Fed-up Soldiers Finding New Ways To Protest The War

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/47085/

Fed Up Soldiers Finding New Ways to Protest the War

By Jeanine Plant, AlterNet. Posted January 24, 2007.

There is a strict protocol for military dissent. A service member can exercise free speech, for example, but she should be off-duty. She can protest the war, but not in uniform.

In an unprecedented move, 1,171 service members signed the Appeal for Redress -- a three-sentence statement that beseeches Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of troops from Iraq -- amid a flurry of anti-war activity happening around the country and a vigorous public debate about escalation in Iraq. According to its creators and their lawyer, J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Conscience and War, the appeal is perfectly legal and stays within the bounds of respectful discourse.

The appeal's message is not groundbreaking; anti-war sentiment in the military is well-known. The oft-cited February 2006 Le Moyne College/Zogby poll showed that 72 percent of active-duty troops wanted out of Iraq by the end of last year. And the GI Rights Hotline, affiliated with the Center on Conscience and War, gets roughly 4,000 calls a month, 40 percent of which, McNeil estimates, are questions about going AWOL.

And dissent in the ranks is not exceptional either. But the way in which these service members expressed their objection to U.S. policy in Iraq is. Their employment of the Military Whistleblower Protection Act, which shields military members from reprisals for communicating with Congress, is relatively novel.

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