Navy judge finds war resistance ‘reasonable’

Navy military resister Pablo Paredes was found guilty of missing a troop movement at his court-martial in San Diego May 10. He had refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard on its way from San Diego to Iraq last Dec. 6.

The courtroom was packed with report ers and anti-war activists, including Fer nan do Suarez del Solar and Cindy Shee han, both of whom have been anti-war activists since their sons were killed in Iraq.

At Paredes’s sentencing the next day, presiding Judge Lt. Cmdr. Bob Klant surprised onlookers by admitting that it was reasonable for the sailor to question the legality of the U.S. wars against Yugo slavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He sentenced Pare des to three months at hard labor and a loss of rank, from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest position in the Navy.

While Paredes and his supporters had good reason to consider any guilty verdict or sentence unjust, most considered this at least a partial victory. Especially important was that the judge recognized both the strength of Paredes’s argument about the Iraq War and his belief that his participation in it would be criminal.

Paredes’s statement to the court, which was sensitive to his fellow Navy members and their families, nevertheless contained the following strong points condemning the Iraq War and justifying his reasons for resistance:

“I am convinced that the current war in Iraq is illegal. I am also convinced that the true causality for it lacked any high ground in the topography of morality. … I read extensively on the arguments and results of Nazi German soldiers, as well as imperial Japanese soldiers, in the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials, respectively. In all I read I came to an overwhelming conclusion supported by countless examples that any soldier who knowingly participates in an illegal war can find no haven in the fact that they were following orders, in the eyes of international law.”