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Connecticut Coalition For Peace and Justice |
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On June 22, 2006, U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada stepped forward as the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the Iraq War and occupation. He faces court martial and up to 6 years imprisonment for his refusal to deploy and for speaking out against a war that he believes is illegal. In support of his courageous action, the Lt. Ehren Watada Campaign is working to educate and broaden the dialog on constitutional rights while mobilizing grassroots action to insure that our government upholds Lt. Watada's right to speak out and refuse to participate in illegal military action in Iraq.
Extracted From: [...] One generation ago, the peoples of the world asked themselves: Where were the "good" Germans? Well, there were some good Germans. The Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the foremost exemplar of someone who led a life of principled opposition to the Nazi terror state, even unto death. Today the peoples of the world are likewise asking themselves: Where are the "good" Americans? Well, there are some good Americans. They are getting prosecuted for protesting against illegal US military interventions and war crimes around the world. First Lieutenant Ehren Watada is America's equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Wei Jingsheng, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. He is the archetypal American hero whom we should be bringing into our schools and teaching our children to emulate, instead of those wholesale purveyors of gratuitous violence and bloodshed adulated by the US government, America's power elite, and the mainstream corporate news media and its interlocked entertainment industry. In international legal terms, the Bush administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany. As a consequence, American citizens and soldiers such as Lieutenant Watada possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the US Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance in order to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by US government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism. [...] Two charges dropped on Jan 30, 2006. For more information, click => here
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