by Pablo Paredes

Military members are increasingly resisting the wars in Southwest Asia. The Pentagon has suppressed, if not explicitly forbidden, statistics showing the level of resistance. So how can the San Diego Military Counseling Project (SDMCP) know that resistance is alive and growing?

First, it’s important to understand the many faces of resistance. Increasingly, folks enlist at 17 years of age and may not completely understand what they have just been talked into. For this reason, resistance often reaches our hotline in the form of inquiries into what these young recruits can call rights.

Other times the resistance is more self-conscious, and folks ask, “I’m getting a raw deal. What can you guys do to help?” Sadly, in many cases the toll of military life has already had dire effects by the time we get the call. In such cases it’s less an act of resistance than a call for help from a soldier experiencing PTSD, depression or suicidal thoughts (or any of an array of other ways that the mind and body resist inhumane realities).
Lastly, a growing number of individuals are seeing through the facade of military propaganda and poor mainstream coverage and realizing the inhumanity they are being asked to carry out. This smaller group is what we normally imagine when speaking of GI resistance. It includes Marine Reservist Stephen Funk, Sgt. Camilo Mejia and Sgt. Kevin Benderman. Their public refusals to continue in the military fill us with hope, and they deserve our admiration. But we cannot remain ignorant of the other forms that mass resistance takes because, first of all, it would be sad to believe only about a dozen people have obeyed their human instincts, and secondly because this mass of unconventional resistance needs our help.

So how many resisters are there? Phones at the GI Rights Hotline tell the story in very alarming numbers. In 2004, the Hotline received 32,000 calls—roughly double its pre-2003 invasion average. (What a difference an immoral occupation makes.) But this number tells only part of the story. A better marker for our efforts is the Helping Out listserv and its activity, which reflects the cases and questions our counselors are discussing. In other words, it reflects the number of GI’s that go beyond making a simple call to actually pursue a discharge or file a grievance. The numbers of listserv posts tell a one-way story.

Following the events of 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan, average monthly activity in 2002 reached 36 posts per month. In 2003 posts nearly tripled, reaching 98 posts per month, and then began a steady rise. This year the average monthly activity is 143 posts.

As the wars continue, and soldiers continue to resist, calls have more than doubled, and the case load increased four-fold since 2002. These facts raise some important questions, namely, how is the military responding, and is it being fair? Sadly, the trends suggest that Uncle Sam is strictly looking out for “good old number one.”
VA budgets have been cut in places where treatment is crucial. This is most evident in the recent closing of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the callous dismissal of the grievances of many vets who cannot access the out-of-state facilities which claim to replace it. In addition, any case where the military can skirt its responsibility of treatment for issues it caused (like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) it does.

As for new recruits, the story has not changed. The Navy is still telling young people that it is a way to “Accelerate your life” as opposed to risking it. The Marines still claim they are “the few” and “the proud” yet refuse to acknowledge that even fewer make it through their contracts without serious physical or psychological damage. The Army dumped “Be all you can be” for “An army of one” to emphasize individuality in a place devoid of such a virtue. The only place the branches show any honesty is in the fine print of the contract, which renders all its promises null and void.

On the subject of dissent, the staffing level is the most significant factor in how each branch deals with its dissenters. The Navy is overmanned, and this leads them to be less severe in their violations of rights than their counterparts (although this doesn’t stop them from disregarding the Federal and Supreme Court case law on how to handle Conscientious Objectors). In general, sailors who go AWOL (Absent With Out Leave) for a long period of time simply receive a less favorable discharge.

On the other pole of staffing levels are the Army and Marines who find it increasingly difficult to fill the empty billets of their Army’s of One and their Few and Proud ranks. The Army and Marines, with their high casualty and injury rates and their high desertion and AWOL rates, find it increasingly difficult to reach full staffing. Predictably, it then becomes harder to get discharged for legitimate medical issues, being a true Conscientious Objector (CO) or even for violating rules (such as being AWOL). The Marines have reached a point where it’s safe to say they probably give out more Congressional Medals of Honor than discharges for CO.
One might wonder why the Army and Marines are trying to hold on to people who don’t want to be in their “all volunteer” ranks. Army and Marine recruiters can probably answer that question best. They continue to struggle and receive more pressure to “Fill those boots!” This pressure has led to more dishonesty in recruiting. Earlier this year in Ventura, California, 14 recruiters were suspended for falsifying documents, which typically accompany recruitment applications. Even the Army had to admit this level of dishonesty was unprecedented.

There is one area in which some uniformity can be expected for all branches of service. From the earliest public resisters on to the most current, one thing has been consistent: excessive punishment. Stephen Funk was sentenced to six months confinement. Kevin Benderman received 15 months confinement. And my case resulted in 3 months hard labor and 2 months restriction. Public opposition to the war is not against regulations, yet it guarantees a more severe punishment.

Although my case is generally regarded as a victory because there was a “light sentence,” the punishment was above and beyond those awarded to other sailors who were guilty of the same violation and many who were guilty of much more egregious violations. The difference of course is that none of those sailors criticized the war on camera.

In short, our experience at San Diego Military Counseling Project tells us what we already knew. When an unpopular war generates a GI resistance movement Uncle Sam has one priority, and it’s not the troops. According to a recent Zogby poll, 72 % of troops in Iraq want out by the end of 2006. My hope is they contact SDMCP or the GI Rights Hotline when they need help, as tens of thousands have already done.

---

Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes was convicted for missing movement stemming from his refusal to board his Iraq-bound ship. Pablo volunteers with the San Diego Military Counseling Project, which received a grant from Resist. For more information, contact SDMCP, 4292 El Cajon Blvd #115A, San Diego, CA 92105; www.sdmcp.org.