COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Officer Faces Court-Martial for Refusing to Deploy to Iraq
JOHN KIFNER and TIMOTHY EGAN, New York Times
July 23, 2006
SEATTLE — When First Lt. Ehren K. Watada of the Army shipped out for a tour of duty in South Korea two years ago, he was a promising young officer rated among the best by his superiors. Like many young men after Sept. 11, he had volunteered “out of a desire to protect our country,” he said, even paying $800 for a medical test to prove he qualified despite childhood asthma.Now Lieutenant Watada, 28, is working behind a desk at Fort Lewis just south of Seattle, one of only a handful of Army officers who have refused to serve in Iraq, an Army spokesman said, and apparently the first facing the prospect of a court-martial for doing so.
“I was still willing to go until I started reading,” Lieutenant Watada said in an interview one recent evening.
A long and deliberate buildup led to Lieutenant Watada’s decision to refuse deployment to Iraq. He reached out to antiwar groups, and they, in turn, embraced his cause, raising money for his legal defense, selling posters and T-shirts, and circulating a petition on his behalf.
Critics say the lieutenant’s move is an orchestrated act of defiance that will cause chaos in the military if repeated by others. But Lieutenant Watada said he arrived at his decision after much soul-searching and research.
On Jan. 25, “with deep regret,” he delivered a passionate two-page letter to his brigade commander, Col. Stephen J. Townsend, asking to resign his commission. “Simply put, I am wholeheartedly opposed to the continued war in Iraq, the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect of our civilian leadership,” Lieutenant Watada wrote.
At 2:30 a.m. on June 22, when the Third Stryker Brigade of the Second Infantry Division set off for Iraq, Lieutenant Watada was not on the plane. He has since been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with one count of missing movement, for not deploying, two counts of contempt toward officials and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer.
Lieutenant Watada’s about-face came as a shock to his parents, his fellow soldiers and his superiors. In retrospect, though, there may have been one ominous note in the praise heaped on him in his various military fitness reports: he was cited as having an “insatiable appetite for knowledge.”
Lieutenant Watada said that when he reported to Fort Lewis in June 2005, in preparation for deployment to Iraq, he was beginning to have doubts. “I was still prepared to go, still willing to go to Iraq,” he said. “I thought it was my responsibility to learn about the present situation. At that time, I never conceived our government would deceive the Army or deceive the people.”
He was not asking for leave as a conscientious objector, Lieutenant Watada said, a status assigned to those who oppose all military service because of moral objections to war. It was only the Iraq war that he said he opposed.
Military historians say it is rare in the era of the all-voluntary Army for officers to do what Lieutenant Watada has done.
“Certainly it’s far from unusual in the annals of war for this to happen,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in military affairs at the Brookings Institution. “But it is pretty obscure since the draft ended.”
Mr. O’Hanlon said that if other officers followed suit, it would be nearly impossible to run the military. “The idea that any individual officer can decide which war to fight doesn’t really pass the common-sense test,” he said.
Lieutenant Watada conceded that the military could not function if individual members decided which war was just. But, he wrote to Colonel Townsend, he owed his allegiance to a “higher power” — the Constitution — based on the values the Army had taught him: “loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.”
“Please allow me to leave the Army with honor and dignity,” he concluded.
Lieutenant Watada said he began his self-tutorial about the Iraq war with James Bamford’s book “A Pretext for War,” which argues that the war in Iraq was driven by a small group of neoconservative civilians in the Pentagon and their allies in policy institutes. The book suggests that intelligence was twisted to justify the toppling of Saddam Hussein, with the goal of fundamentally changing the Middle East to the benefit of Israel.
Next was “Chain of Command,” by Seymour M. Hersh, about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. After that, Lieutenant Watada moved on to other publications on war-related themes, including selections on the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the so-called Downing Street memo, in which the British chief of intelligence told Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002 that the Americans saw war in Iraq as “inevitable” and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
Lieutenant Watada said he also talked to soldiers returning to Fort Lewis from Iraq, including a staff sergeant who told him that he and his men had probably committed war crimes.
“When I learned the awful truth that we had been deceived — I was shocked and disgusted,” he wrote in the letter to his brigade commander.
There were efforts to work things out, Lieutenant Watada said. The Army offered him a staff job in Iraq that would have kept him out of combat; but combat was not the point, he said.
Lieutenant Watada said he had volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, which he regarded as an unambiguous war linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. The request was denied.
In public statements, Army officials warned Lieutenant Watada that he was facing “adverse action” in the days leading up to his decision to refuse to go to Iraq. Charges were filed only after he showed insubordination, they said; his insubordination included giving interviews.
“This was a call of his commander, after he decided that Lieutenant Watada’s action required these charges,” said Joe Hitt, a Fort Lewis spokesman.
When Lieutenant Watada’s mother, Carolyn Ho, learned of his decision, she was caught off guard, she said. Her son, an Eagle Scout who grew up in Hawaii, had always admired the Army.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Ms. Ho said. “I just saw his career going down the drain. It took me awhile to get through this.”
Now, she said, “I honor and respect his decision.”
Two officers who served with Lieutenant Watada in South Korea also voiced support for him in telephone interviews arranged by Lieutenant Watada, though they made it clear they did not share his views on Iraq.
“He was a good officer, always very professional,” said one of the officers, Capt. Scott Hulin. “I personally disagree with his opinion and his stance against the war. But I personally support his stand as a man, to be able to do what his heart is telling him.”
A former roommate of Lieutenant Watada, First Lt. Bernard West, offered similar remarks.
Lieutenant Watada had two assignments in South Korea. One was as the executive officer of the headquarters battery, the other as a platoon leader of a unit of multiple-launch rockets. His evaluations were glowing.
“Exemplary,” said his executive officer fitness report, which Lieutenant Watada provided to a reporter. “Tremendous potential for positions of increased responsibility. He has the potential to command with distinction. Promote ahead of his peers.”
His evaluation as a platoon leader also called him “exemplary” and said he had “unlimited potential.”
Under the military system, the charges against Lieutenant Watada will be reviewed in an Article 32 hearing, the rough equivalent of a grand jury hearing. If there is a court-martial hearing, it will probably come in the fall; the maximum penalty would be a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and seven years in prison, according to a news release from Fort Lewis.
A spokesman for the Army, Paul Boyce, said that as far as he knew, Lieutenant Watada would be the first Army officer to be court-martialed for refusing to go to Iraq.
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