Another War Reopens Trail To Canada

Taken from Sydney Morning Heald, 21 July 2007
July 21, 2007

A generation after Vietnam, an increasing number of American soldiers are evading Iraq by heading north, writes Ian Munro in Toronto.

BEFORE he deserted from the US Marine Corps, Dean Walcott had ridden shotgun on besieged convoys speeding towards Baghdad and spent a second Iraq tour setting up military communications.

Though he had re-enlisted and was in no imminent danger of being redeployed for a third tour to Iraq, Mr Walcott could not go through with it. He bought a ticket on a Greyhound bus and rode to Canada, joining a steady trickle of US enlisted soldiers seeking refuge.

Mr Walcott's life was up-ended in 2004 at a military hospital in Germany when burns survivors from the Mosul mess tent bombing were shipped in.

Some resembled nothing so much as lumps of coal, he said. As they screamed in pain despite the tide of morphine cascading through them, he tortured himself with questions.

"If you are going to do that to your country's soldiers and sailors, then there's got to be a damn good reason, not just the abstract like this one was," said Mr Walcott, 25.

He grew weary of trying to answer the young reservists recovering from the loss of limbs and wanting to know what the heck the war was about and why they were there when all they had wanted was what the recruiters had promised: help with a college education.

His time there was followed by eight months in Iraq, ending in March last year, when he asked not to be redeployed to the war zone. The tragedy for him was that his new job was preparing others to ship out to Iraq. "I put myself in a position where I may be safe, but I was asking other people to go instead of me."

Late last year he resolved not to do it any more and has had no regrets about joining the ranks of the deserters. He saw a military psychiatrist but has had no other psychiatric help since arriving in Canada on December 5.

"I don't think there's any doctor in the world can take away memories," he said.
Mr Walcott's route north follows a path worn decades ago by more than 50,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers and deserters. An estimated 250 have taken that route out of the Iraq conflict.

Lee Zaslofsky deserted from the US Army in 1970. Since 2004 he has directed the War Resisters Support Campaign for Americans evading combat in Iraq.

His group is in touch with up to 40 deserters or war resisters who are seeking refugee status in Canada, but he said there may be several hundred in the country.

"It was pretty slow at first; we would see one a month or so. I would say that it went up to a new level in the past year or so, since last summer," said Mr Zaslofsky, soon to turn 63 and financing the group out of his savings.

He says he deserted partly because he did not believe in the Vietnam War and partly because he did not want to put himself in a situation where he might join in something like the My Lai massacre "or where I might witness that and not have the balls to report it".

Mr Zaslofsky made a life for himself in Canada, working as a political aide and community activist. But in 2004 several deserters contacted the Canadian peace movement, and his war resisters group was formed.

The deserters he sees are mostly young, from late teens to mid-30s, of sergeant's rank or lower, and almost uniformly deeply disillusioned with the war in Iraq.

A Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, said he had spoken to 170 people hiding in Canada and estimated the total number of deserters at 250. "I can't believe I have seen every single guy up here," he said.

"Some don't want to go through the war resisters because they are a political group. Some people want to make the point about their concern but don't want to be part of a campaign."

Mr House said the basis of the refugee claims lay in the United Nations charter, which says there is no obligation on a soldier to take part in a war begun in or conducted in violation of international law. A soldier facing punishment for refusing to fight in that case is considered to be facing persecution.

"We have said that the US Administration violates international law, and condones violation of international law in relation to its interrogation policy," Mr House said.

At 21, Phillip McDowell, formerly of Rhode Island, was just the sort of kid George Bush would embrace. His response to the September 11 attacks was to enlist.

"I had just finished an IT degree," he said. "I thought I could do something positive for the country. I was thinking how we responded to this big event would define us as a nation."

But last Saturday Mr McDowell, Iraq veteran, deserter and one of Mr Zaslofsky's would-be refugees, was outside a church in Toronto canvassing support for the resisters and opposition to the war.

He would have gone to Afghanistan, he said, but was not prepared to return to Iraq. "I believed everything the Government told us about weapons of mass destruction, that there were links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. I was aware of the international opposition to going in, but growing up I always trusted my government."

By the end of his tour he saw the war as wrong, illegal and counterproductive, and was disturbed by the treatment of some prisoners. But he thought he was clear by the middle of last year when his enlistment expired. Then the army called him back.

With his family's support, he and his partner Jasmine took the Canada option in October. The couple have resettled in Toronto.

Mr Walcott's refugee claim was heard a week ago and he is awaiting the ruling, although earlier cases have not succeeded and are being appealed through the higher courts. Mr House does not expect Canada's Supreme Court to decide whether to allow an appeal against earlier refugee rulings before mid-September.

Mr Walcott is juggling offers for his computer skills while working in a sandwich shop and waiting for his parents to visit, since he cannot visit them.