AWOL in America: Why Over 5,500 U.S. Soldiers Discharged Themselvesfrom DemocracyNow!
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
"AWOL, French Leave, the Grand Bounce, jumping ship, going over the hill-in every country, in every age, whenever and wherever there has been a military, there have been soldiers discharging themselves from the ranks. The Pentagon has estimated that since the start of the current conflict in Iraq, more than 5,500 U.S. military personnel have deserted, and yet we know the stories of only a unique handful, all whom have publicly stated their opposition to the war in Iraq, and some of whom have fled to Canada. The Vietnam war casts a long shadow, distorting our image of the deserter; four soldiers have gone over the Canadian border, looking for the safe haven of the Vietnam years, which no longer exists: there are no open arms for such refugees and almost no possibility of obtaining legal status. We imagine 5,500 conscientious objectors to a bloody quagmire, soldiers like Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, who strongly and eloquently protested the Iraq war, having actually served there and witnessed civilians killed and prisoners abused, and who was subsequently court-martialed, found guilty of desertion, and given a year in prison. But deserters rarely leave for purely political reasons. They usually just quietly return home and hope no one notices."
That is from the cover story of this month's issue of Harper's magazine titled "AWOL in America: When Desertion is the Only Option." It is written by journalist and author Kathy Dobie - she joins us today in our firehouse studio.
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AMY GOODMAN: A very interesting piece that you've done in Harper’s. Can you talk about the reason that you started to look into this? What started the story? And then some of the people you talked to.
KATHY DOBIE: Well, what I had done is seen two news clips. One of them was in a New Jersey paper, and that clip talked about a 21-year-old actually sneaking through a window of a house, being stopped by the cops, and when they found out that it was the window of his own house, and they also found out that he had deserted from the army. And the second story was a 17-year-old who had had a car accident in a small town in Massachusetts, and the police showed up again. They ran his driver's license and found out he had deserted from basic training in Fort Benning. So, those two stories suggested to me that there were people leaving that nobody was coming after, and that they were simply leaving and going home. So, at that point, I wanted to know why they were leaving. The stories of the conscientious objectors seem to be a handful if 5,500 people were leaving. So, that's how it started. It started with those two news clips, and then to the G.I. Rights Hotline. They began slowly to connect me to soldiers who had left, and the vast majority do not leave because they have problems with this war, in particular. The vast majority leave well before they even get to combat, and I don't even think they're thinking about combat. What they're thinking about is the training, or they're thinking about their families. And I think I interviewed probably about a dozen soldiers and their families and then, of course, the G.I. Rights Hotline has talked to hundreds and hundreds at this point.
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