THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Anniversaries, large and small

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Feb. 18-24, 2007

What we choose to remember about our collective experience tells us something about our deepest values. This past week much of the press coverage of the war in Iraq has noted that a year has passed since the horrific bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Blown to pieces by Sunni insurgents, the shrine, sacred to Shiites and protected by Sunnis, had lasted more than one thousand years. Today it is a pile of rubble and has become a symbol of all that has been lost in Iraq.

We need to reflect on what it means to have come to a time in Iraq where those things held most holy are destroyed. This kind of destruction tells us much more about the depth of the crisis Iraq faces than all the grim statistics. It is a reminder that when nothing is held sacred, anything is possible.

But this is also an anniversary of a different sort. Four years ago, we witnessed the largest demonstration of people for peace ever held. Across the globe more than 10 million people gathered to try and stop this war. We did not succeed in stopping Bush. But as the years have proven, ordinary people protecting peace were far wiser than those who commanded armies.

This past week we have witnessed another watershed. The effort of the U.S. military to court martial First Lt. Ehren Watada for refusing to be deployed to Iraq was declared a mistrial by Lt. Col. John Head, the military law judge. Couched in the language of procedural errors, the mistrial comes at the end of an effort by both the Judge and the Army to prevent Watada from mounting the core of his defense. Watada argued that his refusal to participate in an illegal war in Iraq was justified, indeed required under the Army’s own Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Watada was prepared to argue that the war in Iraq is a war of aggression, based on lies told to the American public and Congress. As an unlawful war, the war is a crime against peace and a violation of international law. He argued that going to Iraq would make him complicit in a war crime. In his refusal to serve in Iraq, including efforts to ultimately resign, he followed his conscience as well as all appropriate military procedure.

Watada’s decision to oppose this war publicly came from his belief that the military code holds soldiers responsible not only for individual crimes but for what he described as “the greatest crime against peace,” which, as determined after Nuremberg, are “wars of aggression, wars that are not of necessity but out of choice for profit or power or what it may be.”

Watada is part of a growing resistance in the military to this war. Seventeen people have thus far chosen to face court martial rather than serve in Iraq. More than 300 have sought sanctuary in Canada. Over a thousand active duty soldiers have signed the Appeal for Redress, asking to end the war. As many as 10,000 have simply refused to report for duty.

Watada said of his decision, “To stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it…If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the Constitution extols—if they stood up and threw their weapons down—no President could ever initiate a war of choice again.”

Hopefully next year, we will mark this week as the turning point to end this war, when soldiers and citizens took responsibility for ending the illegal acts of our government.

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