This statement originally posted on the March Forward! website. March Forward! is an organization of anti-war veterans and active duty service members.
U.S. Army Specialist Daniel Birmingham, a March Forward! member
stationed at Ft. Lewis, Wash. who did an infantry deployment in Iraq,
won a major victory for service members’ rights this week after
successfully receiving an early honorable discharge as a conscientious
objector.
Over the course of applying for conscientious objector
status, Spc. Birmingham’s unit received orders to deploy to
Afghanistan, which he also successfully averted.
Spc.
Birmingham’s basis for applying as a conscientious objector (CO) was not
a religious one, but based on the fact that he did not agree with the
wars that the U.S. military is engaged in, and therefore had the right
to not take part in them.
His approval as a CO sets an important
precedent for all U.S. service members, as polls show that a large
majority also oppose the war.
Becoming a war resister
Daniel
Birmingham is a 21-year-old from a working-class upbringing in Battle
Creek, Michigan, where he grew up living in his grandparents’
two-bedroom house with over 10 family members, with not enough beds to
go around. His mother has been a factory worker in an auto parts plant
his entire life, and his father has spent most of that time unemployed
after becoming disabled on the job as a union painter. At 18 years old,
Birmingham, with few options for college and in a state with high
unemployment, enlisted in the U.S. Army.
During his 2009-10 tour
in Basrah, Iraq, Spc. Birmingham’s first-hand experience as an
occupying soldier–in a country that had just been decimated by a war
that took the lives of upwards of 1.3 million Iraqis–made him question
the morality of his participation in the occupation.<
Upon
returning home in 2010, Spc. Birmingham wrestled with the moral conflict
of having participated in an occupation that he no longer agreed with
and considered a crime against the Iraqi people. He knew that he would
inevitably have to deploy to the other unpopular war the U.S. military
was engaged in, the other occupation that was taking the lives of
countless innocent civilians, the other war that he didn’t agree with.
So
Spc. Birmingham did what every U.S. service member has the right under
military law to do: file for honorable discharge as a conscientious
objector, for moral opposition to participation in U.S. foreign policy.
Taking a stand
As
Spc. Birmingham was waiting for his CO paperwork to be processed, he
didn’t stay quiet. He was instructed to keep quiet to other soldiers
about what he was doing, and pleasing his command was important to get a
favorable decision on his CO application.
But he knew there
were others in uniform experiencing similar moral dilemmas, and wanted
to reach them with the message that they, too, had the right to refuse
their orders to Afghanistan. Spc. Birmingham wrote a public statement, “I will not go to war again,”
explaining why he exercised his legal right to be honorably discharged,
and called on all other soldiers who agreed to do the same. March
Forward! worked to make his message heard throughout the military, and
circulated a petition in support of his stand to rally public support,
which was signed by thousands across the country (including many members
of the active-duty military).
And in fact, soldiers responded –
soldiers who were deployed in Iraq. On a base in Baghdad, several
(anonymous) soldiers not only decided to become COs, but started
refusing to pull guard shifts, and began distributing anti-war leaflets
on their base with information on becoming a CO. Service members
elsewhere in the country began contacting us saying that they, too,
wanted to exercise their rights as Spc. Birmingham had. Several of them
have already averted deployments to Afghanistan.
Spc. Birmingham
also took his message to the streets. To mark the 10th anniversary of
the war in Afghanistan this past October, Spc. Birmingham joined other
March Forward! members in Washington, D.C., and marched in uniform as an
active-duty soldier in the mass anti-war demonstrations. He told his
story to thousands gathered to establish Occupy Freedom Plaza, took part
in the first General Assemblies at Occupy DC, and was even
pepper-sprayed as he was on the front-lines of a protest against the
drone propaganda exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum.
Spc.
Birmingham not only took a stand for his own life, but put himself at
great risk of disciplinary action and other repercussions by taking such
public action–he put his own interests on the line to reach out to
others questioning the war, and put his body into the gears of the war
machine as a physical participant in protests that rocked the capital on
a historic anniversary. As a result of his courageous stand, several
other active-duty soldiers have successfully refused to deploy to
Afghanistan, become COs, disrupted the war machine on the front lines,
and become anti-war activists.
A victory for all service members
While
Spc. Birmingham’s CO paperwork was being processed, his unit received
orders to deploy to Afghanistan. He successfully exercised his right to
not go. Then, after months of waiting for a decision, his CO status was
approved. Last week, Spc. Birmingham terminated his contract early and
was honorably discharged, retaining full veterans benefits.
Spc.
Birmingham’s successful stand as a CO sets an important precedent for
U.S. service members. There is the generalization that CO status is
reserved for service members with a religious or spiritual opposition to
war. But Spc. Birmingham’s CO status was explicitly non-religious.
His
rationale was simple: If he believed the wars were wrong, then being a
participant in them conflicted with his personal morals, and therefore
he had the right to the legal separation from the Army afforded under
military law.
The approval of his CO paperwork is an extremely
significant acknowledgement by the U.S. military that the legal right
does exist for any service member who disagrees with the war in
Afghanistan to refuse to participate.
Polls show that more than
70 percent of active-duty service members oppose the war in Afghanistan.
All of them have the right to refuse deployment to Afghanistan as
conscientious objectors, as proven by the approval of Spc. Birmingham’s
CO status.
And Spc. Birmingham wants them all to know that fact.
Upon receiving his honorable discharge, he said, “This isn’t the end.
We will continue to inform other soldiers of their rights and the
options they have, that they will never be informed of otherwise. The
outcome of an informed military can be the end of these meaningless
wars.”
Any service member who is one of the thousand who doesn’t
agree with the war in Afghanistan, and is considering exercising the
same rights that Spc. Birmingham did, can click here for information, assistance and support.
