Refusing Isn’t Easy

“Bob” (real name kept secret by request because he’s in the military) writes:

“Granted, it’s a hard decision. But they could have refused to fight in W’s illegal wars.”
Ted,
That’s easy for you to say. To a soldier, the wars were not illegal. He was ordered to go, and he went. It isn’t his place to question. If he does, he will slow the mission down and could cause damage to the unit effectiveness. If he were to refuse, he would face some serious punishment. To straight out refuse a deployment would destroy not only his career, but his future civilian life as well. A dishonorable or bad conduct discharge can follow someone around like a felony.

Soldiers are not automatons. They are American citizens and, moreover, subject to U.S. military law, a law that requires soldiers to carefully consider the legality of every order before agreeing to carry it out. The wars are clearly undeclared and clearly illegal. It is true that one’s military career would be trashed as the result of refusing. What does this say, one wonders, about our armed forces? After all, as demonstrated in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” even members of the Einsatzgruppen roving death squads in eastern Europe were given permission not to participate in raids and mass arrests of Jews and other enemies of the state. And, as the book’s author showed, those who refused–and they were few–were never punished by so much as having been passed over for a promotion. If our system is worse than that, wow. And why would anyone want to remain part of it?

I can’t speak for others, but a dishonorable discharge would in no way, shape, or form reduce the chances of my considering someone as a potential employee. I’m sure many other civilians feel the same way.

That is to not even mention the stupid amounts of bravado and misinformation that goes on. And this is in Military Intelligence, who is notorious for being lack. I can only imagine what it’s like being in the real Army.
Some of the careerists really do care about the country and the Army. They will do whatever it takes to have a HOOAH military career, be it at expense of life, family, or idea’s. It’s a damn shame. Soldier’s should not have to question their leaders. They should automatically assume that their fight is the good one. However, as can be seen in American history, that is rarely the case.
Which is the true shame.
I say this as a current active duty Soldier. I didn’t join to do noble things, kill Iraqis, or preserve freedom. I did join for other reasons, and one of those are my family. It’s easy to say I should have gotten a job, or went to college, but the fact is at my age I wasn’t able to get a good job, and I couldn’t afford college. Keep in mind that when you write things about soldiers in a negative light, the large majority of them could not afford lofty ideas. When I put on my uniform, I’m still a subversive asshole. But when I decide to keep my uniform on, I become someone who was willing to sacrifice a bit of his ideals for
opportunity, college, and his family.

I feel this pain. I remember being 18 years old, coming from a working poor family and growing up in a town with few and unattractive employment prospects, wondering whether I’d ever amount to anything professionally. Fortunately I was a good student and had gotten myself admitted to a good college–but that didn’t even help. I majored in engineering, a field I was neither good at and didn’t enjoy, and ended up expelled after three years. Not only was I unemployed, I was a college dropout with student loans up the ass.

I did consider a military career–twice. I applied to the US Naval Academy and took the US Army’s aptitude test. Man, did the army love me! I take good test. They kept calling and calling and calling…but I didn’t go even though they offered me everything from fast-track to officer to a sweet assignment anywhere I wanted. It was 1981, and while America was not at war and Ronald Reagan was not a batshit usurping fuckhead moron like that twat Bush, he was clearly a dangerous, mentally unstable and intellectually inferior leader. Many Americans worried that his posturing would get us into some stupid war. So, because of Reagan, I didn’t enlist. Better to be homeless than kill people without cause.

Surely it’s an easier decision now.

The Reality of War Bumps Up Against Bumperticker Sloganeering

Andy writes:

Dear Ted,

In September of 2002, as I started my junior year of college I was unfortunate enough to find myself stuck with a U.S. Marine for a roommate.
I’d never felt comfortable around military types. In high school the ROT-Cees were the lowest of the low, degenerates well on their way to jail if not for the saving grace of wanting to shoot something the defence of the country.
Subsequently in college, when I left my home city of Chicago to the boonies of Illinois, I found the Jarheads, Jarhead-Wannabes, grunts, reservists, and even military fan-boys with too many toy warplanes of an even more savage ilk, all too eager to swat down upstart darker-skinned peoples of the world. As I once quipped to a good friend, “If they didn’t have the U.S. military, they’d probably be skinning cats in their parents basements.” You can gather then, that being quartered with a Marine was unenjoyable at best and, especially when the Commandent-in-Chief began his Anti-Saddam sabre rattling, it was completely infuriating.
My roommate specialized in disarming chemical weapons. Not content to do welding at a technical college, he had gone into the Marine Corps with the sole career goal of having being able to retire at age fourty-five. What was he doing in college with this already grand scheme cooked up? A higher pay bracket in the officer corps. Clearly I was living with a genius. This became more obvious to me as the weeks rolled on and the man would sit in our room during the evenings watching CNN and giving his expert commentary. He would surmise how many weapons Saddam had, where they were stashed, and precisely what vicious nuclear and biological terrors Saddam had stockpiled against us. And he would, at length, orate on the legal and ethical reasons that Saddam needed to be removed from power.
Suffice it to say, what this man was selling, I was not buying.
Our arguments bacame progressively more fierce. A cold war had erupted in my dorm room and there was no way in hell I was backing down. Sure, I couldn’t prove Saddam didn’t have Weapons of Mass Destruction, but let’s not forget that the U.S. Government has had it’s own agenda whether the voters liked it or not before, and I could not believe that human slime like Bush and Rumsfeld didn’t have an ulterior motive. (I think we on the Left shouldn’t gloat, but so far we’ve been right about global warming, absence of weapons of mass destruction, and right about now I’d bet money on Peak Oil hitting next year.)
So the semester flew by and there was continued discord in Room 158, and winter break passed, and being away from Private Nimrod was good. Upon my return to campus after break though, he dropped a bombshell. His unit would likely be sent to Iraq.
I know it’s cruel to laugh at someone else’s misfortune, but this? It warmed my heart to see this doofus terrified out of his wits every night as he watched the news knowing that at some point he might actually have to deal with shooting and being shot at.
Suddenly his tune changed; his dissertations on the alleged weapons weren’t about where, what and why we needed to destroy them, all of a sudden, it was about how there was no conclusive evidence of any weapons anywhere, suddenly, Bush had transformed in my roommate’s eyes from brave leader swinging a sword of righteousness to a chimp flailing his wiener.
When we actually started the Invasion in March, my roommate became weird and withdrawn. He even became introspective at points, questioning whether or not his was a wise career choice. Clearly he had never actually expected to do any fighting, kinda funny, with being in the military and all.
By April, the man had hit rock bottom. Already an intensely mediocre student he stopped going to class altogether, broke up with his girlfriend, and often wondered aloud if he would even be alive by this time next year. And always I was there to provide little or no comfort, because this turn of events was comical to me, and I felt, wholly deserved. After the school year ended I lost all contact with him, and good riddance. He was a filthy, loud-mouthed, inconsiderate brute and a borderline sociopath.
Wherever he ended up, whether barracked in north central Illinois, with the perilous threat of sudden deployment hanging over his head, or actually being sent to the middle east, this was what he chose, and he faced the consequences of his choice with fear that he should recognize, this is after all what he seemed to want to do to poor people all over the globe, scare them into submission.
Periodically, I check news from his hometown to see what became of him. If he came back either a hero or a corpse, this would be front page news in Will County, Illinois, so far, nothing. I truly hope he comes back and decides to drop his vocation of destruction and get a real job, but I don’t think it likely, his type never learns easily, if ever. After all, if all the standard bearers and flag-wavers had a lick of sense they might have recalled the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or that FDR had some advanced warning of Japan’s coming attack on Pearl Harbor and realized that a lot of times politicians will lie to advance their own agenda.
The voters, the Senators, the Representatives, the soldiers who were “duped” can claim hindsight is 20/20 all they like, but I think these last terrible five years under Bush should just go to show that a little well-placed skepticism can go a long way.

Thanks, Andy, for a point of view widely articulated throughout the country’s living rooms, but rarely in public.

Republicans Make Their Best Argument

Terence writes:

Ted,
Can you give me you address, I want to come over and kick the living shit out of you.
Regards
Terence Gallagher
XXXX Minerva Ave
LA CA 90066

He’s at sailwest3333@yahoo.com.

Republicans Terribly Concerned About Possibility That They’re Missing Out on Anal Sex

Mike writes:

Ted, why didn’t your friends keep their aids infected cocks in their pants. They would’ve of saved millions of lives. Stop worrying about Iraq and stop handing out the ass gel.

He’s at mjmbushwin04@sbcglobal.net.

Complete Control

FOR Kent writes:

Read your articles all the time and love the web site, I’ve written before but I just had to chime in about your latest column. I was in the military and while I didn’t go to Iraq I have to sympathize with a lot of the folks that are there, yes it is an all volunteer force and GW is an illegitimate president but the American people who are much less restricted (you should see the Uniform Code of Military Justice) didn’t stand up and force GW out, what were we supposed to do?

Granted, it’s a hard decision. But they could have refused to fightin W’s illegal wars.

Also if you try to fight the military system not only are you out of a job, possible jail time and a dishonorable discharge that does not go away. I’m not using it as an excuse I’m just saying that they majority of soldiers (junior enlisted E-1 thru E-4) don’t have the life experience to stand up and stop it, most move straight out of Mom and Dad’s house and into the Army. It’s tough to take a stand against people that have that much control of your life. Anyway keep up the good work and sorry about the rambling.

What you wrote is undeniable. It is damned hard to do the right thing when the penalties are so harsh. But that doesn’t change what the right thing is.

President Gore

Ernie writes:

I recently read an article that you wrote. Incredibly, I discovered that you are one of those people that still believe that President Bush stole the election from Al Gore. Do you have proof? Did President Bush co-opt the Supreme Court in this crime?

Others have documented Bush’s theft of the 2000 election and, by extension 2004 (because he ran as an “incumbent” when in fact, he was not). I’ve written numerous columns and a chapter in my book “Wake Up, You’re Liberal!” describes in detail the redundant ways in which the election was stolen. Most notably, the United States Supreme Court did not have the constitutional right to hear Bush v. Gore because, as an election dispute, state supreme courts (in this case, Florida’s) are the highest arbiters. Never in the history of the republic has the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrated an election dispute because, under our system, states run elections. It should be noted that, had the U.S. Supreme Court appointed Gore instead, he would have just as illegitimate as Bush is today. Their agreeing to hear the case queered the election. But there are many, many other ways in which the election was stolen–including the hiring of goons to beat up officials conducting the recount at Miami-Dade County–a county where, it ultimately turns out, the uncounted ballots would have handed Gore the state of Florida.

The majority of Americans realize that President Bush was elected and re-elected by the voters of this great country. I challenge you or anyone like you to provide proof that President Bush stole the election in 2000. If you cannot provide proof, then you should retract that statement.

It is not my obligation to reprove what has already been proven. It is American citizens’ duty to remain informed and to learn how to Google.

I am confident that you will not, because it takes a real man of courage and integrity to admit his mistakes. Also, your statements will now lye in obscurity. I will send this to all of my friends. I am sure that they will also be amazed that there are still a handful of people that that insist that President Bush did not legitimately won the election.

Actually, more than half the American people tell pollsters that Bush did not win “fair and square.”

East Coast v. Gold Coast

J.L. writes:

Re: You and Chris Ware
You know this is the type of beef that got Biggie killed…
Regards,
A Fan Of Both

Yo, bald bitch! Just kidding.

The U.S.: Imperialist Aggressors

Gabe writes from Canada:

An excellent piece. In fact the anti-war movement was inundated with the same imperial patriotism that afflicts the movement today, with slogans like Bring Our Boys Home, there was a similar, support the troops, oppose their actions orientation both of those who sought a full withdrawal and conservative elements that wanted to limit demands to a moratorium on bombing N. Vietnam. The Rambo origins of the myth is interesting…

I do have a disagreement with your article. I do not believe that the US military has ever been an honourable occupation, any more than the British or the French. With only two exceptions (world wars), every war America has waged has been as imperial aggressors. (Even with WWI, I would have difficulty regarding the Entente as morally superior to the Central Powers, especially considering that Britain and France had much more extensive empires than Germany.) Also, I do not regard the atrocities of the West as equivalent to the murderous response of the colonised (9-11), a distinction that is politically difficult to argue in North America, but is less so when considered from the realm of global human experience.

Certainly the United States was not obliged to involve itself in World War I. That was America’s attempt, with a military flush with cash from the first modern income tax, to compete with the European powers for global domination. We also provoked the Japanese into the Pearl Harbor attack with our military blockade, although it was for the betterment of mankind that Imperial Japan was defeated (and obviously Nazi Germany as well).

Obviously 9/11 pales compared to the scale of murder abetted by American foreign policy. Heck, America has already murdered nearly 200,000 people in retaliation for the deaths of 3,000. But yes, it is difficult to get insular and insulated Americans to see that.

Bad People Do Bad Things

Rachel writes:

Just a quick comment about this week’s column. You asked the rhetorical question, ‘How is a person who voluntarily commits “horrible crimes against humanity” not a “bad person”? ‘ I think it’s _especially_ important to think of people who commit horrible crimes against humanity as ordinary people. Hell, even the Nazis were, in fact, ordinary people. (It’s been a few years since I’ve read it, but I’m sure you have a copy of Hannah Arendt’s _Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil_.)

Sure do. Also worth checking out is “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” But onward:

Once we start thinking of them as “bad people”, we’re not too far from labelling them as “evil-doers”. What I’m trying to say is that if we think of them as “other” people, we won’t consider _ourselves_ to be capable of this. From the military’s point of view, if the Nazis were just “evil-doers”, the US military couldn’t possibly commit human rights violations because we’re “good”, and when we torture people, it’s out of necessity, not out of “evil.” (Of course, for this logic to work, the military would need to believe that torture produces good intelligence, which is bullshit.)

It’s truly terrifying to think that anyone is capable of genocide or any human rights violations, but trying to describe people who commit these horrific acts as other than human can distance us from the reality of human rights violations, and allows a greater possibility of history repeating itself.

I’m a little dumbfounded that my column could have given anyone the impression that I view troops who commit atrocities, and even those who make the wrong moral choice by fighting an illegal war for an unelected dictator, as less than human. We’re all human. Adolf Hitler was human. My thinking relies greatly on Sartre’s view that we are defined by our actions, specifically our worst actions. So troops who commit gross violations of human rights are, by definition, bad people. Of course they are many other things as well: sons, brothers, lovers, accountants, auto mechanics, firefighters, soccer fans. But if morality is to have any meaning, we have to be able to point at someone who does something bad and say: that person is a bad person.

Bush’s “evildoers” is reductionist to the extreme and, more to the point, distracts from the pertinent issue of what motivates, say, 19 young men to kill themselves so they can take a bunch of Americans with them. It is also the height of impertinence to trivialize one’s enemies while it is nothing more than hypertrivialization to minimize the sins of your own side.

Chris Ware Parody Cartoon

I’m getting a lot of “WTF?” emails, more than I anticipated, as the result of today’s cartoon. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, Chris Ware is a graphic illustrator who, among other things, also draws a comic strip in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. This is an (attempted) send-up of that. I thought he was better known than he is. My apologies to those who didn’t get the joke.