The Zong

One of the “War At Home” news stories that I find interesting, if only as a means to take America’s temperature, is the story of Army First Lt. Ehren Watada, a soldier who enlisted shortly following 9/11, but who subsequently decided that the war in Iraq is an “illegal” war and refused to deploy when his unit was called to serve in Iraq last June. He is awaiting court-martial on four counts of conduct unbecoming an officer, for which he would be sentenced to 4 years in a military prison if convicted.

His case is an interesting one not because it sets any sort of precedent, but because of the conflict it exposes between Americans from either side of the Iraq debate. In contrast to accusations that anyone doesn’t “support” our troops, a lie about those on the left that the Neocons like to slip into their rhetoric from time to time, this is a real debate with some interesting points of view.

Congressman Mike Honda from San Jose wrote an editorial piece which ran yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle basically justifiying the actions of Watada, although staying clear of declaring his innocence.

I voted against giving President Bush the authority to use military force in Iraq, and do not believe his justifications for taking us into war were even minimally adequate. As a duly elected member of Congress, I express my admiration for a young American who, in the same spirit, has heeded his conscience at tremendous risk to livelihood, reputation and personal freedom in order to right what he and the vast majority of his compatriots see as a tremendous wrong.

This case, and the subseqent editorial, gave rise to a rather heated discussion on talk radio today. Between the callers and the host, I could determine two different “camps” on this case. One camp was of the opinon that, as a volunteer serving in the military, Watada had basically given up any right to make such moral judgements. In other words, his ass belongs to Uncle Sam, so stop bitching and get in line. Folks in this camp included military family members, schoolteachers, and a veteran of World War II.

In the other camp were people like Congressman Honda, who support the soldier but don’t think he’ll be able to avoid conviction. In general, they admired his actions because of the discussion it brought to light, but none seemed willing to come out and say that he was innocent. In other words, his ass belongs to Uncle Sam, so have fun making big rocks into little rocks for four years.

Bleeding heart that I am, I still believe in a need for absolute military superiority so that I can continue to live the sheltered life that most Americans enjoy, writing this bullshit without any fear that we’re going to be invaded. I pay taxes that support the military that protects us, and I can say from a realistic standpoint that it’s a bad idea for us to let soldiers decide whether or not they want to obey the president. When the shit goes down, I really want everyone following orders so that we don’t all end up speaking Korean and going to marches on the weekends.

Nevertheless, like Congressman Honda and Watada, I think that the people who decided to get us into this war of choice broke domestic and international law more than a few times to get us there. I haven’t been a lawyer for a very long time, but one thing a lot of the folks on the radio seemed to forget was that we actually kicked Hans Blix and his crew of U.N.-sanctioned inspectors out of Iraq before they were done looking for WMD (and before they had found any), and then turned around and pointed out that everyone knew that Saddam had these weapons, that even Bill Clinton said he did and blah blah blah.

It’s all part of the Neocons’ political genius, a plan I like to call the “Are You Fucking Kidding Me? Doctrine.” It consists of basically doing something so completely ridiculous (like Bill Frist questioning the diagnosis of Terry Schiavo on the floor of the House based on some videotapes he saw) or saying something that is so obviously a lie (like Dick Cheney refusing to stop implying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11) that everyone just kind of lets it go or believes it. Ergo, the Bush Administration kicks out the inspectors, then turns around and says “How the hell could we have known there were no WMD?” and then everyone just forgets about the inspectors.

But I digress. The point here is that I feel bad for First Lt. Watada, because his ass does belong to Uncle Sam and he probably won’t have fun making big rocks into little rocks. I’m not sure it’s worth it, because I don’t know if anything will really come of it other than a few more hours of talk radio fodder, because nobody has taken the time to bring anyone to justice for the illegality of this war, and so it remains legal as far as the Uniform Code is concerned.

The fact is, it’s tragic that the war has come to a point where this guy feels like it’s his job to martyr himself to do something about it, when in reality, we’re the ones that failed him and his fellow soldiers. It was our job to vote George W. Bush out of office in 2004, but we as a country fucked that up. We re-elected an administration that we already had a lot of evidence against, and by putting them back in office, it is We the People that hold the responsibility for what happened next. Actually, by “We the People” I really mean the morons who voted for him more than those of us who didn’t, but you can be damn sure we could have made more phone calls to Ohio or something. Wendell Phillips said “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and the American voting public has lost a lot of both.

This obviously isn’t the first time an American soldier has refused to serve in a war in protest, but when someone enlists in the military, as Jim Webb said in his response to the State of the Union:

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues - those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death - we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm’s way. We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us - sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

We should remember these words the next time we elect our military’s Commander-in-Chief, because our lack of vigilance often deprives those troops we love and support so much of their liberty, and we owe them our own sound judgement and clear thinking.

- M.G.