From Underreported I learned about Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, now seeking asylum in Toronto after deserting his Iraq-bound unit. He had reportedly applied for conscientious objector status but was told by officials they had ‘lost’ his application. [It is a good thing we did not put them in charge of Dubya’s military service records, or they might have been ‘lost’ as well. Oops; they were.] As you might surmise, Underreported is focusing on the scant notice taken of this “watershed event in forming a parallel to the Vietnam War” in the press (Hinzman has been in Canada at least since March). I am not sure I can go along with the speculation that the New York Times and the Washington Post are purposely not covering this phenomenon so as not to encourage a flood of desertions to Canada; it seems more like one of the myriad ways in which they have just dropped the ball in covering the post-9/11 climate altogether and give short shrift to all things ‘unpatriotic.’

I don’t precisely recall the tenor of press coverage of war resisters early in the Vietnam War (before the phenomenon was of a magnitude when it could no longer be ignored) either. As a conscientious objector applicant involved with organizing efforts to resist the draft, I was among those who found it important to spread awareness of the possibilities (avoiding the draft by going to Canada; desertion; c.o. status; or ‘just saying no’ and going to prison on grounds of conscience) to those facing induction who might, despite nascent objections to the immorality of the war, not know what options they had or how much support might be out there for them (“Women say yes to men who say no.”). In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, I posted some material here about options for resistance that I hoped might find its way to enlistees. There was some back and forth with other webloggers, particularly Rebecca Blood, about whether you could actually call it conscientious objection in a volunteer army. Whatever the semantics, Hinzman is right; we again face an immoral and illegal war in which the US is committing war crimes on a scale that I am certain remains untold. My hopes of spreading awareness of resistance options to those enlisted or considering enlistment are undiminished. Bravo to Hinzman; spread the word.

In fact, we don’t know that Hinzman is the only soldier to opt out to Canada, but he is the first to ‘come out’ about his principled opposition to the war. (It doesn’t exactly fit with administration spin-mongering to publicize desertions and other acts of war resistance. That is probably why they describe Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun as being in an ‘extended repatriation process’ or some other similar jargon rather than what may really be going on, that he is in custody and being investigated for possibly deserting and staging his own Iraqi captivity.) Here is Hinzman’s website; among other things, he needs financial support to pursue legal maneuvers toward securing refugee status in Canada. (I wonder if Canada is going to need encouragement to take a stand similar to that it took during Vietnam, that it would not extradite draft resisters back to the US.) Perhaps more than finances, however, he needs a movement, and a community of expatriate resisters similar to that which arose in major Canadian cities during the ’60’s.^* In fact, perhaps some of those who went to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam are still there?

Will the US military prevent the GIs serving in Iraq from reading about enlistees who have fled the war, as they prevented soldiers access to the details of the Abu Ghraib atrocities (e.g. issuing an order forbidding them from reading Gen. Taguba’s report on the Internet)?

^*Is anyone familiar with any historical or sociological studies of the Vietnam-era Canadian draft resisters? any compelling novels about them? There is Tim O’Brien’s Going Aftter Cacciato and the short story “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried; others?