Reading his ill-informed garbage (which is an attack on war resister Ryan Jackson), you can practically hear him singing, "It's so easy, it's so easy, Yeeeaahhhh, So doggone easy, It's so easy . . ."
It's easy to call him an idiot but how much of his stupidity is his own fault and how much of it goes to a media system that doesn't give a damn about truth or history we don't know.
Here's what we do know. This is a presidential election, the illegal war is vastly unpopular with the public, and neither major candidate is promising anything regarding Iraq that matters.
Agustin Aguayo is a war resister who was court-martialed for desertion. If he was going to be court-martialed, it should have been for being AWOL since he was gone less than 30 days and turned himself in. But Aguayo signed up already having religious beliefs. He served in Iraq and what he saw there only deepened his religious beliefs. He filed for CO status. The military's 'judgment' was that they saw no way that he could claim religious objections to the Iraq War. The military decided that they were the judge of religion in America and that the rejected every religious narrative that says beliefs grow and deepen. That's a slap in the face to all churches in America and should have led to a huge outcry. Certainly, the stories of Jesus are stories of someone struggling and overcoming, someone who becomes more as a result of his beliefs deepening.
When Aguayo was told he was shipping back to Iraq, his appeal of the military's decision was due to be heard in the US Federal Courts. That didn't stop the military from trying to get him to Iraq -- telling him that if they had to put him in chains, they'd ship him over to Iraq.
Stories like these are stories Tremblay seems ignorant of. And it needs to be noted, with the military also turning down some CO applicants with the argument that they are not religious, religion isn't required to be granted CO status. But let's turn to another war resister, Camilo Mejia.
Mejia was stationed in Iraq. His contract had expired when he was in Iraq. As Chris Hedges notes in the "Afterword" to Mejia's Road from Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, "His commitment to the army was extended until the year 2031." He was stop-lossed. And some try to act like that stop-loss might be mad but does it really matter? We'd argue it's illegal period and that is our opinion. But in terms of Mejia, it is illegal period and that is fact.
Camilo Mejia was not a US citizen. Non-citizens, check the code, cannot be extended by the military. That's the way it is. And, when this point was raised in Iraq, and a call to the US was made, it was made very clear that, yes, Camilo has to be discharged. The 'solution' was to hang up the phone and say the call was lost.
(By the way, to repeat, Dalia Hashad, though called out on air by a guest when she made this point about Camilo's contract being extended, was correct and possibly people should read a book before attempting to tell someone else that's not what it says?)
Both Agustin and Camilo were prosecuted for desertion, both had been rejected in their attempts to be granted CO status.
That's current history. There are many other examples (such as Robert Zabala who is among the many who have had to go to civilian courts to be granted CO status -- a process Tremblay appears ignorant on). But let's go back in history to Vietnam.
What did then President Gerald Ford do? He created an amnesty program for "draft dodgers" and "deserters" which required that they jump through hoops and maybe get amnesty. It was a bad program. What did his clemency board find when they began examining some cases of individuals who applied for the program? Charles E. Goodall was the chair of the clemency board and on November 29, 1974, he spoke publicly of the findings. Some of the applicants were, he stated, genuine CO's but didn't know how to use the process. Still true today. And he stated that the military needed to improve their information systems to increase awareness. That was never done. There was another group he identified as coming from low education backgrounds who had trouble with the process and he stated, "Basically, these people just didn't know how to take advantage of their rights under our legal system. They just didn't know how."
When the military ignored the clemency board's directions to improve the awareness of the CO status, they fostered many of the problems with the process today. In 1974, the process was being called out, by the president's commission. And it was never improved.
Goodall spoke of another category and used one man (unnamed) as an example. The man was in prison. Serving a sentence. Despite the fact that he had actually won CO status. But he had refused orders to instead go to a hospital and work there. The man was a Jehovah Witness and his refusal was in keeping with his beliefs because the hospital would still have been part of the military. He was granted clemency by the board, as he should have. The 'judge' over the case that sentenced the man to prison should have found another alternative than imprisonment.
All the findings of Ford's clemency board were ignored and they're forgotten today. Just as it's forgotten that Ford ordered the release of all "draft dodgers" and "deserters" that were currently serving prison sentences if they applied to the Clemency Board.
Ford's actions were not seen as left and his program was a joke because it did not go far enough. Jimmy Carter would follow Ford into the White House. He would ignore "deserters" -- though, sadly, some recent accounts continue to get that wrong -- but issue a clemency for all "draft deserters." Yet both Ford and Carter were offering far more than anything we're hearing from Barack Obama. Barack the 'anti-war' candidate.
On the campaign trail in 1976, Jimmy Carter declared, "So for a long time it was hard for me to address the question in objective fashion, but I think it's time to get the Vietnam War over with. I don't have any desire to punish anyone. I'd just like to tell the young folks who did defect to . . . come back home, the whole thing's over."
That was Carter running for president, running and winning.
Where are today's candidates on the issue?
After Carter won the election but before he had been sworn in, December 26, 1976, Tom Wicker ("Clemency: It's Not So Simple," New York Times) would call for Carter to do more:
Two major categories is particular exactly reflect his description of young men who didn't know enough to dodge the draft or flee the country:
*Vietnam veterans with less-than-honorable discharges, all awarded administratively not in sentences for criminal action but typically for trouble-making and dissent -- refusing to be assigned to Vietnam, for example, or distributing antiwar literature. These "bad" discharges went to perhaps 790,000 Vietnam veterans and constitute a lifetime barrier for most of them to decent employment and equal opportunity.
*Armed service deserters, of whom there may be about 20,000, only about one in a thousand of whom actually deserted on the battlefield. The Ford Administration's clemency board found that of deserters appealing their cases to it, a fourth were Black or Hispanic, three-fourths were high school dropouts and 57% were from low-income families.
The plea would go ignored but it was made. October 10, 1977, Anthony Lewis ("Meaning What You Say," New York Times) would remind the now-president Carter of his words as opposed to what Carter was actually doing:
This past weekend President Carter signed into law a bill that strips much of the compassion from one part of the program he put into effect, as promised, his first week in office. The law will deny veterans' benefits to many of the ex-servicemen whose discharges have been upgraded under the program, among them some men who had long service in Vietnam and were even decorated before getting into trouble.
So all you little Barack groupies out there convinced that he's going to end the illegal war (when even his laughable 'promise' to pull combat troops isn't a promise as he told CNN two weeks ago), where are your demands? Or do you think cheering "YEAH!" every time he yells, "We want to end the war!" cuts it as a demand?
In 1976, Carter was forced -- all the Democratic candidates for president were pressured in the primaries -- to do something on the issue. Speculation that, as he left office, Ford would offer greater clemency or even pardons, only pressured the Democrats more. In 1976, the Democratic Party's plank included amnesty not only for those who "deserted" or "dodged," but also for civilians who were arrested for protesting peacefully. Written into the plank was that their records would be stripped of those convictions.
Exactly what does The Cult of Bambi plan to do besides get a little wet in their undergarments each time he speaks?
You're putting no pressure on him and he's already saying his campaign promises weren't promises. You're putting no pressure on him and he's drifting further to the right. (He's proposing tinkering with Social Security and some are cheering that on not realizing what's coming, "To have this step, we will need to compromise and reduce ___.")
You're a marvelous fan base, a great cheering section. But don't confuse yourself with the political class because, in the words of Stevie Wonder, "You ain't done nothing."
And you should also grasp that applies to the peace 'leaders' and Panhandle Media who are keeping this information from you. Only an informed public can make demands. Instead of informing what was once possible so that we can build on that today, 'leaders' and Panhandle Media go out of their way to hide the history which only causes each generation to have to 'reinvent the wheel'. It's a very Spinoza like 'progression' they advocate through their continued silence.
