WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
|
Homepages: |
||
|
Army
Objector Heads to Canada By Patrick O’Neill
In so doing, Hinzman, 25, became the first U.S. soldier to seek asylum in Canada since the outbreak of the “war on terrorism.” On December 20, Hinzman, who was stationed at Ft. Bragg, the largest Army post in the nation, received orders to leave for Iraq. His unit—the 504th Brigade, Second Battalion of the 82nd Airborne—would be shipping out to Iraq shortly after the New Year for an indefinite deployment. Last year, Hinzman and his unit spent more than eight months in Afghanistan. When he left, his son, Liam, was just seven months old. When he returned, Liam was walking and didn’t remember his father. While he didn’t see any combat in that first deployment, Hinzman said, he had a bad feeling about going to Iraq. A member of the Fayetteville Friends (Quaker) Meeting, Hinzman said he felt he would have to do things in Iraq he’d regret. During his Christmas leave, Hinzman and his wife had discussed their options. He could go to Iraq—an option both he and Nguyen rejected. He could refuse the deployment order and face court martial and a likely prison term. Or he could follow a plan of action that thousands of young men like him had taken during the Vietnam War: He could flee to Canada. Option three was a go, and after three years in the Army, Hinzman and his family packed up their small car with a few essentials, abandoning almost all of their possessions. They left the post housing, driving straight through until they arrived 17 hours later at the U.S.-Canadian border. U.S. Quakers made contacts in Ontario, and the family was set up with places to stay until they moved into a Toronto apartment February 1. Hinzman is believed to be the first U.S. soldier to file for refugee status in Canada for refusing duty in Iraq. The Toronto Globe and Mail called Hinzman’s case “the first echo of the 12,000 deserters and 20,000 draft resisters who came north more than 30 years ago to escape the Vietnam War.” Hinzman said he chose to leave the United States because he didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t want to face separation from his family again. Search for
Meaning “I guess I just sold my soul for the college money,” he said. “That’s probably a little too blunt. I had this notion that, ‘Hey, I’m going to go and get paid to exercise, shoot weapons and jump out of planes,’ and that sounded real fun. It didn’t matter to me at that point. I was just young, and I didn’t feel I was really going anywhere.” Hinzman also admits he got in over his head. When he joined the Army, he said he expected Al Gore to be elected president, and September 11 was still an unimaginable horror. The Iraq war forced Hinzman to reassess his values. “It’s a political decision, which as a soldier I’m not really entitled to have,” he said. “But I feel that if I had gone to Iraq I would be in sense putting myself into a criminal enterprise and becoming a criminal because it’s a war—or an act of aggression, I don’t think it can be called a war—based on false pretenses in terms of weapons of mass destruction, the links to al-Qaeda and bringing democracy to Iraq. “Because if democracy was to happen in Iraq the Shiites would take power, and they would by no means be a friendly government toward the United States or its interests. So I don’t want to risk my life for that, and I don’t think the government should risk the lives of our country’s young for that or to line the pockets of big corporations. The obvious example is Halliburton. “To me, it’s messed up to go destroy a country’s infrastructure and then have an auction to see who can rebuild it. It just smells bad to me, and I don’t want to be part of it, nor do I want to kill people or be someplace where I wasn’t wanted. There’s a lot of governments and leaders in the world that we don’t necessarily like, but we’re not going there. For example Zimbabwe, we don’t do anything about Robert Mugabe. He’s just as bad a tyrant as Saddam Hussein is, but why aren’t we there? It’s obviously about economics. I don’t want to be a pawn in that game.” Hinzman, a native of Rapid City, SD, admits he was not a typical soldier. In addition to Quakerism, Hinzman practices Buddhism. His fellow soldiers were weirded out by his meditation regimen and his choice not to eat meat. For the most part, Hinzman said, he kept his political and moral views to himself, “although I won’t deny I was known as the liberal in a culture where everybody watches Fox News. “There aren’t very many vegetarians in the army, so that would open up a whole bag of tricks.” Hinzman’s peers would ask a logical question: “Well, if you can’t eat an animal or if you can’t kill an animal, how can you kill a human?” “They did ask those kind of questions and it did raise their eyebrows,” Hinzman said. “That’s one of the reasons that got me thinking that I was in the wrong place. If you think logically, that makes sense. If you can’t kill an animal, how can you kill a human?” Hinzman also felt uncomfortable with the army mindset that encouraged misogyny and violence. Particularly he remembers the indoctrination of the troops during basic training. During exercises, the new recruits would drill using macabre chants. “We were marching around chanting songs like, ‘Train to kill. Kill we will.,’ Or during bayonet training they’d ask, ‘What makes the grass grow?,’ and we’d say ‘Blood, blood, bright red blood.’ “When we would thrust [the bayonet] the drill sergeant would yell that, and we’d have to scream back. People would actually get hoarse yelling this crap. I could never really get into that stuff. Some people ate it up because I think there is an opportunity in groups to kind of let go of your inhibitions and do wanton things. ... “We’d sing cadences as we ran about going through villages and killing babies and stuff. It’s all presented, at least on the surface, as, ‘Oh, it’s just in humor, and no one’s around listening to it,’ but I think that really does put that mindset in a soldier that they’re killers.” Surreal
Life The military mindset also fosters a rejection of feminist and maternal values, Hinzman said. “It’s a very misogynistic place to be in,” he said. “Everyday conversation—it’s like a gangsta rap song, the way women are referred to by people you would never suspect of talking that way. “There is a lot of domestic violence in the army and marriages don’t work and women are objectified.” The circumstances required enormous self-discipline, Hinzman said. “I would have this constant dialogue with myself,” he said, “and sometimes I’d have to force it because when you’re around something enough, when you’re in an environment enough, you do tend to become a product of that environment. “For instance, I swore all the time, and I would have to make these resolutions that I’m not going to swear because that’s the first step on the road to losing your self, your autonomy. “It’s almost expected that you’re going to refer to women and the enemy in negative terms, objectifying the people you fight against so they no longer have humanity. I had to bite my tongue constantly.” While he would occasionally have meaningful conversations with his peers, for the most part, Hinzman kept to himself. “When you’re at work you put on your game face, especially as a lower enlisted person,” he said. “You don’t really talk about the moral ramifications of what you’re doing. Everyday discussion is kind of stultified.” In many ways, Hinzman led something of a double life. As a soldier in the 82nd Airborne, he never knew when he might get the call to go fight in a war he didn’t believe in. While many of his Army peers were hanging out in Fayetteville’s seedy bars, Hinzman and his wife and son would spend many weekends an hour away in Raleigh, the state capital, where they would shop at a health food store and spend time with progressive friends. “Aim High”
“The more I was in the military, the more I found that that wouldn’t be true, for the fact that I liked the people I worked with. I would feel like an ass if I did that and betrayed them in that way and not gave it my all in the heat of battle,” Hinzman said. “I knew I wouldn’t aim high, and that I [might] actually shoot to kill, and I didn’t want to put myself in that predicament.” So, last year, before his unit received orders to ship out to Afghanistan, Hinzman submitted a conscientious objector application to the Army. He did not ask to be discharged, but to be assigned to a noncombatant role. Despite the CO request, Hinzman was ordered to go to war. Once in Kandahar, Hinzman paid a price for his beliefs. When word circulated among the troops that he had filed the CO claim, Hinzman’s first sergeant decided to make an example of the soldier who didn’t want to fight. For more than eight months, Hinzman was assigned to KP, washing dishes in a mess hall 12 to 16 hours a day—seven days a week. “It just made me bitter,” Hinzman said. “I worked absurdly long hours for a long time. It was a lonely experience.” Officially, he was not told he was being punished, but that’s what it was, and he said he understood why the action was taken. “As far as [my first sergeant] was concerned, I said I didn’t want to soldier any more and that offended him. I don’t blame him. I think if I was him I would have acted harshly towards a CO applicant as well. I empathize with him. He had to at least present a hard line. You would just have to be firm because it would open the door for people who were contemplating similar actions, or for people who just didn’t want to fight, or didn’t want to play the game any more, to do the same thing. “If you show, ‘Oh, the guy who did this, his life is hell,’ then people might hesitate or not do it.” During an interview regarding his CO application, Hinzman said he would defend his camp if it were under attack. His honesty killed his application. The army might recognize the CO claim of a soldier who would never fight, but not one who picked and chose his battles. Hinzman withdrew his application when it was clear it would be denied. Last July, Hinzman was back at Ft. Bragg, and things started to improve. A competent soldier, Hinzman was assigned to be one of his company’s armorers, a position of great responsibility “because you’re in charge of millions of dollars worth of weapons,” he said.“I didn’t have to have my hand held.” Prior to filing his CO claim, Hinzman was a radio operator for his platoon, another position that carries a lot of responsibility. Had he reenlisted, Hinzman said he was on track to make sergeant. Life as
a Refugee In Canada, Toronto immigration lawyer Jeffry House is helping the couple apply for refugee status. Since Hinzman could be imprisoned for his stance, he has a legitimate “fear of persecution,” one of the requirements to receive refugee status, House said. “I believe that he would basically be punished for his conscience, for his religious and political beliefs. I don’t believe that his conscientious objector application was dealt with in any sort of reasonable way.” “On a practical level,” Hinzman’s chances of remaining in Canada are excellent, House said. “I don’t think Jeremy will ever be sent to the U.S.” Hinzman also has public opinion on his side. While U.S. citizens strongly support the Iraq war, the large majority of Canadians agree with Hinzman that the war is “contrary to international law,” House said. “There’s a lot of sympathy for him here.” House says there is no precedent for Canada deporting war resisters, and the U.S. is not likely to want Hinzman back. In the weeks he has been in Canada, Hinzman has granted scores of interviews and appeared on CNN. House said he has received dozens of calls from people offering money and support for Hinzman. “He’s kind of a poster boy, and the question, is will there be more?” House said. Hinzman said he does not believe he has abandoned his fellow soldiers, all of whom shipped out to Iraq in January. If he saw them today, Hinzman said: “I’d hold my head up high. I would have more to be ashamed about had I not acted on what I felt was right and [gone to Iraq]. Although I’m here, I think that would have been the easier thing to do because the odds are I would have come back unscathed. I probably wouldn’t have had to act violently.” Back in Raleigh, news of Hinzman’s story produced two scathing letters to The Independent Weekly, the area’s progressive alternative paper. One referred to Hinzman as a “deserting little weasel,” and another said he deserved a “life sentence as a deserter and traitor.” For her part, Nguyen, 31, says she’s just glad her husband won’t be going to Iraq. She was able to put some things with sentimental value in storage in Fayetteville. The rest didn’t matter. She and Liam will not have to be separated from Jeremy again. “I didn’t have any attachments to the other stuff,” she said. “I guess I was just happy that we were going to have this life where we were going to be together, and I was going to know for sure how Jeremy was doing. In Iraq, he might die.” Leaving the United States—especially Fayetteville—didn’t make her sad, Nguyen said. Life as a military wife has been riddled with anxiety during the war on terrorism. Wives would watch TV news reports and read The Fayetteville Observer every day to find out if anyone from Ft. Bragg had died. “They would list names and me being a military wife that was always constantly in the back of my head even though I tried not to dwell on it,” she said. The day Hinzman left, a Ft. Bragg soldier died in Baghdad. The January 3 Observer, which Hinzman never retrieved from his front stoop, had the headline: “82nd copter downed, one soldier killed in attack.” |
WRL Homepage • WRL Programs • WRL Literature • WRL Actions • WRL Employment • About WRL
n
January 2, U.S. Army specialist Jeremy Hinzman, his wife, Nga Nguyen,
and their toddler son slipped out of Fayetteville, NC, under the cover
of darkness and headed to Canada. 