Refusing Deployments (or The Value of a White Man’s Promise)

When I was a kid, I remember watching an episode of Grace Under Fire, the old sitcom starring Brett Butler.  Her son, Quentin, had traded a brand new bike for a baseball mitt.  Understandably, Grace was angry.  She demanded that Quentin return the mitt and get his bike back.  When Quentin replied that he had shaken on the deal, Grace responded “Quentin, haven’t you seen enough cowboy and Indian movies to know that a white man’s handshake doesn’t mean anything?”

Apparently, broken promises are phenomena not exclusive to the U.S. Government’s treatment of Native Americans, or to politics in general.  The old maritime concept of “My Word Is My Bond,” where people took someone’s dealings that their word, without requiring written proof of contract, appears to be long dead.

This above statement, written into a Developmental Counseling Form by SPC Victor Agosto, of Charlie Company, 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, shows me just how far we’ve gone in devaluing the promises we make.  SPC Agosto’s unit received deployment orders to Afghanistan and Agosto decided he did not want to participate.  Were SPC Agosto a conscript, I might be able to relate.  However, since 1973, the United States military has been a force composed entirely of volunteers.  Were Operation ENDURING FREEDOM a new operation, I might be able to relate.  However, OEF kicked off on October 7, 2001.  Even Iraq, which history appears to be bearing out was conducted initially under faulty intelligence and questionable decision making, has been officially a hot war since March 20, 2003.

So, my issue here isn’t that there are soldiers who feel that these particular wars are unjust.  I’m pretty tired of deploying to Iraq.  I have been for quite some time.  It wasn’t the war that I enlisted to fight.  Still, on November 17th, 2001, when I stood along with several other recruits at the Harrisburg MEPS, I took an oath.  Within that oath lies the statement, “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”  At no point does a service member’s opinion come into play.  At. No. Point.

That’s good, no service member should obey an unlawful order.  Still, deployment orders are neither immoral or illegal.  As we are working with the lawfully elected governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no laws being broken.  Disagreeing with the war does not make it illegal or immoral.  I look at a mission statement from one of the divisions participating in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and wonder what is illegal or immoral about a division which, “in participation with Iraqi security forces and the provincial government, secures the population, neutralizes insurgents and militia groups, and defeats terrorists and irreconcilable extremists, to establish sustainable security and set conditions for transition to tactical overwatch and Iraqi security self-reliance.”

There is the argument that our presence in both nations is the root cause of the insurgencies in both nations.  This is both simplistic and ignorant of the larger picture.  We are fighting two different wars in two different countries.  The insurgency in Iraq is ultimately about one thing: The Future of Islam.  For centuries, the Sunni sect has dominated the Shi’a sect of Islam.  It wasn’t until 1979, with the Iranian Revolution, that there was an Islamic nation run by Shi’a.  This did not empower the Shi’a throughout the rest of the Islamic world, due to the fact that the Arab-centric world of Islam could distance Iran because of their Persian heritage.  Iraq, on the other hand, is a nation whose majority are Arab Shi’a.  An Arabic Shi’a nation scares the hell out of the Sunni Islamic world.  The insurgency in Iraq, regardless of what the U.S. says about it, is ultimately played by proxy through Iraqi Sunni and Shi’a by the Saudis and the Iranians.  Our invasion may have given these two nations the chessboard with which to play out this game, but the ultimate goal of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM is to allow the nation of Iraq to function as a multi-ethnic democratic and secure republic, which runs counter to those who sponsor both sides of the insurgency.

The insurgency in Afghanistan isn’t just fought against the United States.  The Taliban were not created by the U.S., and if there is an ideology that is directly opposite to the American way of life, it would be theirs.  The ritual abuse of women, destruction of culture, and massacre of rival ethnic or religious groups stand as testimony to this.  And while they might not have the ability to bring this battle directly to the United States, they gave comfort and aid to those who did–al-Qa’ida.  Here are pictures of some of their handiwork:

When I told people I was enlisting in the Army, two to three weeks after September 11th, many of my friends asked “Why would you join the Army NOW?” as it was very apparent that we were going to war.  Anyone who joins the military, particularly the Army or the Marine Corps, while large portions of it are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, should know full well that they are deploying.  If a service member hasn’t mentally prepared themselves for this inevitability, that is the fault of the service member, not the service that needs them.  If the recruiter told the service member that they will never deploy, the service member then learned a valuable life lesson about not taking everything a salesman tells them at face value.

Not agreeing with a war is not, for someone who made a commitment, reason alone to refuse deployment.  And that, ultimately, is what bothers me about many of these “resisters.”  Their word is not bond.  They will make a promise, swear an oath, and when it becomes inconvienient for them, they look to get out of this commitment.  To me, this is no different than a man who woos a woman with words of love and abandons her when she becomes pregnant.  I may not agree with members of organizations like Iraq Veterans Against War, but if you saw out your contract and moved on, you have every right to protest.  You’ve fulfilled your duty.  Protest away.  If you are still in a commitment, honor that commitment.  Fulfill your duty and move on.  If you don’t, you aren’t showing courage, you showing a lack of honor.  That’s all there is to it.

~ by poolboydeluxe on May 23, 2009.