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Abandon the Battlefield. "There's No Way I'm Going to Deploy to Afghanistan"

by Dahr Jamail

MARFA, Texas, May 26 (IPS) - "It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with," Specialist Victor Agosto of the U.S. Army, who is refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan, explained to IPS. "I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong."

Agosto, who returned from a 13-month deployment to Iraq in November 2007, is based at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

While in Iraq, Agosto never left his base, located in northern Iraq.

"I never had any traumatic experiences, never fired my weapon," Agosto told IPS in a phone interview. "I mostly worked in information technology, working on computers and keeping the network functioning well. But it was in Iraq that I turned against the occupations. Through my reading, and watching what was going on, I started to feel very guilty."

Agosto added, "What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering. It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it."

Having served three years and nine months in the U.S. Army, Agosto was to complete his contract and be discharged on Aug. 3. But due to his excellent record of service and accrued leave, he was to be released the end of June. Nevertheless, due to the stop-loss programme, the Army decided to deploy him to Afghanistan anyway.

Stop-loss is a programme the military uses to keep soldiers enlisted beyond the terms of their contracts. Since Sep. 11, 2001, more than 140,000 troops have had tours extended by stop-loss.

A copy of his Counseling Form from the Army, dated May 1, reads, "You will deploy in support of OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] on or about [XXXXX] with 57th ESB. This is a direct order from your Company Commander CPT Michael J. Pederson."

Agosto posted copies of the Counseling Statements issued by the Army on his Facebook page. Counseling Statements outline actions taken by the Army to discipline Agosto for his refusal to obey a direct order from his company commander.

On one of them, dated May 1, Agosto’s written statement appears: "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect."

In another, dated May 18, he wrote: "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal."

On that day, Agosto was ordered to get his medical records in preparation to deploy to Afghanistan. He refused to do so. The Army threatened to take punitive measures, but Agosto wrote on the Counseling Statement, "I am not going to Afghanistan. I will not take part in SRP [Sealift Readiness Programme]."

If Agosto continues to refuse orders, he almost assuredly will face court martial, and likely jail time.

When IPS asked Agosto if he is willing to take whatever consequences the Army is prepared to mete out, he replied, "Yes. I’m fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or people at the top. They are not responsive to the people, they are responsive to corporate America."

Agosto added, "The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is if soldiers won’t fight their wars, and if soldiers won’t fight their wars, the wars won’t happen. I hope I’m setting an example for other soldiers."

Agosto has overtly refused to follow any order that has anything to do with his taking an action that would support the occupation of Afghanistan. For a time, according to Agosto, he was given simple orders to clean the motor pool, or pull weeds.

"They switched that recently," he told IPS, "I’ve continued to be fairly defiant, so on Tuesday I have to meet with Trial Defense Services, which then begins the process of getting an Article 15, which is movement towards being court-martialed, if these reprimands continue."

"If I take the Article 15, I’ll take a reduction in rank and pay. I don’t’ know what is going to happen. I agreed to sweep the motor pool and pull weeds, but nothing else that I feel directly supports the war. I’m not going to follow orders I’m not comfortable with."

Agosto’s case is not unique. The group Courage to Resist, based in Oakland, California, actively engages in assisting soldiers who refuse to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

"Although the efforts of Courage to Resist are primarily focused on supporting public GI resisters, the organization also strives to provide political, emotional, and material support to all military objectors critical of our government's current policies of empire," reads a portion of the group's mission statement.

IPS spoke with Adam Szyper-Seibert, an office manager and counselor with Courage to Resist.

"Currently we are actively supporting over 50 military resisters like Victor Agosto," Szyper-Seibert told IPS, "They are all over the world, including André Shepherd in Germany, and several people in Canada. We are getting five to six calls a week just about the IRR [Individual Ready Reserve] recall alone."

U.S. Army Specialist André Shepherd, who went AWOL after serving in Iraq, has applied for asylum in Germany after refusing military service because he is morally opposed to the occupation of Iraq.

The IRR is composed of former military personnel who still have time remaining on their enlistment agreements but have returned to civilian life. They are eligible to be called up in "states of emergency." The Army is currently undertaking the largest IRR recall since 2004, despite the recent inauguration of a so-called anti-war president.

Szyper-Seibert said that the number of soldiers contacting Courage to Resist has been increasing dramatically in the last year, and particularly in recent months.

"The number of soldiers contacting us is increasing," he explained, "With five to six IRR’s contacting us a week, plus others going absent without leave [AWOL], the numbers are all climbing, as compared to a year ago. Since May 2008, we’ve had a 200 percent jump in how many soldiers are contacting us."

According to Courage to Resist, there have been at least 15,000 IRR call-ups since Sep. 11, 2001, for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sgt. Travis Bishop, who served 14 months in Baghdad and is also stationed at Fort Hood, recently went AWOL when his unit deployed to Afghanistan.

Like Agosto, Bishop feels it is immoral for him to deploy to support an occupation he morally opposes.

"I love my country, but I believe that this particular war is unjust, unconstitutional and a total abuse of our nation’s power and influence," Bishop’s blog reads, "And so, in the next few days, I will be speaking with my lawyer, and taking actions that will more than likely result in my discharge from the military, and possible jail time... and I am prepared to live with that."

The reason he made this decision is addressed in his blog.

"My father said, ‘Do only what you can live with, because every morning you have to look at your face in the mirror when you shave. Ten years from now, you’ll still be shaving the same face.’ If I had deployed to Afghanistan, I don’t think I would have been able to look into another mirror again."

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Comment by Jeff on June 29, 2009 at 2:03pm
If the video doesn't play for you here's a link. Just Click Here
Comment by luggnutz on June 29, 2009 at 1:50pm
1st: Who am I? 2nd: Sidetracked? Did you even read what I posted? 3rd: I agreed with just about everything you said, but it was you calling us ignorant and stupid just because we didn't go in for the mind training like you! How can you say now you didn't insult someone. Go read YOUR WORDS again! 4th: yup, too smart for me, carry on soldier, with that imaginary signed piece of paper by God giving you the right to be OVER other humans! If any of you had such lofty ideals about anti-war and anti-violence, you wouldn't have gone into the meat machine to begin with!
Comment by Jeff on June 29, 2009 at 1:48pm
Clamor, watch this video. Wake up son.

Comment by Jeff on June 29, 2009 at 1:43pm
Conversation has been described as the exchange of ideas.

If you wanted to limit the conversation then you needed to set ground rules. Had you decided to set ground rules I wouldn't have participated. This is the nature of the give and take of conversation and you can't get away with framing the argument so neatly soldier. YOU strayed from the original premise as much as anyone else and your accusation is patently false.

I AM anti-war.

If you were anti-suffering or if you even understood suffering you wouldn't be responding as you are and you would recognize that the suffering we caused in Iraq and that we are now causing in Afghanistan is purely for US hegemony and corporate profit. You're a tool and they employ you well.

As Kissinger said, "military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy"

What don't you understand about that statement?
Comment by clamor on June 29, 2009 at 1:20pm
"You Make Me Smile"

Dear Jeff and Luggnuts,


Say all you want to say and then some. If anyone is reading these comments do me a favor. Look at how I don't sidetrack away from why I first started writing. It was because I didn't agree with these two "soldiers" using a certain group's mission in life (stopping wars) as their way of "cupping out." That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn't once say I was "pro-war," I haven't said once that I'm "anti-war." All I'm trying to say is these two "soldier's" are trying to use bowling balls in a game of marble's.
If you have time, also look at how I comment at everything that is said to me. I stay in track, but I also reply on direct comments. But you don't see the same thing from Jeff and anybody else. They get a certain work from a long paragraph and hone into it. From your last comment again, you sidetrack, said what you wanted to say, but had nothing to do about the two "soldiers." That's the bottom line.
We are two people reading the same book fifteen feet apart. A total stranger stops in front of us and asks a simple question. You start explaining the whole plot to the book to the guy. While all I do was point at a building, a book store. Why, because all he said was, "wow, both of you reading the same book. Must be interesting, wonder where I can get it?"
You know what else makes me laugh? I can expect every time I come online to see your reply, from a highly educated man, with vast knowledge and wisdom that surpasses mine (I'm being very sincere) insult time after time, when not once have I directly insulted him. Such an interesting fact.

P.S.
Can't wait for your reply. I want to see how you sidetrack again from the issue of the two "soldiers" and see what you can say about the war again. And in what words you'll use to insult me again (hoping you won't).

I'm not saying I'm pro-war, nor anti-war. But I am anti-violence, and anti-suffering, yet, even Heaven and Hell wages war at times. Just a funny fact from the Good Book.
Comment by luggnutz on June 29, 2009 at 11:53am
Enforcement
Factor I
As in every social system approach, stability is achieved only by understanding and accounting for human nature (action/reaction patterns). A failure to do so can be, and usually is, disastrous.
As in other human social schemes, one form or another of intimidation (or incentive) is essential to the success of the draft. Physical principles of action and reaction must be applied to both internal and external subsystems.
To secure the draft, individual brainwashing/programming and both the family unit and the peer group must be engaged and brought under control.
Factor II - Father
The man of the household must be housebroken to ensure that junior will grow up with the right social training and attitudes. The advertising media, etc., are engaged to see to it that father-to-be is pussy-whipped before or by the time he is married. He is taught that he either conforms to the social notch cut out for him or his sex life will be hobbled and his tender companionship will be zero. He is made to see that women demand security more than logical, principled, or honorable behavior.
By the time his son must go to war, father (with jelly for a backbone) will slam a gun into junior's hand before father will risk the censure of his peers, or make a hypocrite of himself by crossing the investment he has in his own personal opinion or self-esteem. Junior will go to war or father will be embarrassed. So junior will go to war, the true purpose not withstanding.
Factor III - Mother
The female element of human society is ruled by emotion first and logic second. In the battle between logic and imagination, imagination always wins, fantasy prevails, maternal instinct dominates so that the child comes first and the future comes second. A woman with a newborn baby is too starry-eyed to see a wealthy man's cannon fodder or a cheap source of slave labor. A woman must, however, be conditioned to accept the transition to "reality" when it comes, or sooner.
As the transition becomes more difficult to manage, the family unit must be carefully disintegrated, and state-controlled public education and state-operated child-care centers must be become more common and legally enforced so as to begin the detachment of the child from the mother and father at an earlier age. Inoculation of behavioral drugs [Ritalin] can speed the transition for the child (mandatory). Caution: A woman's impulsive anger can override her fear. An irate woman's power must never be underestimated, and her power over a pussy-whipped husband must likewise never be underestimated. It got women the vote in 1920.
Factor IV - Junior
The emotional pressure for self-preservation during the time of war and the self-serving attitude of the common herd that have an option to avoid the battlefield - if junior can be persuaded to go - is all of the pressure finally necessary to propel Johnny off to war. Their quiet blackmailings of him are the threats: "No sacrifice, no friends; no glory, no girlfriends."
Factor V - Sister
And what about junior's sister? She is given all the good things of life by her father, and taught to expect the same from her future husband regardless of the price.
Factor VI - Cattle
Those who will not use their brains are no better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jelly-fish, father, mother, son, and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same.

Now remember this from the bible?
Titus 10 For there are many unruly men, profitless talkers, and deceivers of the mind, especially those men who adhere to the circumcision. 11 It is necessary to shut the mouths of these, as these very men keep on subverting entire households by teaching things they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. 12 A certain one of them, their own prophet, said: “Cre´tans are always liars, injurious wild beasts, unemployed gluttons.”

So here we have more prophecy fulfilled. And when you people ask "What about the soldiers that died and sacraficed for us all!", I DIDN'T ASK THEM! THEY DIDN'T SCARAFICE FOR ME OR YOU, THEY DID IT FOR THE LUCI SYSTEM! When you guys ask this or cry out, it's like children in the marketplace who say "We played music but you wouldn't danse! We wailed but you would not beat your breasts!" That's right, I won't danse no matter what music you soldiers play, and you can wail all you want, I won't be beating my chest. Fear and pain and sadness feed licifer and his energy system. I was never a good feeder of this, and from here on in he gets NOTHING FROM ME!!! Any who want to feed him, feel free to continue...to play your music and beat your chests wailing. I didn't come to extiguish anyone, but to brighten up and fan the flame of truth. And from my teacher and his teachings, I don't have to spill one drop of blood to do it.
Comment by Jeff on June 29, 2009 at 11:27am
AND Henry Kissinger's quote is apropos here, just PERFECT:

"Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy"
Comment by illuminated-dj on June 29, 2009 at 11:10am
9/11 was inside job.bin laden is/was cia asset.afghanistan is about poppy fields and building a gas pipeline to caspian sea.
Comment by luggnutz on June 29, 2009 at 11:09am
From Silent Weapons for a Quiet War
The Draft (As military service)
Few efforts of human behavior modification are more remarkable or more effective than that of the socio-military institution known as the draft. A primary purpose of a draft or other such institution is to instill, by intimidation, in the young males of a society the uncritical conviction that the government is omnipotent. He is soon taught that a prayer is slow to reverse what a bullet can do in an instant. Thus, a man trained in a religious environment for eighteen years of his life can, by this instrument of the government, be broken down, be purged of his fantasies and delusions in a matter of mere months. Once that conviction is instilled, all else becomes easy to instill.
Even more interesting is the process by which a young man's parents, who purportedly love him, can be induced to send him off to war to his death. Although the scope of this work will not allow this matter to be expanded in full detail, nevertheless, a coarse overview will be possible and can serve to reveal those factors which must be included in some numerical form in a computer analysis of social and war systems.
We begin with a tentative definition of the draft. The draft (selective service, etc.) is an institution of compulsory collective sacrifice and slavery, devised by the middle-aged and elderly for the purpose of pressing the young into doing the public dirty work. It further serves to make the youth as guilty as the elders, thus making criticism of the elders by the youth less likely (Generational Stabilizer). It is marketed and and sold to the public under the label of "patriotic = national" service.
Once a candid economic definition of the draft is achieved, that definition is used to outline the boundaries of a structure called a Human Value System, which in turn is translated into the terms of game theory. The value of such a slave laborer is given in a Table of Human Values, a table broken down into categories by intellect, experience, post-service job demand, etc.
Some of these categories are ordinary and can be tentatively evaluated in terms of the value of certain jobs for which a known fee exists. Some jobs are harder to value because they are unique to the demands of social subversion, for an extreme example: the value of a mother's instruction to her daughter, causing that daughter to put certain behavioral demands upon a future husband ten or fifteen years hence; thus, by suppressing his resistance to a perversion of a government, making it easier for a banking cartel to buy the State of New York in, say, twenty years.
Such a problem leans heavily upon the observations and data of wartime espionage and many types of psychological testing. But crude mathematical models (algorithms, etc.) can be devised, if not to predict, at least to predeterminate these events with maximum certainty. What does not exist by natural cooperation is thus enhanced by calculated compulsion. Human beings are machines, levers which may be grasped and turned, and there is little real difference between automating a society and automating a shoe factory.
These derived values are variable. (It is necessary to use a current Table of Human Values for computer analysis.) These values are given in true measure rather than U.S. dollars, since the latter is unstable, being presently inflated beyond the production of national goods and services so as to give the economy a false kinetic energy ("paper" inductance).
The silver value is stable, it being possible to buy the same amount with a gram of silver today as it could be bought in 1920. Human value measured in silver units changes slightly due to changes in production technology.
Comment by luggnutz on June 29, 2009 at 10:59am
If any are meant for captivity, they go off into captivity, is any shall kill by the sword, they will die by the sword. I read my bible. I was taught about the big lye and I didn't buy it. If you can feel justified in invading foreign soils and terrorizing innocent people's with propoganda from Luciferians, if you can read what Henry Kissenger's opinion of you all is, and still beleive you are doing something positive and noble, if you think your corps on this great pile of sacrafice across the times of humanity where men have lived and sold lyes and changed nothing in the great scheme of things.....carry on. Who am I? 1: I'm no puppet who's been scared into justifications and reasoning MY HEART (YOURS TOO, JUST CLOUDED NOW) knows are not true. 2: I'm not a luciferian, and I won't fight for them. While you boys were taught how to duck and cover and rip babies out of people's arms, I educated myself on this whole lying killing system. You THINK you know enough...you THINK you are doing something righteous and positive. But all soldiers ever did in these last 2 centuries is feed a demon and his story line and soak the earth with bloods both innocent (theirs) and guilty ( all active soldiers in this U.N. scheme. You are just as insulting and belittling thinking just because WE AREN'T in the army, we haven't a clue of what we are talking about. But I leave most "Ohh Sooo Smart People" alone anyways. I have fought daily for humanity since before you even got exited over your first rifle, but unlike so many, I've never had to pick up a weapon, get violent, or shed blood to do it. But I guess after doing this for 38 years with great success and never having to join the Jim Jones Military Parade, you know more than me about this. Sorry boyscouts, excuses are like buttholes, everybody HAS ONE!!!! Someday you will stand in front of someone just like everyone else here before and now. And if you EVER read or learned even one particle of what he taught us all before his murder, you'd know your excuses won't work in front of him. Military.... a side of satan's system I could never be SCARED into, no matter how bad things got. Treat others how you want to be treated! So when the foreign troops come just now, remember all the hand slapping and patting on the back you guys did invading others for evil reason's. See how you are gonna like the same treatment back.
Lastly, I know it burns many to read, but truth and honesty don't change for feelings. I don't need a gun or government or money or metals to feel safe and secure about myself. Others do however, and that speaks to a lack of faith, and an ingnorance of history's lessons. Have any wars stopped Luci? Have any declarations or constitutions or management systems and political idiologies ? Nah! Instead, they all COME FROM HIM! You really wanna educate yourselves on who you are dealing with here, go read "Quiet Weapons For A Silent War". Read how Rothchild created all this current cash flow system out of an illusion , an image. Then closer to the bottom, read how they planned to break up the family and use propoganda to get the men to go sacrafice themselves in bought and payed wars using peer pressures and lyes and empty promises of glory. Tell us how it feels to read what they planned, and how all of you's as sons and duaghters have helped accomplish it, so that these freaks now feel they have the right to call ALL OF US (not just puppet soldiers) stupid cattle, steak on the table, and useless eaters. Actually do the 5-6 years of studying and reading and researching on the background of all of this. Because right now, you could write 20 2 page comments littered with words of reasoning, to those of us who have done the roving and scratching and searching, your speech just exposes compartmentalization and denile of truths we've already lived and proved.
Of course, you're perfectly free to continue on such paths, we all know where those paths leed...to cemetaries!

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