Lt. Watada's Courageous Dissent

By Jeanine Plant, WireTap. Posted August 17, 2006.

When the Third Stryker Brigade of the Second Infantry Division left for Mosul in northern Iraq on June 22, 28-year-old Lt. Ehren Watada was not with them.

Out of a deeply held belief that the war in Iraq is both illegal and immoral, Lt. Watada refused to deploy. His decision has since mobilized dozens of anti-war activist groups who have eagerly adopted his cause to put a face to their movement. It has also alienated him from his superiors in the military.

Today in Fort Lewis, Wash., because of his unwillingness to serve in Iraq, he faces an Article 32 pretrial hearing, which is roughly equivalent to a preliminary investigation in a civilian criminal court.

By the end of the next two days, he will know whether he faces a court-martial this fall. He is the first officer to face this prospect so far during the Iraq war. Lt. Watada faces a maximum of seven and a half years in prison, dishonorable discharge, and forfeiture of all pay and allowances.

"Today, I speak with you about a radical idea," Lt. Watada said in a speech Saturday night to an audience at the Veterans for Peace Conference in Seattle, Wash. "The idea is this: that to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it. They must remember duty to the Constitution and the people supersede the ideologies of their leadership. The soldier must be willing to face ostracism by their peers, worry over the survival of their families, and of course the loss of personal freedom. They must know that resisting an authoritarian government at home is equally important to fighting a foreign aggressor on the battlefield."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Lt. Watada was moved by a profound sense of duty and patriotism and enlisted in the Army right out of college in 2003. He received no monetary assistance from the military to pay for his education. His first two years in the Army were spent in a tour of duty in South Korea.

But since June 2005, when he began officer training at Fort Lewis, Wash., Lt. Watada spent a lot of time doing research about wars and atrocities. After much deliberation about the nature of the Iraq war -- the realization of the Bush administration's deceitful rationale behind the invasion and the war crimes committed during the occupation, such as the killing of unarmed civilians at Haditha -- he concluded that the war was illegal and immoral.

"[The war in Iraq] usurps international treaties and conventions that by virtue of the Constitution become American law. The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice, but a contradiction to the Army's own Law of Land Warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes," Lt. Watada said at a press conference held in Tacoma, Wash., on June 7.

He was surrounded by veterans, members of the anti-war communities, military family members and religious leaders at the press conference.

Jeff Paterson, a Gulf War resister and anti-war activist with Not in Our Name, created the Thankyoult.org website for friends and family of Lt. Watada. The website sells posters and T-shirts to help fund Lt. Watada's legal defense and advertises a petition to sign. Paterson said they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support. The website has received 15,000 messages and helped raise $40,000 from individuals.

But Paterson admits that the website has attracted its fair share of critics, too. "There are some people who are very threatened by Lt. Watada's stand," he said. Some members of the military have written to the site, "I can't even address you as a lieutenant anymore." Wives of soldiers in Iraq have called him a disgrace. Others have called him a coward and a traitor, questioned his "manhood" and "sexuality," and said "freedom is not free," Paterson said.

"It is a preconception that we have when we join the military that people just blindly follow orders," Lt. Watada said in a phone interview. "But if you can't distinguish between lawful and unlawful orders, the Abu Ghraibs will continue to exist."

When he didn't board the plane to Iraq on June 22, Lt. Watada was put into seclusion for one week and charged with one count of missing movement. He now works in an administrative position at Fort Lewis.

Lt. Watada was first charged with insubordination on June 8, the day after his press conference, which he organized after his first resignation application was denied, with three counts of conduct unbecoming of an officer, and two counts of contempt toward officials. Both charges reprimand Lt. Watada's statement at the June 7 press conference that the president "betrayed our trust."

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