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NEWS & LETTERS,
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2003
U.S. military resisters speak against Iraq war
Oakland, Cal.--Stephen Funk, a Filipino-American, joined
the Marine Corps reserves a year ago, but soon realized it was not for him. He
applied for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. On July 29 he spoke to more than
50 mostly high school Asian youth to try to convince them to not fall for
military propaganda. He said he joined because he felt alienated. As part of
Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program, which mandates that school
districts give contact information for high school youth to military recruiters,
he kept being pursued by recruiters. He was invited to go to an obstacle course,
which sounded like fun. “They sold me on things like leadership, money for
school, teamwork, and I joined. “The training was intensive. We had to shout out
‘kill’ constantly. You get in trouble if you were not real aggressive, real
violent. I talked to the chaplain and he told me not to think about it, just go
along with the program. They never told me about the CO status, which was really
irresponsible. So I went public [with my application for CO]. I held a press
conference in April so that other people who enlisted would know what their
options were. Many people think that CO status went out with the draft. There
are people I know who would file if they knew about it.” After his court martial in September for desertion he faces
a possible year in prison and a bad conduct discharge. The military is punishing
him for going public. All other CO’s have been released already. When a youth asked if there is any reason to join the
military, Stephen said that most people don’t re-enlist because it's not a
good place to be. “You lose all individuality, all sense of who you are.” The following day there was a fundraiser for his legal
defense. The hall was overflowing with more than 100 supporters. Several other
resisters spoke. Edward Hasbook was a high-profile non-registrant during the
brief time President Carter tried to force young men to register for the draft.
He said that people make the choice not to participate in the military at all
stages, from refusing to register to refusing orders on the battlefield. The
real victory is having people refuse to participate in wars. Eric Larsen was a CO during the first Gulf War. He spent
six months in the military brig for his decision not to fight. He initially
faced the death penalty, and he credited people organizing for his defense with
the much lighter sentence he actually got. He urged support now for Stephen Funk
and many others who are questioning what they are doing in Iraq. Aimee Allison signed up at age 17. She wanted to go to
college to be a doctor and was assigned to be a medic. Medics learn to triage by
who is least injured, because it helps put the soldiers back in fighting units.
It felt wrong. She was told to give seriously injured soldiers a shot of
morphine and let them die. When her unit was called to the Gulf War to deal with
an alarming rash of suicides, she asked herself if she was willing to kill for
President Bush (the elder). She was not. Jeff Patterson joined the Marines in ‘86 when he was 18.
He says he didn’t know much. He saw TOP GUN and military ads. It was not until
he was sent to Korea and Okinawa that he found out what the Marines did. When he
refused to go to Iraq in 1990, he faced five years in prison for “making
disloyal statements” among other charges. It was pressure from outside that
made the military realize it would be better for them to discharge him than to
keep trying to punish him. During the discussion Stephen Funk added that aversion to
killing is core to being human. While he admitted to being gay on his CO
application, he chose not to make that the grounds he was asking for discharge,
because it would have been dishonest. He wanted to tell the truth about not
wanting to kill. He decided to go public with his decision after he spoke to a
meeting of youth organized by the ACLU, who had good questions that he thought
deserved more attention. He urged getting “No Child Left Behind” out of
schools as the first priority. To read more about Stephen Funk visit www.notinourname.net/funk.
For his legal defense, send checks payable to Stephen Funk Legal Defense Fund,
1230 Market Street #111, San Francisco, CA. 94102 --David Mizuno’Oto and Urszula Wislanka |
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