[Mb-civic] Support War Resisters

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ZNet Commentary
Support War Resisters October 10, 2004
By Doug Ireland 

The iniquity of the U.S. occupation of Iraq came home to me yet again this
week as I watched a BBC report on the aerial bombardment of Samara. There
was a helmeted American colonel, smilingly telling the camera that the
residents of this city of 200,000 were "happy" at the bloody liberation of
their home. The wailing Samarans filmed by the BBC didn't look
particularly filled with joy as they dug through the rubble of residences
destroyed by the U.S. gunships' rockets. The baby boy in swaddling clothes
they dug from that rubble, who was covered from head to foot in dust, did
not look "happy" either -- he looked dead. The baby also did not look like
a terrorist.

As I saw these latest pictures from this unhappy war, the thought came to
me that this week was the anniversary of one of the most famous documents
in French history -- the Manifesto of 121 against France's colonial war in
Algeria. 

At the height of that other war, which saw French soldiers ordered to
torture, rape and kill Algerian men and women (whether they were
combatants in the Algerian FLN or not), the 121 writers, intellectuals,
and artists proclaimed -- 44 years ago this week -- their support for the
right to desert from an Army guilty of degradingly inhuman, criminal
conduct. "We respect, and consider justified," they said, "the refusal to
take up arms against the Algerian people."

Among the signatories of the Manifesto of 121 were some of France's most
prominent talents: Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, of course, but also
Pierre Boulez, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, Vercors (the heroic
writer-fighter of the French Resistance to Nazism), Marguerite Duras,
Simone Signoret ... and more, all of whom risked a great deal, including
indictment, for signing this incitement to desertion. When Signoret and
other actors were banned from appearing on state-owned radio and
television for signing the Manifesto, all the other players in France's
most popular broadcasts went on general strike in solidarity with the
banned.

The links between France's conduct in Algeria then, and the United States
actions in Iraq today, are rather concrete. Gilles Pontecorvo's
award-winning 1965 docudrama, "The Battle of Algiers" -- detailing the
illegal repressive tactics by the French -- has been used as a
how-to-do-it training film for the U.S. counter-insurgency forces in Iraq.
The 2001 memoir by the head of French intelligence in Algeria, General
Paul Aussaresses -- "Special Services, 1955-57," in which the General
justified and recounted in detail the kidnapping, torture, and murder his
self-described "death squad" employed -- has been used, too, as a training
manual, notably for the intelligence officers deployed to the torture
prison at Abu Ghraib, where teenage boys were raped. (General Aussaresses
was indicted in France for publishing this apologia for "crimes against
humanity" -- actions which French President Jacques Chirac qualified as
"atrocities" when he ordered the General stripped of one France's most
prestigious decorations, the Legion of Honor, for his published
confession.)

On October 20, Canada will hold its first hearing to determine the fate of
an American Iraq-war resister in uniform: Jeremy Hinzman, who has applied
for refugee status after refusing combat duty in Iraq. Hinzman, a North
Carolinian, enlisted when he was just 17, when his father took him to the
recruiting office, in part because of a promise of money for his
education. 

Hinzman also told Canadian television, "I also had a vision in my head of
being a big guy and fighting for just causes." With the revelation that
the reason for the U.S. invasion -- Saddam's pretended Weapons of Mass
Destruction -- was a lie, Hinzman decided the war was "a crime against
humanity." That, he says, "is not part of defending your country and it's
not something I'm willing to kill someone else or lose my own life for."
Hinzman applied for conscientious objector status after he received orders
to go to Iraq, but was rejected while he was still serving in Afghanistan.
He went to Canada while on leave.

Hinzman is not the only war resister in uniform to have sought refuge in
Canada. Brandon Hughey, 19, fled to Canada from Fort Hood, Texas, in March
because he doesn't believe the U.S. war in Iraq is legal or moral; he has
since become a prominent speaker at anti-war rallies there. Hinzman,
Hughey, and the rest of the half-dozen uniformed war resisters seeking
refugee status could face stiff prison terms if Canada returns them to the
United States.

A petition has been launched in Canada in support of these G.I. War
resisters. This appeal to the Canadian government has received important
support from the Canadian labor movement. The petition recalls that,
"during the period of 1965-1973 more than 50,000 draft-age Americans made
their way to Canada, refusing to participate in an immoral war. At the
time, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said: 'Those who make the
conscientious judgment that they must not participate in this war ... have
my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give
them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism.' ... We
call on the Canadian government to demonstrate its commitment to
international law and the treaties to which it is a signatory, by making
provision for U.S. war objectors to have sanctuary in this country."

The War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada is anxious to have as many
Americans as possible sign this petition. I have done so -- in part
because, whatever the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, nothing
is going to deflect the U.S. from continuing to occupy Iraq. John Kerry
has proclaimed he is just as committed as George Bush to that American
occupation, which even he says could last at least as long as four more
years. (And that rhetorical deadline, of course, depends in part on
Kerry's chimerical dream of recruiting troops from U.S. allies -- even
though France, Germany, and other NATO members have already made clear
that under no circumstances will they send their soldiers into harm's way
after the tortures at Abu Ghraib have inflamed most of the populace
against the occupiers.)

I expect little from a Kerry administration except an end to the assaults
on the Constitution, science, and queers -- although I've said that is
more than enough to command an urgent vote for the Democrat in order to
defeat George Bush. But it is precisely because I have urged others to
support a candidate whom I know is committed to the continuing American
occupation of Iraq that I feel compelled to do all I can to help these war
resisters, who have shed the uniform of my country in protest of this
cruel and unnecessary war and its honor-destroying aftermath.

In particular, those of us who are intellectuals on the left, and who have
signed petitions for an effective Anybody But Bush vote, betray our own
values if we do not support the principled deserters from service in Iraq.
Especially since, in doing so, we risk far less than did the signatories
of the Manifesto of 121 against that other dirty war. In this anniversary
week, let us pay homage to the courage of the 121 then, and sign the
Canadian petition by the War Resisters Support Campaign now -- which you
can do easily by clicking here.
http://www.petitiononline.com/resister/petition.html
This is, after all, a question of conscience.


Doug Ireland, a longtime radical journalist and media critic, runs the
blog DIRELAND.




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