Conscientious Objection, After You’re In

April 30, 2004

Here’s a web­site of “Jere­my Hinz­man, a U.S. Army sol­dier who became a a con­sci­en­tious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his ser­vice. His appli­ca­tions denied, he moved to Cana­da and is seek­ing polit­i­cal asy­lum there.
I find I can under­stand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel uni­verse, I’d be in iraq myself instead of pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org. My father, a vet­er­an who fought in the South Pacif­ic in World War II, real­ly want­ed me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. For quite some time, I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. I am attract­ed to the idea of ser­vice and duty and putting in hard work for some­thing I believe in.
Hinz­man’s sto­ry is get­ting a lot of main­stream cov­er­age, I sus­pect because the “escape to Cana­da” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that res­onate with that gen­er­a­tion. I wish Hinz­man would flesh out his web­site sto­ry though. His Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions leaves out some impor­tant details that could real­ly make the sto­ry – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the expe­ri­ences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d rec­om­mend Jeff Pater­son­’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of sto­ries includ­ing his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge ques­tion of youth, and today in the wake of the hor­ror and tragedy of New York Sep­tem­ber 11th this ques­tion has increased impor­tance for mil­lions of young peo­ple. No one who has seen the images will ever for­get… If I had­n’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peas­ants who dared to strug­gle against “Amer­i­can inter­ests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala… Faced with this real­i­ty, I began the process of becom­ing un-American-meaning that the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the world began to weigh heav­ier than my self-interest. I real­ized that the world did not need or want anoth­er U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more sto­ries all the time of service-people who find a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty when they land on for­eign shores. How many will rethink their rela­tion­ship to the U.S. mil­i­tary. How many will fol­low Pater­son­’s exam­ple of becom­ing “un-American”?

Why We Mourn and Protest

December 19, 1998

Many of the this week’s crit­ics of the Non­vi­o­lence Web are insist­ing that the U.S. needs to bomb Iraq in order to secure a future world of peace: “Are you an idiot? We need­ed to bomb them. 

Oth­er­wise, many more INNOCENT will even­tu­al­ly die at the hands of Sad­dam Hus­sein. Some­times force is nec­es­sary in order to pre­vent much greater vio­lence later.”

This is the log­ic that has brought us to most vio­lent cen­tu­ry in human exis­tence. War is always fought for peace. Acts of vio­lence are always jus­ti­fied with the argu­ment that they’re pre­vent­ing acts of vio­lence lat­er. We kill for peace. And they kill for peace. And as the death count ris­es we build even big­ger and smarter bombs. And they build even big­ger and smarter bombs.

The million-dollar cruise mis­siles going into Iraq aren’t go to hurt Sad­dam Hus­sein. He’s safe­ly ensconced in one of his pres­i­den­tial palaces watch­ing CNN (mean­while, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton sits in the White House watch­ing CNN as well). All the cruise mis­siles in the U.S. Navy won’t bring Hus­sein from power.

It is the peo­ple of Iraq who feel the sting of these bomb­ings. Just as it is them who have born the brunt of eight years of bru­tal sanc­tions. It is the moth­ers who suf­fer as they watch their chil­dren die because even the most basic med­ical sup­plies are non-existent. It is the lit­tle ones them­selves suf­fer­ing as yet anoth­er wave of bombs come rain­ing down on their world from that abstract enti­ty called the “U.S.”

Amer­i­can pol­i­cy is wrong pre­cise­ly because we are at war not with Sad­dam Hus­sein, but with the peo­ple of Iraq-the cit­i­zens, the poor and meek, the down­trod­den and hurting.

The nation of Iraq will always have the tech­ni­cal know-how to build weapons of mass destruc­tion. Because the fact is that we live in a world where every indus­tri­al­ized nation with a cou­ple of smart chem­istry Ph.D.‘s can build these bombs. India and Pak­istan just a few months ago set off nuclear weapons, we know Israel has a stock­pile. We can’t just bomb every coun­try with a weapon of mass destruc­tion or with the capac­i­ty to pro­duce such a weapon.

We need to build a world of real peace, of peace between nations built on the rule of law, yes, but also on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. We need for­eign pol­i­cy that rec­og­nizes that it is the rulers and the poli­cies of oth­er nations with which we dis­agree. That rec­og­nizes that it is wrong to ever con­demn a whole peo­ple for the excess­es of their leaders.

A num­ber of U.S. peace groups have called for today to be a day of Nation­al Mourn­ing and Protest. Let us gath­er to remem­ber that we stand togeth­er in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those suf­fer­ing in Iraq. Let us vig­il qui­et­ly and then yell out loud­ly that war to end war is wrong.

End the Sanc­tions. Stop the Bomb­ing. Declare peace with the Iraqi People.