COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Will the Watada Mistrial Spark an End to the War?
Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, The Nation
February 9, 2007
A military judge in Fort Lewis, Washington, has declared amistrial in the court-martial of Lieut. Ehren Watada, the first
commissioned officer prosecuted for refusing to go to Iraq. A new
trial is believed to be unlikely before summer, if at all. The
mistrial represents a significant victory for Watada, for the rights
of military resisters and for the movement of civil resistance to US
war crimes in Iraq.
On the surface, the ruling by Lieut. Col. John Head appears to
result from a procedural technicality, but in fact it is a defeat for
the Army's central goal in prosecuting the 28-year-old officer. The
judge had gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep Watada from
achieving his objective of "putting the war on trial," ruling that
Watada's motivations for refusing to deploy with his unit
were "irrelevant" and that no witnesses could testify on the
illegality of the war.
But in its zeal to exclude the real meaning of the case, the
court tied itself up in procedural knots. Prosecutors wanted the
judge to find that Watada had agreed to pretrial stipulations that he
had violated his duty when he refused to show up for movement to
Iraq. But Watada made clear that he believed his duty, under his oath
and military law, was to refuse to participate in an illegal war. As
the underlying question of the war's illegality emerged like a family
secret in the courtroom, the judge agreed to the prosecutor's motion
to declare a mistrial. But Time.com reported that Watada's attorney,
Eric Seitz, says he will file an immediate motion to dismiss the case
on grounds of double jeopardy if the Army tries to resurrect it.
Watada maintained 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. Under Judge Head's rulings,
however, there simply would be no way for a soldier to resist an
illegal order. Indeed, an American military person could be ordered
to commit mass murder or genocide and then be denied the right even
to make a case for the lawfulness of his actions. The judge's rulings
fly in the face of the Supreme Court's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision,
which stood for the principle that all US officials are bound by
national and international law not to commit war crimes.
The Army maintained that the duty to refuse an illegal order,
established at the Nuremberg Trials and enshrined in the Universal
Code of Military Justice, applies only to orders to commit particular
criminal acts like executing a prisoner. But in Watada, Resister, a
January 27 video by independent filmmaker Curtis Choy, Watada says
that responsibility "doesn't just include individual war crimes. It
includes the greatest crime against the peace, which is, as they
determined after Nuremberg, wars of aggression, wars that are not out
of necessity but out of choice for profit or power or whatever it may
be."
Watada's dissent was intended to spark a movement of civil
resistance on the part of the American people. As he told the
Veterans for Peace annual convention in Seattle recently, the peace
movement needs a change of strategy.
"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," he said.
But the young officer's appeal is not only to people in the
military. He told the Veterans, "Should citizens choose to remain
silent through self-imposed ignorance or choice, it makes them as
culpable as the soldiers in these crimes." In the Watada, Resister
video, he added, "No longer can any American citizen or organization
simply sit on the fence and say, Well, we don't take a position on
the war, because the war in itself is unconstitutional in many forms,
and we as Americans have to step up and say either we agree with
what's going on or we disagree with what's going on.... If you
disagree ... then you are going to have to ask yourself what are you
willing to sacrifice of yourself in order to correct the injustice
and wrongs of this government in regard to the Iraq War."
"We all take part in it-if you pay your taxes, you're taking part
in this war. We all have a responsibility, as they determined after
Nuremberg, whether you're the lowest soldier or the highest ranking
general, or just a regular civilian, we all have responsibility ...
to resist and refuse enabling and condoning this criminal behavior,"
he said.
Sparking Resistance
Indeed, Watada's stand is helping spark resistance in many walks
of American life. More than 1,000 active-duty soldiers have now
signed the Appeal for Redress, asking for an end to the Iraq War.
Appeal founder Jonathan Hutto made the connection between Watada's
case and the soldiers' action. "The Appeal for Redress stands in
solidarity with all those who resist the current occupation of Iraq,
the mass murder of the Iraqi people, the harm and destruction done to
American service members and their families, and the ill use of
American tax dollars.... We hope that Lt. Watada is successful in his
defense of his actions. We further hope that his actions inspire
other service members to look deeply into the cause of this conflict
and to follow their moral conscience."
The Washington Post reported that at a student rally held during
the January 27 antiwar demonstration in Washington, DC, "Many
students mentioned the case of Ehren Watada ... as an important step
in building a cohesive antiwar movement. Watada's father spoke from
the main stage at the protest as student speakers at a side rally
organized by the Campus Antiwar Network hailed the young man as a
hero and said the war will not end until other soldiers make the same
decision."
Watada has also inspired a growing movement of civil disobedience
against the war. Ying Lee, a former member of the Berkeley City
Council, wrote in the Berkeley Daily, "Watada is a young man with
extraordinary clarity about his moral responsibility and I am
grateful for his principled and clearly articulated thoughts about
his obligation to defend the Constitution, the UN charter, and the
Nuremberg Principles.. .. My gratitude to him is expressed in
committing civil disobedience by blocking the doors of the San
Francisco Federal Building."
A majority of the American people now tell pollsters they believe
the Iraq War is wrong. More than a dozen Congressional committees are
now investigating aspects of the Iraq War and the "war on terror,"
including war crimes ranging from top officials' lies about weapons
of mass destruction to illegal rendition and torture of captives.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the Iraq War is the greatest
moral issue facing the United States. And the midterm elections are
almost universally interpreted as a call to end the war in Iraq. Yet
the war only escalates. Could Lieutenant Watada's strategy of civil
resistance provide the key to bringing it to an end?
America's Constitutional Crisis
Watada's stand is based on fundamental constitutional principles
and responsibilities. It goes to the heart of America's current
political, moral and constitutional crisis. As he told Democracy
Now!, "In our democracy, according to our Constitution, one person,
one man, cannot hold absolute power, hold himself above the law,
including in actions in declaring war or waging war on another
country. And it is my belief that in deceiving the American people,
through what a majority of us now know to be true, the leaders of our
country were violating their oath to this country and violating
constitutional law."
Watada's reasoning provides a pivot for redirecting America's
understanding of what has happened to us and what we must do about
it. He challenges us to confront a chain of implications that starts
with the truth about the criminality of the Iraq War, moves through
the principles of the Constitution and US and international law, and
ends with our personal responsibility.
Watada also provides a living example of what it means to step up
to personal responsibilities. "There was a long time when I went
through depression because I told myself I didn't have a choice," he
said in Watada, Resister. "That I joined the military and I had only
one duty and that was to obey what I was told, regardless of how I
felt inside. It really hurt me for a long time because I imprisoned
myself by telling myself I didn't have a choice. It didn't matter
that I might be sent to prison. I was already in prison, my freedom
was already gone."
"When I told myself that I do have a choice, I have a choice to
do what is morally right, what is in my conscience, and what I can
live with for the rest of my life-even though that comes with
consequences, I do have that choice. When I realized that, and when I
chose what was right for me, I became free again. And I think
everybody has to remember that and to realize that is what is
important in life."
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of