Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

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RedGlitter
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Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

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Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

LIEUTENANT TRIED TO RESIGN, REQUESTED DUTY IN AFGHANISTAN

By Tomas Alex Tizon

Los Angeles Times

OLYMPIA, Wash. - The soldier stands in his living room eyeing all the cool soldier stuff he never got to use in a real war. Such as the helmet with not a single ding and the sleek body armor with not a scuff. The gear piles high on the carpet.

First Lt. Ehren Watada is giving it all back and, out of courtesy, packing it up. The Army had treated him with utmost respect until the moment it decided to court-martial him. It was nothing personal. The Army does what it has to do.

Just like Watada himself did what he believed he had to do seven months ago when he became the first -- and only -- commissioned officer in the United States publicly to refuse deployment to Iraq.

His conscience, he said, had overtaken him. He told the world what he had privately told his superiors months earlier: that he believed the war was illegal and immoral, and he would play no role in it.

Watada tried to resign; the Army denied him. He said he was willing to fight in Afghanistan; the Army refused him again: A soldier cannot pick and choose where he fights. As his unit shipped off to Iraq, Watada stayed to face the consequences.

Thousands of GIs have gone AWOL or voiced opposition to the war in Iraq, but when an officer says he will not go, the whole military machine must take note. It means dissent has crept up the chain of command, potentially undermining the war effort.

The Army felt compelled to respond forcefully, charging Watada, 28, with one count of failure to deploy and four (later reduced to two) counts of ``conduct unbecoming'' for making public statements against the war and against the Bush administration. His court-martial begins today, at Fort Lewis, 15 miles north of Olympia.

Watada ponders the prospect of spending four years in military prison, and he muses on his spiral from exemplary military man to reviled anti-war poster boy.

With everyone judging him, he wants to make one thing clear. ``I'm not afraid to fight,'' he said. ``I'm not a pacifist. If our country needed defending, I'd be the first one to pick up a rifle. But I won't be part of a war that I believe is criminal.''

`Ordinary American'

Watada calls himself ``an ordinary American'' and a patriot who unwittingly found himself in a moral dilemma he could never have imagined when he first put on a uniform 18 years ago. That is when the story begins, according to his mother, Carolyn Ho, a high school counselor in Honolulu.

It all started because she thought Cub Scouts uniforms were cute.

The uniforms also represented wholesome activity. Ho and her then-husband Bob Watada wanted to keep their two young sons out of trouble. Ehren was the thoughtful one; his older brother, Lorin, the rambunctious one.

Ehren thrived on the order and discipline, and the little rewards that marked one's ascension up the scouting ranks. ``He was the sort who studied for every merit badge possible,'' Ho said.

Thus Watada's kinship with life in uniform was born. He went from Cub to Boy to Eagle Scout, and he had an inkling as early as 15 that he would end up in the armed forces.

In 2003, after graduating near the top of his class at Hawaii Pacific University, Watada walked into a recruiting station and hop-scotched from Officer Candidate School to his first tour of duty in South Korea, where his superiors rated him exemplary.

His battalion commander spoke long and often of the paramount importance of preparation.

``He told us, `If you don't know all there is to know about your mission, you're failing yourself and you're failing your soldiers,' '' Watada said. ``I took the lesson to heart.''

So when he was re-assigned to Fort Lewis in early 2005 in anticipation of deploying to Iraq, he did his job: He got to know everything there was to know about Iraq. He spent nights online, read books, talked to combat veterans, devoured media reports.

At the end of 2005, he was convinced the Bush administration purposefully manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion and the congressional approval of the war therefore was based on lies.

He said he was so anguished by his conclusion and the knowledge that he would soon be ``participating in the madness'' that he grew deeply depressed. In December 2005, he sought guidance from a chaplain and a mental-health counselor. Neither helped. He considered filing for conscientious objector status but could not in good conscience, he says, because he does not oppose bearing arms.

`Invisible prison'

``I was in this situation where I knew something was wrong,'' he said, ``but I was being forced to do it anyway. It felt like I was in an invisible prison of my own making. It's a terrible place to be.''

In January 2006, he submitted a letter of resignation, was refused, and the process rolled to where it is today.

Watada does not blame the Army as much as he blames the administration. The Army does what it must to function. Military culture always has presumed that individuals lose certain kinds of freedom when joining the armed forces.

``The idea is when you put on a uniform, you put your personal opinions to the side,'' said Kathleen Duignan, executive director of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, D.C.

Duignan said the best known case that parallels Watada's occurred in 1965 during the Vietnam War, when 2nd Lt. Henry Howe was caught participating in an anti-war demonstration. The Army court-martialed Howe and sentenced him to two years of hard labor.
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Accountable
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Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

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A soldier's not the same as a citizen. Don't try to measure him with the same stick.
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LilacDragon
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Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

Post by LilacDragon »

I hope they throw his butt in the brig for a good long time!

He joined the military as an officer long after the invasion of Iraq. As a SOLDIER, his job is to fight the fight that his Commander in Chief tells him to fight - not the fight he decides he wants to fight.

I am sick to death of people joining the military and taking advantage of the benefits that the military has to offer and then cries foul when they are called upon to do the damn job that they agreed to do.
Sandi



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BTS
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Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:47 am

Stand against Iraq sends officer to trial

Post by BTS »

His refusal in his OWN words

http://thankyoult.live.radicaldesigns.o ... ement.html



WHAT A CROCK.......IMO

Sounds GOOD.......... But contrived
"If America Was A Tree, The Left Would Root For The Termites...Greg Gutfeld."
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