Historians
Against the War (HAW)
Electronic Newsletter No. 2,
March 2005
Contents
HAW
News
Rusti
Eisenberg, HAW Opposes New Funding for
Steering Committee, Updated HAW Statement
Margaret Power, HAW Elects New Steering Committee
Carl
Mirra, God and War at Yale
Reports from the Field
Van Gosse, HAW at United for Peace and Justice,
Second Assembly
Marvin Gettleman, Anti-War Education
Marc Becker, World Social Forum
Op-Eds
Marilyn Young, “Teaching
the Vietnam
War in a Time of War”
Anna Kasten Nelson, “Collateral
Damage
to Historical Research from the ‘War on Terrorism’”
Staughton Lynd, “The
New Conscientious
Objectors”
The Newsletter is
intended to provide members with updates on HAW activities, reports on the
movement against war and empire, and thought-provoking historical analysis of
current events. Members are invited to
contribute current news items on HAW activities by submitting
notes to news@historiansagainstwar.org. In
addition, you can contact HAW at http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/contact.html.
Op-eds and other pieces for the Newsletter should be sent to jim.obrien@umb.edu. This issue was
edited by Alan Dawley.
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HAW
NEWS
[ This issue of the
newsletter appears on the heels of protests in the
HAW
Opposes New Funding for
by Carolyn Eisenberg
Historians
Against the War is urging its members to strongly and quickly register
opposition to the $82 billion Supplemental sought by the White House. Most of the expenditures specified in the
bill are for the continued war and occupation of
In
the aftermath of his re-election, it is apparent that the President has no
intention of leaving
Many
legislative leaders are now fearful of voting against new appropriations,
fearing that they will be seen as undermining the troops. United for Peace and Justice, of which HAW is
a member, is working closely with Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans
Against the War to convey the message that the best way to support the troops
is to bring them home!
The
immediate goal is to get largest number of Senators to vote “No” on the
Supplemental and to support amendments calling for an American exit
strategy. Because the House has already
passed the bill, all efforts are focused on the Senate, which is expected to
vote sometime in April.
Historians
can contribute to this effort by phoning, faxing or e-mailing your senator,
setting up a meeting with the Senator or a staff member, writing for the local
press, and participating in protests outside Senatorial offices.
For
the future, Historians Against War is forming a Legislative Action Network so
that we can respond more rapidly to emerging issues. If you wish to participate, contact Carolyn
(Rusti) Eisenberg at hiscze@aol.com or Van Gosse at van.gosse@fandm.edu.
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HAW Steering Committee
Adopted early February
2005
When
alarms about weapons of mass destruction proved to be hollow fabrications, the
Bush Administration resorted to claims about democracy and freedom to justify
its occupation of
We
believe the unconditional withdrawal of foreign occupying forces is the
precondition for peace and reconstruction in the Middle East and a step toward
redressing the imbalance of military and civilian power in the
We
call upon the
<><><><><>
HAW Elects New Steering Committee
A
new Steering Committee was elected at the January AHA meeting in
Ben Alpers,
David Applebaum,
Marc Becker,
Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, St.
Scholastica Academy,
Ron Briley,
John Cox, Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill;
Alan Dawley, The
Carolyn “Rusti” Eisenberg,
Rosemary Feurer; Northern
Jerise Fogel,
Marv Gettleman,
Van Gosse,
Nicole Kief, Open Society
Institute,
Staughton Lynd, Worker’s Solidarity Club of Youngstown;
David Montgomery,
Carl Mirra,
Jim O’Brien,
Enrique Ochoa, Cal
State, Los Angeles;
Margaret Power, Illinois
Institute of Technology,
Andor Skotnes, The
Kathryn (Kathy) Sukites,
American University,
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by
Carl Mirra
A
distinguished panel of Yale alumni will discuss the legacy of anti-war
resistance at Yale, a legacy that is of pivotal importance in our turbulent
times. Panelists include Staughton Lynd,
Warren Goldstein (who will read a statement prepared by William Sloane Coffin
and place it in context), David Mitchell (served 2 years for draft resistance
on the grounds that the US violated the Nuremberg principles in Vietnam),
Michael Ferber (1960s anti-war activist who was part of the Boston Five
trial). Yale chaplain Frederick Streets
will chair the panel. Co-sponsors
include Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, Yale Alumni for Social Justice, and the
Yale Peace Coalition. Date: April 28,
2005/11am-3pm. Location: Battell Chapel,
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REPORTS
FROM THE FIELD
HAW at United For Peace and Justice, Second Assembly
by
Van Gosse
Historians
Against the War was well-represented at the Second National Assembly of United
for Peace and Justice in
HAW
supported UFPJ’s new Strategic Framework, which focuses on ending the
occupation of
For
detailed reports on the decisions voted at the Assembly, go to http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2675
<><><><><>
by
Marvin Gettleman
I.
Anti-War Education at the United for Peace and Justice Assembly,
After
the Strategic Framework (see report by Van Gosse above) was overwhelming
endorsed, I went to the mini-plenary labeled “
There
was no opportunity at the mini-plenary to critique these proposals, which,
endorsed, went up to the main Level #1 plenary on Sunday. I spoke for the proposal, despite its
dumbing-down pedagogy, despite its total neglect of a historical perspective,
and despite the lack of any attempt to examine the Vietnam War-era teach-in
movement (on which, see M. Gettleman, VIETNAM [1965], pp. 389-409) to
see what we can learn from it 40 years later.
As a participant in this movement, I remember the eagerness to find out how
the
II.
Educators to Stop the War, East Coast Regional Conference, Hunter College High
School, New York City, March 3, 2005
The
sessions on anti-war pedagogy and the battle against military recruitment were
informative and valuable. Elementary and
secondary school teachers seem to have a far more sophisticated understanding
than instructors of college-age students and adults on how to transmit pacific
and non-warlike values. Far too many on
our side seem to believe that vehement expression of forceful opinions alone
will bring recalcitrant folk around to our wisdom. Ah, if were only that easy….
Any
HAW member may request a copy of the program of the
P.S. David Applebaum, a member of steering committee
of Educators to Stop the War, reports that some 750 people attended and laid
plans for a “day of action” on April 20th.
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by
Marc Becker
Over
the past five years, the World Social Forum (WSF) has quickly grown into the
world’s largest gathering of civil society.
With the twin themes of challenging corporate-led globalization and
opposing Bush’s wars of imperialist aggression, 155,000 people gathered in
Porto Alegre, Brazil at the end of January to debate alternatives and to
present proposals to create another world.
A
series of panels on “Breaking Down the Ivory Tower” examined the role of
universities in supporting civil society, democratizing knowledge, and opposing
neoliberalism on campus. Participants
created a transnational network of scholars and activists to promote
collaborative actions that challenge militarism and economic exploitation.
At
another meeting, activists gathered to share their experiences with organizing
social forums in
These
initiatives open up a potential for collaborative work with other
scholar-activists in the
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OP-EDS
Teaching
the Vietnam War in a Time of War
Marilyn B. Young,
If you happen to be
teaching a course on the Vietnam War and you happen to read the newspapers
regularly, opportunities to connect the past to the present without undue risk
of presentist violations abound. You
can, for example, lead a class through a close examination of the analogies in
constant play in the press. A recent
dispatch by John Burns channeled
The most common analogy
made between Vietnam and Iraq is topographic:
Vietnam was/Iraq is, a quagmire.
At a press conference in the summer of 2003, Secretary of State Donald
Rumsfeld had a hard time with the word.
He had opened with an analogy of his own, comparing the growing
insurgency in Iraq to, of all things, the situation in the US immediately after
the American Revolution. “There was
rampant inflation and no stable currency.
Discontent led to uprisings, such as Shays Rebellion, with mobs
attacking courthouses and government buildings… “ He added that the “transition to democracy is
never easy” and seemed unaware or indifferent to the logic of his analogy which
left American troops in Iraq in a rather anomalous situation. A reporter wanted to know whether the Iraqi
resistance could be called a guerrilla war and whether the US might not have
landed itself in a quagmire. Rumsfeld
flatly replied that it was not a guerrilla war.
As for “Quagmire. We have had
several quagmires that weren’t thus far… Why don’t I think it is one? Well, I
opened my remarks today about the United States of America. Were we in a quagmire for eight years? I would think not. We were in a process. We were … evolving from a monarchy into a
democracy. If you want to call that a
quagmire, do it. I don’t.” So there.
The locus classicus
of the term “quagmire” seems to have been David Halberstam’s 1964 book, The
Making of a Quagmire and what he took quagmire to mean was that the U.S.
was somehow caught in situation not of its own making, a swamp that was
dragging it down to destruction and from which it could not seem to extricate
itself. In his book, The End of
Victory Culture, Tom Engelhardt reflected on how the word functioned in the
Vietnam war. “For Americans,” Engelhardt
wrote, “the benefit of the word quagmire was that it ruled out the possibility
that the U.S. had committed acts of planned aggression. The image turned Vietnam into the
aggressor….” If Vietnam was a quagmire;
if Iraq is a quagmire, then Americans, not Vietnamese or Iraqis, are the
victims of war.
A subset of the quagmire
analogy is the notion that, however terrible the situation, the U.S. cannot
leave. In the case of Vietnam, the
prediction was that the departure of US troops would lead to a bloodbath. In Iraq the language is no less
sanguine. Politicians and journalists
insist the US must remain to set things right.
Having broken Iraq, as Secretary of State Powell famously warned, the US
has now bought it. A class on Vietnam
must examine closely exactly what the bloodbath argument entailed, its logic,
its relation to the military and political situation at the time. As for Iraq, I think the British reporter
Simon Jenkins put it best: “No statement
about Iraq is more absurd than that ‘we must stay to finish the job.’ What job?
A dozen more Fallujahs? The
thesis that leaving Iraq would plunge it into anarchy and warlordism defies the
facts on the ground.”
Along with analogies,
there has been a wholesale reappearance of what one could call Vietnam-era key
words and phrases: hearts and minds,
friend from foe, political versus military solutions, destroying the town to save
it. There are, as yet, no free-fire
zones in Iraq. But there are “weapons
free” zones, which does not mean what the words imply—an area in which weapons
are absent—but rather one in which weapons can be used on anything that moves.
The appeal to direct
combat experience continues to characterize much of the writing on Vietnam (and
to tempt many men, among them mature historians, to claim Vietnam service they
never performed). What, exactly, do
troops on the ground experience?
Chatting recently with a filmmaker and a freelance writer, two American
soldiers passed around their digital pictures of dead Iraqis and commented on
them: “These guys shot at some of our
guys, so we lit ‘em up.” Two died and
the third lived. “His buddy was crying
like a baby. Just sitting there bawling with
his friend’s brains and skull fragments all over his face. One of our guys came up to him and is
like: Hey! No crying in baseball.” The soldiers acknowledge the humor is sick
but “humor is the only way you can deal with this shit.” The reporter insists, (hopefully? defensively?) that below the humor is
rage. As in Vietnam, the target of that
rage is not government policy but rather the people to whose country the American
soldiers have been sent.
Recently, Thomas Friedman
advised his readers to “gauge Iraq” by listening to the soldiers. “Readers regularly ask me when I will throw
in the towel on Iraq,” Friedman wrote.
“I will be guided by the US Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical -
so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are
unsure it will work. When a majority of
those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go
out and fix the sewers in Sadr City … then you can stick a fork in this
one. But so far, we ain’t there
yet. The troops are still pretty
positive.” He seems not to have spoken
with Corporal Daniel Planalp, one of many soldiers who have complained to
reporters that they do not know why they are there. “This is Vietnam. I don’t even know why we’re over here
fighting. We’re fighting for
survival. The Iraqis don’t want us
here. If they wanted us here, they’d
help us.”
Let me end on another
soldier’s statement, published in the New York Times on Memorial
Day. On March 18 of last year, Sgt.
Christopher Potts, 38, of Tiverton R.I. wrote to his wife describing his
journey from Kuwait into Iraq: “The
first leg of the trip through the desert was really bad. There were children of all ages from God knows
where begging for food and water. The
dust was blowing all over them, and some had torn outgrown clothes, and some
were barefoot. I looked over at my
driver and we were both crying after a few miles. I said to him, You know, this is why I’m
here, so that my kids won’t ever have to live like that. Then we just drove in silence for a
while.” Sgt. Potts was killed on Oct. 3,
2004.
Sgt. Potts believed what
the government wished him to believe—what John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines
Johnson and Richard Milhous Nixon all wanted the men they sent to war to
believe: that somehow, by killing people
over there, they would protect us, over here.
How Sgt. Potts came to believe what he did and what its relation might
be to the reasons his government sent him to kill and be killed is what we and
our students need to understand better.
This task is the more urgent in that it just may be that Sgt. Potts got
it right: that the national interest as
currently defined by the country’s leaders, does require Sgt. Potts to
kill and to die in Iraq.
<><><><><>
Collateral
Damage to Historical Research from the “War on Terrorism”
By Anna Kasten Nelson,
American University
The penchant for secrecy
on the part of the Bush Administration, plus the traumatic events of 9/ll, has
set back access to historical information by more than two decades. Any attentive American has heard about the
failure to open information for the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional
Intelligence Committees but few realize the impact of the Bush Administration
and their wars, both against terrorism, and for “democracy” in Afghanistan and
Iraq. War always expands the power of
presidents and this president has used some of his power to draw the curtain on
past information as well as the present.
It may seem irrational but fears developed from current events
invariably are reflected in the closing of documents from the past. Even the Congress is not immune. Concern over the “loss” of secrets at Los
Alamos stimulated the Kyle Amendment in October 1998 which mandated a second
look at documents previously declassified.
It was an expensive, time consuming venture which further delayed
responses to FOIA. Over time, declassifiers
looked at 1.3 million pages. They found
365 pages that should not have been declassified under their new
guidelines. Most of these pages were
concerned with nuclear facilities abroad.
If we examine the litany
of new restrictions on information, we can see how little they relate to
current problems. Long before 9/ll,
Attorney General Ashcroft reversed the Clinton guidelines on FOIA
requests. Whereas Attorney General Reno
had informed the agencies that they were to declassify when in doubt, Ashcroft
instructed the agencies to classify unless there was a clear reason to declassify. He even went one step further to assure them
that the Justice Department would defend their actions.
Then, on November 1, 2001
part of the group of decisions that seemed caused by events of the previous
September, Bush issued an Executive Order to “clarify” the Presidential Records
Act of 1978. This Act (the PRA) finally
placed reality into a law that turned presidential papers into federal
records. Starting with Reagan,
presidents could no longer hold title to their records. It was an unambiguous act that clearly stated
a timetable for release of records and did not need clarifying. The new Executive Order, in fact, muddied the
water. Now, before documents from presidential
advisers (which were presumably given in confidence) can be released, both the
PAST PRESIDENT AND THE CURRENT PRESIDENT must agree on their release. This provision could allow Bush to keep back
papers involving his father on Iran-Contra from the Reagan years and details on
the incursion into Panama, for example.
Considering that presidential papers tend to slowly open over a 20-30
year period, any number of ramifications can be foreseen.
Another act of
“clarification” came with the promulgation of the Executive Order on national
security documents. Clinton’s order had
set a date of 25 years for automatic declassification. He then gave the agencies an additional 5
years to implement the order. Proudly
declaring that unlike other presidents, the Bush administration did not
establish a brand-new executive order, the merely changed the Clinton
order. First it gave the agencies
another 3 ½ years to automatically declassify.
Agency heads can delay another five years if needed (and if history
holds, it will be needed). Microforms
can take another 5 years and another 3 years can be allowed if other nations
have an interest in the record and send it through their declassification
staff. Finally, no file will be
declassified until the most recent document is 25 years old. At least one person who approved this
executive order had no idea that some files in the State Department may run for
20 years. When all the 5,3, and forevers
are added up, some files will clearly be closed for 50 years.
The “war” on terrorism has
also brought with it a new category of records to be removed from public
perusal. These are “records of
concern.” They are not classified
records but aren’t exactly declassified these days either. For the most part they relate to the
country’s infrastructure. These records
may not seem important to many researchers but they are often crucial to the
work of public historians and even urban historians. In addition, removing records sets a
dangerous precedent for the future.
Ultimately, we may find another ambiguous category of records. Some meetings in Washington now require all
participants to agree (swear?) not to reveal what was said in the meeting. Are the resulting records going to be
classified or only withdrawn.
Withdrawing records—but
not reclassifying them—is another prevalent technique to keep information out
of public hands. This was recently
illustrated by the response of the CIA to the current volumes of the State
Departments Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). After examining the documents chosen for
inclusion in the volumes, they set off for the National Archives to withdraw
documents. The documents were not
reclassified nor taken from the Archives.
They were simply withdrawn and placed in a kind of no mans land with no
indication as to when they would be released from custody.
Even in the best of times,
our declassification system is Byzantine.
The structural problem behind document release results from the
assumption that the US can tolerate no risk, not one slip up. A zero risk policy is responsible for the
re-examination of millions of nuclear energy documents, withdrawal of over
thirty year old CIA documents and of the lack of trust between declassifiers in
different agencies. No policy is without
risks, not even one that is obsessed with overcoming them.
Several times Bush and his
spokesmen have indicated that they won’t need to worry about history’s
evaluation of their administration. One
nameless official even indicated that they wouldn’t be around in 80 years to
see the results. Well, Mr. President, we
have news for you. The next president
may cancel your executive order and after 12 years your papers will be
available for research. Even Henry
Kissinger is facing his past these days.
You can plan on the first book with footnotes from your records in about
20-25 years. History may not make
governments honest but it has an uncanny ability to illuminate the dishonesty.
<><><><><>
The
New Conscientious Objectors
by Staughton Lynd
Everybody knows the
conscientious objector. We recall the
Quaker wife in “High Noon,” who objected to all killing until her husband
supposedly showed her that sometimes violence is the only way. Or we think of the Amish elder in “Witness”
who spoke with horror of persons who use a “gun of the hand,” or handgun.
Conscientious objection is
defined in United States military regulations as objection to “war in any
form,” based on “religious training and belief.” Conscientious objection thus defined is
tailored to the subculture of certain small—and thus politically
unimportant—Protestant groups: Quakers,
Amish, Mennonites, members of the Church of the Brethren, Hutterites. (Viewers of “Matewan” will remember the tale
of Hutterite objectors to World War I who were chained to the bars of their
cells at Fort Leavenworth, where two of whom died.) African American Jehovah’s Witnesses also
practice conscientious objection.
Conscientious objectors in
a voluntary military are self-evidently something different. If they come to object to war in any form, it
will be on the basis of their firsthand experience in a particular war in which
they have been asked to take part.
At the Nuremberg trials,
after World War II, United States prosecutors including Supreme Court Justice
Robert Jackson made it clear that in the future American soldiers like all
others would be expected to refuse orders to commit war crimes. But exactly how are servicemen expected to
refuse? How can they do so in the midst
of combat without endangering not only themselves, but the lives of their
buddies as well?
Sometimes there are practical
ways to say No. In the late 1960s, Hugh
Thompson, from Stone Mountain, Georgia, was in command of a helicopter assigned
to do reconnaissance over the village of My Lai. When he and his crew saw what was happening
on the ground beneath them, they violated orders, landed their helicopter, and
trained their guns on United States troops until a number of children, women,
and elderly persons could be evacuated.
In Iraq, Sergeant Kevin Benderman’s unit was ordered by their commanding
officer to shoot children who were only throwing rocks. None of the soldiers in the unit obeyed.
More often, as Sergeant
Camilo Mejia puts it, when you are in combat it is possible to think only about
survival. Both Mejia and Benderman
became conscientious objectors when they had the opportunity to return to the
United States from Iraq and to reflect on their experience away from the stress
of combat and the pressure of peers.
Both refused redeployment. Mejia
was court martialled, convicted, and is serving a year in confinement at Fort
Sill, Oklahoma. Benderman awaits court
martial at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
Numbers
Unlike the traditional
conscientious objection of members of radical Protestant sects like the
Quakers, the new conscientious objection may become a mass phenomenon.
Numbers are elusive. The New York Times reports that nearly
a third of the 950,000 persons from all branches of the Armed Forces who were
sent to Iraq or Afghanistan have been ordered to deploy a second time. CBS estimates that there have already been
5,000 deserters. National Guardsmen and
Reserves, few of whom expected to see active duty when they enlisted, make up
about 40-50 percent of the 150,000 United States troops in Iraq. According to USA Today, although many
of them signed up for financial reasons, 71 percent of Guardsmen and Reservists
have experienced no change in income (30 percent) or have lost money (41
percent) as a result of military service.
Already military personnel are vulnerable to the extension of their
tours of active duty beyond the period for which they enlisted, under so-called
Stop Loss orders, and beyond the twelve months in a combat zone which in Iraq,
as in Vietnam, has thus far been customary.
Now they are also threatened with a rumored change in military regulations
that would make possible more than twenty-four (24) months of active duty for
any particular enlistee.
Numbers are hard to come
by. An article in the Los Angeles
Times indicates that in the Vietnam war, there were 172,000 applications
for CO status by draftees and 17,000 by active duty soldiers. In the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, one can
predict, there will be fewer such applications overall but almost all of them
will be from active duty service personnel, based on their actual participation
in war.
Accordingly careful
attention is warranted to the experience of those persons like Mejia and
Benderman who have thus far had the courage to apply for CO status. Hugh Thompson, Camilo Mejia, Kevin Benderman,
and David Qualls (the named plaintiff in a suit against Stop Loss by himself
and seven John Does serving in Iraq) are all from the South. The new conscientious objection is a “red
state” phenomenon. It may spread.
Mejia
Mejia, who is from
Florida, is a Catholic not a Protestant.
Indeed his father, Carlos Mejia Godoy, composed the “Missa Campesina” or
“Peasants’ Mass” used as the liturgy in many Nicaraguan Catholic churches
during the 1980s, and Camilo’s “religious training and belief” was in Catholic
high schools in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
Mejia joined the Army in
1995 at age nineteen when he (according to his application for CO status)
“working full-time at a burger joint, making minimum wage.” Hardly anybody he knows joined the military
to go to war, Mejia says. After active
duty from 1995 to 1998, Mejia was honorably discharged and enlisted in the
Guard so as to go to college.
In January 2003 Mejia’s
Guard unit was activated to go to Iraq.
Before they deployed to the Middle East, the Lieutenant Colonel in
command of the battalion told everyone that he was not going to return without
a Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), awarded only after a unit has been under enemy
fire.
What this meant became
evident in Iraq. On one occasion Mejia,
a squad leader, was in charge of a unit that was ambushed as it returned to
base. Mejia ordered the vehicles to
return fire and proceed at top speed. No
one in the unit was hurt, but base commanders chewed Mejia out for his failure
to stand and fight. Another time Mejia’s
unit was directed to follow the same route to and from a checkpoint, night
after night. Officers were overheard
saying that the purpose of this routine was to draw the enemy out.
During this second
maneuver, there came a night when an explosion shattered one of the
vehicles. Soon after an “unsuspecting
vehicle” approached. One of the
occupants was decapitated by machine gun fire from Mejia’s unit, but the Iraqi
men turned out to be innocent.
The first assignment of
Mejia’s unit in Iraq was at a prisoner of war camp. “They told us we could not call it that,
because the facility did not comply with the Geneva Convention.” Interrogation was conducted by “three
mysterious guys who did not give us their real names.” Detainees were sorted into combatants and
non-combatants. Mejia and his men were
ordered to soften up the supposed combatants by keeping them awake for up to 48
hours. “The easiest way to do this,
according to the soldiers we replaced, was to constantly yell at the detainees,
make them move their arms up and down, make them sit and stand for several
minutes. When these techniques failed,
we would bang on the wall with a huge sledgehammer or load a 9 mm. pistol next
to their ears.”
Two incidents stood out
for Mejia. A squad leader shot a child
who was carrying an AK-47 rifle. A man
stopped his civilian vehicle to help the dying boy. Just as the man reached a hospital, he was
intercepted by Army vehicles and directed to take the victim to an Army medical
facility. That facility, and then
another Army facility, refused treatment.
The boy was then returned to the hospital where the Iraqi had wished to
take him but by that time he was dead.
On another occasion, in Al
Ramadi, Mejia was part of “onwatch security.”
He said, “Our platoon leader relayed the order to shoot anyone who threw
anything that looked like a grenade.” A
young Iraqi emerged, carrying a grenade but too far away to have any chance of
hurting the American soldiers. They
opened fire and killed him.
Mejia said, “I observed
most of this event through the rear aperture of my M-16 sight, and with my left
eye closed. It is impossible to say
exactly when I fired my weapon, I just know that I fired it. This incident stayed on my mind for many
weeks. The image of the young man,
killed by a rain of fire, is still fresh in my memory. Many times I have told myself that maybe the
bullets from my rifle only touched his leg, maybe his shoulder, that maybe I
missed him completely.”
Returning to the United
States for leave in fall 2003 “provided me with the opportunity to put my
thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say.” The next spring Mejia turned himself in,
applied for Conscientious Objector status, and refused to redeploy.
Benderman
Kevin Benderman is from
northern Alabama and is 40 years old. He
has served honorably in the Army for 10 years.
His wife Monica has been an advocate for the elderly in Texas.
During a first tour in
Iraq, Benderman was a mechanic who fixed Bradley armored vehicles. He witnessed the same kind of incidents in
Iraq that so much bothered Mejia. He
says in his CO application:
“I saw people whose only
drinking water was from mud puddles at the side of the road. I met a school teacher in Khanaqin who was
supporting his retarded brother and his sister and her family. His sister’s husband had been killed by war,
and he was unable to marry and have his own children because of his
responsibility to her and his brother.
This is what war does. As my unit
traveled to our destination, I could not ignore the little girl standing by the
side of the road with her mother. Her
arm was burned to her shoulder, and she cried in pain. [The officer in charge of the convoy said
they could not use their limited supplies to help the girl.] I had to look at that little girl, look into
her eyes, and in her eyes, I saw my TRUTH.
I cannot kill.”
On January 7, 2005, Kevin
Benderman is alleged to have refused an order to deploy with his unit for its
second tour in Iraq. At about the same
time two other members of his unit attempted suicide rather than deploy, and an
additional 17 soldiers in the 2-7 Infantry Battalion are said to have gone AWOL
for the same reason. Monica Benderman
e-mailed me on January 31: “We heard
from four soldiers today who do not want to deploy, and are looking for
information to begin CO applications.
[They] are from all over the country.”
One of Benderman’s
superior officers called him a coward.
His company commander informed Benderman that he would recommend
disapproval of the CO application without even reading the regulation, because
it could only be a ruse. A chaplain,
after first refusing to meet with Kevin, said he should be ashamed of
himself. Benderman has been upbraided
before members of his unit for articles on the internet for which he is claimed
to have been responsible, and which were said to constitute “Disrespect to a
Superior Officer” and “Disloyal Statements to the United States.”
On the other hand,
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has written a letter supporting Benderman, and
war hero Colonel James “Bo” Gritz profiled Benderman three days running on his
radio show.
The process a CO applicant
can expect is suggested by Benderman’s experience thus far. He has been charged with: 1) Desertion with the intent to avoid
hazardous duty, for which he could be imprisoned for five years; and 2) Missing
movement by design, which carries a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment.
The military hearing
process begins with a pre-trial hearing called an Article 32 investigation, the
purpose of which is to decide whether court martial is warranted. The officer in charge, Lt. Col. Linda Taylor,
has also served as chief military prosecutor at Fort Stewart. She has declined to recuse herself.
In Meija’s case a hearing
was held at Fort Sill, the hearing officer recommended disapproval of the
application, and there is no definite answer yet. In a departure from the procedure employed
with Mejia, Benderman was summoned to a hearing on his CO application less than
24 hours after his Article 32 hearing ended.
The Investigating Officer was clearly hostile, not the detached,
neutral, and impartial officer required by regulations. Benderman’s appointed military counsel
objected to the entire proceeding.
On February 10, 2005,
Benderman’s commanding officer informed him that if the Article 32 hearing
recommended that the charges should not go forward, Benderman would again be
ordered to deploy.
Note. Kevin and Monica Benderman are featured
speakers at a rally against the war in Youngstown, Ohio on March 19, 2005. The Kevin Benderman Defense Committee has a
web site:
http://www.BendermanDefense.org. Contributions are needed in order to hire
outside counsel should a court martial be ordered.