Bound, Gagged & Kidnapped ! ! !

April 20, 2005

The following statement is from Dave Blalock and Darnell S. Summers. Both are Executive Board members of the “Stop The War Brigade” and the German Chapter of “Vietnam Veterans Against the War (AI)”. Their message concerns the case of Blake Lemoine, Sgt. Hasan Akbar and all the other GIs who are imprisoned and persecuted by the US military for their Anti-War stand:

After serving for one year in Iraq, US Army Specialist Blake Lemoine was then based in Darmstadt Germany. As a result of his experiences he became a very outspoken opponent of this unjust War and demanded to be discharged from the military.

On March 28, 2005 at Courts-Martial proceedings held in Darmstadt Blake was given 7-month sentence for allegedly not answering the telephone while only days after Blake’s conviction Capt. Maynulet was dismissed from the Army, for killing a defenseless Iraqi man, Karim Hassan Abed Ali al-Haleji,with two shots to the head. Maynulet stated that he was only putting the Iraqi out of “his” misery,”It was the honorable thing to do.” Capt. Maynulet was slapped on the wrist. He was only “dismissed” from the Army and was quoted as saying “I’m happy to have my life back.” .

On April 10 2005, the Stop the War Brigade(STWB), the Military Counseling Network (MCN), American Voices Abroad (AVA) Military Project, Connection e.V. , and the “Kampagne gegen Wehrpflicht, Zwangsdienste und Militär” held a demonstration at Coleman Barracks in Mannheim where Blake Lemoine was imprisoned in the base stockade.Alayna Lemoine, his wife, spoke at the Demo after having talked with Blake. She related that Blake had told her to convey to all the people who had supported him his deep sense of appreciation and gratitude. He asked that people write letters demanding clemency in his case. Shortly thereafter, unknown to both his wife and his military lawyer, Lemoine was secretly transported to another military prison thousands of miles away to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The legal fates of these two soldierscontrast drastically. On the one hand Blake Lemoine is imprisoned after he denounces this war and refuses to participate in any way with the military’s death machine. On the other hand Captain Maynulet kills an innocent civilian and is rewarded for it—his Iraqi victim is reduced to only a sad and unfortunate occurrence of war. We are sure that with this incident listed on his job resume Maynulet will have no problem finding work doing “Ghetto Occupation Duty” a la Rodney King for the police departments of New York or Los Angeles. Along with this officer being freed there is a horde of high-level war criminals that still remain at large. No government has yet brought charges against US President George Bush and other officials who out right lied about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction and directed this unjust war which has murdered over 100,000 people—mostly innocent civilians.

On April 14, 2005 at Fort Bragg, N.C. the army prosecution rested its case against Sergeant Hasan Akbar, an African-American Muslim, who is charged with premeditated murder, which carries a possible death penalty. These charges grew out of an event that occurred in March 2003 at the beginning of the bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. Akbar is accused ofmethodically destroying an electricity generator, throwing grenades and opening up with automatic weapon fire into three command tents, of the Tactical Operations Center of the 1^st Brigade, 101^st Airborne Division, killing two and wounding 14. A fourth grenade entered the tent of Colonel Ben Hodges, the unit’s commanding officer, but did not go off. At the time Sgt Akbar was reported to have committed these acts in protest against the war and/or to racism in the Army.

For the past two years we’ve heard almost nothing in the media about Akbar. Now that his case is coming to trial we hear that his lawyer is claiming insanity as his defense. The people who he allegedly killed were planning murder and he allegedly stopped them. Where’s the crime? We know that for some this is a frivolous and rhetorical argument but what is that insanity plea all about? If people can describe the motives of an anti war GI resister as bordering on the insane and we acquiesce to their logic—then just how sane are we really?Was Oberst Claus Stauffenberg, a World War II German military officer, insane when he attempted to kill Hitler with a bomb that he carried into Hitler’s command bunker? No one would seriously condemn Stauffenberg’s actions and/or those of his co-conspirators, in fact they are immortalized in books and film(Rebellion of the Conscious).

A historical note:

As early as July 16, 1938, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, whom Stauffenberg admired greatly, then Chief of the General Staff, wrote the followingwhen he resigned following the invasion of Czechoslovakia: “Vital decisions for the future of the nation are at stake. History will indict these commanders (who blindly follow Hitler’s orders) of blood guilt if, in the light of their professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their conscience. A soldier’s duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience, and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order.” This view led Beck to join the efforts to remove and later to assassinate Hitler, and would cost him his life on July 20, 1944. What will be Sgt. Hasan Akbar’s fate? He now faces the Death Penalty.

There is some civilian support for Sergeant Akbar but there has also been a conspicuous absence of recognition from the broader Peace movement for his case. Even though it has shown a lot of support for some anti war soldiers with impressive websites and the like—the “movement” is ignoring other GI resisters and effectively stigmatizing them by their obvious silence. The question begs to be asked—WHY?

We don’t have all the answers but we would like to remind people about a little bit of history. As active duty soldiers during the Vietnam War we were both involved in the widespread GI Resistance Movement which had played a major role in ending that unjust war. This rebellion in the military included over 500,000 deserters…more than 300 underground organizations and newspapers…. It inspired Colonel Heinl to write: “The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States. By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.” (From: The Collapse of the Armed Forces, 7 June 1971, Armed Forces Journal)

The GI movement that developed during those times (60s-70s) was often unstructured and uncoordinated. It reflected a broad homogenized ideological spectrum ranging from religious pacifists, to anarchists, to Marxists, to Maoists, to radical Democrats. It included soldiers who took action individually or in organized groups. It was a movement spawned by the violent genocide we had inflicted on the Vietnamese people, the extreme racism and oppression that existed both in the military and society at large, and the lies perpetrated on us by the political establishment to justify it all. And last but not least, it was the mass Anti War and Black Liberation Movements along with the general rebellious “Fuck The System” attitudes that existed predominately among the youth throughout society, which had provided the moral and physical support for this GI resistance movement.

In today’s present war on Iraq America’s military efforts to subdue the Iraqi insurgents have been unsuccessful. In combination with this the developing anti war insurgency within it’s own ranks is expanding at an increasingly rapid pace. We are quite sure that many ghosts of America’s rebellious army during the Vietnam War are returning with a vengeance to haunt the present day US military commanders as they conduct their latest unjust war.

Today we offer our heartfelt salute to Army Specialist Blake Lamoine, to Sergeant Akbar and to the thousands of other soldiers who have courageously stepped into front lines of this new anti war GI resistance movement.

We pass no judgment on the tactics that they might use. No matter if they are “loud mouthed” adversaries denouncing the war—Or if they participate in a modern day “Search and Avoid” patrol—Or if they are a Conscientious Objectors—Or if they are deserters—Or if they go AWOL—Or if they out right refuse to fight—Or even if they are accused of participating in a fragging as was the case during the Viet Nam War with

Pvt. Billy Dean Smith—it doesn’t matter what form they use to express their discontent. Because, taken as a whole, all of their efforts are playing a significant role in building a movement that will bring an end to this unjust war.

Your Comments are welcome

We call on the broad Peace Movement to do the same.

“STWB”

“They can’t burn us, so they shut us up.”

Alayna Lemoine Press Conference-Darmstadt

“The enlistment contract is a slave contract and unfortunately I found this out far too late.”

Blake Lemoine

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Bound, Gagged & Kidnapped ! ! !

We call on the broad Peace Movement to do the same.

“STWB”

Blake Lemoine