Regaining My
Humanity
By Camilo Mejia
18 February 2005
CodePink.org
I
was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week
leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts
in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would
ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all
the horrors-the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi
dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent
man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier
broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees,
crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had
taken the lifeless body of his son.
I thought of the
suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further
humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.
And I realized
that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned
out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was
no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren't helping the
Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn't want us there. We weren't preventing
terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn't find a single good reason
for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.
Coming home gave
me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation.
I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and
criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized
that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the
military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.
By putting my weapon
down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted
the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military.
I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my
principles.
When I turned myself
in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did
it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me-they were
just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only
enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and
depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed
in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis
and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared
to the price Humanity has paid for war.
Many have called
me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found
somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that
I don't believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do
extraordinary things.
To those who have
called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing
it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left
the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there
was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself
in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of
losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing
myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used
to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning
to realize my humanity had abandoned me.
I say without any
pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad
in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who
called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward
not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first
place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty
that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral
duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier.
All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up
to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation.
I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize
to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.
I also apologize
to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the
raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive
me.
One of the reasons
I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of
losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there
are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain
free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to
follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live
with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more
than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free
man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.
While I was confined
in total segregation, I came across a poem written by a man who refused
and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed.
His name is Albrecht Hanshofer, and he wrote this poem as he awaited
execution.
Guilt
The burden of my
guilt before the law
weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot
and to conspire was my duty to the people;
I would have been a criminal had I not.
I am guilty, though
not the way you think,
I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,
I should have called evil more clearly by its name
I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.
I now accuse myself
within my heart:
I have betrayed my conscience far too long
I have deceived myself and fellow man.
I knew the course
of evil from the start
My warning was not loud nor clear enough!
Today I know what I was guilty of...
To those who are
still quiet, to those who continue to betray their conscience, to those
who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who
are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say "come forward."
I say "free your minds." Let us, collectively, free our minds,
soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert
ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war.
Camilo Mejia
spent more than 7 years in the military and 8 months fighting in
Iraq. On a furlough from the war, he applied for Conscientious Objector
status, and was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International.
He was convicted of desertion by the U.S. military for refusing to return
to the war in Iraq and was imprisoned. Mejia was released from prison
on February 15th