Rules of Disengagement: What You Can Do To End Illegal Wars

By Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd, PoliPoint Press. Posted June 13, 2009.

From Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent © 2009 by Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd. Reprinted with permission from PoliPointPress, LLC, Sausalito, CA.

The continuing occupation of Iraq and the growing war in Afghanistan are leaving permanent physical and emotional scars on a whole generation of soldiers. Not since Vietnam have so many GI's objected to a war, and never have military families spoken out so strongly for withdrawal. This new book comes to the aid of distressed military personnel and their families. It examines the reasons men and women in the military have disobeyed orders and resisted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With a practical as well as theoretical focus, this book discusses what resisters have done, and what readers can do, to help end illegal orders and wars. It also examines race and sex discrimination in the military, including the epidemics of rape, sexual assault, and suicide in the military, as well as inadequate health care for service members. It examines the dehumanization of soldiers and civilians, and the ways in which military training promotes racial and sexual violence.

Rules of Disengagement places modern issues regarding the Iraq and Afghan wars in the historical context of earlier military dissent movements, notably during the Vietnam War. The authors analyze numerous issues of constitutional, international, and military law, including conscientious objector status, rules regarding military discharge, the right and duty to disobey illegal orders, the international laws of war and human rights, and the constitutional rights of free speech, association, assembly, dissent, and protest.

The following is an excerpt from the introduction:

The Vietnam-era GI Movement

The similarities between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war in Vietnam are remarkable and sobering. Although political, technological, and cultural changes create many differences in war and warfare, the questions and dilemmas that soldiers faced in the 1960s and 1970s are strikingly similar to those they have confronted in recent years. So, too, are the decisions of growing numbers of soldiers to disengage from the wars similar to the choices made then.

The number of soldiers and sailors who refused to fight in Vietnam is larger than most people would expect. Many soldiers and sailors sought to be declared conscientious objectors. Many claims were wrongly denied at the local command level and never reported to military headquarters. Rates for other discharges soared as disgruntled service members searched the regulations for ways to get out of the military. Many walked away. The Department of Defense (DoD) estimated that there were 73.5 desertions per 1,000 soldiers from the Army and 56.2 per 1,000 from the Marine Corps in 1971. Over the course of the war, more than 500,000 soldiers deserted. A support network of civilian attorneys and lay people set up military counseling centers around the United States and overseas to provide assistance for GIs seeking discharge or dealing with the legal consequences of desertion. As frustrations rose among the troops, killings of officers by angry enlisted men, known as fraggings, occurred at the rate of at least one per week. Colonel Robert Heinl, a military policy analyst, wrote in 1971, “The morale, discipline and battle-worthiness of the U.S. armed forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.”

Many GIs felt betrayed by their government. All over the United States, in Germany, and in Asia, they established underground newspapers and set up coffeehouses and centers where service members met and discussed politics and strategies for resisting. Quiet opposition turned into a tidal wave of resistance that developed throughout the course of the Vietnam War. Some GIs complained in their churches about what the military was teaching them. Many GIs began to salute trash cans or mail dead fish to particularly loathsome officers. Mass protests were held, and a number of GIs were prosecuted. The draft galvanized the antiwar movement among college students.

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Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

Kathleen Gilberd has worked as a military counselor for over 30 years. She is co-chair of the National Lawyer’s Guild’s Military Law Task Force and a frequent contributor to its legal publication, On Watch.

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