What is justice when they go AWOL?

What is the right kind of justice for these soldiers? The admission from the administration along with the evidence has shown there was no need to invade Iraq. With that in mind, it was allowed by the UN and the Congress. Granted, the evidence and claims made against Saddam turned out to be false and the facts were not presented to the Congress, but they did allow it. What is justice when others feel the same way but stay in, do their duty and still risk their lives? How can we judge when it is a matter of conscience? What about those who have other reasons? Sexual attacked? PTSD? What is justice for them?



These two soldiers made the news today

FORT KNOX, Ky. — A military judge at Fort Knox has sentenced a soldier who fled Iraq to six months in jail. The Courier-Journal reported that at his court-martial Wednesday, Pfc. James Burmeister pleaded guilty to being absent without leave.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/ap_desertersentence_071708/

BOISE, Idaho — An Army deserter from Idaho who was deported from Canada is being held in a county jail in Washington state pending a transfer to military custody.
Pvt. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, fled to Canada in 2005 to avoid serving in Iraq, but was deported this week after losing a court battle to stay in that country.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/ap_long_deserter_071608/

But there have been many more. These are just a few of them

OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada is set to deport in June the first of possibly hundreds of American soldiers who sought asylum to avoid military duty in Iraq, a group backing the US deserters said Wednesday.Corey Glass, 25, came to Canada in August 2006 after serving in Iraq as a military intelligence sergeant.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFdsgFXBe9csevgyOxUipuylCUiQ


VILSECK, Germany — Deserting his unit the day before it deployed to Iraq earned a 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment soldier 11 months in jail and a bad-conduct discharge.Spc. Loren Barrett, of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry, pleaded guilty to two charges of being absent without leave but innocent to a desertion charge during the court-martial Tuesday.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51874


BAUMHOLDER, Germany — Capt. Robert Przybylski, the Baumholder-based officer who was AWOL for a month, faces an Article 32 hearing for a charge of desertion, though a date is yet to be set.Przybylski, through his defense counsel, requested a delay in the proceeding, which had been scheduled for Dec. 14, according to V Corps.
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51216

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. — Missing Army Sgt. Julie Stendahl has returned to Fort Lewis, Wash.Stendahl was supposed to be deployed to Iraq at the end of October, but she went missing on the Oregon Coast.Lincoln City police say she turned herself in Monday morning.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_missingsoldier_071126/

FARGO, N.D. — A Michigan couple was sentenced Monday after driving a U-Haul truck through fields in an attempt to escape police Friday after not paying for gas.
Christopher Powell, 20, who is also being held for the Army on suspicion of being absent without leave, was sentenced to 90 days in jail Monday after pleading guilty to misdemeanor theft of property, criminal mischief and fleeing police.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/06/ap_awolsuspect_062408/

LOS ANGELES - An Army medic who fled rather than serve a second tour in Iraq because he believes war is immoral turned himself in Tuesday to face a possible court-martial. Army Spec. Agustin Aguayo, 34, turned himself in around 6 p.m. at Fort Irwin, an Army base in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles, said Army spokesman Ken Drylie.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,114979,00.html


A soldier who served two combat tours in Iraq was arrested Wednesday for leaving the Army without permission more than a year ago to seek treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. Sgt. Brad Gaskins said he left the base in August 2006 because the Army wasn't providing effective treatment after he was diagnosed with PTSD and severe depression.


A 10th Mountain Division soldier who went AWOL claiming his commanding officers threatened to send him back to Iraq despite his listing as medically unfit for combat planned to surrender Friday to Fort Drum authorities and ask for an investigation into his treatment.Spc. Bryan Currie, 21, of Charleston, S.C., will ask Army Secretary Pete Geren to convene a court of inquiry — a rarely used administrative fact-finding process — to investigate top generals at Fort Carson, Colo.; Fort Drum, N.Y.; and Fort Hood, Texas, said Tod Ensign of the New York City-based veterans’ advocacy group CitizenSoldier. “Instead of prescribing one medication for PTSD, I was given a bag of medication and just told to take them all until I found one that works and just stick to that,” he said.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/03/ap_awolsoldier_030708/

An Army reservist who checked himself into a civilian psychiatric hospital after being turned away from a military clinic should be court-martialed for being absent without leave, according to an Army report. First Lt. Jullian P. Goodrum, of Knoxville, Tenn., is a veteran of both U.S. wars in Iraq and is being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Goodrum was also suffering from the disorder last fall, the time of his alleged infraction. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53642-2004Dec9.html

There have been two who received more attention

Ehren Watada (born 1978) is a First Lieutenant (1LT) of the United States Army who in June 2006 refused to deploy to Iraq for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Watada said he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. At the time, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as a Fire Support Officer. Watada is the first commissioned officer in the U.S. armed forces to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Watada's February 2007 court-martial ended in a mistrial when he argued that his orders were unlawful, because Military Judge John Head ruled that question can not be resolved within the military justice system, saying the argument was thus reduced to an admission of guilt. A second court-martial was scheduled but was stayed in October, 2007 by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle, who issued an order stating that Watada's "double jeopardy claim is meritorious" and no evidence that it lacks merit was presented. The Army is challenging the injunction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada

Suzanne Swift (July 15, 1984 - ) is a Specialist in the United States Army. She is most noted for going AWOL from the Army when she received new orders to deploy to Iraq, after her charges of sexual assault from her first deployment had continued to go unanswered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Swift

As of March 2007

NEW YORK: A total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the army last year, or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures from the U.S. army.
The new calculations by the army, which had about 500,000 active-duty troops at the end of 2006, significantly alter the annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year.
In 2005, for example, the army now says 2,543 soldiers deserted, not the 2,011 it had reported. For some earlier years, the desertion numbers were revised downward.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/23/america/web-0323army.php

Scotland has their own problems with this

Exclusive: Army crisis as 615 Scots soldiers go AWOL or off sick
Jul 11 2008 By Stephen Stewart
A SHOCKING 615 Scots soldiers, more than an entire battalion, are AWOL or off sick. The number of troops absent without leave or unfit to fight has soared by almost 25 per cent in just a year. The grim figures reveal the depth of the manpower crisis in the Royal Regiment of Scotland. And they add to growing fears that the pressure of manning two deadly fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan is pushing the Army to breaking point. The Daily Record used Freedom of Information laws to obtain the absence and sickness figures from the Ministry of Defence. We were told that 360 troops from Scotland's regiment were AWOL and 255 had been signed off by medics.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/07/11/exclusive-army-crisis-as-615-scots-soldiers-go-awol-or-off-sick-86908-20639190/

When AWOL comes with PTSD, what's the right answer and the right justice? There are so many questions the media could be asking, but no one is bothering. How can it be justice when a soldier is sexually assaulted and felt forced to avoid going back? How can it be justice when a soldier wounded by PTSD, seeks treatment and is then forced to go back into combat?

When stories make the news, like the two stories in the first part of this, come to the attention of the pubic, the stories are allowed to die from memory without any kind of investigation into the reasons behind these. Do we even care? Do we really care about any of them when no one is doing any follow ups, asking questions, interviewing the families, asking the military brass what they are doing about any of this? Don't they deserve more than just a few headlines? It's bad enough when a soldier reaches the point where they are willing to risk jail in order to not deploy, but when it comes to valid reasons behind it, especially when they have PTSD, it cannot be dismissed.

Female soldiers, like Suzanne Swift have reasons to not go back when they are sexually assaulted, yet the reports still come out this is still happening to female soldiers as well as citizen soldiers in the National Guards and Reserves. When it's gotten so bad that females deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan stop drinking fluids early in the day to avoid having to use the latrine at night, risking dehydration, to avoid being attacked by their own units, something has to be done. This cannot be allowed to drop from our own conscience and should not be dropped from reporting unless and until these problems are addressed. It's not justice. It's ambivalence.

Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington