http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19671.htm

First Lieutenant Ehren Watada.

The results of such an action? One of the results would be no more US soldier deaths. Another would be no more US soldier atrocities. No more torture by US military interrogators. Families would be reunited and our troops would be where they need to be… protecting our borders rather than out on an imperial adventure. There would doubtless be violence in Iraq after our departure, but that would happen whenever we leave, especially after all the money we’ve given Al Queda in Iraq in bribes.

One of the things I’m doing now is supporting Nader’s candidacy. He’s the only candidate that will withdraw the troops fast. He’s the only candidate that will cut our defense spending by half. He’s the only candidate that sees the Palestinian plight and Israeli atrocities for what they are.

I’m hugely in favor of impeaching Bush and Cheney as you can see by the banner on my blogsite. I’d impeach Nancy Pelosi too, for her complicity in the matter.

I have attended Nader rallies in the past and refuse to attend republican or democrat caucuses. These parties are corrupt beyond repair and their is no hope of reform from within. They are our modern day Gadianton society IMHO and I cannot get near one of their caucuses without retching violently.

Most importantly, whenever war topics are raised on Connor’s blog, I pipe up most annoyingly and regularly to the dismay of all of Connor’s regular readers.

I suppose you are asking me these questions to see if I’m sincere or not in my assertions here. Why do you doubt me?

Janet,
I’m sorry for what your husband has gone through. I have been a vocal opponent against our wars since I became aware of them in the mid-90s. I have always written my elected representatives and put my small voice out there in protest of their policies. I run a blog that you can see if you click on my name, that deals specifically with the secret combinations in our country that inspire our wars and other unjust policies. My voice is small, but hopefully I am cleansing my garments at least partially through my vocal opposition to our governments murders.

Vote for Bush? Are you kidding? I’ve voted for Nader the last 3 elections.

Did you attend your state caucauses? Did you vote for Bush? Once? Twice? Have you written your congressional representatives? Have you written your senators? Are you active in political campaigns? Do you have a blog about war? Have you advocated removal and criminal charges against those who lied to start this unjust war? Have you stood beside Iraq vetrans and demonstrated against the war with them?

Most of our servicemen are good people. Some good people had gone bad after-the-fact. What are you doing to help the U.S. military victims of this unjust war? How would you end it? What are the results of your solution?

While on tank patrol through the narrow streets of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib had become a “free-fire zone,” Hicks was told, and no “friendlies” or civilians remained in the area. “Game on. All weapons free,” his captain said. Upon that command, Hicks’s unit opened a furious fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his unit had killed 700-800 “enemy combatants.” But he knew the dead were not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. “I will agree to swear to that till the day I die,” he said. “I didn’t see one enemy on that operation.”

Hicks soberly recounted this bloody incident to a packed auditorium in Silver Spring, Maryland, as part of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, a summit hosted March 13-16 by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Modeled after the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation–in which Vietnam veterans, including John Kerry, testified in Detroit about US atrocities in Vietnam–this incarnation featured more than fifty veterans and active-duty service members testifying about engaging in or witnessing atrocities and war crimes against Iraqi and Afghan civilians. As a precondition for participation, IVAW required veterans to provide corroborating evidence such as photographs, videos and additional witnesses. Former marine Scott Camil, 61, who spoke at the first Winter Soldier event, attended the conference along with seven fellow Vietnam-era witnesses. “When we came home, the World War II and Korean War veterans did not support our activities. I know how that feels,” Camil said quietly. “We’re not going to let it happen to these guys.”

Soldiers and marines at Winter Soldier described the frustration of routinely raiding the wrong homes and arresting the wrong people. It was common for unarmed Iraqis to be killed at US checkpoints or by US convoys, they said. Many said they were congratulated on their “first kill.” Some even desecrated Iraqi corpses. Spc. Hart Viges said he refused to pose in a photograph with a corpse when his fellow soldiers prodded him. “I said no–not in the context of, That’s really wrong on an ethical basis,” he said. “I said no because it wasn’t my kill. You shouldn’t take trophies for things you didn’t kill. That’s where my mind-set was back then.”

Several veterans said it was common to carry a stash of extra automatic weapons and shovels to plant near the bodies of unarmed civilians they had killed to make it look as if they were combatants. Others described the surreal sensation of committing cold-blooded murder without facing any consequences. Jon Michael Turner, who served as a machine gunner with Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Eighth Marines, said he shot an unarmed Iraqi in front of the man’s father and friend. “The first round didn’t kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterwards he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend…and I said, ‘Well, I can’t let that happen.’ So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family.” Later, Turner pointed to a tattoo on his right wrist of the Arabic words for “**** you.” “That was my choking hand,” he explained. “And any time I felt the need to take out aggression, I would go ahead and use it.”

“This is not an isolated incident,” the testifiers uttered over and over, to the point of liturgy, insisting that the atrocities they committed or witnessed were common. The hearings were not organized to point fingers at “bad apples” or even particular squads, several testifiers said.

On Friday, Day 2, testimony began at 9 AM with a panel about the “Rules of Engagement”. Speakers from the Army and Marine Corps. — people that I have known for the last few years — recounted the atrocities that they not only witnessed but participated in. Anyone who is interested can listen online at http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier. But about halfway into that panel, I lost my objectivity. The stories they were telling about the rules of engagement they learned while training at boot camp, or on a military base “back home”, were the same as what I had heard from my son. I broke down sobbing. The photographs they were showing on the five viewing screens of bloodied bodies torn apart by close gunfire, 50-calibre Machine guns, rocket launchers, and every other damn weapon our great military industrial complex has created, were all too familiar to me. When my son returned home from both war zones, he was so eager to share his stories and pictures.

I could not fathom that my son, whom I raised to be a Catholic, whom I took to Sunday school, who received Communion and Confirmation, had not only been a participant in such horrors, but had pictures to prove it. I immediately told him that I would not listen to his stories or look at those pictures. He could speak with his father. My response may seem too many as being hard on my son, who only wanted to unload what he was feeling on his mother. But I couldn’t come to terms with it then — or now.

Watching and listening to the testimony made me very ill. Here were these young men and women, handsomely dressed, some wearing medals, talking about how they shot civilians who were holding nothing more threatening than a cell phone, groceries, a shovel, a white flag, or a pair of binoculars. Anyone deemed suspicious by the particular soldier or Marine on watch was fair game, subject to the orders, “Take ‘em out!” The Rules of Engagement, as stated by Garrett Rapenhagen were “a joke and disgrace, and ever changing.”

I knew that. I had heard it back home from my son. He told me he had to survive; he had to protect his buddies, so that they could all come home alive. They didn’t know who the enemy was, so they would just “blast them away.” The Marines are taught that. They shoot and don’t even ask questions. Their motto is “Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out!”

Camilo Mejia, who is the chair of IVAW, spoke about how soldiers were trained that dehumanizing the enemy is necessary to survival, and how they are taught to think of Iraqis as “hajjis”. In fact, all of the panel members said Iraqi citizens were repeatedly referred to as hajjis. I know that word all too well; I have heard my son talk about it, as well as other anti-Iraqi slurs such as “towel head,” and “sand nigger.” The expression “if you feel threatened, use your weapon” was also a familiar phrase to me. So, too, was the slogan, “Do what you need to do.” That meant that you use your rifle anytime, and you can crush whoever you want with your vehicle in the street.

Members on the panel recounted how, when they were bored, they blew up dogs and other animals to keep themselves entertained. All too well I had heard these stories, which gave me the creeps more than anything else. I also heard the testimony of former Cpl. Matt Childers, who said that after American soldiers had already beaten and starved detainees in their custody, one of them removed a hat from one of the detainees’ heads and smeared it with his own feces, before feeding it to one of the prisoners who was so hungry that he actually attempted to eat it.

One other Marine, whom I happened to interview personally — which produced a conversation I hope to describe more fully in a future article — was Bryan Casler. Casler was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. He described Marines taking their MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) which were in plastic bags, and defecating in them before tossing them out to Iraqi children on the side of the road. Those who picked them up would think they were food and attempt to eat the contents. Casler also said soldiers would urinate in bottles and throw them at children. They would also remove the chemical packets that were within the MREs (which helped heat the food) and hand them to children to eat. He said that when they went into Babylon, the marines would drive vehicles into mosques and historic ruins, and break off pieces to take home with them.

Some of the soldiers’ testimony was characterized by defiant anger. At the end of his testimony, former Marine Mike Totten ripped up the commendation he had received from General Petraeus, and threw it on the floor in front of him, to a huge applause. One day earlier, former Marine Jon Turner had taken a chest full of medals and thrown them into the audience. “I don’t work for you anymore!” Turner said. At the end of his heart-wrenching account of the atrocities he had witnessed or committed, Turner begged the Iraqi people for forgiveness.

All too well I know these stories, and have known them for years. So I kept crying and asking myself how these young men and women wound up in this position. How someone who joined the military out of a sense of “patriotism” wound up doing such horrible and heinous things that would make a mother sick to her stomach. How do we let our children do this? Casler, like my son, joined right out of high school. Many others do the same. And many don’t have to be recruited; they join voluntarily, out of a desire to serve their country. Many feel that doing so is what makes heroes.

So I spent three days listening to heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching stories, and continuously asked myself the same question: “Why?” More specifically, why do these soldiers and Marines, who represent a critical new breed of resisters, still feel so tied to the military that many of them espouse some variation of the sentiment, “I am proud of my service in the military. I am not proud of what I did.” For someone like me, I can clearly see that statement making sense. But then I had to ask myself why I thought it made sense.

How could you be proud to be in the military, and yet not like what you participated in while in the military? I have often asked my son this question. He says, “I love the Marine Corps. , but hate the government.” What a deep statement – one that conjures up very mixed, confusing emotions. So I have to examine not only the statements of love, but of loathing for war. War is a dirty business, forever has been and forever will be. So why do we encourage our citizens to think otherwise?

My hope is that they search for the truth of the matter, and that once they discover the truth, they get out of the military as fast as they can.

Did you ever see the “Lonesome Dove” miniseries, or read the Larry McMurtry book on which it’s based? There’s an interesting character by the name of Jake Spoon in the book, and he basically serves as the catalyst in the story that starts everything in motion. He inspires a group of cowboys running a livery stable in a two-bit town in Texas to gather a herd of cattle and go north and start a ranch in Montana “before the bankers get everything”. Jake soon enough learns that being a cattleman isn’t really what he’s cut out for, and by chance (and then choice) falls in with a group of murderous ruffians. He tells himself that he’s going to break away from them as soon as he can, that he’s just with them in order to get through the territory, but pretty soon he finds himself an unwilling accomplice to the murder and “manburning” of innocent farmers; he’s never able to break ranks with the Suggs gang because they don’t trust him, and they know he’ll report them to the law should he ever get the chance. Eventually, he finds himself facing a hangman’s noose as a result of the poor choices he made and his attempts to rationalize his actions:

“Pea, you know me,” Jake said. “You know I ain’t no killer. Old Deets knows it too. You boys wouldn’t want to hang a friend, I hope.”

“I’ve done a many a thing I didn’t want to do, Jake,” Pea Eye said.

Jake walked over to Augustus. “I ain’t no criminal, Gus,” he said. “Dan’s the only one that done anything. He shot that old man over there, and he killed them farmers. He shot Wilbarger and his men. Me and the other boys have killed nobody.”

“We’ll hang him for the killings and the rest of you for the horse theft, then,” Augustus said. “Out in these parts the punishment’s the same, as you well know.”

“Ride with an outlaw, die with him,” he added. “I admit it’s a harsh code. But you rode on the other side long enough to know how it works. I’m sorry you crossed the line, though.”

Jake’s momentary optimism had passed, and he felt tired and despairing. He would have liked a good bed in a whorehouse and a nice night’s sleep.

“I never seen no line, Gus,” he said. “I was just trying to get to Kansas without getting scalped.”

Newt had saddled the men’s horses. Call came back and took the ropes off the four saddles.

“We’re lucky to have caught ‘em by the trees,” he said. Newt felt numb from all that he had seen.

“Have we got to hang Jake too?” he asked. “He was my ma’s friend.”

Call was surprised by the remark. Newt was surprised too — it had just popped out. He remembered how jolly Jake had been then — it was mainly on Jake’s visits that he heard his mother laugh. It puzzled him how the years could have moved so, to bring them from such happy times to the moment at hand.

“Yes, he’s guilty with the rest of them,” Call said. “Any judge would hang him.”…

It took a while for Deets to fix the knots to his satisfaction. The twilight began to deepen into dusk.

Jake tried to get his mind to work, but it wouldn’t snap to. He had the feeling that there ought to be something he could say that would move Call or Gus on his behalf. It made him proud that the two of them had caught Dan Suggs so easily, although it had brought him to a hard fix. Still, it cut Dan Suggs down to size. Jake tried to think back over his years of rangering — to try and think of a debt he could call in, or a memory that might move the boys — but his brain seemed to be asleep. he could think of nothing…. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it was too bad, but he couldn’t find the energy to fight it any longer…

Call walked over. Now that they were about it he felt a keen sorrow. Jake had ridden the river with them and been the life of the camp once — not the steadiest boy in the troop, but lively and friendly to a fault.

“Well, it’ll soon be dark,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s us, Jake — I wish it had fallen to somebody else.”

Jake grinned. Something in the way Call said it amused him, and for a second he regained a bit of his old dash.

“Hell, don’t worry about it , boys,” he said. “I’d a damn sight rather be hung by my friends that by a bunch of strangers. The thing is, I never meant no harm,” he added. “I didn’t know they was such a gun outfit.”

He looked down at Pea Eye and Deets, and at the boy. Eveyone was silent, even Gus, who held the coiled rope. They were all looking at him, but it seemed no one could speak. For a moment, Jake felt good. He was back with his old companeros, at least — those boys who had haunted his dreams. Straying off from them had been his worst mistake.

“Well, adios, boys,” he said. “I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

And then he spurs his horse, and handles the final detail of his own hanging himself.

How many Jake Spoons have we got in our military, who just signed up for the educational tuition assitance benefits, or the incentive pay, or the chance to see the world, or because they really believed they were going to defend the United States against unjust aggression, or because they saw it as a chance to participate in a religious crusade against Islamofascism, or any number of reasons that didn’t include going off to foreign lands and killing people, both in and out of military uniforms, for reasons about which their own government hasn’t been honest? It’s entirely possible they joined up and “didn’t know they was such a gun outfit”, being blinded by all of the other reasons they might have had for signing up.

Maybe I’m completely wrong, and God will still look upon these Jake Spoons at the last day and say to them, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”. But we are taught that a man can not be saved in ignorance. We all need to find out the truth of what our government has been doing in its foreign relations policies over the last century. And then we need to see the line that Jake didn’t see before we cross it, and end up by going down the same unfortunate path as the Nephites who thought that by being better warriors than the Lamanites, they would save themselves. Too late, they found that war was not the answer; it wasn’t even the real problem. The real problem was their ability to rationalize away the keeping of the commandments.

War is hell, and my grandfathers on all sides were in wars, D-Day, etc. I went on a mission to Ukraine, a former member of the country that had more deaths in WWII than any other country by a very wide margin. Over 20 million. I have seen entire cities that were flattened and people who had their family ripped away from war. I hate war. That said, when you fight, you do it to win. In Alma, Moroni talked about how the stripling warriors did everything he asked of them with exactness etc. That is how an effective fighting force works. That is all I was pointing out. It isn’t brainwashing. Blaming the soldiers is stupid and prideful, and in the few circumstances where it was the actual individual soldiers that caused the problems, we should leave it up to the respective organizations to deal with that. Leaders are for all intense and purposes always the ones to level blame at.

And, as we find out at the end of the book, it was all for naught. It was a complete and utter waste, because nobody wins in the end. It wasn’t even good for the Lamanites in the end, because once they had lost the Nephites to pick on, then they just continued warring among themselves.

I would advise everyone to read every article about Christianity and Christians and war that are linked on this page.

Perhaps it is semantics, but I draw a big distinction between having a strong military, and having a strong defensive military. Our defense is anything but strong right now, with our troops spread so thin.

As per picking out what you posted, I felt that the rest of your comment was directed at others in this thread, so I was leaving it up to them to respond if they chose.

I disagree with this statement. We should have a strong defense. Standing armies are a dangerous institution, especially when used for foreign aggression, empire maintenance, and policing the world.

Saying “well if they all just put down their weapons” just boggles my mind. So, hundreds of thousands of soldiers across Iraq at one moment all come to the same conclusion, drop their weapons all over without endangering all their lives and the livelihood of all their families. And I would be rich if I had a lot of money. Anyway, reality and logic is lost so often with such strong ideology. 99.99% of the time the leaders of these soldiers are to blame. The rest of these incidents are not us to judge and should not be of our concern anyway.

Hmm… so are we obligated by our religion to follow unjust laws? what think ye Connor?

Ah, one of the biggest conundrums I’ve yet faced. I discussed one aspect of this question in this post.

You asked me another question earlier, which I forgot to address:

Connor, do you believe what Kelly and Curtis claim that men who serve in our armed forces, are, because of that fact, murderers?

This is also a conundrum. While they must fulfill their legal obligations, I do not believe that the Lord would disapprove of soldiers who desert or refused to, say, torture somebody. Nor do I think that He would disapprove of a soldier refusing to knowingly inflict causality upon an innocent civilian life. Soldiers are in a different class in wartime, in my mind. But any soldier who refuses an order that will knowingly and deliberately harm civilians in the process is a hero in my book.