e opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find a single good reason for having been there, for having shot at people and been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me—they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price Humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but I believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

While I was confined in total segregation, I came across a poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name is Albrecht Hanshofer, and he wrote this poem as he awaited execution:

GUILT

The burden of my guilt before the law

weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot

and to conspire was my duty to the people;

I would have been a criminal had I not.

I am guilty, though not the way you think,

I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,

I should have called evil more clearly by its name

I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.

I now accuse myself within my heart:

I have betrayed my conscience far too long

I have deceived myself and fellow man.

I knew the course of evil from the start

My warning was not loud nor clear enough!

Today I know what I was guilty of…

To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray their conscience, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say “come forward.” I say “free your minds.”

Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves

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Prisoners of Conscience: Peace Doesn't Come Easily

Just about a year a go I was tried by a special Court-martial at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The charge: desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous duty. My case received a lot of attention from the media, mainly because I was the first Iraq veteran to have been to combat, returned on a two-week furlough, and publicly refused to return to Iraq while denouncing the war as illegal, and who then surrendered himself to military authorities. For the first time since the invasion of Iraq the military had to deal with the delicate issue of public dissent within the ranks.

The command at Fort Stewart restricted me to the base, and never allowed me to leave even to confer with my attorneys, and requests to travel with them to Florida, and to meet with them off the base, all to help them prepare a better case, were all denied. I was housed in a barracks building with about ten rooms, yet I was the only one there. Between my surrender and the Court-martial, reporters were told they could interview me off base, while I was told I could give interviews, but was prohibited from leaving the fort.

On the day of my trial, access to the base was restricted to military personnel, my attorneys, and a few family members. Everyone else was directed to gate number three, but the signs leading to that gate were taken down during the three days of my trial. The entire block of the courthouse was barricaded, and there were civilian and military police officers patrolling the area, and they had trained dogs sniffing the area. Reporters were contained in a media center about a mile away from the courthouse, and everyone's computers, cameras, recording devices, and cell phones were confiscated prior to entering the courtroom.

All of our pretrial motions were struck down, and many key witnesses and crucial pieces of evidence were not allowed in the case. Violations of army regulations by my unit, and violations of international law and the supreme law of the land by the military, were readily ignored, and the prosecution was allowed to bring the entire case down to the question of whether I got on a plane or not, thus receiving an easy, undeserved victory.

Before the end of the trial, members of my unit had already been to my barracks room. When my relatives got to my quarters to claim my belongings, immediately after the sentencing, the room had been swept clean. But the raiders forgot to take the lock they cut in order to get to my wall-locker. My mother later used that lock in a press conference to show the military had packed my things even before they could know I was going away. An officer then quickly approached my mother to kindly escort her to where my possessions had been taken.

But not even a year after being sent to a confinement facility in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where I spent nine months of a twelve-month sentence, I found myself in San Diego's 32nd Street Naval Station, where Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes was being tried by a special Court-martial. The charges: Unauthorized Absence and Missing Movement.

His case, like mine, received much attention, not because of the nature of his charges, but because on December 6th of last year, Pablo publicly denounced the war as criminal and illegal while refusing to board his ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard, before it left for the war in Iraq.

The military judge found Pablo guilty of Missing Movement but not guilty of Unauthorized Absence, and even though the sentence included two months of hard labor and three months of restriction within the base, Pablo received no jail time, and no punitive discharge from the Navy. The same day of Pablo's Court-martial, a military judge from Fort Stewart, found that Army Sergeant Kevin Benderman, another public war resistor, had been sent to trial by a biased hearing officer, and temporarily dropped the general Court-martial against him, a type of trial that could have sent him to jail for up to five years. Another investigation, to be conducted on May 26, will determine by what type of Court-martial Kevin is tried.

These findings represent important accomplishments for the antiwar movement, as they seem to indicate that military authorities are handling public dissent within the ranks with a bit more caution, as more members of the military are speaking out against the occupation. It would be interesting to see if these are isolated cases, or if the military is indeed making an effort to uphold the law.

Service men and women should know that expert testimony at my trial as well as at Pablo's trial, was that the invasion and occupation of Iraq are illegal under international, domestic, and military law. At my trial, professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, testified that the Iraqi invasion and its aftermath is a crime against humanity, and a violation of Army Field Manual 27-10, which incorporates the Geneva Conventions. At Pablo's trial, Professor Marjorie Cohn from San Diego's Thomas Jefferson School of Law, testified that the war in Iraq violates the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force only in self defense, or with the Security Council's approval. She also noted that according to the Nuremberg Principle and the Army Field Manual, disobeying an unlawful order is a duty, and claiming to be following superior orders constitutes no legal defense in the commission of war crimes. Interestingly, neither at my trial nor at Pablo's, did the prosecution ever put on evidence to counter the defense international law expert testimony.

America is going through a historical transformation, from disguised to almost openly admitted (and defended) imperialism. In a time when peaceful protesters are being put in cages, or free speech zones, in a time when international law is being ignored or circumvented in order to conduct and justify torture, in a time when schools are being forced to make their students' files available to the war machine, in a time when the fear and pain of the nation are being used to fabricate support for a criminal war of imperial domination, it becomes imperative that members of the armed forces act upon their principles.

An empire cannot survive without an imperial military, a military whose members do not question the orders of their superiors, a military whose members who choose to refuse, do so quietly to save their skins, a military whose members rather die and kill against their moral judgments than question the authority of their command.

It is too easy to just tell service men and women to follow their conscience, whatever that means; this advice puts the burden back on their shoulders and brings no sacrifice to the adviser. But peace does not come easily, so I tell all members of the military that whenever faced with an order, and everything in their mind and soul, and each and every cell in their bodies screams at them to refuse and resist, then by God do so. Jail will mean nothing when breaking the law' became their duty to humanity.

Pablo's trial not only marked an important step towards resistance, but it also brought doubt to the minds of many sailors who were present during his Court-martial. They may not yet agree with the antiwar movement, some probably never will, but for the first time many of them witnessed an open debate about the immorality of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Perhaps for a moment doubt brought a sense of humanity back into their hardened system of military values. This would not have been possible had Pablo not put his physical freedom on the line. His sacrifice was small compared to the sacrifice of the over 100,000 Iraqi dead, but perhaps it is the unity of small sacrifices, like Pablo's, that can bring about major changes into the heart of our nation.

We probably should stop fearing so much for our personal safety and start looking more closely at the sacrifice of others, perhaps we will be inspired and empowered to put more of ourselves on the line for the benefit of those who are really suffering. The light of others should not blind the path to our own resistance. Perhaps a good place to find our own light will be the trial of war resister Sgt. Kevin Benderman. Maybe I'll see you there, maybe we can shine together.

To find out more information about Kevin Benderman's Court-martial, or to contribute to his defense, please visit: www.bendermandefense.org/