May 19, 2006

Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar campaigning American mother whose son was killed in Iraq, has begged Canadians to welcome war resisters, just as we did during the Vietnam War. She says this with the grief and passion born of the fact that she begged Casey to go to Canada. She begged him to let her break his legs, anything but go to Iraq. He died five days after he arrived in Baghdad.

I should have written about this earlier, given that Monday, May 15, was International Conscientious Objectors' Day, but I missed the day, as one does. The calendar is clogged with such days, but important ones, like that one, were crowded out by such idiotic things as National Smile Month in Britain, in which citizens were urged to stop cleaning their teeth with screwdrivers. This explains Tony Blair's teeth.

We spend so much time skittering away on silly demands on our attention – Tooth Week, honestly – that we miss the important stuff. In defiance, I shall continue to remove plaque with my sewing scissors and shall belatedly mark International Conscientious Objectors' Day by reciting some history.

American veterans' protests recently prevented the placement of a statue in Nelson, B.C., honouring Vietnam draft dodgers, despite the fact that they have enhanced and graced this country. By all means, send us your thoughtful, your non-violent, your bravest best, I say to America.

But in Britain, the statue honouring conscientious objectors remains. It stands in Tavistock Square in London, close to the spot where a London bus was blown up last year by a suicide bomber ostensibly protesting the British and U.S. invasion of Iraq. Among the many ironies is that Tavistock Square was once the home of Virginia Woolf.

Her friends in the Bloomsbury Group were all conscientious objectors in the First World War and did farming work of a sort. They and the 6,000 other "conchies" in Britain would have made absurd soldiers anyway in that particularly absurd war. And on May 15, another memorial was unveiled in Cardiff in Wales, even as British soldiers were thrown out of the army in disgrace for refusing to serve in Iraq and one man, a doctor, was jailed.

The year 1916 was a particularly unpleasant time to be a conscientious objector and it seems as though we have moved full circle, forgetting history. It was the first time conscription had been imposed. My own grandfather was imprisoned for refusing to fight. He was a Scot and a very uncompromising sort.

By the time the Second World War rolled around, people were much more skeptical of that first unthinking, jingoistic madness that led them to pin the white feather of cowardice on men not in uniform.

In the United States, the "fortunate sons" of the rich and powerful simply ceased to serve after the Second World War. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton didn't even declare their objections; they just finagled their way out of the Vietnam draft the way cunning people do.

While there is no draft for Iraq, Bush torments war resisters and deserters waiting in Canada for a Federal Court ruling on their status. They are not rich kids. They have no intricate strategies. Indeed, they volunteered for service – but not, they say, for Iraq. And if they are sent back, they will be jailed by a president who essentially did the same thing when he was young while working on being a full-time drunk.

Canada's Tory government follows in lockstep. Canadian soldiers go to a war zone with little or no public debate, but are pushed out of public view when they die, as a female soldier did this week. It seems as grotesque as the American way. U.S. veterans see their mental disorders misdiagnosed, their poisoning by the metals used in weaponry unacknowledged and their disability pensions dangled like a toy.

It's this contradictory attitude to soldiers that makes me think conscientious objectors and deserters should be honoured more than ever. If we can't decide how we feel about soldiers and their inconvenient habit of coming home coffined, then how can soldiers be expected to be wholehearted?

We in the West have been told so many political lies. We trust no one. Ambivalence is our watchword. A person who says, "No, I will not kill," is rare in these times, and thoroughly admirable.

I don't expect a favourable Canadian Federal Court ruling for young people trying to escape fighting an illegal undeclared war. Even the Americans aren't claiming that their soldiers are battling foreign "soldiers." No, those Iraqis and Afghans are "insurgents" or "Taliban." In Guantanamo, they are "illegal combatants." These words, like white paint, cover a multitude of sins. But the key point is this: Some people follow orders. Others, like my grandfather, are what the British call "Bolshie." They question orders. They don't like being told what to do. And they'll say no.

This last is a character trait I admire. I wish people said no more often. It strikes me as healthy. Just as I shall continue to avoid dentists, I shall honour the stubborn and the thoughtful. These war resisters? They're my type of human.