Iraq war veterans say discontent
growing among active-duty soldiers

Two veterans of the war in Iraq say they are part of a growing movement that will help end the U.S. involvement in the civil war and occupation. Camilo Mejía, a former Army staff sergeant, and Liam Madden, a former Marine sergeant, told UUSC staff and guests that encouraging soldiers and veterans to speak out against the war will be critical in the campaign to end U.S. involvement and bring the troops home.

Mejía said his experience in Iraq demonstrated the immorality of U.S. involvement and transformed his personal beliefs into those of a conscientious objector to war. After serving in the active and reserve Army for eight years, he became the first Iraq soldier to be prosecuted for refusing to fight, citing his moral objections to the war and occupation.

Mejía, a native of Nicaragua who grew up in a family of Sandinista revolutionaries, said the immorality of the Iraq War became abundantly clear to him when he was required to participate in the process of torturing prisoners.

“Our job was to soften up prisoners so the spooks (military intelligence and CIA) could question them,” said Mejía. “One method was to keep them sleep-deprived. Our job was to yell at them, tell them to get up. If that didn’t work, we’d grab a sledge hammer and hit the wall so it sounded like an explosion. Next, we’d get a gun and point it at them.”

“It became very difficult in this fog of war to make any moral decisions,” said Mejía. “Our number one concern was to get out of that place alive.”

Mejía was a featured speaker on October 12 at the second in a series of roundtable discussions organized by UUSC to educate the public and build support for an end to U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. The roundtable, “From Combat to Peace and Reconciliation: The Journey of Two Iraq War Veterans,” also featured Liam Madden, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq; UUSC President Charlie Clements, a veteran of the Vietnam War and now an antiwar activist; and Wayne Smith, manager of UUSC’s Civil Liberties Program and a former combat medic during the Vietnam War.

Served prison term for desertion
Mejía, who now lives in Miami, was three months short of completing his eight-year military obligation in the Florida National Guard when he was called to active duty and sent to Iraq in 2003. After seven months (two in Jordan, five in Iraq), he returned to the United States for a two-week furlough and refused to go back to Iraq, applying for conscientious objector status. In May 2004, he was convicted of desertion by a military court martial, sentenced to a year in prison, and given a bad-conduct discharge. Since completing his prison term, he has been a prominent antiwar activist, and is the author of Road from Ar Ramadi, a book about his personal journey from soldier to pacifist.

Mejía is the board president of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a nonprofit organization working to mobilize support for ending the war and bringing U.S. troops home. UUSC’s Wayne Smith has agreed to serve as an advisor to IVAW.

Madden, now a college student in Boston, had served more than three years and was opposed to the war in Iraq when he was deployed there in December 2004. He said his experiences in Iraq reaffirmed his belief that the war is immoral and illegal. He said innocent Iraqis are constantly at risk of attack by both other Iraqis or the U.S. military.

“The Iraqis have been accused of killing each other,” he said. “We created the conditions that make it difficult for them to live with each other.”

Clements described his personal transformation from Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, to service in Vietnam, to his refusal to fly missions in support of the invasion of Cambodia.

Clements said it was a trip to Iraq shortly before the preemptive U.S. invasion that brought him back to UUSC. He had served as director of human rights education during the 1980s and had led campaigns to persuade the U.S. Congress to help end the civil war in El Salvador.

“At UUSC, we are partnering with organizations that are on the front lines of the struggle,” said Clements. UUSC opposed the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and is a leader in the growing movement to end U.S. military involvement.

Related resources

To watch video coverage of the roundtable, click here.

To read UUSC’s recent statement on ending the war in Iraq, click here.

To sign the UUA’s petition calling for an end to the war in Iraq, click here.

To read UUA President Sinkford’s recent letter to Congress urging our nation’s policymakers to find the moral courage “to end this hopeless war,” click here.

Posted October 16, 2007