ballsy. does the kid have a point? he seems to make a good argument.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198566,00.html

Army Lieutenant in Hawaii Refuses to Deploy Because of War Objections

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

SEATTLE — An Army lieutenant who has refused to deploy to Iraq with his Fort Lewis Stryker brigade was barred by his commanders from attending a news conference Wednesday.

Instead, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada issued a videotaped statement, saying he had appealed to his commanders in his wish not to participate in the war.

"It is my duty as a commissioned officer of the United States Army to speak out against grave injustices. My moral and legal obligation is to the Constitution and not those who would issue unlawful orders," Watada said, wearing a dark suit and blue tie rather than his military uniform. An American flag served as a backdrop.

Watada is a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the Army's first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The unit is set to begin leaving later this month for a second mission in Iraq. This would be Watada's first deployment to Iraq.

Watada scheduled the news conference here, near Fort Lewis, but was barred from attending during his duty hours from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. PDT.

In his statement, Watada said "it is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law.

"Although I have tried to resign out of protest, I will be forced to participate in a war that is manifestly illegal. 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."

He said the war violates the democratic system of checks and balances and usurps international treaties and conventions.

"The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice but a contradiction to the Army's own Law of Land Warfare," Watada said.

In a letter to his command in January, Watada said he had reservations about the Iraq war and felt he could not participate, his lawyer, Eric A. Seitz, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday from his office in Honolulu.

A couple of months later, at the Army's suggestion, Watada resubmitted his request to resign, Seitz said. He was told last month that his request had been denied.

After his workday ended, Watada told reporters he will soon submit another request to resign but he added, "I feel it is inevitable ... I will be charged and I will be punished."

He added such punishment would be "no more and no less" than the sacrifices of the soldiers serving in Iraq.

The Army said Wednesday his request was denied because Watada's current unit is in a stop-loss category, and he has not fulfilled his service obligation.

Paul Boyce, a spokesman in the Army's national public affairs office, said Tuesday that Watada is "not the first officer, not the first enlisted, nor the first soldier" to refuse deployment to Iraq. An Army fact sheet dated Sept. 21, 2005, the most recent one available, said 87 conscientious objector applications had been approved and 101 denied since January 2003.

Watada, who is opposed only to the Iraq war, did not apply for conscientious objector status. He said Wednesday evening he wouldn't object to going to Afghanistan.

Army regulations define conscientious objection as a "firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, because of religious training and belief."

Watada's decision to publicly declare his intent to disobey orders "is a serious matter and could subject him to adverse action," Army officials said in a statement Wednesday. "No decision regarding personnel actions involving 1st Lieutenant Watada will be made until a thorough review by his commander occurs in accordance with military law."

Watada could be court-martialed if he refuses to serve as ordered, unless the Army allows him to resign his commission or assigns him to duties that are not directly connected to the war, Seitz said.

Watada enlisted in 2003 after graduation from Hawaii Pacific University. He reported for boot camp that June and began officer candidate school two months later.

His commission requires that he serve as an active-duty Army officer for three years ending this Dec. 3, Seitz said.

"He is willing to be court-martialed and go to prison because he believes the war is illegal," Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, said after Wednesday's midday news conference.

Watada's case highlights the increasing resistance to the war in Iraq, Cohn said. She contends that the only way to stop the war is to pressure Congress to cease funding for the war.

"There are many here today who come from many different religious traditions, and we oppose this war in Iraq as an unjust war. We believe that the war is wrong and misguided," said Jim Davis, a United Methodist minister and chaplain of University of Puget Sound, who also attended the news conference. "As is now abundantly clear, Americans have been misled with distorted information to gain support for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq."

Watada's decision was criticized by Rebecca Davis, co-founder of Military Families Voice of Victory.

Davis, the mother of three sons, said in an e-mailed statement that she hopes Watada is prosecuted "to the fullest extent."

"He is a coward and a traitor. His actions will only serve to get his fellow soldiers killed so that he can save himself and become famous," Davis said.

I don't disagree with this soldier. However, I don't see the "good argument" you refer to. I just see someone saying the war is illegal - and hence immoral.

my reference is that he doesn't just say 'this war sucks' and actually lays out some groundwork behind his feelings. i suppose him saying why it's illegal and immoral makes me think it's a decent argument.

This guys an idiot.

What's the argument? Talking points from the NYT? It's illegal, we abuse Iraqi's. ZOMG!

This guy's an idiot.

What's the argument? Talking points from FoxNews? Mock all modestly liberal viewpoints. ZOMG!

I have to agree with this. Being ordered to goto a war is not an illegal order, And though I think Iraq is a bad idea, I have never seen anything that even comes close to convincing me that the Iraq war in of itself is illegal.
If you join the military you had better be prepared to at times be deployed to a war zone even if don't agree with the war. Otherwise you shouldn't have joined up in the first place.

How the fuck can an all volunteer army have 200 conscientious objectors? I can't believe they approved even one of these applications.




I can't believe he said this. Fuck this guy.

It's interesting to note that, despite the multi-purpose army the government expects to deploy to serve every conceivable conflict around the globe, the army is still, first a foremost, comprised of soldiers who are trained to kill. The primary function of the army is to protect or serve in times of war. It's soldiers kill. They don't get to systematically choose in which wars/conflicts they fight.

I want to know what this kid thought he was signing up for when he volunteered to become a member of the army.

Maybe he thought he would fight in wars to protect US soil, or wars that were fought for reasons that weren't made up. He said he has no objection to going to Afghanistan.

Watada enlisted in 2003 after graduation from Hawaii Pacific University. He reported for boot camp that June and began officer candidate school two months later.

What did he think he was gonna be doing with his time in uniform? If he objected to Iraq, he should have never accepted his commission. I hope they take his commission away, and make him pay back all those ROTC dollars he stole to pay for his education. This is why I am totally against the military baiting people in with money, because scum like this end up polluting our numbers.

B. I don't watch FoxNews at all. Thank you very much.

I lean on the side of the fence that says "If you're going to join the army, you don't have a choice in what you get to do once you get there". Just on a simple level, I don't want the military to take opinion polls on who wants to fight where and for what reasons.

Then again, you can't rely on people who "object" and don't want to be there. That's dangerous. I'm with LW, make him pay back all the $ he got, dishonorable discharge, and lock him up.

If he graduated in 2003, he was takign ROTC dollars LONG before Iraq was on anyone's radar screen. Well except GWB & Co. They were planning this war in Iraq in 1999.

You should check it out. I could stick 99% of your posts onto the teleprompters of that network and no one would even blink.

True, but he still took the money. You can opt out of ROTC at any point you choose. You can opt out when you go to boot camp, or when you go to OCS. There is really no obligation until they pin that butter bar on you and you are officially a member of the US military.

Before he went to bootcamp, he knew Iraq was taking place. From what I can see, he would have been an objector the war in Iraq before he graduated for the same reasons that he objects to it now. So far as those opinions are concerned, nothing has changed.

The fact of the matter is that this kid is simply another example of people going into ROTC to exploit the enormous financial gain to be had by a quick committment.

It's not like anyone within the system from 2002 on didn't know what was going down. We knew way ahead what was going down and that we'd be in it for the long hall. It's not like he was gambling on it. If you're an officer, you're gonna go through Iraq. Particularly being a grunt.

I don't think this guy is deserving of jail time. I just think he should be forced to pay all that money back and be made a shame of.

Correct me if I'm wrong, LW, but I believe I recall reading that objecting on political grounds is not a legitimate reason for CO status, and this is exactly why. Either you are ok with killing enemy combatants, or you aren't. You can't say that killing enemy combatants in this situation is wrong, but killing them elsewhere is ok. To say that the war in Afghanistan is moral and legal, while the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal is not a declaration of values, it is a political assesment. In both countries we are fighting muslim fundementalists who tend not to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and in both countries civilians have been killed in the crossfire, and prisoners abused from time to time. The Iraqi war was unwise, but the rules don't allow you to sit out because you don't like a particular conflict.

Lt. Watada is correct. The war in Afghanistan is a retaliation against acts of aggression against America. Nothing illegal there. If you examine the reasons we invaded Iraq, however, none of them are legal. Saddam Hussein was a criminal and needed to be removed from power. We are no longer welcome in Saudi Arabia, and we need a better base of operations than Kuwait in the Middle East. We can attack most of our potential attackers-Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria-pretty readily from Iraq. If all of OPEC turns against us, we'll still have a major supplier of oil guaranteed to us. If we can democratize the Middle East, we have a better chance of ending the petroleum era peacefully. International terrorists are more willing to attack our military personnel in Iraq than civilians in the U.S. And last and certainly least, there are huge government contracts to be handed out on a no-bid basis to Halliburton. Whether things end up in war or peace, we've covered the bases by invading Iraq. Just because the invasion is brilliant strategically doesn't make it legal, though. Since Lt. Watada knows this, he should refuse the order and accept the consequences.

No it's not. The Afghanistan campaign NEVER had to be what it was. It is so very much like Iraq that it's almost startling. What Afghanistan was was this. We wanted terrorists within the country that were harbored there. We offered the pre-existing government a chance to let us go in cooperatively to get Al Queda. They refused. And ultimately it ended up being two wars. One against the terrorists we were going after, and the other against a sovereign government that by all definitions in the Geneva Convention and the Rules of War had not aggressed America. Had the Taliban cooperated with us, the Taliban would still exist. And I can just imagine the outcry from the left if that scenario had prevailed.



Actually, what we wanted out of Iraq was exactly the same as Afghanistan. We wanted to remove the potential threat of terrorism against us and Israel that was presented via the Iraqi government and terrorist organizations that existed there pre-GWII. We wanted ensure Saddam was abiding by the rules, we wanted to get the terrorists out of there, we wanted to mitigate the governments threat that it posed to other nations via terrorism. Saddam refused to cooperate, just like the Taliban. He refused to allow us to go after terrorist groups such as Ansar Al Islam which called Iraq its home. It refused to turn over harbored terrorists such as Zarqawi, who Saddam personally gave protection. He violated all of the UN resolutions that were brought up against him as well. Not legal? Son, if Iraq was illegal, than Afghanistan was JUST as illegal.



Huh? We do combined exercises with Saudi Arabia quite often. We have a port in Jeddah. We have naval ports in Dubai, we have companies of Marines and a major naval station in Bahrain. We have airbases, and naval bases in Qatar, we have a major air base in Egypt. Then we have a base in Djibouti. We have all kinds of people in Yemen, and we've renewed cooperation with Tripoli. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot about Jordan too.



Iraq belongs to OPEC.

While I feel for the guy, when you sign up for the military, sometimes you have to go do things you really don't want to do or feel strongly against. Nobody made him join the military.

If you don't want your life controlled, don't enlist.

Am I actually to the right of center on this issue? Goodness.

Although I don't agree with you on Iraq and terrorism, your assesment of their equivalancy is pretty valid. The Taliban didn't attack us, so we didn't remove them from power in retaliation for any direct action on their part. Additionally, what makes a war 'legal' other than a blessing from Congress? Are we talking international law, or what? In that case, it would require UN approval? I don't understand this whole concept of an 'illegal' war.