Marking the Anniversary of the Iraq War, Activists Cast Wary Eyes on Libya

The first U.S veteran of the Iraq War to publicly file for conscientious objector status joined local peace activists here Sunday to mark the war's anniversary while analyzing the brewing conflict in Libya.

Eight years after the Peninsula Peach and Justice Center shut down University Avenue with 5,000 demonstrators protesting the Iraq War, the group Sunday recruited about 30 people who braved the rain and filed into the the small chapel of the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Camilo Mejia was joined by the center's Ben Daniel and Paul George, who, after hearing Mejia's story, turned their sights on Libya, calling that fight more than just humanitarian intervention, but rather, a "third war."

In 2003, Camilo Mejia was four months away from completing his eight-year obligation to the military when his commander informed him that he was stop-lossed—a military term for the involuntary extension of active duty—and that his service was required until the year 2031.

Mejia was shipped to Iraq, where his first mission was to torture civilians so they would be "softened" for interrogation, he said. From there he went to Ar Ramadi, an urban city.

"We were working with a civilian population, where the only thing that separated a civilian from a combatant is that a civilian had a gun and was shooting at you, so when the combatant put the rifle down, there was no way to tell a combatant away from a civilian," he said. "Given the the inability to pinpoint the enemy, or a uniformed enemy, we ended up killing a lot of non-armed civilians."

Although Mejia began to resist some orders, he was afraid of being perceived as unpatriotic or "soft."  "Between the fear of dying, peer pressure, the heat and fatigue, it was very difficult to make decisions based on morality or my conscious," he said. "Decisions were made with the one purpose of getting out of there alive."

When Mejia was given an opportunity to go home halfway through his tour, he decided he could not in good conscious continue to be part of the occupation. He wrote up a "conscientious objector" claim, went public with his opposition to the war and surrendered to a military base. A few months later, he was court-marshaled with desertion and was declared a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International.

In 2005, after serving nine months in in jail, Mejia wrote a memoir, The Road From Ar Ramad: The private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia.

Meanwhile, on the anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, Paul George, director of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, talked about Libya.

"We still have two wars going on and a third war apparently starting," he said. "I think it is important that we remember the lessons of Iraq and the lessons of Afghanistan as we turn on our televisions and see the scroll across the bottoms of the screen that says America's newest war."

George said he believes that what is happening in Libya should not be referred to as a humanitarian intervention—but another war. "When we start bombing human beings who are in military tanks and carriers, this is war. I don't believe in humanitarian intervention, when modern warfare shows us that 80 percent of the victims are civilians. You cannot protect civilians by going to war."

Although the Arab League originally supported the U.S no-fly zone, after seeing the  level of violence the U.S has engaged in, the league is beginning to rethink that decision, according to George. "What they wanted was the protection of civilians, not the bomb-shelling of more civilians. It is a large, modern city, so it will be inevitable that there will be massive civilian casualties."

George also made it clear that the situation in Libya should not be considered a genocide, where there would be a legal and moral obligation for the U.S to intervene.  Unlike in Egypt, the revolution in Libya was violent, where people from the Libyan government defected and began to fight the central government with tanks and artillery.

"It would have to be expected that if you use tanks and artillery in your rebellion, someone would shoot back at you," George said. "We mourn and regret and want to see a loss to any civilian life, but this kind of intervention, this kind of massive attack with missiles, is guaranteed to cause more civilian death."

Ben Daniel, a Presbyterian minister and writer, added,  "People said this of Saddam Hussein, but we killed more civilians in Iraq then Saddam Hussein ever did. We are told that there will be a little death to prevent a lot of death, but we are actually causing more death, and that it what is happening in Libya; we are creating more death."

George also cited financial costs as reasons to be against the Libyan intervention. Right now, the U.S is paying $309 million to maintain forces against Libya, he said.

"We are projecting U.S firepower against a country that has not threatened us, that has not attacked us," George said. "This is our country attacking another country; we should have something to say about it—we are paying for it." 

Unlike the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the Libyan revolution chose to turn to armed rebellion, which was inevitably going to result in a military situation, according to George. 

"We should remember the lesson of powerful non-violence, where dictators in Tunisia and Egypt have been toppled," George said. " The biggest lesson to remember from Iraq is that you cannot drop democracy on a country or deliver democracy via a tomahawk cruise missile. These democratic Arab revolutions have to come from within; our interference, our intervention, our war, may derail an entire prospect for a new world in this region."