Regaining My Humanity

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021705Z.shtml

 

Editor's note: Camilo Mejia spent more than 7 years in the

military and 8 months fighting in Iraq. On a furlough from the war, he

applied for Conscientious Objector status, and was declared a Prisoner

of Conscience by Amnesty International. He was convicted of desertion

by the U.S. military for refusing to return to the war in Iraq and was

imprisoned. Mejia was released from prison on February 15th. - to

 

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Regaining My Humanity

By Camilo Mejia

CodePink.org

 

Thursday 17 February 2005

 

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a

two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put

my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say.

People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took

me back to all the horrors-the firefights, the ambushes, the time I

saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own

blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun fire. The

time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he killed a child, or

an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky,

perhaps asking God why we had taken the lifeless body of his son.

 

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in

ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids, patrols and

curfews of an occupying army.

 

And I realized that none of the reasons we were told about why

we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass

destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We

weren't helping the Iraqi people and the Iraqi people didn't want us

there. We weren't preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I

couldn't find a single good reason for having been there, for having

shot at people and been shot at.

 

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between

military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a

war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a

war of imperial domination. I realized that acting upon my principles

became incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I

could not return to Iraq.

 

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a

human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the

men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country.

I have only been loyal to my principles.

 

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did

it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for

those who fired upon me-they were just on the other side of a

battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the

Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did

it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in

prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans

have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the

price Humanity has paid for war.

 

Many have called me a coward, others have called me a hero. I

believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have

called me a hero, I say that I don't believe in heroes, but I believe

that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

 

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are

wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are

wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I

admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing

innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to

survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the

process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter,

to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted

to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity

had abandoned me.

 

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I

commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to

accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without

knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war,

but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and

resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to

take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human

being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because

I was afraid. I was terrified, I did not want to stand up to the

government and the army, I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I

went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I

apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should

have been.

 

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them I say I am sorry

for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in

their hearts to forgive me.

 

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning

was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind

bars I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite

of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is

freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is

freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined

to a prison but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all

humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a

higher power, the voice of my conscience.

 

While I was confined in total segregation, I came across a

poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi

Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name is Albrecht Hanshofer,

and he wrote this poem as he awaited execution.

 

Guilt

 

The burden of my guilt before the law

weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot

and to conspire was my duty to the people;

I would have been a criminal had I not.

 

I am guilty, though not the way you think,

I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,

I should have called evil more clearly by its name

I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.

 

I now accuse myself within my heart:

I have betrayed my conscience far too long

I have deceived myself and fellow man.

 

I knew the course of evil from the start

My warning was not loud nor clear enough!

Today I know what I was guilty of...

 

To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray

their conscience, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by

its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and

resist, I say " come forward. " I say " free your minds. " Let us,

collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded,

put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves as human beings by

putting an end to war.

 

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