To War Or Not To War, That Is The Question
 

January 22 2005
Counterbias.com
by Jack Dalton

If there is one thing I understand, it is this: once one sees war up close and personal and look into the abyss (the Heart of Darkness of war), you are forever changed.

Some become self-defensive, becoming strong supporters of war. What else can they do? If they do not support war, they'll be compelled to revisit it and come to terms with the idea. That in itself shakes the very foundations of one's beliefs, and this is something many are unwilling to do. It hurts like hell.

Then there are those like Jim Massey, Mike Hoffman, Kevin Benderman, Dave Bischel, Tim Goodrich and Camillo Mejas, who have confronted the issue of war's immorality and inhumanity from the perspective of those who have participated in it. Through that participation, they've found war sorely lacking. They've come out in opposition to war as a method of solving our problems.

The aforementioned men are not alone in their outspoken opposition to war, or their refusals to no longer be a participant in the destruction of their fellow human beings. They are just a few in the growing number of those in uniform currently taking the same position.

One important thing everyone should keep in the fore-front of their minds: these people, the men and women that are starting to refuse deployment or re-deployment to Iraq, are not "nut jobs." Far from it. Not only are they quite sane, but they have the absolute moral right to choose what they will or will not participate in when it is their lives being put on the line.

In fact, Monica Benderman, Sgt. Kevin Benderman's wife, puts it much better than I in the questions she has posited: "What is wrong with a country when a man can walk into a military recruiting office, sign on the dotted line and find himself in a war zone two months later, without one question directed toward his sanity?"

"What is wrong with the direction of the world when a man and his wife receive phone calls and emails from all over their country asking them to explain themselves, calling them cowards, wondering if they have ever read the Bible or studied the scripture, all because that man has chosen to speak out against war and violence, and his wife has chosen to stand with him?"

"Have we gone so far away from Truth that people actually believe war and killing is right, and that a man must be crazy to want to walk away?"

These are powerful words, and questions which must not only be pondered, but answered. As a disabled Vietnam veteran and one that has been an anti-war activist ever since coming back home, not only do I agree with the anti-war movement within the ranks, but I fully support it and those that take this stand.

The men and women in today's military are doing what it took those in uniform being sent to Vietnam over four years to start doing: oppose war and start refusing to be participants. Sooner rather than later is a good thing.

As a veteran of a war, as a writer, and as an American citizen, I fully support those who see the senselessness of "legal" murder. To a large degree, that is what war is, at least in the minds of those that propel the rest of us into their wars of "choice".

Additionally, as co-editor of the Project for the Old American Century (as opposed to the Project for a New American Century wing-nuts), we have come out strongly anti-war and will fully support any and all of the men and women in uniform who, as a matter of conviction, maintain their moral right to stand against war, and refuse deployment to Iraq (or any other war the Bush cabal may choose to start).

It's simply a matter of conviction. And we are right.


Jack Dalton is a disabled Vietnam veteran.

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