This article was first published in Political Affairs Magazine, Online edition. Later appeared in the Ventura County Star newspaper, CommonCurrents, OnlineJournal and AfterDowningStreet.
Support Ehren Watada at http://www.thankyoult.org/
US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is facing an eight-year term in military prison for just doing his duty: serving our country and protecting the Constitution.
The charges against Lieutenant Watada are conduct unbecoming an officer, missing movement, and contempt toward President Bush. But they boil down to the “crimes” of thinking, speaking and following his conscience.
In June 2006, Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that the Iraq War is illegal. The Army filed charges, held a hearing, and recommended a court martial.
This impending trial will be a test of our president’s authority to wage preemptive war. Lieutenant Watada argues, on our behalf, that President Bush has abused his authority; President Bush argues that Watada is contemptuous for saying so.
The architects of the Iraq War want to punish Ehren Watada for “unbecoming conduct,” but Lt. Watada has only done what any soldier is supposed to do upon receiving an order: exercise moral judgment, determine if the order is lawful, and only then obey it.
As we learned at the Nuremburg trials after the genocide of World War II, an officer is not merely permitted to disobey an illegal order; she or he has a solemn duty to do so, and must not take legality for granted.
How then is a soldier supposed to make the “moral choice” required by the Nuremburg Principles? What 28-year-old Ehren Watada did was educate himself about the conflict and turn to recognized experts in ethics and international law. His subsequent decision not to participate in the Iraq War was pro-Constitution, pro-international law, pro-human rights, and anti-abuse of authority.
Watada stated, “My participation would make me party to war crimes. The Iraq War is not legal according to domestic and international law.”
Many distinguished world leaders and international law experts agree that the war is illegal. They include Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, who in 2004 declared that the US invasion was "not in conformity with the UN Charter, and from our point of view, illegal."
Three experts testified for Ehren Watada at his Article 32 preliminary hearing: University of Illinois Law Professor Francis Boyle, former United Nations Undersecretary Denis Halliday, and retired Army Colonel Ann Wright. They all supported Watada’s claim that the Iraq War is illegal.
Marjorie Cohn, President-elect of the National Lawyer’s Guild and a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, made a similar case at the sentencing hearing in 2004 for Pablo Paredes, a sailor and conscientious objector who refused to board his Iraq-bound ship.
Professor Cohn noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice establishes that lawful orders must not be contrary to the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Furthermore, the Army Field Manual establishes an explicit duty to disobey unlawful orders: "Following superior orders" is not a defense to the commission of war crimes, unless the accused "did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that the act ordered was unlawful."
Cohn argued that the United States has not only endorsed the Nuremburg Principles, but also has ratified both the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, making them legally binding according to Article 6 of the Constitution: “All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
As Ehren Watada puts it, “As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must, as an officer of honor and integrity, refuse that order."
As citizens of honor and integrity, we must support Ehren Watada.
*****
Monday, September 25, 2006
Sunday, September 10, 2006
5th Anniversary of 9/11/2001
Five Years from 9/11: Our Peace Mission Remains Unaccomplished
Today, as we reflect on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and remember what it is like to be the victims of a murderous attack, we have before us a solemn peace mission that remains tragically unaccomplished. It’s time to end the war in Iraq.
When war waged in our name takes place on a distant continent and afflicts a people whose language we don’t speak, whose religion we don’t practice, and whose customs we don’t understand, our capacity for empathy is diminished. Empathy, however, is spiritual strength; without it we are morally enfeebled.
As empathy withers, ethnocentrism and xenophobia flourish. The Other--in the current war, the Iraqi--is perceived as threateningly exotic and entirely unfamiliar, outside the human family. Or she is not perceived at all. She’s anonymously hidden under the rubble of collateral damage.
What most debilitates empathy is toxic mass media. We are mesmerized by celebrity worship, sensationalism, consumerism and the self-righteous cant of political entertainers posing as journalists. We are inspired by banal slogans, entertained by perpetual one-click shopping opportunities, and titillated by the gore and glam of the rich and blonde.
We Americans recognize the names Natalee Holloway, Jonbenet Ramsey and Paris Hilton immediately, but we couldn’t name one Iraqi casualty of war if our lives depended on it.
Iraqi lives do depend on it. The war in Iraq won’t end unless we get our ethical bearings and recover our empathy. It won’t end unless we learn the names Roesio, Khadem and Hosam as well as we have learned Paris, Natalee and Jonbenet. It won’t end unless we care as much about “their” dead in Baghdad as “our” dead on 9/11.
What we have done to Iraqis is no secret; we cannot plead ignorance. Real American journalists like Kathy Kelly of “Voices in the Wilderness” have been reporting from Iraq’s hospitals since Shock and Awe began on March 19, 2003.
Kelly told us about Roesio Salem, a 10-year-old girl from a place called Hai Risal, severely wounded by our weapons on the first day of the war.
She told us about Fatima, a 10-year-old from Radwaniya, who suffered multiple fractures when a wall fell on her as she ran from our bombs.
She told us about Khadem, 63, who was shopping for food when shrapnel punctured his intestine and wounded his leg.
She told us about Hosam, a 13-year-old who was wounded in the stomach and now has a colostomy bag.
This killing and maiming has continued under our watch for three and a half years.
Just days before the 5th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CNN reported that we reached another macabre milestone in the Iraq War. US military dead surpassed the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. The civilian death toll is, of course, very much higher. The Defense Department reports that over the past quarter, Iraq has averaged 3,000 war deaths per month.
Iraq has about one tenth of the population of the USA. An equivalent disaster for our population would be the death of 120,000 Americans between May and September. That’s twice the number of soldiers who died in the entire Vietnam War. That’s forty 9/11s.
If Americans were being killed at the rate Iraqis are, we’d be losing almost 30,000 citizens each month, 1,000 per day.
The dead wouldn’t be thousands of miles away in Baghdad or Falluja; they’d be people we know from church, school and soccer practice. They’d be children from our daycare centers. They’d be seniors on park benches. The maimed and wounded would fill up our hospitals and long-term care facilities from Maine to California. We would know their names.
The Iraq war never should have happened. It has brought misery, poverty, pain and death to a people who deserved only our love and humanitarian assistance.
Now, as we reflect on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and remember what it is like to be the victims of a murderous attack, we have before us a solemn peace mission that remains tragically unaccomplished. It is time to forget Paris Hilton and remember Roesio Salem. It’s time to end the Iraq War and occupation. There will never be a better time.
Today, as we reflect on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and remember what it is like to be the victims of a murderous attack, we have before us a solemn peace mission that remains tragically unaccomplished. It’s time to end the war in Iraq.
When war waged in our name takes place on a distant continent and afflicts a people whose language we don’t speak, whose religion we don’t practice, and whose customs we don’t understand, our capacity for empathy is diminished. Empathy, however, is spiritual strength; without it we are morally enfeebled.
As empathy withers, ethnocentrism and xenophobia flourish. The Other--in the current war, the Iraqi--is perceived as threateningly exotic and entirely unfamiliar, outside the human family. Or she is not perceived at all. She’s anonymously hidden under the rubble of collateral damage.
What most debilitates empathy is toxic mass media. We are mesmerized by celebrity worship, sensationalism, consumerism and the self-righteous cant of political entertainers posing as journalists. We are inspired by banal slogans, entertained by perpetual one-click shopping opportunities, and titillated by the gore and glam of the rich and blonde.
We Americans recognize the names Natalee Holloway, Jonbenet Ramsey and Paris Hilton immediately, but we couldn’t name one Iraqi casualty of war if our lives depended on it.
Iraqi lives do depend on it. The war in Iraq won’t end unless we get our ethical bearings and recover our empathy. It won’t end unless we learn the names Roesio, Khadem and Hosam as well as we have learned Paris, Natalee and Jonbenet. It won’t end unless we care as much about “their” dead in Baghdad as “our” dead on 9/11.
What we have done to Iraqis is no secret; we cannot plead ignorance. Real American journalists like Kathy Kelly of “Voices in the Wilderness” have been reporting from Iraq’s hospitals since Shock and Awe began on March 19, 2003.
Kelly told us about Roesio Salem, a 10-year-old girl from a place called Hai Risal, severely wounded by our weapons on the first day of the war.
She told us about Fatima, a 10-year-old from Radwaniya, who suffered multiple fractures when a wall fell on her as she ran from our bombs.
She told us about Khadem, 63, who was shopping for food when shrapnel punctured his intestine and wounded his leg.
She told us about Hosam, a 13-year-old who was wounded in the stomach and now has a colostomy bag.
This killing and maiming has continued under our watch for three and a half years.
Just days before the 5th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CNN reported that we reached another macabre milestone in the Iraq War. US military dead surpassed the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. The civilian death toll is, of course, very much higher. The Defense Department reports that over the past quarter, Iraq has averaged 3,000 war deaths per month.
Iraq has about one tenth of the population of the USA. An equivalent disaster for our population would be the death of 120,000 Americans between May and September. That’s twice the number of soldiers who died in the entire Vietnam War. That’s forty 9/11s.
If Americans were being killed at the rate Iraqis are, we’d be losing almost 30,000 citizens each month, 1,000 per day.
The dead wouldn’t be thousands of miles away in Baghdad or Falluja; they’d be people we know from church, school and soccer practice. They’d be children from our daycare centers. They’d be seniors on park benches. The maimed and wounded would fill up our hospitals and long-term care facilities from Maine to California. We would know their names.
The Iraq war never should have happened. It has brought misery, poverty, pain and death to a people who deserved only our love and humanitarian assistance.
Now, as we reflect on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and remember what it is like to be the victims of a murderous attack, we have before us a solemn peace mission that remains tragically unaccomplished. It is time to forget Paris Hilton and remember Roesio Salem. It’s time to end the Iraq War and occupation. There will never be a better time.
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