Monica Benderman is the wife of consciencious objector Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who is currently imprisoned for refusing to return to Iraq to fight an unjust war. Yesterday she published a very good article about what her husband's predicament means to this country and to the peace movement, and what it will really take to achieve peace.
Amnesty International has declared him a Prisoner of Conscience. (See below for an Amnesty International recommended action to support Kevin.)
From the Kevin Benderman Timeline site:
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The Regional Corrections Facility at Ft. Lewis, Washington is vintage World War II. The windows are cracked and can’t be closed. It’s below freezing on most nights now. I could go on – but what good will it do in this country of warmongers, idealistic pacifists, and evangelicals? Nothing like love for a cause – any cause – as long as it’s impersonal enough that everyone can remain detached, can share their emotions through the war cries and protest chants, staring out into a field of people whose gazes are just as vacant as the featured speaker of the day.
The military prison is filled with the usual criminal element, narcotics and alcohol abusers, thieves, and child molesters. It has been said that the best chance of parole from this facility is for the child molesters – tells you a lot about our society – the society that professes such a high moral standard that we can dare to invade other countries to bring that same standard to their shores.
In among the criminals, sleeping on a three inch thick mattress, sitting in plastic chairs staring at the walls all day, and waiting for months at a time to have his request for a call to his attorney fulfilled, is one who is furthest from the criminal element, a man the Anti-War movement lovingly refers to as a "Prisoner of Conscience." Labels, always the labels. Sgt. Kevin Benderman stands for everything that should be right in this country. This man stands for liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, FREEDOM to be themselves and live as they choose.
This "Prisoner of Conscience" is jailed because we have been told that we must fear him, just as we fear those who have committed crimes against society, the rapists, molesters and thieves who victimize with their lack of moral principles. Our government has told us we must fear the Conscientious Objectors because they have stood against an illegal war of aggression. Our government, threatened by Sgt. Benderman’s moral stand to defend humanity and our constitution, has imprisoned him in the hopes that the slamming of the rusty, mildewed bars will silence his message of truth.
I know I will get letters, and I know I will anger many. To quote a rather public common citizen of this country, I say "Bring It On." It’s time for America to face what it has refused to see – itself in its death throes.
War will never bring peace. War will only bring one more generation who will seek war as a solution. We hear repeatedly that victory must be achieved in this war for us to move closer to peace, and that victory means the end to all those who are our enemy now fighting against us. Where is the victory in killing? We are only creating more enemies, and the time without war that will follow will not be a time of peace.
That time will be a time of regrowth, when the wounds of the generations to come out of this war lay quiet and fester. When the anger at the crimes of humanity suffered at our hands is fed with the education of lessons learned in this most recent battle. In time, when we least expect it, the fetid smell of a people no longer willing to live with the guilt of the atrocities they allowed us to commit on their lives, will creep across the oceans and slither across our shores. Our new generation, lulled to sleep with the false sense of peace brought on by an illusion of superiority, will find itself shocked and awed that the security we thought we had was nothing more than a blanket now burning at the foot of a 100 story building built to represent success at the edge of the ghettoes we drive home to each night.
We cannot win at war. No one wins in war. Calling Sgt. Benderman a "coward" because he refuses to be a mercenary for men who do not have the courage to defend themselves, does nothing except show a person’s true colors. Relying on someone else to die so that people can sit on their sofas and grow fat on beer and chips, justifying their right by claiming they pay taxes to this country, is about as worthless an excuse as “men” can have.
Pacifism without a commitment will not achieve peace; it is a cop-out – no different than those evangelicals who go to church each week waiting in prayer believing that someone is coming to save them. Protest marches on weekend afternoons that have been planned for months so that those we speak against will be prepared with cleverly scripted comebacks, are not the way to achieve Peace. Singing the praises of the "prisoners of conscience" who wait in cells for someone to finally see the light, but not demonstrating our commitment to their stance in our own lives, is not the way to achieve Peace. The songs may be great for morale, but whose? Who benefits by songs for a cause when we forget that the "cause" has men like Sgt. Benderman as its foundation. This man speaks the truth so strongly, because he is a soldier who has been to war, and yet sits behind bars for the fear he instills in the administration when he says he will no longer be party to their destructive ways. How can we fight to end a war, and not fight as strongly to end the wrongful imprisonment of a man who dares to speak the truth for all of us?
Sgt. Benderman is wrongfully imprisoned, not for doing great things, but for doing the right thing, and standing against a corrupt system whose administration fears the statement his actions speak. He is also imprisoned because his country has done so little to demand that the principles of our constitution be upheld. He is imprisoned because the citizens of this country have shirked their responsibility by believing the work of Peace was not their job. The citizens of this country have failed, by NOT demanding that moral conscience be the foundation of all of our actions.
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[Read more.]
Amnesty International is asking people to send cards and letters of support to Kevin Benderman. For more information, click here.
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