Another Soldier Who Is More Brave than Congress
by James Buchanan
A recent news article reports “Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love. ‘I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school,’ the now 24-year-old told AFP. ‘I was ‘filet mignon’ for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade,’ or around 16 years old, he added. Chiroux joined the US army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant. He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq. On Thursday, he refused to go, saying he considers Iraq an illegal war. ‘I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq,’ Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington. ‘My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation… I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation…’ ”
While a majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, there is considerable confusion regarding what to do with soldiers like Chiroux, who are simply stating what most of us already know and believe in our hearts. The military of course wants to crush him like a bug –maybe a few years in Leavenworth and a dishonorable discharge. The increasingly deranged George W. Bush considers such conscientious soldiers “traitors” merely for pointing out the obvious.
While these reactions are to be expected from Bush and the Pentagon, some ordinary Americans, who should know better, are saying that soldiers like Chiroux have signed their lives away as soon as they joined the military and they have no right to object to being sent on an illegal mission in an illegal war.
The truth is we shouldn’t even be in Iraq. It never posed a threat to us. We were lied into that war. Bush, Cheney and the neocons should be in jail if justice were to prevail. What part of “Illegal War” do some people not understand? (more…)