The Greatest Gulf War Heroes: In Honor of Our Resisters
by Betsy Esch
Airplanes don't fly, tanks don't run, ships don't sail, missiles don't fire unless the sons and daughters of Americans make them do it. It's just that simple.
-- General Norman Schwarzkopf, West Point, 1991
...When Clarence Davis was nineteen years old a judge gave him a choice: Go to jail or enlist. Having spent the better part of his childhood in and out of a variety of juvenile "homes," Davis opted for the Marines. It was peacetime, the Cold War was over, the "threat" of communism had been exterminated and, besides, he already knew what jail was like. The Marines at least represented the possibility of skills, money and mobility.
Less than six months later, in August, 1990 the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait and the United States began preparations for the tragedy that would come to be known by some as Operation Desert Storm. Just five months after that, Davis was among the first 500,000 U.S. troops deployed to the Persian Gulf.3
After arriving in Saudi Arabia, Davis decided he would not participate in the allied campaign against Iraq. In a letter he wrote, "I can never support the same country or thought that killed millions of Native Americans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Africans, Iraqis, Panamanians etc. I can never support the same thought that does not include me in the Constitution that I supposedly enlisted to uphold and defend....I am not a Muslim but another reason for my refusal to fight came from the immorality of killing a Muslim brother or sister."
Davis turned himself in to his Commanding Officer; at that time he didn't even know he had the right to apply for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. Davis was immediately locked up and held in a military prison until his court martial, where he was found guilty of desertion and refusing to obey a direct order. Though military law requires that a civilian lawyer be made available to soldiers charged with military crimes, Davis was denied this right on the grounds that it was too expensive to fly someone in for the trial.
About the court martial he wrote, "Being scared was indeed the only prerequisite....imagine a full bird Colonel and three officers all telling you that you are facing death or a life of long hard labor and ain't nothing you can do about it. It was basically an experience that will never leave me." Some months later, Davis was returned to the States and sent to the brig at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, where all the Marine resisters were incarcerated.
By January, 1991 more than 2500 people had applied for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. In spite of the Gulf War's popularity, more people applied for CO status during the build up and war than in any other four-month period in the century. Though ultimately less than ten percent of those applications would be accepted, the intervening months saw one act of courage after another from the resisters -- who faced far harsher treatment than those who refused to serve in Vietnam.
In October, 1990 Army headquarters created a rule requiring that those who had applied for CO status be deployed even though the processing of their applications was incomplete. Even after Danny Gillis (who now goes by the name Kweisi Raghib Ehoize) had applied for CO status he was called up for active service.
Ehoize refused to board the bus that would take his division to the air strip. While the families and friends of young soldiers being shipped out looked on, Ehoize was beaten by two white Marines who tried to force him on the bus. Though he had broken no laws, Ehoize was handcuffed and taken to the brig by the military police.4
In a blatant act of harassment, Jody Anderson, a Marine who aided Ehoize during the attack but who then did ship out to Saudi Arabia with the unit, was arrested after the war and charged with mutiny, inciting to riot, assaulting an officer and disobeying a direct order. All told, Anderson faced life imprisonment plus forty-four years, ultimately serving two years in prison.5
Between the end of the war in Vietnam and the Gulf War, numerous changes to military law and policy had been implemented to limit the spread of antiwar sentiment and make it harder for GIs to resist. Troop rotations, leaves and discharges were ended (many of those who refused during Vietnam did it while on leave or rotation); GIs stationed in Saudi Arabia were strictly isolated from the Saudi people (one of the acknowledged factors that contributed to the rise of antiwar sentiment among Americans in Vietnam is that they lived among the Vietnamese people).
Policy included a refusal to acknowledge any resistance (reporters were regularly told that the rate of applications for CO status had not increased, though it had in fact multiplied exponentially); and the centralization of all imprisoned resisters at Camp Lejeune during their application period (making it nearly impossible to gather evidence and witnesses for their trials, or to organize mass-based community support.)
One of the most beautiful acts of solidarity in resistance to the war was the November, 1990 refusal by seven Marine reservists in the Fox Company, the Bronx. Twenty-one year old Sam Lwin, a Burmese-American student at the New School for Social Research, was the first to refuse. Joined by dozens of students organized into the group Hand Off Sam!, Lwin leafleted and demonstrated regularly in front of the Marine armory in the Bronx, eventually persuading six of his fellow reservists to join him in refusing.
Trinidad-born Colin Bootman was one of the seven. At a public speakout in New York he said, "My aunt, a leader in the New Jewel movement [in Grenada] was assassinated as a result of political turmoil. My family encouraged me to leave the Marines because they saw no future in waging wars."
Another Fox Company resister was African American reservist Keith Jones. At the time he began school, Jones did not support the antiwar and activist student organization at City College. After performing in two plays written by Vietnam veterans, though, he began to see things differently. "If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't enlist. This is insane."
Like most other Marine resisters, the Fox Company Seven faced severe punishment. Confined at Camp Lejeune in a barracks that was isolated from the rest of the camp (termed "the yellow barracks" by the pro-war Marines), the resisters had to stand night shifts while still working all day, were regularly strip-searched, told they were cowards and forced to scream "I'm shit" at the top of their lungs.
At Sam Lwin's court martial the government's key witness, Corporal David Patrick Conley, admitted that he had bragged that the last good thing he would do for the Marines before being discharged would be send Sam Lwin to jail for twenty years.6
Nineteen year old Marine reservist Tahan Jones from Oakland refused to report in when he was called up for active duty service in the Fall of 1990. After being declared absent without leave (AWOL) and charged with desertion in a time of war, which carries a death sentence, Jones became one of the most visible and active war resisters.
Along with the white Marine reservist Erik Larsen, who also faced a death sentence for desertion in a time of war, Jones spoke at antiwar demonstrations across the country. "I had an obligation to take a stand," he said. "I felt if I kept quiet I would never look at myself in the mirror again. Now when I look in the mirror I'm proud of what I've done."7
After being AWOL for nearly six months, Jones and Larsen turned themselves in during the Spring of 1991. The cruelty of the campaign against them was revealed when, after holding the threat of death over their heads for months, the Marine Corps dropped the charges. Because the United States had never actually declared war against Iraq Larsen and Jones could not be charged with wartime desertion.
Of course, this technical detail had not stopped the U.S. military from bombing Iraq "into submission" and it wasn't going to stop it from sending Jones and Larsen to prison. They then were charged with "desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous duty and shirk important service." Lieutenant Colonel David Beck (retired), a Marine Corps military judge during the Gulf War, remarked that he'd never known about this law but, sure enough, after he saw the charges against Jones and Larsen he looked it up and it was real.8...
We should take our cues from those who refused to serve in the Gulf, who joined the long tradition of African American resistance to the present in the name of a free future. The Gulf War resisters stood for the idea that they had the right to go to school; they had the right to refuse a war they didn't believe in and they had the right to the resources that they could only get by enlisting. Let us take our cues from them collectively, and from Clarence Davis, who wrote, "Next time let's talk about freedom -- all types."
[The full text is available at <http://solidarity.igc.org/atc/90Esch.html>.] ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
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