Copyright 2011 by John T. Reed
I am currently watching a C-Span program that is an interview with Army Lt. Ehren Watada. He was a first lieutenant who was discharged from the Army for resisting things he disagreed with.
Since I had an experience like that, I was curious about his version.
Basically, he was an OCS officer with a college degree. After he became a lieutenant, and was on orders to go to iraq, he decided he was against the war in Iraq.
Why? Basically, he is a liberal and his reasons are the same as any liberal. Indeed, he complained about Clinton being impeached for sex but Bush not being impeached for “lying about WMD.” Just standard Main Street liberal bullshit, not any sort of inside information that he acquired from being in the military.
He refused to deploy to Iraq.
Guy’s an idiot. He came across as dumb in the interview. I thought he was a West Point graduate. I think there is another guy who is a West Point grad who did something similar. I thought this was him. But as the interview went on I was thinking, how the hell did this moron get through West Point.
Then I Googled him and found he was a cum laude Hawaii Pacific University grad. His cum laude performance in college was far from evident in the interview.
If he and I had been in at the same time, we probably would have known each other because of the common plight of being on the outs with the brass and fighting big time against them.
If he told me his story when I was in and asked my opinion, which seems like the kind of thing he would do, I would have said,
Your position is total bullshit. You took an oath to the Constitution. You are acting like you have the right to only serve under a liberal commander in chief. Are you nuts?! During the Vietnam War, the CIC changed from Democrat liberal Johnson to Republican Nixon. Based on your theory, those whole damned 553,000-man force in Vietnam was entitled to come home on inauguration day. You want to be anti-Bush, stay out of the Army. If you are in, you follow lawful, non-stupid orders regardless of who is president. You cannot get out of a combat tour with these lame political arguments.
He resigned when he was still obligated to remain in because of his original enlistment plus because of a stop-loss deployment order.
He said one Japanese-American veteran told him he was acting like a spoiled brat. Watada laughed out loud at that. The vet was right. The guy is lame. His legal theory that he can ignore his oath because he feels Bush ignored his is idiotic. His overall logic was childlike. He seemed to take a lot of strength from people who said they supported him. But his various anecdotes of support were simply other liberals who share his dislike of Bush.
The C-Span interviewer was rather uninformed and biased in favor of Watada. For one thing, some active or retired military—maybe a JAG officer— should have been interviewed to present the other side.
At one point Watada said the Americans and South Vietnamese tortured North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. I heard that the South Vietnamese did that but I never heard of Americans doing it. I am not saying it did not happen in isolated instances, but Watada seemed to say it was official policy and standard practice. He was not born then and does not know what he’s talking about.
I discussed my experience somewhat in the Army at various articles (www.johntreed.com/military.html) and in my book Succeeding.
In short, I had a five-year commitment after West Point. I discovered in the Army two things I was extremely opposed to: OPUM and OVUM which means actions that are Officially Prohibited but Unofficially Mandatory and Officially Voluntary but Unofficially Mandatory. I resolved that I would not comply with either, do my five years as gung ho as possible and get out the moment I was allowed to. I never resigned, feeling I had made a promise regarding the five years. I volunteered for ranger and airborne schools and graduated from them and volunteered for Vietnam and did a tour there.
To my surprise, my refusal to go to Army “command performance” parties and sign false documents and such was the highest “crime” any of my superiors (except for the only West Point graduate I served under) had ever seen. They kept “counseling” me to “straighten out” and “play the game” and threatening to tighten screws on me if I did not comply.
I refused. They tightened. I refused again. They tightened some more. And so on. Ultimately, after giving me lousy jobs, lousy efficiency reports, blocking my promotion, and so on, they ran out of slack in the “screw.” So they filed papers to fire me with an honorable discharge and severance pay. I wanted to leave—when my five years were up—but they could not wait that long because my getting away with refusing to go to parties and such was embarrassing them and scaring them that other lieutenants would start doing the same. Other lieutenants did ask them, “How come I have to do this but Lieutenant Reed doesn’t?”
Watada went big with the media seeking all the media attention he could get. I sought none. In spite of that, the local daily newspaper—the Asbury Park Press—got wind of what was being done to me and wanted to do a story about it. It was sort of the talk of Fort Monmouth that I was being railroaded, Kangaroo court, and all that. Back then, during the Vietnam War, the media loved any story that was anti-military especially if the guy on the outs was a West Point airborne ranger Vietnam vet. Some of my classmates from West Point went that maximum media route as conscientious objectors and such. When the Press contacted my Army JAG lawyer, I said I did not want to go the media route and they respected my wish.
Anyway, I got discharged honorably with about $4,000 severance pay four years, nine days and two hours after I graduated from West Point—about a year short of June 5, 1973, the date I was allowed to resign and determined to resign.
So I have almost nothing in common with Watada. He submitted his resignation when he was on orders to deploy to Iraq. That is illegal. I never submitted my resignation at all.
Watada was accused of illegal actions, accurately from what I learned about him just from his interview.
In my case, they said I had a “defective attitude.” The basic idea of my administrative proceeding was I was a nice guy and they would not have done anything to me if I was an enlisted man, but not quite up to the high standards of being an officer. Uh, excuse me. I had four years at West Point and another year of officer training afterward. I volunteered for Vietnam and went there. Many of my West Point classmates flunked ranger school. Some flunked airborne and satellite communications school. I passed all those. Many of my West Point classmates chose to avoid going to Vietnam. The vast majority of the officers in the Army were neither West Point nor ranger nor airborne. Based on qualifications like that, I was probably in the top 10% or 15% of all the officers in the Army at the time. (There were lots of draftee officers then.) Basically, my superiors got to a point where they went to the JAG guys and said, “Is there a regulation that we can use to get rid of this guy even though he is still not finished his West Point five-year commitment?”
Watada got court martialed, but after a mistrial it ended up in various procedural appeals until Obama took office and simply dropped the case, thereby letting Watada get away with this bullshit scot free.
I was a company commander when I was in. I am officially certified as having a “defective attitude.” But if I had been Watada’s company commander when he did this, I would have court martialed him.
John T. Reed
