By Jamilah Hoffman, 11/27/06
It is not enough to simply “be against” the war in Iraq. We must resist. These are two very different terms as to “be against” implies a passive stance one takes. For example, “I am against Athlete’s Foot.” Sure, most people are against Athlete’s Foot, but are you actively preventing it, or stopping its spread. While I did not intend to make a metaphor out of a fungal condition, there is a similarity to the war in Iraq.
To stop Athlete’s Foot, you must actively set out to do so. You get
some sort of anti-fungal cream, apply it and it goes away. You don’t
sit and say, “Oh, I am really against this case of Athlete’s Foot,” and
then watch as it spreads and increasingly becomes worse. In other
words, you resist it. The same can be said for the war. There have
been hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers killed. U.S.
forces now occupy Iraq, giving way to scores of kidnappings and
bombings to scales never seen before the invasion.
With the invasion and now occupation of Iraq, the lies and
manipulation used to take this country to war shows, not incompetence,
but a determined effort to remake the world for imperialistic effects.
And it is this reason why it is so important to resist this war.
 Lt. Ehren Watada is currently facing up to 4 years in prison for speaking out against and refusing to fight in the war on Iraq, The latest info can be found at http://thankyoult.org/. |
We can look to Ehren Watada as an example of what it looks like to
resist. As a First Lieutenant in the US Army, Watada became the first
commissioned officer in the US armed forces to publicly refuse
deployment to Iraq. In his speech at the Veterans for Peace National
Convention, Watada told the crowd about his choice to refuse deployment
to Iraq that, “”it is not an easy task for the soldier. For he or she
must be aware that they are being used for ill-gain. They must hold
themselves responsible for individual action. The soldier must be
willing to face ostracism by their peers, worry over the survival of
their families, and of course the loss of personal freedom. They must
know that resisting an authoritarian government at home is equally
important to fighting a foreign aggressor on the battlefield.”
In January of 2006, Ehren Watada submitted a resignation request
declaring the he would not serve in Iraq. After research, Watada found
that the war was illegal, violating the Constitution and War Powers
Act, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg
Principles, which bars “wars of aggression.” For taking this stand,
for speaking out, Watada faces court martial on three counts of conduct
unbecoming an officer and a gentleman and one count of missing
movement. In all, Watada faces up to four years in prison. Watada is
resisting an unjust and illegal war. He is taking a stand that has
severe consequences because the stand he is taking is the right thing
to do.
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But what makes a person like Ehren Watada resist? With the
consequence of serving time in prison, with the loss of income and
benefits, and with severed relationships, what makes some people resist
while others go on with everyday life? Camilo Mejia, one of the first
Iraq war resisters, wrote from prison that, “One of the reasons I did
not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing
my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many
types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in
many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow
our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with
our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than
ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man
because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.”
Ehren Watada, Camilo Mejia and others who have resisted this war are
not heroes. They themselves have said as much. But they are ordinary
people who were faced with the choice of either participating in an
illegal war and blindingly supporting the reasons that took us there,
or resisting all of that. In the case of Mejia, he saw firsthand the
murder and the torture while he served in Iraq. Watada spent time
researching international law and saw how this war was not just wrong
but illegal. The public must wake up and listen to the accounts of
people who have actually served. The Ground Truth, a new documentary
about the firsthand experience of those who have served in Iraq, is a
must see in that it is an unedited and brutally honest look at what is
going on in Iraq. We have soldiers who are coming home and telling us
what is going on over there – the murder, the torture, the destruction
– but it seems that there aren’t that many people listening. If there
were, the movement to resist this war would actually correspond to the
effort put on by the Bush regime to promote it.
 This new documentary on gives an honest and horrific portrait of the war on Iraq through the eyes of US soldiers. It’s available at http://thegroundtruth.net/. |
At the same time, it seems that people are comfortable to just
passively sit this one out. I feel that people aren’t taking an active
role in stopping the war because they have isolated themselves from the
war. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. Yet the Bush regime
isn’t going to bring this war to the people of America, but the people
need to be made aware of their role in the war, even their passive
resistance.
That is why this movement must grow, but that resistance cannot
depend only on the enlisted. The public has a stand to take as well.
In Watada’s speech at the Vets for Peace National Convention, he states
that, “The Nuremberg Trials showed America and the world that citizenry
as well as soldiers have the unrelinquishable obligation to refuse
complicity in war crimes perpetrated by their government. Widespread
torture and inhumane treatment of detainees is a war crime. A war of
aggression born through an unofficial policy of prevention is a crime
against the peace. An occupation violating the very essence of
international humanitarian law and sovereignty is a crime against
humanity. These crimes are funded by our tax dollars. Should citizens
choose to remain silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice, it
makes them as culpable as the soldier in these crimes.”
It’s pretty clear that resistance is needed in this country, but not
just from the general public. It must come from those who are serving
as well. While there is the sentiment that there is no stopping George
Bush and the rest of his regime, history has shown us that this is not
the case. While the Vietnam war lasted over a decade, resistance by
the anti-war movement as well as resistance from the soldiers who
served led, in combination with other factors in the US and internationally, to the reduction of troops by Nixon and the end to that
war. One of the things that is needed today is a culture of
resistance. Resistance that is not reduced to a fringe community, but
spreads throughout this country, from the enlisted to the everyman, and
from student to solider. This is what is needed to stop the disastrous
direction Bush is taking this society.
 Click here to download 11×17 PDF poster from worldcantwait.org |
I have read that there have been at least 5,000 soldiers who have
taken the stand and refused to fight in Iraq. There are probably more,
but this is not news that the government wants everyone to know about.
They are pushing the message that we should support the troops, no
matter what. Democrats add that we should support the troops and (maybe) bring
them home sometime in the next decade. But how can one support the troops when they are
torturing innocent people? How does one support the troops who
massacred people in Haditha? Or the rape and murder of
fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza by US Marines, and the subsequent
murders of her parents and little sister to cover up their crimes? I
don’t support those troops at all.
I do, however, support those troops who refuse an illegal order and
have resisted. More troops would follow in their footsteps if they knew
there was a movement to support them. “Supporting the troops” takes on
a whole new dimension when those troops we support, by refusing to
fight, can end this illegal and unjust war.