[NYTr] Iraq: When AWOL Is the Only Escape -- A Patriot's Story

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Alternet - Nov 20, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/68192/

When AWOL Is the Only Escape -- A Patriot's Story

By Sarah Olson

James Circello sat on the edge of his bed staring at the floral pattern
on a generic hotel comforter, contemplating what life would be like in
prison. It was early August, and his parents had given him a one-way
bus ticket to Lawton, Okla., and told him he was welcome home once he
got his life together. U.S. Army Sergeant Circello had been AWOL since
April, and with just a few dollars left in his wallet and a dying cell
phone battery, he saw two options: turn himself in to military
authorities at Ft. Sill, or get the next bus out of town and join
hundreds of anti-war veterans convening in St. Louis, Mo.

James was a patriot, and after Sept. 11, joined the Army to defend his
country. By 2002 James was in Italy, assigned to the 173rd Airborne
Infantry Brigade. The 173rd deployed to Iraq between March 2003 and
2004. Facing redeployment last April, this time to Afghanistan, James
asked himself if he could tolerate replicating the disaster he'd been
part of in Iraq. When he answered no, a friend drove him to the
airport, he flew to the United States and has been AWOL ever since.

Contemplating life in his Oklahoma hotel room, James realized he didn't
go AWOL to avoid a second tour of duty. He wanted to help stop the war,
and how better to do that than join with the hundreds of other veterans
now opposing the Iraq war? So James grabbed his Army-issued green
duffle bag and headed for the Greyhound station. He boarded a bus to
take him south to the banks of the Mississippi River and joined an
international community of veterans working to put an end to war.

James joins a growing number of disillusioned and newly politicized
Iraq War veterans. According to an Associated Press report released
last week, the number of AWOL Army soldiers has increased 80 percent
since March of 2003. The Army says 4,698 soldiers deserted their posts
in fiscal year 2007 -- an increase of over 2,000 soldiers from the year
before. GI rights advocates say the number is far higher. Soldiers go
AWOL for many reasons, and the majority of them don't denounce the Iraq
war. However, an increasing number publicly oppose the war, even though
this could mean harsh punishments or jail time.

What turns a patriot like James Circello, who volunteered for military
service, into someone critical of the United States occupation in Iraq
and Afghanistan? What experiences turn someone willing to fight and die
for his country into someone who, in a recent interview, said quietly:
"It's disturbing when you see humanity fail."

Fighting the war on terror

"I remember the day kids started throwing rocks," James said.
Initially, Iraqis did welcome them, served them tea and called them
liberators. But gradually, James says they grew hostile. "Not without
reason, in my opinion," he says.

James can still hear the helicopters beating the air above the city and
see U.S. troops on every street corner in Kirkuk. The city was locked
down, the traffic going nowhere and soldiers were herding families into
corrals like sheep. That was the day smiles dancing on the faces of
Iraqi boys hardened. Boys used to run through the streets of Kirkuk,
chasing Jeeps loaded with American soldiers. They would run barefoot
through garbage and didn't seem to care when the streets became muddy
with sewage. "They were smiling," James said. "That was the weird part.
As they'd chase after our Jeeps, they were smiling." Sgt. Circello lost
his belief in American liberation at the same time these boys lost
theirs.

Even humanitarian aid was distributed with brutality and chauvinism,
James says. When the chain of command learned there was a shortage of
petroleum -- and without oil to cook, people were starving -- the Army
set up distribution centers where women were cordoned into lines made
from razor wires. The wait was endless, and there was never enough
cooking oil.

"It was hectic and maddening," James said. "U.S. soldiers would put
their hands on the women in line, forcing them to move, trying to get
them to be quiet and stand still. They'd stick guns in their faces
trying to threaten or humiliate them. I did it myself ... once."

In those early days, James didn't live on an Army base. His unit lived
in a house in Kirkuk. They didn't need hum-vees, because when something
happened in the city, they looked out the window. Soldiers roamed the
streets on motorcycles, and at first, security wasn't such a problem.

But things started going badly pretty quickly. When soldiers set up
roadblocks, if the driver couldn't prove ownership of his vehicle, it
was impounded. Unfortunately, the soldiers relied on a very American
way to prove ownership: They checked for papers. But the ubiquitous
orange and white taxis often existed in families for generations, and
no one had papers anymore. When they were stopped, American teenagers
would wrest the sole source of income for several generations of a
family from the hands of the family patriarch.

Coming home

When James went home to Lima, Ohio, his family didn't ask him about
Iraq or about being AWOL. They did offer to listen, but there was a
schism between James and his parents, who still believed in the mission
of the Iraq war. They didn't want to hear that their son had deserted
and was now living illegally in his childhood bedroom.

James is frustrated by how little many Americans appear to have thought
about the war, or even know that it continues. Even today, with the war
massively unpopular, James thinks politics is still defining the terms
of the debate, and people still seem uncomfortable challenging the Bush
administration about the war. "People say we have to stay because 4,000
soldiers will have died in vain if we leave," James says. "But what
gives their death meaning if we stay?"

Even though he has struggled with how to turn himself in for the better
part of the summer, James says he's not afraid to go to prison. His
goal is to raise awareness in the United States about the war about the
thousands of soldiers who oppose it and somehow to make amends to the
Iraqi people. He's terrified he'll go to prison before he can do that.

Struggling to communicate this message, James traveled from New York to
Ohio, Oklahoma to Missouri, Louisiana to Pennsylvania and many places
in between. He did this without renting a car or boarding an airplane,
because using his credit card would give away his location. James got a
job building houses in New Orleans, where he was paid under the table,
but most AWOL soldiers can't find work because they're wanted by the
U.S. government. James doesn't appear to mind sleeping on the couches
of people he just met, which is good because with the United States on
the brink of a recession, his precarious legal status also makes it
difficult to find housing.

As the Iraq War nears its fifth anniversary, more and more soldiers
oppose the war, and many more are AWOL. Soldiers opposing their own
government and the wars they've been ordered to fight have never been
popular. Dating back to the Revolutionary War, U.S. soldiers have
questioned the morality of war, and when they've acted on these
questions, they have been maligned by the civilian population and
punished by their government. Technically, the penalty for deserting
during wartime is death. Today, many, mostly younger veterans, are
calling for support of war resisters and trying to eliminate the stigma
of cowardice associated with deserters.

Supporting the troops

"Right now we're in the middle of two foreign occupations, and a lot of
people don't understand the sacrifice people in the military are making
or the reasons we've been asked to make it," says Kelly Dougherty,
executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Dougherty says
it's difficult to return from military service, only to realize many
Americans don't seem to know there's a war going on at all.

That frustration is compounded when veterans have trouble obtaining
everything from mental and physical health care to disability
compensation, according to Paul Sullivan, executive director at
Veterans For Common Sense. He says the Veterans Administration (VA) is
struggling to provide for the quarter million Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans it already treats, and this is already having disastrous
consequences for returning GIs.

Recent Army studies found nearly one in five Iraq veterans have
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD,) and almost half demonstrate
combat-related trauma of some sort. According to a CBS News
investigation, more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have committed
suicide than have been killed in combat. What's more, Sullivan says the
average wait for the VA to consider disability claims from injured
veterans is about six months, and this helps explain the 15,000 recent
veterans who are homeless today.

That veteran services have fallen into such disrepair indicates how
poorly planned the Iraq war has been, according to Camilo Mejia,
chairperson of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who, himself, spent
nearly a year in prison rather than return to Iraq. He says failing
services are just the latest example of how the government elects to
wrap itself in yellow ribbons and hollow rhetoric rather than
meaningfully care for veterans.

"How do we honor veterans and then send them to fight in an illegal
war?" Mejia asked this week as the country celebrated Veterans Day.
"How do we honor the veterans and then not speak out about their
service? We don't want to hear their analysis or their questions, and
we don't want to hear how their "service" in Iraq has changed them. How
can we go on waving the flag and talking about supporting the troops,
when we ignore the thousands of veterans opposing this war?"

Finding peace

As the country celebrated Veterans Day last week, James was again
contemplating life behind bars. He spent this week traveling from Baton
Rouge, La., to Washington, D.C., and then west to Kentucky, where he
says he will turn himself in at Ft. Knox. He says he's grateful to the
community of veterans -- from every state in the country -- who have
supported him and soldiers like him.

Just like everybody else in the country, it's clear James desperately
wants his service in the Army to be meaningful. The difference is that,
for him, serving meaningfully means changing the nature of the U.S.
debate about the war and somehow making amends to the Iraqi people.

On the phone from somewhere in the middle of the country, James says
he's ready to resolve his conflict with the U.S. military so he can
more effectively accomplish his goals. You get the sense that maybe he
wishes going to prison could resolve the rest of the conflicts he
experiences as well. Last week, James turned himself in to the military
at Ft. Knox, in Tennessee. Rather than going to prison as he had
feared, James was simply discharged with an other than honorable
discharge, which prevents him from accessing healthcare or the GI Bill,
but at least for now, James seems OK with that. Now he says he's ready
to start the rest of his life, much of which is likely to be shaped by
his time in Iraq and his experiences as an AWOL soldier opposing the
war.

[Sarah Olson is an independent journalist and radio producer.]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute.