DoJ Drops Watada Case

By Steve Hynd

Some good news I missed yesterday - the Department of Justice has dropped its case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused deployment to Iraq because he felt it was an immoral war.

In Feb. 2007, military judge Lieutenant Colonel John Head halted Watada’s case following possible inconsistencies concerning a “stipulation of fact” agreed before the hearing. The decision led to a mistrial, ending Watada’s court martial. The Army appealed, but a judge said Watada could not be tried again on the same charges, as it would violate his right to be free of double jeopardy.

The Justice Department is dropping its appeal of that judge’s decision.

“Because there are no longer any criminal charges pending against Lt. Watada, and because (his) military service has been extended far beyond his normal release date, he anticipates that he will soon be released from active duty,” Watada’s attorney, James Lobsenz, said in a media advisory published Wednesday. “He plans to return to civilian life and to attend law school.”

Congratulations, Lt. Watada, and thank you for having the courage to say what needed said.

The charges against this principled, honorable officer made special mention of his words to the 2006 convention of Veterans for Peace, held in Seattle:

“I could never conceive of our leader betraying the trust we had in him. As I read about the level of deception the Bush administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked. I became ashamed of wearing the uniform. If the president can betray my trust, it’s time for me to evaluate what he’s telling me to do,” Watada said, according to the court martial charge sheet.

That's exactly right, and it's a great shame that more officers don't both know it and have the guts to say it. The basic training US soldiers receive on the Laws of War and Geneva Conventions amounts to just eight hours. That's a marked contrast to the intensive training that German and other NATO soldiers get on the subject, training that emphasises that it is every soldier's duty to refuse an order if he thinks it immoral or illegal - that "I was just following orders" is not a defense. One of the reasons Germany didn't join the Iraq coalition, and is so reluctant to commit more of its troops to combat roles in Afghanistan too, is that it suspected a large portion of its soldiers and their officers would refuse on the basis of their training. Current US training is a pale shadow of WW2 training too - when coverage of the Laws of War comprised a full tenth of training manuals.

 I suspect the CIA, not explicitly being a war agency, gets even less training on these matters. That may go a long way to explaining why it was so easy to get interrogators to go along with clearly illegal orders to torture - but blame for the gradual erosion of training in this essential area falls squarely on those in power who have consistently made the decision over the decades that the less US troops knew about this stuff the better.

Comments

[Bill H]

The basic training US soldiers receive on the Laws of War and Geneva Conventions amounts to just eight hours.

Well, that is absolutely shocking, and it explains a lot. My basic training was more than fifty years ago and we got a lot more than eight hours on that subject matter. I have long wondered how those guys could have considered their orders to be legal and why they would carry them out. Not just the orders about torture at military prisons, but some of the airstrikes, some of the firing orders that I have seen aired. I have wondered in a state of minor shock at how those soldiers would have possibly followed the order to do that. What has seemed like lack of discipline may actually just be due to our shocking lack of training in what is lawful because we, as a nation, no longer seem to care what is lawful.