Should U.S. deserters be permitted to remain in Canada?

Sgt. Corey Glass is the 25 year old who voluntarily joined the American National Guard in 2004 because he thought he could help in disaster areas in his own country. "I should have been in New Orleans after Katrina," he has said more than once.

Before signing up, he should have looked further into what the American National Guard stood for. In Wickipedia, it says in part; “The National Guard may be called up for active duty by the state governors or territorial commanding generals to help respond to domestic emergencies and disasters, such as those caused by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.” But if you read further, and Glass should have read further, it also says; “The National Guard of the United States units or members may be called up for federal active duty in times of Congressionally sanctioned war or national emergency.”

Instead of being sent to New Orleans, he was sent to Iraq where he served for six months. Because of what he saw and experienced in Iraq, he fled to Canada in 2006, lives in Toronto and has became the poster boy for protesters against the Iraq war. His position with respect to the Iraq war is; "I didn't feel the war was the right thing to do from the beginning and I definitely didn't feel we should be doing this to the Iraqis."

He is right about the United States going to war with Iraq being a big mistake. President Bush (as I have said in an earlier blog) is not the brightest light that has ever been in the White House. First of all, Saddam Hussein wasn’t stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, despite what the CIA told Bush. Secondly, he wasn’t permitting Al Qaeda to get a foothold in Iraq; again despite what Bush was told. Not one of the 9/11 terrorists was Iraqi and al-Qaida was not operating out of Iraq as it is now. That being as it is, Bush had no right to declare war against Iraq.

At the time of this writing, it has cost the Americans over $570 billion dollars to conduct the war and the cost climbs upwards at a rate of three thousand dollars every second. Less than 2% of the fatalities in the Iraq war are American. If that 2% makes it a war for the United States, then the 50-times-greater death toll from Sunnis killing Shiites and vice versa certainly makes it a civil war for Iraq. It is believed by many that over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the Americans attacked Iraq. More than 4,100 American soldiers have been killed and over 30,000 have been wounded. The U.N. estimates the initial attack on Iraq could injure up to 500,000 Iraqis, create a million refugees, leave 10 million Iraqis without basic necessities and create an outbreak of diseases in epidemic proportions.

Many believe that the real motive for Bush ordering the attack on Iraq is that he and his cohorts want the oil that is under the ground in Iraq. This war may not have been about oil in the first place, but to argue that the United States is committing more than 300,000 armed men and women to the single area of the world sitting atop two-thirds of the global oil reserves without having oil on its mind is a bit of a stretch. A spokesman for Halliburton confirmed that the value of these contracts in Iraq is estimated at $900 million. While the Halliburton spokesman claims the company got the job because of its 84-year-long experience, the smell of oil, business and politics wafts in the air. More important, the department has signed up a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton Co., to subcontract that work. After Cheney leaves office as Vice President of the United States in January of next year, guess where his next job will be? It was certainly in his best interests for him to agree with Bush that the United States should attack Iraq.

I personally have mixed emotions about the war in Iraq. As I see it, the only good thing that anyone got out of it, and I am speaking for the Iraqis, is that Sadamm and his two evil sons are dead and that also goes for Chemical Ali who was a relative of Sadamm. He was the man who supervised the mass gassing of the Kurds who died by the thousands. Sadamm and Chemical Ali died by hanging and Sadamm’s sons died in gun fights with the American ground troops.

Although Sadamm was responsible for the war with Iran which resulted in over a million soldiers dying in that war and he was responsible for hundreds of thousands civilians dying, he at least brought stability to Iraq. As it is today, Iraq is slowly tearing itself apart with its civil war, something that wouldn’t have happened if Bush hadn’t attacked that country.

The Americans made another blunder when that nation attacked North Vietnam. That blunder can’t be put on the shoulders of Bush however. The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, or the Vietnam Conflict, occurred from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The war was fought between communist North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and South Vietnam, supported by the United States. The Americans were afraid that the Communists in North Vietnam would take over all of Vietnam. The war exacted a huge human cost as well. In addition to approximately 58,159 U.S. soldiers killed and many more wounded, 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, and 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians who were caught up in the war also lost their lives with many more wounded. And in the end, the Vietnamese Communists won the war and the Americans ran home licking their wounds. In active protest against United States involvement in the Vietnam War, many Americans publicly burned draft registration cards, risking imprisonment; others fled to other countries, such as Canada. In the end, President Carter forgave all the Americans who were draft dodgers during the Vietnam war.

The only war I feel that the Americans are involved with in this century that is a righteous one is the war in Afghanistan. In that war, they are fighting the Taliban and that group of Afghans support terrorism.

Based on the foregoing, I can appreciate why Glass feels that the United States was wrong in attacking Iraq. The U.S. attacks on Iraq and North Vietnam were colossal blunders and it did and is still costing the American people dearly, both in lives, money and their reputation.

What does concern me about the dilemma that Glass is experiencing is that if he joined the American National Guard on the promise that he would be used only for helping in disaster situations, the government was wrong in not using him in that manner. However, I doubt that when he signed his contract with the government, there wasn’t something in the contract stating that he could be sent to Iraq or any other country in which the Americans are in conflict with.

On July 10, 2008, Glass earned a small reprieve as the Federal Court granted him a stay of deportation while it considers whether to hear his case. It must be noted that, earlier, ABC News reported Glass is in fact not even a deserter and was discharged from the National Guard later in 2006. Supposedly, he faces neither punishment nor a forced reassignment to Iraq although Glass and his supporters are skeptical.

Glass is believed to be one of more than 500 U.S. deserters now living in Canada who refuse to serve in Iraq. Several have applied for refugee status, however none has been granted.

On June 3, 2008, parliament voted in favour of a resolution calling for the government to give U.S. war resisters permission to apply for permanent resident status in Canada. It also called for the government to stop deportation proceedings against them. This resolution is non-binding on the government.

And the Harper government now seems determined to send a strong message that Canada will not support U.S. deserters in any way. For example, another U.S. soldier, Robin Long, an American army deserter could be deported to his country after a Federal Court judge rejected his application for a stay of his deportation order. Long, 25, fled to Canada in 2005 to avoid serving in Iraq. He was arrested in Nelson, B.C., last October on a Canada.

Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant but so is Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the American government doesn't seem to be in any hurry to do anything about him, that is other than of course, to propose that more economic sanctions be put upon a people who must pay over 600-million Zimbabwean dollars for one loaf of bread. The reason for the United States non-armed intervention could be simply that that country is not sitting on a large pocket of oil.

Meanwhile in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki shocked the Bush government when he stated publicly recently that it is time for to set a timetable for U.S. troops to leave his country. While the U.S. government is negotiating with the Iraqis to keep its forces in the country on a long-term basis, Maliki and his parliament feel such an agreement would undermine Iraq's sovereignty. On that point, he is right.

Many Canadians believe that American war resisters should be permitted to remain in Canada as refugees. I am not one of them. I feel that when you sign up, for whatever your motive is, you take your chances like everyone else. And if you are drafted, then you have an obligation to fight in the war. If Canada was attacked by another nation, every man who is physically able to fight and is not too young or too old would have a legal and moral obligation to fight for our nation. We would have no sympathy for those who desert our country in its hour of need.

During the Second World War, 10,000 Canadian men refused to participate in the war as fighting men. A great many of them were conscientious objectors. (pacifists) Canadian conscientious objectors for the most part were willing to accept non-combatant roles during conscription or military service during the Second World War. It is conceivable that many of them were simply too afraid of being killed or wounded in battle and suddenly become conscientious objectors when their names came up in the draft.

As I see it, Canada should pass a law that if American draft dodgers or deserters flee to Canada, they should be returned to the United States on the condition that once on American soil, they will not suffer punishment for their desertion or for dodging the draft other than a dishonourable discharge if they had served in the U.S. armed forces.

An exception would be if they deserted under fire because to do that is to bring possible deadly consequences upon the lives of their fellow soldiers in the heat of battle. If found guilty and no lives were lost, then they should go to prison for a long time. If another soldier’s life is lost because of the desertion, the deserter should be sent to prison for life without parole.

If a draft dodger is evading service when his country has been attacked, he should be imprisoned in a prison until the war is over. If the draft dodger is a conscientious objector and reported to and stated so at a draft board when his country has been under attack, he should be forced to work in a non-war occupation in an enclosed camp and not be given his freedom until the war is over.