More US Troops
Questioning Iraq Duty
By Christian
Henderson
12 April 2005
Aljazeera
As
the tally of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq continues to rise,
so does the number of soldiers uneasy about serving in the two-year-old
war.
US army figures
indicate that since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, about 5500 military
personnel have absconded.
In 2003 an independent
advisory service for US military personnel, the GI Rights Hotline, received
32,000 calls, twice as many as in 2001, from soldiers wanting to leave
the military.
Some refuse to serve
for political reasons, others are just unwilling to go to a country
where 1500 US soldiers have been killed and more than 11,000 wounded.
Many soldiers who
object have already spent time in Iraq and become disillusioned by their
experiences.
Camilo Mejia is
one of them. He spent six months in a combat unit in Iraq after the
invasion, and upon returning to the US for a vacation decided he would
not return for moral reasons.
He subsequently
served a one year prison sentence for deserting.
Mejia says his experiences
in Iraq shocked him.
"The commanders
wanted us to get into firefights because they wanted to put that on
their resume to make them look better," Mejia told Aljazeera.net.
"Thirty people were killed by my unit. About three of those people
had weapons."
"Once you come
home it's really hard not to think about it. You start going back to
those moments and it's really hard to justify that," he said.
As some soldiers
begin their second or even third tour of Iraq, Mejia says many are asking
why are they still in the country two years after invasion and after
handing over power and overseeing elections.
"'What the
hell else are we there for?' Soldiers ask themselves this question.
It's like there is no ending," he said.
The Pentagon is
struggling to maintain enlistment targets.
According to army
figures the active-duty army in March missed a monthly recruiting goal
for the first time since May 2000, and the Guard and Reserve are also
lagging.
And as the Pentagon
struggles to find enough troops to replace already overstretched units
in Iraq and Afghanistan, many say it is resorting to measures that amount
to an unofficial draft.
"We think there
is a draft but a different kind because it doesn't include everyone,"
Robert Dove, an administrator with the Quaker peace group American Friends
Committee, told Aljazeera.net.
Dove points to the
US Army's "stop loss" policy, which prevents soldiers from
retiring or leaving the military after they have finished their duty.
Carl Webb says he
is a victim of this policy. He went Awol after being given orders to
return to duty when he had just finished three years of part-time service
in the US National Guard.
"One month
before I was due to leave they gave me these orders [to return to service]
... I enlisted for three years in August 2001, which meant that my time
was up in August 2004. I am saying this is illegal," Webb told
Aljazeera.net.
"The policy
that they have now is the policy of not allowing people to leave or
calling back men who are 40 or 50-years-old. It doesn't affect the general
public," he said.
Despite the vocal
protests of some of those who refuse to serve, there is evidence that
the number of desertions has actually declined.
"We have had
a steady decrease in the number of deserters," a US Army spokeswoman
said.
"Most of the
people who are deserting are continuing to desert for the same reasons.
... The number of people who have deserted for reasons of conscience
is very, very small," the spokesperson told Aljazeera.net.
To be sure, cases
of soldiers coming out against the war and registering themselves as
"conscientious objectors" are still far less than the 190,000
claims filed during the Vietnam war.
But despite the
army's figures, Dove of the American Friends' Committee believes the
number of deserters is actually much higher.
"There are
at least 5000 and I am sure that means there are a lot more. The system
is overloaded," he says.
Webb says he joined
the National Guard simply because he needed to supplement his income.
"I didn't have
any money. I was broke. I was in debt and there was a $2500 bonus for
those who joined, so I sold my soul to the devil," he said.
Critics of US Army
recruitment policies say that in a bid to meet their quotas, recruiters
often operate in poor communities and lure young people with promises
of an education and other benefits.
"I think poor
people are definitely targeted. We refer to it as a poverty draft. What
that really means is that recruiters target low-income people. So when
they choose which high schools to recruit people from, they spend a
lot more time in high schools in poor areas," Dove said.
He said the benefits of joining the US military were usually less than
many recruits were led to believe.
"You can get
up to $70,000 in assistance once you have completed your service. Almost
no one gets that... Most people who get any money at all get considerably
less than that and a lot of people get nothing," he said.
Also, an increasing
number of National Guard units are being sent to Iraq, something that
has shocked some National Guard recruits.
"The National
Guard were originally for emergencies within the United States, so a
lot of people join the National Guard for a host of reasons, including
that when they go for their training camp they will get paid for it,"
Dove said.
"But in the
last two years they have been enlisted, and to their great horror they
[have found they] can be sent off to war."
Both Mejia and Webb
have added their voices to the anti-war lobby in the US, attending rallies
and speaking about the reasons behind their actions.
"The only way
this can be resolved is through protests by the masses," Webb says.
For his part, Mejia
says he realised while serving in Iraq that the arguments used to justify
the conflict were bogus.
"You go into
an Arab nation, you kill people, you steal their oil, you destroy their
country and charge them to have it rebuilt," Mejia said.
"You are giving
terrorism a whole new life."
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