I concur completely with David Kalbfleish’s post, “‘Why did you join?!’” but wish to elaborate on a few of his points.

When, at the tender age of 17 years and 2 days, I swore to defend this country with everything up to and including my life, I had in mind the values and pride instilled in me throughout a 13 year career of public education. I believed that two short centuries ago, the Declaration of Independence established the freest state the world had known, and that state’s citizens’ rights were established and protected by the Constitution, a people’s victory without historical precedent. Relinquishing the very statutes outlined in that sacred document was the farthest thing from my thoughts. The ranks of brave and heroic individuals I was about to join had wrestled for themselves freedom and independence from an oppressive imperial empire by driving them off this continent and back across the Atlantic by means of force, and so I took the oath.

I could not have imagined that just three short years later, I’d become the component of an oppressive imperial empire attempting to wrestle freedom and independence from ranks of brave and heroic individuals who, in turn, were trying to drive me off their continent and back across the Atlantic by means of force. From retrospective meditation, I came to understand that our forefathers’ generation, the very generation that inspired me into military service, had so much in common with the insurgents that our generation gunned down. The only difference is the home team will probably lose this fight because of the stubbornness of their invaders, a stubbornness our leadership is able to maintain because of the moral disengagement of our people. With all the hostile and unintelligible rhetoric that’s come to characterize this issue, proclaiming mutual humanity with Iraqis, as I have done above, is regarded as collusion, treason. Proclaiming so only emboldens war supporters with a heightened sense of self-righteousness and licenses them to continue because they’ve discovered “new enemies.” The voices of skepticism and devil’s advocacy, so indispensable a component of any authentically democracatic process, are shunted aside by the mantras of national groupthink, even when these voices come from those who themselves defend the democratic society.

So we’re enmeshed in this cruel irony of “the oath.” This very oath, along with “the contract” each of us signed, has ossified into our prewritten epitaph. Simply by our agreement to serve in uniform, we’d resigned our privilege to protest; any hope or desire we have for sympathy or attentive ears from the patriotic war-loving few that still cling to Bush’s underbelly are surrendered, ipso facto.

That the original justification for going to war has repeatedly been falsified is irrelevant; if the truth mattered at all, it would have enabled meaningful change a long time ago. These individuals, so predisposed to antagonize our resistance, must be understood as unreachable by rational arguments or civil dialogue. Their continued support for this war, and the subsequent contempt and scorn that they heap upon us, derives not from reasoned politics but merely from patriotism so entrenched and indomitable it might be more accurately termed “religion.” This ideation of the noble fight: us unconditionally good Americans against those incorrigibly evil guys; is alarming in its theistic overtones. It is, quite clearly to me, a pathology, a sickness of the mind, to so unreservedly and cheerfully support a campaign crafted and executed by a war criminal who claims to act on orders received from his god.

The evidence against Bush, Cheney, et. al. has been comprehensively gathered, copiously presented, published and republished time and again for years. I feel that we are past these phases of our work. It is safe to assume that anyone who still reproaches an anti-war activist, as happened to David and presumably many others, does not do so because they are responsible, conscientious citizens but were, for the past few weeks while the horrific truth was unearthed, coincidentally out of town and out of touch. Although it isn’t clear to me what strategy we ought to implement next, I feel confident saying that the ones that have failed from the beginning to yield results will probably not work in the future either. While this perspective is admittedly discouraging, I believe it is worthy of our reflection, nevertheless; I think on it frequently, myself, though I don’t despair.

Independent of the likelihood we have for seeing our goals achieved, the urgency of their achievement is what must motivate us to continue, and our continuance must proceed from a clear-eyed assessment of what is at stake. If you find hope in the fact that 70% of Americans oppose this war, as David seems to, and think that means we’ve got 30% to go, ask yourself, what would happen if 100% of Americans opposed the war in Iraq? A lovely thought indeed, would it equate to anything? Would Bush suddenly uphold democratic values? We might be wiser to consider the repercussions of Bush’s continuing presidency as it is received in the global community. In terms of our own security as a nation, it matters very little whether or not we, as the whistle blowers of this injustice, are able to convince the final 30% that this war is unjust or inspire the other 70% into collective action. Most of the outside world is knowledgeable of Bush’s predilection for systematic treachery, profound disregard for human rights, and insatiable appetite for imperial aggression; furthermore, they are very upset about it. Their consensus on this issue, not ours, ratchets up the probability of future terrorist attacks to levels unknown, but our effective and unrelenting activism potentially staves off further global cataclysm. We must therefore proceed prudently but without sluggishness.

Now, consider that if it were possible for us to force the legislature’s hand, through achieving 100% awareness and participation of the citizenry, to enact internationally equitable foreign policy respecting the rule of law. How much confidence in the cooperation of the executive can we realistically have? The administration that has, for 6 ½ years, defined itself by its affinity for unilateral action, social and political isolationism, and refusal to yield to the will of anyone but the president or the president’s god, seems unlikely to share power appropriately or doctrinally adhere to the constitution. This leaves us at an impasse on the “redress of grievances front,” still with that ratcheted-up threat of attack looming beyond our shores. Shall we then confront this swollen threat with more violence? It seems unwise to reuse a strategy that has proven ineffective so many times in the past not to mention unfair to punish desperate foreign cultures for the wickedness of our leadership, but the threat is real, all the same.

Whatever course we decide to take, our engagement of the public at the ground level must never cease. A recent influx of literature from radical publishing houses question the potential of nonviolent political activism to effect meaningful social change, which indicates to me that frustration is simmering and perhaps an unseen threshold will soon be crossed. I do not advocate the use of violence to achieve our goals, but I do believe that the time for civil disobedience is at hand. From our skepticism and subsequent exploration, we have acquired the misfortune of awareness; if we fail to actively resist and withdraw our civil participation, then we will contribute to the human rights abuses consciously, and this is not something I am prepared to do. In summation, I emphatically support confronting, with courage and resolve, what merits confrontation: grave threats to our democratic lifestyles. I will resist, with whatever resources are at my disposal, all enemies that so characterize themselves by their illegal, immoral, and oppressive action. That’s what I meant when I said serve; if serving in this manner entails confronting the commander in chief, then so is our sworn duty as servicemen.