Sir, No Sir!
Fred Hyde
www.virtualcitizens.com
2007-04-06

http://www.virtualcitizens.com/articles/Sir_No_Sir

[Editor's note:  this article has been adapted from a piece provided by the Freedom Socialist newspaper.  We thank editors and writers there for sharing these events with us.  Please see their work at: www.socialism.com]

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GI resisters and young people set a courageous example for anti-war movement

Lt. Ehren Watada’s well-publicized refusal to fight an “illegal” and “immoral” war has inspired hope that U.S. enlisted men and women can play a decisive role in stopping the Iraq War, like they did in the Vietnam War, by refusing to fight.  Watada is one of the better known cases in a growing movement of GIs, including many soldiers of color and women, who are acting on their conviction that this war is wrong, based on   deceit and greed.

Geoffrey Millard, an anti-war agitator and Army National Guardsman who spent 13 months in Iraq, put it this way:  “They are resisting orders, they are going to jail, going to Canada, and going AWOL. And they are talking about why they are doing it.”

The military’s problem of losing soldiers due to desertion is compounded by a rising movement among students to oppose the war — and thwart military recruiters from signing up more young people.

Laying down arms

Estimates are that 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers have deserted since G. W. Bush ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  Many of these war resisters are young adults who recruiters enticed using outright lies, often promising they would never go to Iraq, and guarantees for certain job training.  Many former dupes now refuse to return to Iraq.  They will not be party to the racist genocide and a multitude of war crimes that these vets have witnessed first-hand.

Filipino Marine Christopher Magaoay is one such soldier.  “I know that killing persons just because they are of a different race is wrong, no matter what the rules of engagement are.  That is why I left.”  Magaoay went AWOL and fled to Canada.

Among those who refuse to deploy are also older veteran soldiers like Abdullah Webster, who served 18 years in the Army before filing for status as a conscientious objector.  Webster declared his unwillingness to fight “an unjust war” that was based on lies and aggression.  For taking this heroic stance, Webster spent 11 months in prison, lost his pension and benefits, and received a bad conduct discharge.

By going public with their refusal to fight, and standing up for what they believe, i.e. exercising God-given freedoms to speak and challenge government, GI’s risk severe repercussions, including months of jail time.  Despite actual and threatened sanctions, many in the military are choosing to face the consequences rather than support criminality, immorality, and lies.  By announcing their decision to lay down arms they send a powerful message to other enlistees. Sharing their experiences and declaring their convictions also helps reassure other GIs that they are not alone in their opposition to the war.

An excellent collection of 45 profiles of these heroes is found at www.tomjoad.org.  While not exhaustive, this honor roll reflects the diversity of those who are speaking out in their refusal to deploy.  It includes four women, four Blacks, six Latinos and four other people of color, who together make up 38 percent of the soldiers profiled on this website.

Included on the list is Mexican-born Army medic Agustín Aguayo, court-martialed on March 6, 2007, and sentenced to eight months in jail for refusing to go back to Iraq.  After joining the Army, Aguayo quickly developed anti-war beliefs, especially opposing the immoral war in Iraq with all its blatant profiteering by Black Water, Halliburton, Raytheon and the rest.  On his first tour of duty Aguayo refused to load his weapon ever, even when assigned to guard duty or patrols.  His case is a rallying point for the right of soldiers to be conscientious objectors.

Not surprisingly, the government of G. W. Bush and his crew of war criminals and torturers is doing everything it can to prevent soldiers from acting on such convictions – without reprisal.  A story that demonstrates the unlawful lengths the Army will go to punish GI resisters is that of Kyle Snyder, 22.  

Rather than go to Iraq, Snyder fled the military and moved to Nelson, British Columbia.  At the covert request of the U.S. Army, on 23 February 2007, police in Canada illegally arrested Snyder without a warrant, alleging that Snyder violated Canadian immigration laws.  (This in a nation that welcomed Americans who avoided the Vietnam draft and has a monument to their commitment to peace and humanity).  After seven hours of detention and threats of deportation by police, Canadian immigration officials ordered Snyder’s release because he is in Canada legally.   Being AWOL from the U.S. Army is not an extraditable offense in Canada.

The men and women who make the tough decision to leave their posts represent only one part of the blossoming GI resistance movement.   Countless other soldiers are carrying forward their fight against war from within the ranks of the military.   More than 1,700 active-duty, Reserve and Guard personnel have already signed an Appeal for Redress that was submitted to Congress in January 2007. Their statement declares it is “time for the troops to come home,” and the list of signers continues to grow by more than 100 people each week.

Students on the forefront

The other significant way to deprive the government of the bodies it needs to wage war, invade and colonize, and serve global capital is to educate young people about the military’s false promises and predatory tactics.  Clandestine and overt recruitment strategies encompass everything from the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires schools to provide the military with students’ contact information, to recruiters who target kids from poor families and communities – telling them lies like “they won’t go to Iraq” or “they will be arrested if they don’t enlist.”

In 2005 and early 2006, high schools and colleges were the scene of serious organizing to drive military recruiters off campus.  Students are once again responding eagerly to initiatives taken by anti-war organizers across the U.S.  In December 2006, students jammed a Board of Education meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota to speak up against the war and demand an end to recruiters in their schools.  Teens are also doing counter-recruitment tabling at various schools in the area.

On February 15, 2007, thousands of students from more than 20 colleges and high schools across the U.S. responded to the call for a strike against the war.  Protests were held at four University of California campuses, as well as Columbia University (NY), Occidental College (Los Angeles), Rutgers University (NJ), University of Massachusetts (Amherst), Sarah Lawrence (NY), Columbia College (Chicago), and others.  At UC Santa Barbara, students shut down a highway.  

In the Bay Area, students from Fremont and Berkeley high schools walked out of classrooms, as did 700 students from Lowell High.  On February 24, 2007, activists converged on military recruitment centers in Washington State. And on April 18, 2007 Youth Against War and Racism is planning a “city-wide walkout” in Seattle to protest the war and recruiters in schools.

It’s time to stop all wars for profit

Thanks to the writings of General Smedley Butler, since the 1930s, we have understood that the primary motivation of war, for the capitalist class, is profit.  They profit through extracting resources and exploiting markets in the newly acquired territory, and through transfers of tax money from the poor to the rich in the form of war-profiteering contracts.  By the 1960s, we understood that the most important lesson from the Vietnam War was about what it takes to stop not only particular wars (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan), but all imperialist wars.  The main regret voiced by Michael Wong, a Vietnam-era war resister and activist in Veterans for Peace, is that, though his generation stopped that war, “what we did not stop was the system that drives wars of economic exploitation.”

Nothing will scare Washington D.C.’s warmongers into ending the war quicker than building a movement of radicalized vets and young people who understand the need to transform their opposition to the Iraq war into support for a class war against the real enemy, American monopoly-capitalism, which sells out the many for the benefit of less than one percent.

Regardless of internal disagreements over this approach and other issues, the still-fractured anti-war movement needs to come together and support the soldiers who have put their necks on the line by speaking out and refusing to deploy.  One way activists can do that is to build on the militancy of the student strikes and demand that laborers join in by calling for mass work stoppages to bring all the troops home immediately.

Fred Hyde
www.virtualcitizens.com