National Guard reservist
Bryan
Alarcon.
He's just saying NO to war.
Some military reservists will risk jail to resist Iraq
duty
By Prashant Gopal
Staff writer
Posted
March 6 2003
National Guard
reservist Bryan Alarcon said "no" when his sergeant called looking for
volunteers to go to Turkey as part of the U.S. military ramp-up to war. If
he's ordered to go, Alarcon says, he'll refuse -- even if his decision
lands him in jail.
The 25-year-old West Palm Beach resident is
among a small group of military personnel who have joined another fight --
the one building locally and across the country against war.
Alarcon said he'd rather risk going to jail than participate in a conflict
he considers immoral. He said he didn't apply for money from the military
to pay for his Palm Beach Community College tuition this semester and
joined thousands of other Americans for the Jan. 18 peace rally in
Washington, D.C.
It's uncertain how many service people share
Alarcon's beliefs. But as war talk heated up in January, the anti-war G.I.
Rights Hotline fielded a record number of calls, mostly from military
personnel and families seeking advice on conscientious objector and other
discharges.
The 3,582 calls were twice the normal monthly call
volume, the group reported.
"They're going to call me a coward,"
said Alarcon, a full-time student who has a 9-month-old daughter. "But
being a coward is not acting as I believe."
Changing beliefs
Soldiers
who don't want to participate in the looming war are facing a difficult
choice. But jail isn't the only option for resisters. The military
recognizes conscientious objectors who prove they have deeply held moral,
ethical or religious beliefs that would keep them from participating in
war for any reason.
It might sound hypocritical for someone who
volunteers for military service to claim pacifism. But the United States
government acknowledges that beliefs can change.
Some callers to
the G.I. Rights Hotline said they were 18 when they joined and were still
forming their opinions. Others said they were persuaded to join by
military advertisements, brochures and recruiters talking a lot about job
skills, world travel and education benefits, and nothing about the
brutality of combat, said Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator for the
Center on Conscience and War in Washington, D.C., who helped answer
calls.
A U.S. Armed Forces Web site, for example, asks: "Where else
can you get paid to train with the best, travel around the world, make
lifelong friends, and get an education?"
"Many of these people
thought they were going to computer school," Galvin said. "Reservists
think it's a job they do two weeks a year and a weekend a month. These
people are realizing it's not about what they thought it was at
all."
But government officials are skeptical of those who say they
weren't aware of what they were getting into.
Soldiers, for
example, take an oath of enlistment, promising to support and defend the
U.S. Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to obey
orders from the president of the United States and their superior
officers.
Army Lt. Col. Ryan Yantis put it this way: "It's
disingenuous for a soldier to wake up and say they never knew they were
joining the Army to fight wars. ... It's much like a fireman suddenly
realizing, `You mean I have to fight a fire?'"
Defense yes, attack no
When
Plantation resident Travis Clark joined the Marine Corps in 1996, it
seemed like a good option. Then 19, he couldn't afford college and the
country was in a state of relative peace, Clark said. He signed an
eight-year contract, which required him to serve five years of active duty
and stand by for a possible call-up during the next three years.
As
the years passed, his views began to change. He started reading works by
Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. His active duty stint ended in
August 2001, and he now volunteers as special events coordinator for the
anti-war group Peace South Florida.
If he's called up before his
military contract ends in the summer of 2004, Clark said, he won't
go.
"I can see violence used if there was an invading army invading
my people," Clark said. "But I'm not going to go into someone else's
country and force them to defend themselves."
Like Clark, many
resisters say they vowed to defend the country, not to take part in what
they consider a war of aggression. Veterans for Peace, a national group
with 3,000 members, wrote a letter to the military's top commanders on
Feb. 13, urging them not to fight.
"We believe the war against Iraq
that the U.S. government is planning and preparing for is in violation of
the Charter of the United Nations and customary international law," the
letter reads. "The judgment of the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg noted, `Resort to war of aggression is not merely illegal, but
criminal.'"
Contract
vs. `feelings'
The tradition of conscientious objectors
dates at least to the Civil War. But draft resistance became a mass
movement during the Vietnam War, when 200,000 men were accused of
violating draft laws and another 360,000 war resisters weren't formally
accused, according to American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker
pacifist organization.
During the 1991 Gulf War, about 500 enlisted
men and women filed for conscientious objector status and about 61 percent
were approved, according to a General Accounting Office report. Several
members of the all-volunteer military simply refused to fight and were
jailed for up to 18 months.
It's not clear how many soldiers are
resisting a war this time. Military officials say the numbers so far have
been small. Only six members of the Army, for example, applied for
conscientious objector discharges in February, an Army spokesman
said.
As for Alarcon, he has kept his pacifist feelings from the
rest of his unit. But, as the United States moves closer to an invasion of
Iraq, he says he's ready to speak up and is getting his papers in order to
file as a conscientious objector.
"I've got to let it be known that
I'm not ready to just lay down and do what I'm told, because they say this
is a free country," Alarcon said. "I know I signed a contract, but my
feelings are lot stronger against this."
Prashant Gopal can be
reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 561-243-6602. |
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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