Courage to Resist (CTR) is an organization in the San Francisco, CA area and beyond formed during the early part of the Iraq War (often called the 2nd Iraq war) which began in 2003. CTR's mission is to support U.S military war resisters, including helping them with legal fees such as well-known resisters Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner. In 2018, CTR began encouraging soldiers to resist at detention camps and other immigrant operations of the U.S. military. CTR's principle slogans are “Supporting the troops who refuse to fight!” and "Towards a World Without War!" They support those “who face consequences for acting on conscience, in opposition to illegal wars, occupations, [and] the policies of empire”.
The Iraq War began amid controversy of Iraq's possessing “weapons of mass destruction”. According to French academic Dominique Reynié, between 3 January and 12 April 2003, 36 million people globally took part in almost 3,000 protests against war in Iraq, with demonstrations on 15 February 2003 being the largest.[1] Resistance also occurred in the U.S. military. On April 1, 2003 Stephen E. Funk, a U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Reservist held a press conference outside the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside, CA publicly announcing his refusal to participate in the war.[2] Like minded civilians and veterans of earlier wars stepped forward to support Funk. As other soldiers refused orders and faced courts-martial, a broader support organization was needed for their defense. Courage to Resist was formed to help fill that need.[3]
Jeff Paterson
Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson refused to board military aircraft in Hawaii en route to Persian Gulf on August 7, 1990.
One of Funk's early supporters was Jeff Paterson, a former Marine who was the first soldier to publicly refuse orders to the 1st Iraq War in 1990. Paterson had been a Marine for five years and was on the verge of returning to civilian life when his discharge was cancelled in lieu of orders for deployment to the Persian Gulf. On August 7, 1990, as his unit boarded an aircraft in Hawaii, he sat down on the tarmac and refused to move. A week later he held a press conference where he stated, “I will not be a pawn in America’s power plays for profit and oil in the Middle East”.[4][5][6] Paterson was a CTR founding member and has served for many years as the Project Director.[7]
Opposition to the Iraq War
CTR supported several early and later public resisters to the Iraq War, including Army Staff Sergeants Camilo Mejia and Kevin Benderman, Navy Petty Officer Pablo Paredes, Army medic Agustin Aguayo, Private First Class Robin Long, and Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada.[8][9][10][11][12][13] CTR support was in the form of funding public support and legal defense, staging rallies near military bases where resisters were being court martialed and at military recruiting stations, and participated in national days of actions to oppose the Iraq War and support resisters.[14][15]
CTR members traveled to Israel and Palestine to meet with former Israeli soldiers about their experiences “carrying out acts of brutality and occupation” and decided to support resistance to the Israeli military. In 2008 they were instrumental in issuing a statement signed by 26 U.S. military soldiers and veterans who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, which supported Israeli Shministim (Hebrew for “12th graders”) who were also resisting military service.[18] In 2018 they supported Tamar Ze’evi, a 15-year-old who spent 115 days in jail for refusing to enlist in the Israeli army.[19]
Chelsea Manning Support
Activists March for Bradley Manning at the 2011 San Francisco Pride Parade.
In April 2010 a video showing a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed eleven unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees, and seriously wounded two children was released by WikiLeaks and quickly spread via the Internet and news media. On May 27, 2010, Chelsea Manning was arrested and charged with espionage and “aiding the enemy”. Within days of Manning's arrest, CTR joined with others to defend her and help raise money for her defense. On August 21, 2013 she was sentenced 35 years in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. This was the longest sentence ever given to a whistleblower and was widely criticized.[20][21] Throughout the trial and the 7 years Manning served in Leavenworth prison, CTR defended her and provided financial support through the Chelsea Manning Support Network. Manning's lead defense attorney, David Coombs, credited CTR directly for her early release: “If not for the efforts of Jeff Paterson and the Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist, there’s no way that a president would spend the political capital to grant a commutation”.[22] Manning said on the NBCToday show that she "would especially like to thank Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network for their tireless efforts in raising awareness for my case and providing for my legal representation."
Counter-Recruiting
CTR focuses some of its efforts to counter U.S. military recruiting, including the efforts of the military to influence and recruit youth. CTR organized a demonstration and vigils outside military recruiting centers, and on one occasion, forced a Marine recruiting center to close for several hours.[23][24] They use materials such as those produced by the Stop Recruiting Kids campaign.
Reality Winner Support
Reality Winner, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and military contractor, was arrested on June 3, 2017 and charged under the Espionage Act with leaking a National Security Agency report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections to the news website The Intercept.[25] After her arrest, CTR began a campaign demanding the charges against her be dropped. CTR coordinated the formation of the Stand With Reality support committee that noted “the charge against Winner is grossly disproportionate to her alleged offense, and is designed to create a chilling effect on investigative journalism by dissuading sources from sharing information that is critical to the public interest.”[26][27] On August 23, 2018 Winner received a sentence of 5 Years in prison.[28] Since her conviction, CTR has joined with others to call for Winner's pardon or the commuting of her sentence to time served.
Immigrants
CTR's most recent campaign opposes the use of U.S. military personnel in immigrant detention camps and on U.S. borders. CTR produced materials encouraging soldiers to resist the “illegal” orders in relation to immigration and they support GIs who have publicly resisted. For example, they support U.S. Army Captain Brittany DeBarros's uses social media and public statements to voice her opposition to the military's immigrant related deployments. She stated, “I didn’t take an oath to defend illegal war abroad and immigrant concentration camps at home. True leaders refuse illegal and immoral orders.”[29][30]
↑ Philipps, Dave (2018-08-23). "Reality Winner, Former N.S.A. Translator, Gets More Than 5 Years in Leak of Russian Hacking Report". The New York Times.
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–industrial complex due to a crisis of conscience. In some countries, conscientious objectors are assigned to an alternative civilian service as a substitute for conscription or military service.
Citizens of Israel have refused to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or have disobeyed orders on the grounds of pacifism, antimilitarism, religious philosophy, or political disagreement with Israeli policy such as its occupation of the West Bank. Conscientious objectors in Israel are known as sarvanim which is sometimes translated as "refuseniks", or mishtamtim.
Camilo Ernesto Mejía is a Nicaraguan who left the United States Army during the Iraq War on conscientious objector grounds, was convicted of desertion and went on to become an anti-war activist. He is also the son of Carlos Mejia Godoy, Nicaragua songwriter.
In the United States, military conscription, commonly known as the draft, has been employed by the U.S. federal government in six conflicts: the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The fourth incarnation of the draft came into being in 1940, through the Selective Training and Service Act; this was the country's first peacetime draft.
Jeremy Dean Hinzman is an Iraq War resister who was the first American deserter to seek refugee status in Canada.
The War Resisters Support Campaign (WRSC) is a Canadian non-profit community organization, founded in April 2004 in Toronto, Ontario to mobilize support among Canadians and worldwide to convince the Canadian government to offer sanctuary to all U.S. military personnel who wish to come to Canada because of their opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
South African resistance to war has a long tradition, and a history that includes conscientious objectors, pacifists, deserters and draft dodgers, as well as those whose objections are based upon the notion of "just war" as opposed to unjust or illegal war.
Ehren Keoni Watada is a former first lieutenant of the United States Army, best known as the first commissioned officer in the US armed forces to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In June 2006, Watada refused to deploy for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, saying he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. At the time, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as a fire support officer. He was brought before a court-martial in 2007 which ended in a mistrial; the Army subsequently discharged him under "Other-Than-Honorable-Conditions" (OTH) in 2009. An OTH discharge is the least favorable type of administrative discharge from the Army, and is reserved for a "pattern of behavior that constitutes a significant departure from the conduct expected of Soldiers of the Army."
Stephen Funk is a former United States Marine Corps Landing Support Specialist and Lance Corporal reservist. He was the first person to publicly refuse to deploy in Iraq.
Officers and enlisted personnel, in the U.S. Armed Forces and elsewhere, regularly take an oral oath to support and defend the primary convening document and/or the supreme leader of the nation-state. There have been countless cases throughout human history where commissioned military officers and enlisted personnel—as individuals or small groups—have chosen to question and disobey the orders of their superior officers or the supreme leader of the state.
Agustín Aguayo is a veteran of the Iraq War. After several failed attempts to attain conscientious objector status, he deserted his unit in Germany in September 2006 to avoid redeployment to Iraq. He was convicted of desertion by a court martial March 6, 2007 and served six months in prison. His trial led Amnesty International to declare him a prisoner of conscience.
Robin Long is one of several U.S. Army deserters who sought asylum in Canada because of his opposition to the Iraq War and became the first of those to be deported to the United States after being rejected for refugee status. He was deported from Canada on July 15, 2008.
During the Iraq War, which began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there were United States military personnel who refused to participate, or continue to participate, in that specific war. Their refusal meant that they faced the possibility of punishment in the United States according to Article 85 of the US Uniform Code of Military Justice. For that reason some of them chose to go to Canada as a place of refuge. The choice of these US Iraq War resisters to go to Canada has led to considerable debate in Canada's society, press, legal arenas, and political arenas. Much of the debate on this issue has been due to the controversial nature of the Iraq War itself. Among the many elements of that debate are Canada's relationship to the Iraq War, and Canada's relationship to the US, its largest trading partner.
A war resister is a person who resists war. The term can mean several things: resisting participation in all war, or a specific war, either before or after enlisting in, being inducted into, or being conscripted into a military force.
Naser Jason Abdo is an American former United States Army private first class who was arrested in 2011 for attempting to commit a terrorist attack against a restaurant frequented by soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas. He was convicted in federal court and sentenced to two consecutive life terms, plus 60 years, which he is currently serving in ADX Florence.
Kimberly Rivera is an Iraq War resister and former U.S. Army Private First Class who went AWOL in February 2007 after a year of service. She was the first female U.S. military deserter to flee to Canada. She was deported from Canada on September 20, 2012, and pleaded guilty to desertion, receiving a sentence of ten months' imprisonment and a bad-conduct discharge. Amnesty International objected to her detention and designated her a prisoner of conscience.
Yesh Gvul is an Israeli movement founded in 1982 at the outbreak of the Lebanon War, by combat veterans who refused to serve in Lebanon. Yesh Gvul's campaign of selective refusal is credited with contributing to the Israeli government's decision to withdraw from south Lebanon.
The Insubordinate movement was a mass antimilitarist movement of civil disobedience to compulsory military service in Spain, the movement lasting from the early 1970s until the abolition of conscription on 31 December 2001.
Mesarvot is an Israeli organisation supporting conscientious objectors in their total refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The organisation exists since 2015 and provides a network for public attention and legal support of youth refusing to join the army and former conscientious objectors.
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