I've stumbled across several article this morning on troops from the U.S. and U.K. deserting rather than be forced to serve in an occupation of Iraq in which they do not believe.
From these two articles, it looks as though
9,000 U.S. troops have deserted rather than serve in Iraq; about 7,000 of those have fled to Canada in the hopes of asylum (there's
a three-minute report on this on the BBC News front page today), while about 1,000 U.K. soldiers have deserted:
LONDON, May 28, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The number of British soldiers deserting military service over the US-led occupation of Iraq has been on the rise with more than 1,000 personnel went absent without leave and failed to return since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, the BBC reported Sunday, May 28.
Additionally, U.S. antiwar mom Cindy Sheehan has been urging Canada to offer deserters haven.
So what does this all mean? I know that we had tens of thousands of soldiers avoiding the draft and the Vietnam War, but the draft also kept that military effort fuelled with fresh bodies, fresh young faces from America. 8,000 seems like quite a large number when we're talking about ground forces numbering around 165,000 in Iraq. And can we blame them? I wouldn't head over there to fight and die to defend Bush's incessant lying; Rumsfeld's shoddy war "plan" (war fought with too few troops, too little armor, too little body armor; war fought in drive-bys from SUV convoys); the murder of innocent civilians; contract mercenaries driving down the roads on joyrides, randomly picking off Iraqi civilians; no, I'd want nothing to do with this Bush-Cheney disaster.
But what do the rest of you think? If the administration is making the troops do unconscionable things, fight this sort of undeclared "war" and bloody occupation, do people who have signed up for service in the military - including our National guard, who never should have been sent there - do they have any right to refuse, or to seek conscientious objector status?
How about the right to go AWOL, as a certain unelected "president" of ours once did?
Do our military personnel have any rights whatsoever, once they've signed up?
Thanks for your thoughts in such a dark moment in American history.