Thursday, January 04, 2007
You're in the Army now
Let’s review a timeline:
9/11/01 – a bunch of “pissed off Arabs” kill nearly three thousand Americans.
10/11/02 – Congress gives its OK to attack Iraq.
12/2002 – US troops are deployed to the Mid-East.
1/28/2003 – "State of the Union": we’re going in - with or without a UN vote.
3/28/2003 – Iraq is attacked
End of March 2003 - Ehren Watada is accepted into the military.
I present all that because the Washington Post has a Page C01 article entitled: A Mother Fights for a Soldier Who Said No to War. This follow-up act to Cindy Sheehan is:
“Carolyn Ho…[who] came to Washington in mid-December to build support for her son, Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq.”
Yep, seems now-1st Lt Ehren Watada isn’t too keen on our presence in Iraq…actually it’s probably more accurate to say that he isn’t too keen on HIS proposed presence in Iraq. Highlighting that he didn’t really understand the way the Army works, he graciously gave them the option of sending him to Afghanistan instead. The Army - quite correctly - said no and so:
“Barring some kind of miracle, he will be court-martialed on Feb. 5… If convicted, he could be sent to military prison for six years. There's going to be a pretrial hearing today.”
The beauty of an all-volunteer force is that no-one is in the military who doesn’t affirmatively make the decision to join. Certainly, anyone joining when Mr. Watada did had to have had some inkling that maybe, just maybe, Iraq was in his future. Mr. Watada’s defense alleging he was misled by his government and that this is an illegal war no doubt plays well with a large faction of the left but, unfortunately for him, they are not in the jury pool for his Court-Martial. I’m not questioning his sincerity or his patriotism. But I believe he is 100% in the wrong here and I certainly won’t question a conviction in this matter with a maximum sentence imposed.
9/11/01 – a bunch of “pissed off Arabs” kill nearly three thousand Americans.
10/11/02 – Congress gives its OK to attack Iraq.
12/2002 – US troops are deployed to the Mid-East.
1/28/2003 – "State of the Union": we’re going in - with or without a UN vote.
3/28/2003 – Iraq is attacked
End of March 2003 - Ehren Watada is accepted into the military.
I present all that because the Washington Post has a Page C01 article entitled: A Mother Fights for a Soldier Who Said No to War. This follow-up act to Cindy Sheehan is:
“Carolyn Ho…[who] came to Washington in mid-December to build support for her son, Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq.”
Yep, seems now-1st Lt Ehren Watada isn’t too keen on our presence in Iraq…actually it’s probably more accurate to say that he isn’t too keen on HIS proposed presence in Iraq. Highlighting that he didn’t really understand the way the Army works, he graciously gave them the option of sending him to Afghanistan instead. The Army - quite correctly - said no and so:
“Barring some kind of miracle, he will be court-martialed on Feb. 5… If convicted, he could be sent to military prison for six years. There's going to be a pretrial hearing today.”
The beauty of an all-volunteer force is that no-one is in the military who doesn’t affirmatively make the decision to join. Certainly, anyone joining when Mr. Watada did had to have had some inkling that maybe, just maybe, Iraq was in his future. Mr. Watada’s defense alleging he was misled by his government and that this is an illegal war no doubt plays well with a large faction of the left but, unfortunately for him, they are not in the jury pool for his Court-Martial. I’m not questioning his sincerity or his patriotism. But I believe he is 100% in the wrong here and I certainly won’t question a conviction in this matter with a maximum sentence imposed.
