A Tale Of Two Trials

I heard about two trials in the news yesterday: That of Lt. Ehren Watada (Officer Refused to Deploy to Iraq) and of Scooter Libby ( Cheney Official Testifies at CIA Leak Trial ).

It wasn't the stories alone, but the surreal juxtaposition of the two, that rattled my mind and my sleep. In one court, a young man faces six years in prison because he believes the war to which he was deployed is illegal, was launched under false pretenses, and that his participation in it would make him a war criminal. In another court, the prosecutor skirts around the peripheries of the subject of the lies that brought us to Iraq by charging a Bush administration underling with perjury.

If these trials were shown on a split screen, we would see a young man facing a military court, unable to submit his defense that he cannot go to Iraq because the war is illegal (Judge Rejects Watada Motions The News Wire Tribune  ), condemned for "Conduct Unbecoming." On the opposite screen, Libby's lawyers persuade the jury that lying under oath was an innocent memory lapse.

If only these two trials were brought together, Lt. Watada could be brought as a witness before Patrick Fitzgerald to testify that he, his men, and the entire American public were brought into war because people like Scooter Libby were busy feeding lies to the press to discredit and then punish Joseph Wilson. That Scooter Libby is a small part of the cadre that created and promoted a fiction that has cost billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and the reputation of our country in the eyes of the world.

Lt. Watada might say that all of us Americans--not just he--are on trial for agreeing to go along with the consequences of this lie. All of us--not just he--must either refuse to allow this war to continue on false pretenses or stand guilty of its consequences. And that all of us are guilty of "Conduct Unbecoming"--by funding the lie, by sending more troops to defend it.

But back to real life, where, if Libby is convicted, it still won't lead to Rove or Cheney. And Lt. Watada will still go to prison because the lie that brought him and this country into war--the one that Joseph Wilson tried to debunk--will not have been proven. But his refusal to go, as 21,000 hapless souls are poured onto the battlefield, will remind us that it's all about individuals--one man of principle, one man without scruples, one soldier facing death, one civilian searching the rubble for one child that didn't come home.

That is why it is not all right to take the attitude that so many Democrats in congress seem resigned to:
We didn't want to start a war, but now that we are in it, we need to work with what we've got and not just hitch up the wagons and go.

In reality, every day that we stay in Iraq we lend credence to the legitimacy of our invasion and occupation.

While we stay, we imply that we are not engaged in an illegal war or committing war crimes.

While we stay, Lt. Watada is not vindicated for having the guts to refuse to shuffle his men into the charnel house because he understood this war was not to save us all from terrorism or to spread democracy, but because of a lie propagated because (we must assume) there was oil in them there hills.


To keep posted on Lt. Watada or donate to his defense fund, visit: http://www.thankyoult.org/