After two deployments, Marine doesn't want to go back, could face jail

When Benjamin Lewis was 17, he joined the Marine Corps' delayed entry program, looking for a new direction in his life. He had dropped out of school and was struggling. The military seemed like a good option.

After two deployments to Iraq, and an honorable discharge, Lewis, now 23, recently learned that he might be involuntarily redeployed to the region. He's decided that he's not going back, even if it means facing imprisonment.

The road to that decision was a long one.

Back in California, Lewis's recruiter talked him into going back to school to get his diploma before heading to boot camp in San Diego. After three months of infantry training, he joined the Third Battalion Fourth Marines in 29 Palms, Calif. They deployed in 2004, where the battalion participated in the first assault against Fallujah, supporting front-line infantry.

After a crash course in Arabic, Lewis became a translator for his platoon on patrols. He spent a lot of time on foot patrols in Haditha, living for months with local policemen there, sometimes working long hours with almost no sleep.

"We were really just making a show of force, marching around the streets and making a show of our presence."

After returning to the United States following their first tour, the battalion was redeployed to Iraq in 2005. They operated a vehicle checkpoint in Fallujah for seven months.

"It was a very long and stagnant tour," he said.

He spent the last year of his service as an urban combat instructor in California for the Marine's Mojave Viper operation, where he realized that teaching suited him.

"That was almost like being deployed. It was 14-hour days. You'd get a couple days off every 20 days or so."

In 2007, Lewis was honorably discharged from active duty. He moved to Corvallis and enrolled at Linn-Benton Community College to pursue a dual degree in philosophy and English literature. He planned eventually to work with peace organizations. But two months ago, Lewis learned he was being considered for involuntary reactivation under the military's 2004 Individual Ready Reserves provision.

As a Marine, Lewis had made an eight-year commitment to the Marines, so although he was discharged, he was still eligible for redeployment. But in the year since Lewis had left the Marines, he'd realized that he did not agree with the Marine Corps' actions in Iraq, or with the United States' involvement in the region.

Last month, Lewis went to Kansas City, Mo., for muster, or formal military inspection. At that time, he and other Marines were told that they'd receive their formal orders within two months. Lewis is now waiting to hear the final word, but said he has long since decided to refuse to reactivate.

Lewis has contacted groups such as Courage to Resist and Iraq Veterans Against the War. He's consulted attorneys about what might happen if he refuses. He said he's prepared for jail time, if that is the result, but until that time, he's speaking out against the war.

"After being in the Marine Corps and joining up with the intention of helping people and hoping to execute those romantic ideals you see in the advertisement," he said, "once you're there you realize not only are you not capable of doing it, you're in an organization that suppresses any individual will to do such things."

Lewis started having these thoughts while training other Marines during his time with Mojave Viper. He said that having some distance from Iraq, and time to learn more about how the United States got into the war originally, gave him a new perspective.

"I was able to be more objective, and I was watching these mentalities," he said. "They started to scare me, the convictions that people had over things that were complete fallacies."

Later this month, Lewis plans to fly to Washington, D.C., to talk to activists there. He is trying to start an Iraqi Veterans Against the War chapter in Portland with a satellite in Corvallis. He's been writing about his experiences and his convictions. He's interested in talking to other Iraq war veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001, and he's asking them to contact him at corvallisivaw@gmail.com.

He's also awaiting his final orders, and he's dealing with the reality that his decisions could mean he'll face jail time.

"I made the resolve once I left 29 Palms that I would never go back into the Marine Corps."

As I See It

By Benjamin Lewis and Brandon Neely

On this day, Veterans Day, we would like to express to the American public why we, veterans of the Global War on Terror, have chosen to refuse orders to reactivate into military service. We are direct witnesses to the horrors of this war, having experienced its atrocities at their source, and we have decided that we can no longer carry out these illegal and immoral policies.

We believe that veterans and active duty G.I.s are in a key position to stop illegal and unjust war, and we are inspired by the resistance of troops who stood against the war in Vietnam. One of the pre-eminent reasons for the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was increasing dissent among the active duty troops stationed abroad and at home. By the end of the war, there were entire units refusing to participate in combat, many going as far as outright mutiny.

The U.S. learned a lesson from the Vietnam War: that it is unlikely, except in the event of self-defense, that regular civilians will execute the life threatening orders that are given to them by military authority. The solution of policy-makers was to create an all-volunteer force that negated the need for a draft. This translates into a mercenary force composed of America's disadvantaged: a sector of the U.S. demographic that is particularly susceptible to military recruitment for lack of other options and finding themselves with deployment orders again and again.

To compensate for huge pitfalls in recruitment since the invasion of Iraq, the military has resorted to recalling former service members. This policy is known as "involuntary activation" and utilizes deactivated service members, who still have time on their contracts in the Individual Ready Reserves (IRR), to fill shortcomings in specific job specialties. The abuse and misuse of this policy has escalated under the Bush administration to such a degree that it can now only be viewed as a "backdoor draft" that targets the same disadvantaged individuals the military sought out for enlistment, namely because they are better at not questioning orders.

However, we have now begun to question these orders. We are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and members of the IRR who have refused or will refuse any activation orders that would lead to use serving an unjust and imperial U.S. foreign policy. It is a prevailing notion that this refusal is unpatriotic, but we consider our actions the only choice. Not only did the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do great harm to the people of those countries, but it undermined the ostensible goal on which the wars were begun. Instead of stopping terrorism, it has proliferated terrorism, an expectation that was predicted well before the war started.

By refusing activation we are refusing to participate in wars that serve the purposes of furthering the careers of politicians and high-ranking officers. We openly support other IRR members who follow in these footsteps. The military is a force that rules through fear of retribution for disobeying its will. In reality, more than a third of IRRs simply refuse to report to duty. Most of the rest report out of fear that the military will change their discharge status or prosecute them for desertion, but up to this point, prosecution has been rare. Members of the IRR are not under the uniform code of military justice, and thus far, the military has had a practice of not prosecuting them with criminal charges unless they report in some form or function to activate. Very few willingly volunteer for activation.

There can be no promise that President-elect Barack Obama will stop the stressful and unfair techniques of back-to-back deployments, "stop-loss," or the backdoor draft that are damaging the psychology of veterans in irreparable ways. Nor that he will stop encouraging global violence by unlawful uses of force. It is in this vein that we turn to organizations like Courage to Resist, Iraq Veterans Against the War and many other large scale and grassroots organizations to solicit change in a largely unrepresentative democracy, and, to allow the voices of the people to ring through the halls of the Capital.

Benjamin Lewis

Former Marine Corps Mortarman, Iraq Veteran, IRR Recall Resister, Peace Activist

Brandon Neely

Former U.S. Army Military Police Officer, Iraq Veteran, IRR Recall Refuser