Officer Faces Court-Martial for Refusing to Deploy to Iraq

First Lt. Ehren K. Watada joined the Army after Sept. 11 but says he will not serve in Iraq. I was still willing to go until I started reading, he said.
by John Tifner and Timothy Egan

SEATTLE When First Lt. Ehren K. Watada of the Army shipped out for a tour of duty in South Korea two years ago, he was a promising young officer rated among the best by his superiors. Like many young men after Sept. 11, he had volunteered out of a desire to protect our country, he said, even paying $800 for a medical test to prove he qualified despite childhood asthma.

Now Lieutenant Watada, 28, is working behind a desk at Fort Lewis just south of Seattle, one of only a handful of Army officers who have refused to serve in Iraq, an Army spokesman said, and apparently the first facing the prospect of a court-martial for doing so.

I was still willing to go until I started reading, Lieutenant Watada said in an interview one recent evening.

A long and deliberate buildup led to Lieutenant Watada’s decision to refuse deployment to Iraq. He reached out to antiwar groups, and they, in turn, embraced his cause, raising money for his legal defense, selling posters and T-shirts, and circulating a petition on his behalf…

SEATTLE When First Lt. Ehren K. Watada of the Army shipped out for a tour of duty in South Korea two years ago, he was a promising young officer rated among the best by his superiors. Like many young men after Sept. 11, he had volunteered out of a desire to protect our country, he said, even paying $800 for a medical test to prove he qualified despite childhood asthma.

Now Lieutenant Watada, 28, is working behind a desk at Fort Lewis just south of Seattle, one of only a handful of Army officers who have refused to serve in Iraq, an Army spokesman said, and apparently the first facing the prospect of a court-martial for doing so.

I was still willing to go until I started reading, Lieutenant Watada said in an interview one recent evening.

A long and deliberate buildup led to Lieutenant Watada’s decision to refuse deployment to Iraq. He reached out to antiwar groups, and they, in turn, embraced his cause, raising money for his legal defense, selling posters and T-shirts, and circulating a petition on his behalf.

Critics say the lieutenant’s move is an orchestrated act of defiance that will cause chaos in the military if repeated by others. But Lieutenant Watada said he arrived at his decision after much soul-searching and research.

On Jan. 25, with deep regret, he delivered a passionate two-page letter to his brigade commander, Col. Stephen J. Townsend, asking to resign his commission. Simply put, I am wholeheartedly opposed to the continued war in Iraq, the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect of our civilian leadership, Lieutenant Watada wrote.

At 2:30 a.m. on June 22, when the Third Stryker Brigade of the Second Infantry Division set off for Iraq, Lieutenant Watada was not on the plane. He has since been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with one count of missing movement, for not deploying, two counts of contempt toward officials and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer.

Lieutenant Watada’s about-face came as a shock to his parents, his fellow soldiers and his superiors. In retrospect, though, there may have been one ominous note in the praise heaped on him in his various military fitness reports: he was cited as having an insatiable appetite for knowledge.

Lieutenant Watada said that when he reported to Fort Lewis in June 2005, in preparation for deployment to Iraq, he was beginning to have doubts. I was still prepared to go, still willing to go to Iraq, he said. I thought it was my responsibility to learn about the present situation. At that time, I never conceived our government would deceive the Army or deceive the people.

He was not asking for leave as a conscientious objector, Lieutenant Watada said, a status assigned to those who oppose all military service because of moral objections to war. It was only the Iraq war that he said he opposed.

Military historians say it is rare in the era of the all-voluntary Army for officers to do what Lieutenant Watada has done.

Certainly it’s far from unusual in the annals of war for this to happen, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in military affairs at the Brookings Institution. But it is pretty obscure since the draft ended.

Mr. O’Hanlon said that if other officers followed suit, it would be nearly impossible to run the military. The idea that any individual officer can decide which war to fight doesn’t really pass the common-sense test, he said.

Lieutenant Watada conceded that the military could not function if individual members decided which war was just. But, he wrote to Colonel Townsend, he owed his allegiance to a higher power the Constitution based on the values the Army had taught him: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.

Please allow me to leave the Army with honor and dignity, he concluded.

Lieutenant Watada said he began his self-tutorial about the Iraq war with James Bamford’s book A Pretext for War, which argues that the war in Iraq was driven by a small group of neoconservative civilians in the Pentagon and their allies in policy institutes. The book suggests that intelligence was twisted to justify the toppling of Saddam Hussein, with the goal of fundamentally changing the Middle East to the benefit of Israel.

Next was Chain of Command, by Seymour M. Hersh, about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. After that, Lieutenant Watada moved on to other publications on war-related themes, including selections on the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the so-called Downing Street memo, in which the British chief of intelligence told Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002 that the Americans saw war in Iraq as inevitable and that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Lieutenant Watada said he also talked to soldiers returning to Fort Lewis from Iraq, including a staff sergeant who told him that he and his men had probably committed war crimes.

When I learned the awful truth that we had been deceived I was shocked and disgusted, he wrote in the letter to his brigade commander.

There were efforts to work things out, Lieutenant Watada said. The Army offered him a staff job in Iraq that would have kept him out of combat; but combat was not the point, he said.

Lieutenant Watada said he had volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, which he regarded as an unambiguous war linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. The request was denied.

The rules for awarding the ribbon, which also can be given to sailors and Coast Guard personnel, were written in an era when war meant firefights unlike the Iraqi insurgency, which employs roadside bombs and mortars and hides among civilians.

So the commandant of the Marine Corps has changed the standards for awarding the Combat Action Ribbon. Troops who “render satisfactory performance under enemy fire” can receive the ribbon, even if no shots are fired in response.

“Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terror represent a new type of battlefield,” said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commanding general of the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Changing the criteria, he said, gives the Combat Action Ribbon “greater relevance” for the kind of warfare Marines are confronting now.

Sattler, who commanded Marines during the battle for Fallouja in late 2004, had asked Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee to review the Combat Action Ribbon.

“Marines were leaving [Iraq] after having participated in combat action and were not eligible because the criteria did not recognize the type of the threats we’re seeing,” said Lt. Col. Jim Taylor, leader of the Marine Corps’ military awards section.

The first notice of the change came in March. Hagee announced the final rules, approved by the secretary of the Navy, late last month. Officers have until Jan. 1 to request that the ribbon be awarded to their troops retroactively.

So far, 85 Marines who previously had been rejected have received the Combat Action Ribbon under the new rules. The 85 were selected from 3,400 cases first submitted before the rule change.

In his June 25 message, Hagee said the improvised explosive devices used by insurgents were “the primary reason” for broadening the eligibility criteria.

IEDs have accounted for 40% of U.S. fatalities in Iraq since January 2004. As the U.S. mission has shifted from combat to the training of Iraqi forces, the percentage of fatalities in 2006 attributable to IEDs is 56%, according to one study.

The Combat Action Ribbon with its blue, gold and red stripes was created in 1969, during the Vietnam War. In 1999 the award was made retroactive for people who served in World War II and Korea.

Coast Guard personnel are eligible when working under Navy direction.

In his message to Marines, the commandant said that although the criteria for earning the Combat Action Ribbon had changed, the aggressive virtues the award was meant to recognize had not.

Hagee ended his message with a common Marine parting: “Keep attacking.”