardless of the fact that you anticipate that number to be closer to 30 and it turns out to be 130, they are no longer accidental or unintentional.  They are intended, though not wanted. The American commanders who authorized dropping 13 bombs on two villages on the night of May 5th knew, for a fact, undeniably, that some civilians would be killed, but approximated that number to be low enough that it would not rise to the level of an internationally reported incident as it turned out to be.   Once the actual body count turned out to be higher than estimated, the various denial, delusion, deception, justification, and obfuscation mechanisms at the Pentagon and at the White House kicked in, to create an appearance of contrition and corrective action, coupled with the total lack of any actual remorse or steps to prevent yet another repetition of this tragedy in the future.  

The truth is, the American military’s counterinsurgency strategy anticipates a certain number of civilian deaths at American hands, but considers that a fair tradeoff for hopefully higher number of militants killed.  In the Farah incident, that calculus did not pan out, but if you take the month of May as a whole, US tactics probably did yield more militants than civilians killed (though the real numbers will not be known for years, if ever), making May a successful month bringing us one step closer to completing the mission President Obama has given to the Pentagon.  The American war machine, with its reliance on airstrikes and high explosive and thermobaric munitions, is designed to create maximum carnage at the point of impact and thus inevitably to inflict a certain level of inevitable "collateral damage" during its operations, and everybody involved is aware and comfortable with that fact, like they are with the unfortunate fact that every bomb dropped costs millions of dollars.  

The unfortunate reality is that if you try to kill more militants, you will also kill more bystanders.  The two are inextricably connected, especially in the context of airstrikes and other bombardments.  This fact is obvious and it has been pointed out many times by many different organizations, that the Pentagon’s increasing reliance on airstrikes during the last couple of years, which trend continues under the new Administration with a record number of airstrikes occurring this year, means that a higher proportion of civilians than ever before is being consigned to death in order to increase our effectiveness of our operations in the region.  The US could certainly use weapons with a lower yield and lesser lethality, or switch to different tactics, but then, more of the targeted enemies would survive along with more bystanders and more American soldiers would be placed at risk.  It is a tradeoff we as Americans are not prepared to make, and instead, the Pentagon have entire departments devoted to the after the fact spin that is required to deal with the fallout from occasional and inevitable large scale incidents of civilian killings, and a set price that is paid out to the families of any civilians we kill ($2,000 per head is the going rate in Afghanistan, and more in Iraq where the standard of living is higher).  

The Obama Administration has been explicitly asked to renounce the practice of targeting villages with massive airstrikes and has made clear that this practice would continue, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Given that commitment, every time President Obama gives one of his great speeches about his commitment to winning the war in Afghanistan, he is also making an unspoken commitment to kill thousands of innocent bystanders in the course of trying to win that war.  When the Democrats in Congress push though the new war supplemental to pay for all the bombs dropped on Afghan villages, they are accepting the fact that some of the people killed by those bombs will be civilians, will be women, will be children, and they will die in horrible pain from the burns inflicted by our top of the line munitions.  When we salute the soldiers departing on their deployment to Afghanistan and thank them for keeping us safe, we accept the fact that these soldiers will not only be killing terrorists in our names, but also civilians, in a proportion carefully calculated and passed up the chain of command.  

Of course everybody involved will be working to make that proportion as low as possible, given the preferred tactics and without tying "one hand behind our back," in the words Obama's national security adviser Retired Gen. James Jones, but nobody is under the illusion that it will ever be anywhere close to zero, and they are comfortable with that.  The reality is, and what Mr. Jones means by his comment is that we are not prepared to allow population centers to become safe havens for the enemy, and we are prepared to kill an unlimited number of civilians in order to demonstrate to the enemy our will and capacity for such killing.  

So what I’m trying to do in this series of diaries is to lay out this reality very carefully for all the good people here who support this war and its escalation, so that they might become comfortable with it as well, just as our leaders and our troops are.  Not only are you supporting the killing of the faceless evildoers who you believe would, if left unchecked, do America great harm, but you are also supporting, to an equal extent, the killing of thousands of people who may be those militants’ family members, or neighbors, or complete strangers who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  It does no good to call their killings a tragedy, a mistake, or any other of the guilt reducing euphemisms perfected by the West in the long centuries of warfare on the distant battlefields where the white man has borne his heavy burden, and to pretend like they will stop any time soon as the glitches in the system are fixed.  These deaths is an anticipated and logical consequence of the actions which you support, and the high domestic support for this war and its current escalation directly makes them possible.  Moreover, the fact that the high casualty incidents which are, to be fair, reported on by Western media, cause almost no reverberations at home, no demonstrations, no real outrage even on sites like this one, means that there is not even any pressure on the Obama Administration to order the Pentagon to adjust its tactics and reevaluate its rules of engagement to at the very least forbid, once and for all, airstrikes on villages and other civilian clusters.  

That’s the simple truth.  I do not expect you to change your position on the war because of it.  In all likelihood you believe that the mere possibility that if the West withdrew its occupation force from Afghanistan, then various militants would acquire a safe haven and base of operations there, potentially leading to another attack on the US homeland like the one which occurred on 9/11.  It is human nature to consign many thousands of distant and unknown people to a certain death somewhere far away in order to prevent the possibility that some closer and better known people somewhere closer to us may die in the future.  What is really being prevented isn’t even the potential death of Americans at some point in the future at the hands of hypothetical terrorists trained in the camps that might potentially be set up in an Afghanistan free of American presence assuming it then falls to the Taliban who then continue their alliance with al Qaeda.  The real motivator here is the little sliver of fear Americans began to feel after 9/11 that one of the news reports about dead civilians might one day be about themselves or somebody they know.  And to prevent that possibility and to silence that fear, Americans are prepared to endure (regretfully of course, because we are all moral and compassionate people) hundreds of similar reports about civilians killed by Americans far far away.  

Direct GI Resistance

"As I expected, not long after presenting this to my whole chain of command and refusing to go on not just one but several flights going to Iraq, I was fined, demoted, incarcerated and then discharged."

By Carl Davison. June 8, 2009

The logic of direct GI resistance is simple; To withhold your labor from something you think is morally wrong, simply saying, I have chosen not participate in something that is at odds with my values and I will tell the military this face to face with pride and dignity so others can learn from my example.

It is different than indirect GI resistance such as desertion in that the servicemember takes a direct stand and does not avoid confrontation with the institution which opposes his moral code but welcomes this confrontation as a means to fight silence among the ranks. Some resisters such as Steve Yoczik and myself had statements of our intentions to present to our chain of command.

My statement of intent

To: McKean, D. Scott, LTC, 1-66 AR, 1 BDE, 4ID
Feb, 25, 2008

I, SPC. Carl John Davison, HHC, 1-66 AR, 1 BDE, 4ID, under the burden of conscience and with strong resolve must inform you that when facing a dilemma between my sense of what is right and decent and the demands of my chosen profession, I have, after years of fighting myself over this issue, chosen the former, and in doing so choose to disassociate myself with modern warfare and any institution in support of it.

I understand that in a disciplined military force conduct such as this can not and will not be tolerated, because it is important to maintain order and discipline. I also understand that we in the U.S. military are in no position to question the validity of the orders we are given by congress or the executive office, and that we all swore oaths to obey all orders of the President of the United States and the orders of all officers appointed over us.

Under the principle of civil disobedience (which states that if a law or rule conflicts with a higher moral law it is morally acceptable to break it as long as you face the consequences of your actions out of respect to that higher law and out of respect to the offended parties, in this case the U.S. Army and U.S. Government), I uncontestedly accept any and all punishments given to me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for refusing to deploy to Iraq, I will soon submit a request for a consciences objection discharge 1-0, under Army Regulation 600-43, and Department of Defense Directive 1300.6 which is a chapter 5 discharge.

I am applying the principle of civil disobedience to hopefully contrast myself with those who are not acting on principles and those who prefer to run to Canada, unlike them I prefer to stand my ground and face any consequences.

In my actions I mean no disrespect to the soldiers and marines who sacrifice everyday on the orders of those in Washington D.C., who (most of which) have never served or fought and yet they send others to do so.

My beliefs on the evils of governments and war are not new, I've held these views since I subscribed to the Tolstoyian Christian-Anarchist ideologies before I joined the military in January, 2001, but I have purposely suppressed my views that governments are inherently based on violence and that warfare in general is brutal, against the natural laws of God and humanity and it undermines human dignity and divinity and any search for a more peaceful alternative. I mainly suppressed my views for some in my family who would find them intolerable, but this I can no longer do.

I am by no means trying to insult anyone else's beliefs, which come from their own knowledge, experiences and dictates of conscience, I am only trying to declare my libertarian-pacifistic views and what I must do.

SPC. Carl John Davison

And just as I expected, not long after presenting this to my whole chain of command and refusing to go on not just one but several flights going to Iraq, I was fined, demoted, incarcerated and then discharged in September. I stood confident in the fact that I was not alone, thanks to groups like IVAW and Courage to Resist and the many other GIs before me starting with Stephen Funk and then Camilo Mejia (in this era) and currently Victor Agosto and Travis Bishop have taken the same stand and countless before us against the unjust war in Vietnam. We posed a simple question, 

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” -Thomas Jefferson

-thanks to Courage to Resist

Bellingham City Council Forum Recap

"...I needed to hear the simple truth: war is wrong, violence should be abhorred, and life is sacred."

Hello Everyone,

Last night was the city forum on issues surrounding AWOL soldiers and making Bellingham a sanctuary city for war resisters. I can speak only for myself, but I think that last night was an incredible learning experience. I want to thank everyone who came out to show their support, and to those who spoke. It is not an easy thing to do in front of so many people, and so many different opinions. I was so proud to be part of a group of people who listened respectfully to every word, and spoke with grace and humility. There is much to be learned from how we conduct ourselves in these situations. I also deeply appreciated the comments made by those in opposition, and particularly the people who had put a lot of thought into what they wanted to say and did so in a peaceful manner. It amazes me how things can become so politically charged, when at the core we believe in so many similar issues.

I am sorry to those who were unable to speak because of the time limit. I know your voice would have added a lot to the discussion. If you wish to let the city council know how you feel, they have requested that you write letters or e-mails at council's email stating that you were at the forum and were unable to speak, and letting them know how you feel about these issues.

The big question is, “What now?” and it is a difficult one to answer. Although there are many of us who wholeheartedly believe in the political stance of a Sanctuary City for AWOL soldiers, I think the more important issue right now is: what are we actually going to do to support our veterans, and support and protect the soldiers going AWOL? I think it is an incredible step that our city council members are willing to host a discussion about these issues (THANK THEM!!).

The first step that needs to be taken on our own is researching these issues and continuing to discuss them with our community. I encourage you all to read as much as you can about the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and desertion in the military, and to come to your own conclusions. We must also learn the language of all sides, which will help at least develop an understanding of the culture we live in that is feeding the cycle of occupation, colonization, and war.

The forum will be aired on BTV10 tomorrow, June 10th at 12:00 PM. Stay tuned for what’s next, and remember that as MLK, jr. stated, 

“The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.” 

If people feel the need to gather and talk about last night’s event, we are beginning to plan a gathering to facilitate this discussion. Please stay in touch. Here are some words from Evan Knappenberger.

In Peace and Love,
Channing Showalter and Nick Spring
Bellingham GI sanctuary coordinators

Dear Sanctuary Friends,

The last several weeks have been a challenging time for humanity. It seems at times like the wolf is waiting right outside our door, but when we speak truth to fear we wield a power far greater than our own. When I spoke tonight at the town hall forum, and even before the doors opened as I was surrounded by a mob of republicans insulting me and threatening me, I experienced something quite amazing. I felt myself in a trance-like possession: my hair stood on end, and I swooned and nearly fell over. But instead of succumbing to fear, what I experienced instead was truly humbling.

I should preface this by mentioning that I am currently facing a terrifying ordeal in my personal emotional life, and that I have not been well for some time. But in the midst of that gripping fear of being surrounded by enemies, and on the verge of an emotional breakdown, I felt a presence acting through me which I will never forget: I let go of my fear and my emotional pain: the words that came felt like they were armed with a truth that was irreproachable. I will always remember what happened to me tonight: that by letting go and giving my will over to something deep inside me I have somehow cured a part of myself. I wish to share this feeling with you, and another thought, but first I would like to thank all of you for your support.

When the movement to abolish slavery was founded, it was by a tiny group of like-minded people. By speaking truth to fear, and through their faith in knowing that what they were doing was right, those dozen people endured and effected a lasting, miraculous transformation in the hearts of their fellow human beings. I am honored to be a part of such a movement, no matter what else may happen to me. I am proud of all of you who support the Sanctuary movement in body and in spirit, and I am grateful to you all.

Six years ago, right here in Bellingham as the Iraq war was starting, hundreds of truckers broke the law in an open show of intimidation aimed at the peace vigilers on their usual corner. They drove through the traffic lights blaring their horns and waving flags and cursing the Peace people. They thought that with their flawed and emotive arguments --if they screamed loud enough-- they would silence the conscience of this city. Fortunately they were wrong, and the peace movement survived that moment.

Tonight the same war-supporting mob of fearful irrational people thought that they could overpower those of us who know what it means to be a human being with a conscience. Not only were they wrong --we spoke with moving conviction!-- but we have won a greater victory with our testimony. We have managed, by bringing all of them to one place and giving them the truth from our hearts, to shatter their paradigms of honor, patriotism and blind militarism.

While their side was engaged in emotive polemics, unable and unwilling even to listen, we endured. Our side listened intently despite the painful provocations of their illogical jabs (like the one they made at the name of the Native American moderator), and we demonstrated a remarkable collective restraint (myself included). While their side persisted in worn perfidies disguised as patriotism, we shifted their paradigms of honor, justice and violence. Even better, I think that by confronting them on these their most tightly held beliefs, they were visibly shaken. Any reaction- anger, surprise, disgust- is a shift for them. We have to come to realize in the end that these people never thought deeply about these issues before.

I know it sounds stupid, but I was one of them a few years ago. I remember one night in Iraq on all-night duty when I looked up anti-militarist liberal propaganda on the internet. A good conservative patriot, I felt sick to my stomach reading the American Friends Service Committee website. I was angered. I was disgusted. I was outraged. But then I shifted.

The anger faded. The disgust turned to despiar, because in my heart I knew that the object of my disgust was inherently truthful. The outrage remained, though, and is now focused in an opposite direction from the peace community. All of this because I needed to hear the simple truth: war is wrong, violence should be abhorred, and life is sacred. There were very little special effects, and now I hold these values very close to my core being. I think that every time we expose people to the truth, no matter how they appear to not be listening, something similar happens. Certainly by challenging the dominant themes of militarism, faux-patriotism and imperialism, we can do little wrong.

Six years ago something like what happened tonight would have been unthinkable. In fact, it was impossible even to attend the weekly peace vigil without risking violent confrontation, let alone stand in support of AWOL humans against federal law. The fact that we are even here is a major accomplishment, and I am eternally amazed and in awe of all of your dedication to doing what is right. Thank you all so much for what we have done together. Let us celebrate our survival and our victories!

In solidarity and gratitude,
Evan

-thanks to Bellingham GI Sanctuary City

War Resister, Joshua Key, on SunTV

-thanks to We Move To Canada

War Resister, Steve Yoczk: "Why I refused to fight."

I believe the most important aspect of the anti-war movement is to take the boots off the ground – no soldiers, no war.

If there was a collective “hell no” from the entire service, they would not be able to lock up each and every one of them – war’s over.

By Steve Yoczk. June 5, 2009

I am a former military servicemember who went AWOL rather than deploy to Iraq. This is the story of why I refused to fight.

I joined the Coast Guard Reserve at age 17 in May 2002 and served uneventfully until June 2005. I decided to switch to the Regular Army for the handful of obvious and universal reasons: money, lack of education, desire for good working skill. More than that, though, I wanted to be a part of something I felt was just and right, with the spirit of the Second World War and the beginning months of the Vietnam conflict in my head. I believed the Army to be an institution that stressed “think before you shoot”. I was told I would be training for communications with the 25 Foxtrot program, or Network Switching Systems Operator/Maintainer.

I was told many things by a recruiter I trusted not to lie to me since we both knew I’d already been in the service several years.

I soon realized my serious mistake when I arrived at the Warrior Transition Course (WTC) at Fort Knox, a prior-service training course. I spoke to one person who had tried to get into the Navy SEALs, and was now trying to become a Ranger. I asked him why, and his response was “I just want to kill Hadjis, man!”, with excitement in his voice. Others were re-signing to the military because of monetary reasons, mainly. Extra combat pay, separation from family pay, hazardous duty pay, and who knows how many other possibilities; men and women putting their lives on the line to help ease the shackles of our monetary system.

Probably the defining moment for me realizing I had made the wrong decision was our platoon commander, a Sergeant First Class, instructing us on tactics in movement and engaging the enemy. Near the end of the session, he spoke of prisoners, and explained “It’s just better to double tap them (double tap meaning shooting twice to kill) and walk away than to haul them back to have to deal with all the paperwork. Just please don’t do it in front of a reporter”. This was laughed at by the others, but I just stood in awe. This man was a combat veteran, with ranger and Special Forces tabs – what I used to think of as America’s Strongest and Brightest – explaining these things in the same everyday fashion you explain how to work a copy machine.

I finished the course and moved on to Fort Gordon, thinking things might change once I began training in my assigned course. I was placed in a prior service unit, and spoke with several veterans each day that had been deployed numerous times. Again I was schooled on the many benefits of being deployed in war, and more of the exact same reasons I heard at Fort Knox were repeated again by different people.

Halfway into the 20 week training course I realized the job I had signed up for no longer existed in the Army due to obsolete equipment. “Jobless” individuals were being trained anyway, and would be deployed anyway. This meant I would be doing any number of things from convoy escort to prisoner transport. I realized this would not be the last word that the Army would go back on, and knew that I had to get out before my life made a serious downturn if not a sudden end.

I began resisting in any way I could think of, after learning that the CO application process was rigged and that I would just draw unwanted attention on myself. I had spoken to several soldiers who had tried to apply, and their application was either thrown out, reasoned away with pro-Army talk, or they were put on hold for “review” while the soldier was deployed anyway. I tried gaining weight, I failed over 50 Physical Training (PT) tests (knowing the regulation was three failures and you went before the Commanding Officer for a “motivation check”, which never came), I would regularly disappear from duty during the day, and miss formations. On and on and on this went. After about eight months, I learned that the one thing keeping me on base, the PT Test, would have a regulation change for prior service members. This meant that the PT Test was no longer a requirement for graduation, and that I would soon be attached to a unit bound for Iraq.

Steve Yoczk while in the Coast Guard

My depression and desperation increased at this point, and I believed I had absolutely no other way out, so I attempted suicide. After a week of “therapy”, I was deemed still fit for duty, and so was returned to my unit and continued on my track to Iraq.

I learned of a friend who had gone to Canada shortly after this, and began speaking to him and members of the War Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto. I felt this was my last possible chance to avoid a seriously life changing event, and went to Canada in November of 2006.

I lived there until April of 2009, and turned myself in. I was discharged a week and a half later because I fell under the criteria for a quick discharge, since I never officially graduated my AIT Class.

I’m now living in the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Washington DC House, and am looking forward to sharing my story with the hopes that others who might be questioning their commitment like I did, will know that there is no shame in getting out before you’re sent to hell. I believe the most important aspect of the anti-war movement is to take the boots off the ground - no soldiers, no war. If there was a collective "hell no" from the entire service, they would not be able to lock up each and every one of them - war's over.

What’s happened so far and will probably continue to happen for some time is horrible, but the solution mentioned above is quite simple. The problem will be for those individuals who are perfectly capable of doing this thing to remove their mind from what I call the “consumer’s distraction complex” that we’ve all been programmed with, take a good, honest and empathetic look at what they are contributing to, and see the humanity in actions of resistance to these things. It could be over that quick.

-thanks to Courage to Resist