GI dissidence spreads to Baghdad

GI resistance is continuing to grow even as the popular opposition to the occupation of Iraq does. Below are some updates on ongoing cases and some new resisters, including one in Baghdad.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. Photo: Courage To Resist

On June 21, the news broke of the first U.S. war resister stationed in Iraq, Spc. Elonai “Eli” Israel, who sent out an SOS on his blog making known his presence and delicate situation in Iraq and indicating he was surrounded by hostile forces, apparently meaning within the U.S. chain of command. Spc. Israel is stationed at Camp Victory in Baghdad with JVB Bravo Company, 1-149 Infantry of the Kentucky Army National Guard. He wrote, “I have told them that I will no longer play a ‘combat role’ in this conflict or ‘protect corporate representatives,’ and they have taken this as ‘violating a direct order.’” Spc. Israel will seek a discharge as a conscientious objector. He received immediate support from groups like Courage to Resist, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and GI Special, and announced the next day that he felt relieved for the time being.

A military judge in Ft. Lewis, Wash., ruled July 7 that Lt. Ehren Watada, the first Army officer to refuse orders to Iraq and publicly announce it in June 2006, could be again brought to trial. At his first court-martial, which ended in a mistrial last Feb. 7, Watada attempted to bring up his moral and political objections to the war in Iraq and his responsibility to the men he was supposed to be leading into battle.

The judge at that court-martial, Lt. Col. John Head, made all decisions in the first days of the trial to prevent the lieutenant from bringing up his principled opposition to the Iraq war as part of his defense. When the prosecution case seemed weak, lead prosecutor Capt. Scott Van Sweringen asked for the mistrial, and Lt. Col. Head granted it. Watada’s attorney, Eric Seitz, has argued that trying Watada again would be “double jeopardy,” and that the Army should drop the case.

While Watada may face another trial, he has been picking up more and more popular support, especially on the West Coast. A new group now supporting him is composed of Japanese-Americans known as the Heart Mountain draft resisters, who refused the draft during World War II, saying they would fight only if the Japanese-Americans held in camps by the U.S. government at that time—who had committed no crimes—were all released and were treated as first-class citizens. These elders congratulated Watada for his principled position and encouraged him to keep on with his struggle.

Sp/4. Eugene Cherry, a soldier in the 10th Mountain Division, a unit whose home base is Fort Drum in upstate New York and which is now breaking into homes in Baghdad, had a good result. He had been facing a bad conduct discharge and a year in prison for going AWOL and was to face court-martial on July 9. On July 2, Tod Ensign of the “Different Drummer” center in Watertown, near Fort Drum, sent out an e-mail announcing that the Fort Drum command has, belatedly, decided to drop “its plans to court-martial Sp/4 Cherry for being AWOL. It will, instead, allow him to request an administrative Other than Honorable discharge.”

Cherry, an African American from Chicago, has medical documentation that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The “Different Drummer” is modeled on the Vietnam era anti-war coffee houses set up near military bases.

Cherry’s supporters in Watertown had planned meetings and protests as the court-martial was to start, including the presence of Col. Ann Rice and the final stop of the IVAW bus, which had made an 11-stop tour mostly of military bases in the eastern part of the U.S., from Georgia to Watertown, but also including the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. At Ft. Benning, Ga., and Ft. Jackson, S.C., some of the anti-war veterans were arrested by the military authorities. The arrests demonstrated how the command fears contact between experienced dissidents whose word will carry weight and the active-duty troops.

An officer, this one in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and right here in the U.S., has been threatened with discharge for his outspoken opposition to the war. Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., an African-American hip-hop artist, writes that on March 26 the Air Force notified him they are taking action to honorably discharge him on the basis of “behavior clearly inconsistent with the interest of national security.” The letter arrived six days after Yearwood publicly announced the launching of a national “Make Hip Hop Not War.”

Rev. Yearwood faces a hearing on July 12 at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. He says that Cindy Sheehan will be there to lend solidarity.

In February 2003 Yearwood preached a sermon he titled, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” He is an eloquent writer with a powerful message that he sent out in a recent release:

“This moment in history is our generation’s lunch-counter moment—Iraq is our Vietnam and New Orleans is our Birmingham. Our generation could be the generation to defeat racism, poverty and war, but only if we come together as people of conscience. In the movements of the 60’s, solidarity among the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement was never truly achieved. As the ‘Hip Hop generation’—a generation where the sons and daughters of former slaves work side by side with the sons and daughters of former slave owners—we have the ability to bridge the gap and link movements for peace, justice, civil rights and the environment in true solidarity.”

As the last-but-not-least item, the Appeal for Redress, an pro-withdrawal statement signed by active-duty GIs, surpassed 2,000 signatures in mid June, and as of July 9 had reached 2,028.