I guess we’ll be getting used to hearing those funny accents around Vancouver again. Ah, everything old is new again!
“My enemy isn’t foreign now. It’s domestic.”
AWOL American military personnel, fearing redeployment to Iraq, have observed with frustration as the amnesty and discharge deal reached by 23-year-old Kyle Snyder was apparently disregarded once the soldier had surrendered himself at Fort Knox as per the agreement.
The AP via the Guardian has the full report.
“They’re not going to win the hearts and minds like that,” said Glass, 24, who signed on with the Indiana National Guard in 2002…
“Nobody’s going to come back from Canada anymore,” said James Fennerty, a Chicago-based attorney who represents Snyder and other AWOL soldiers.
Several soldiers who went to Canada have said they don’t want to return to Iraq. Sgt. Patrick Hart, who deserted the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division in August 2005, a month before his second deployment, said he felt misled about the reasons for the war.
“How can I go over there if I don’t believe in the cause? I still consider myself a soldier, but I can’t do that,” said Hart, a Buffalo, N.Y., native who served more than nine years in the military.
“The whole story behind it, it all feels like a big lie,” Glass said. “I ain’t fighting for no lie…”
Some are seeking refugee status in Canada. Hart, who was joined in Toronto by his wife and their 3-year-old son, served time in Bosnia in the early 1990s, became a reserve, then went to Iraq after returning to active duty. The idea of returning to the United States is appealing to Hart, because he would like to see family and friends.
“I could see going back under some kind of amnesty program or something like that,” Hart said. “But I don’t trust them. My enemy isn’t foreign now. It’s domestic.”
raincoaster 
Dear god I, above all, hate to say this, but to quote Superchicken: “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”
Let me say first that I personally would rather have a blank file in my line than someone who’s not there to do the job–someone I can’t count on when the $#!7 gets thick.
But all of these guys signed on the dotted line. They were not promised “free college education and a chance to hang out in Tokyo” they weren’t told “if there’s a war you get to pick and choose how you’ll serve your time”. No.
The deal is that once you take the King’s shilling, be it George III or George W., you serve. And if that service entails fighting in wars you don’t believe in, tough. You had a choice, you chose to put on a uniform.
The DOD has done so much wrong, offering deserters or sudden “conscientious objectors” amnesty only complicates things. The deal should never have been put on the table.
If a civillian wished to come to Canada to avoid the draft, I sympathize. Conscription is evil. But desertion, regardless of time and circumstances, suggests opportunistic bludgers who wanted a soft, well-paid job, then left the restaurant when the bill was presented.
Canada shouldn’t welcome them. At most we should let them work out their legal problems on their own.
Sorry Metro, but I don’t think there’s anything in the deal that these mostly poor, optionless folks sign when they enlist about going into combat on false pretenses. Furthermore, many (more than 40,000) of the kids in Iraq are National Guard folks who were recruited understanding they were committing to one weekend per month of service, and then to be called up for emergenicies. Now they’re serving tours of six months or longer, for which they were never trained or prepared.
I’m confused about your distinction between “conscription” and the recruitment system we have down here in the states. What we have is called a “poverty draft.” Military recruiters focus their efforts heavily in depressed, underresourced areas where 18-19 year olds have few (if any) employment or educational opportunities. They deliberately mislead kids about what they’re committing to when they enlist.
I’m not sure how the military works north of the border, but that’s the situation down here, where only poor folks are expected to hold to their contracts. I have always been grateful that Canada allows exploited kids refuge when they seek it. I hope your perspective doesn’t come into fashion up there anytime soon, since this war’s not going anywhere and there will be plenty more overworked, betrayed, disillusioned troops looking for a way out.
I sympathize with the people who think the military is the only option. But are you seriously telling me that these kids are told they will never see combat? Do they truly believe that that “one weekend a month” means no field time?
The Canadian Militia and Reserves (the distinction is immaterial at this level) are our part-time army. When you join, there is a specific duty to serve–it’s spelled out in your contract. If Canada went to war and said “we need you”, you’d best be ready to go.
You make a choice when you join. After that you’re a tool of the foreign policy of the natio whose army of one you happen to be in. A shovel cannot decide whether it’s used for digging holes or splitting skulls. Neither is that the task of a soldier. The worthiness of a war is not within the scope of the PBI (poor berloody infantry).
Whether they like it or not, they are members of an army of a country that has declared a never-ending “war”. And that has been at it for five years now. No high school grad is dumb enough to believe it can’t be him or her–or did Kerry misspeak rightly?
You have a choice–poor or rich. If you join, that may be the last choice you make outside of the chow line. That’s how armies work. Especially volunteer ones. Believeing in the cause isn’t your job.
Volunteer soldiers sacrifice freedom of choice to allow the rest of society to go on in free pursuit of life, liberty etc. Desertion from a volunteer force is worse than cheap–it’s dishonest. And it cheapens the sacrifice of everyone around you.
Metro, this will shock you, but I am largely with you here. I don’t believe anyone who is unwilling to fight any war they’re directed to fight should sign up for military service. It’s a far more difficult moral choice than it’s generally made out to be, and while I completely support draft dodgers I have not got the warm fuzzies for AWOL soldiers who knew what they were getting into.
That said, theylion makes some very good and accurate points. Look at the way Snyder was recruited; he was in Job Corps, which is essentially military school/chain gangs for troubled kids, from the time he was 13. The recruiter offered him “a way out.” He was told he’d be rebuilding Iraq; instead, he found himself destroying it. It’s as if a doctor were recruited, then told he’d be spending the next two tours of duty as a bomber.
A few months ago a student reporter did an expose of recruiting methods in the US and they included (on tape!) recruiters promising candidates that they wouldn’t see combat, that they’d be stationed only in the US, and so on. Is this also the time to note that studies show the average IQ in the military is below that in prisons? Which itself is above that of cops, but that’s another story.
I sometimes post things here about which I have conflicting feelings, and this is one of them. The debate that it fosters is worth the assumption on shallow readers’ parts that I am 100% in agreement with the interview subject here.
Getting back to the core of the post, though, what does it say about the US military that it will make and subsequently break a deal like this? Civil or military authority rest on the belief of the people that both serve the citizenry; as that appears to be less and less the case, it’s natural that we would in turn question their authority, thus increasing levels of desertion.
BTW for those who haven’t noticed, I’m now sometimes making the pictures into links to background material, for more reading. I should probably put up a post about that now that I’m utterly high on Nyquil and two pots of coffee.
Here’s some backup from ABC, which has footage of recruiters telling candidates the war is over and they won’t be sent to Iraq.
http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/cameras-show-army-recruiters-misleading/20061103145309990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001