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The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan

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For those who thought the anti-war movement in America was dead, independent journalist Dahr Jamail shines a brilliant, revealing light on an under-reported, overlooked segment of the resistance in his second book The Will to Resist: Soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jamail, a former mountain guide in Alaska, was so dissatisfied by the lack of critical reporting in the early days of the Iraq war, he decided to head for the conflict and dig for the truth on his own, unembedded. The result was a hard-hitting look at the U.S. military's devastating impact on Iraqi civilians in Beyond the Green Zone (2007).

In The Will to Resist, Jamail examines the U.S. military's impact on the very people fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the soldiers themselves. What he describes is a brutal system that teaches young recruits to dehumanize "the enemy" and each other.

From a military culture of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and intimidation to a system that "chews `em up and spits `em out," (battle wounds, stop-loss, and veteran's benefits be damned), Jamail interviews scores of veterans and active duty soldiers who've come to realize they can't "be all they can be" if they are killing civilians, dodging bombs, struggling with traumatic brain injuries, or plagued by suicidal urges.

Jamail documents the soldier's experiences in their own blunt language, giving the war, and swelling internal resistance, an immediacy and realism the U.S. Military would rather go unexamined, but is increasingly hard to ignore.

With detail and clarity, Jamail describes how a growing number of soldiers are resisting by refusing orders, speaking out, acting up, coming out (of the closet), writing, blogging, demonstrating, and just plain saying "no" to wars in which they find themselves being used as disposable pawns.

Some of the stories Jamail tells are shocking, some are depressing, while others are inspiring, irrepressibly human and unexpectedly brimming with promise. The soldiers in The Will to Resist offer hope at a time when America's war-making seems to be accepted as "just one of those things." Even if the American public is too busy, too indifferent, or too desensitized to offer any meaningful resistance to the ongoing American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, there are a growing number of military personnel who will.

"A big thing used to be squads putting up in some Iraqi's house for a day or two, just going there and staying. They insert themselves in a house covertly in order to watch a neighborhood without anyone knowing that they were there. But it is really not about watching. It is about sleeping. Hopefully the squad is well-accepted in the family. Sometimes they even make friends. A few soldiers keep watch, the rest of the squad catch up on sleep and relax for a change." -- Bryan Casler

"So we would go and drop the dismounted people at some house with an air conditioner, where they would kick in a door and hang out and drink tea with those people, while we would proceed with the vehicles and bide time out of visible range." -- Seth Manzel

What a bunch of slackers: that might be an appropriate response to all of this if there were some comprehensible and worthwhile thing that any of these people were supposed to be doing. But, as Jamail's book makes clear, when US soldiers in Iraq are not avoiding their duty they are engaging in harassment, abuse, torture, the murder of civilians, endless stress and trauma, and the risk of their own death and injury for no purpose that has been made clear to them. Soldiers quoted in the book point out that if their own nation were occupied they would certainly fight back just as the Iraqis do. In fact, these are soldiers who signed up to fight for a cause. Some of them fell for the post-9-11 propaganda and signed up thinking they would help defend the United States. Many of them signed up for economic reasons, but they also had a willingness to kill and risk death for a noble cause. Many of them tried to do so for years before losing faith. And what went away, other than their physical and mental well being, was not their courage or generosity. It was their ability to convince themselves they were risking their lives for any good reason.

As recounted in "The Will to Resist," which ought to be read by every American, avoidance of duty (or, rather, illegal orders masquerading as duty) in Iraq has often evolved seamlessly into refusal to obey. Jamail recounts incidents of individuals and squads refusing to obey orders. If you were sent out at the same time every night to the same place, and were losing more friends each time to predictable attacks, for no apparent reason, would you not at some point refuse to go out yet another time, at least without changing your path and timing? Most of these soldiers do not have any understanding that war is always a mistake. They are willing to fight a war if someone can explain to them what the purpose of it is, or what a victory would look like. But they have turned against this particular war, since nobody can explain it to them, and they have seen for themselves that what they do in it accomplishes no good.

Award-winning independent journalist Dahr Jamail The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is the true story of those within the U.S. military service whose consciences prompt them to resist the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. From battalions that refuse orders, to active-duty soldiers who sign antiwar petitions, individual soldiers who refuse redeployment, those who dare to take a public stand against the occupation, and more, The Will to Resist is a fascinating examination of what motivates such opposition amid the United States' loyal defending force. The Will to Resist is not a politically neutral book; chapters reflect a decidedly negative and critical view of the American occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the heart of The Will to Resist is not its politics, but rather the true stories of the men and women who serve - and who choose to resist what they perceive as unjust, whether it be sexism, discrimination, or apparent crimes of war. An eminently readable account that, once started, cannot be put down.

The other reviewers have said it all, except for how very refreshing and inspiring it is to see that some Americans understand the spirit, function and purpose of international law. Who would have thought. Not a single politician (well, aside from Russell Feingold) has a clue, and these poor men and women, some there because they were terribly misled (by their parents, their schools, their communities), some just plain poor, figured it out for themselves. It's about the preservation of humanity in all its senses. Everyone should read this book (and Nicholson Baker's 'Smoke', while you're at it). I never thought I would agree with the slogan plastered all over suburban SUV's but this book gives 'Support our troops' totally new meaning.

This remarkable book, by an unembedded, independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for five years, tells the story of the heroic US soldiers who are resisting the unjust and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They use a variety of tactics, including `search-and-avoid' missions, as soldiers did in Vietnam.

Since 2006, a majority of the American people have opposed the Iraq war. In February 2006, 72 per cent of US servicemen in Iraq said the war should be ended within a year.

Obama says that all US combat troops will leave Iraq by August. But between 50,000 and 70,000 troops will stay `for the next 15 to 20 years' to guard the US-owned oil fields and train the Iraqi military. Obama has allocated $1 trillion to the US military.

The war has killed 1.2 million Iraqis. US forces have killed more Iraqi civilians than the insurgents have. US soldiers are under orders to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made the soldiers `feel uncomfortable'.

US troop strength in Afghanistan will top 100,000 early in 2010 and there are another 50,000 plus troops from `vassals and tributaries' (in Zbigniew Brzezinski's words). The USAF and RAF bomb Afghani children, Red Cross depots and refugees, and occasionally the Taliban, in a war that is not destroying terrorism but worsening it. The UN says that US and Afghan government troops have killed twice as many Afghan civilians as the Taliban has.

American and NATO drone missile and helicopter gunship attacks into Pakistan are increasing. Drones fired into Pakistan have already doubled the numbers of civilians killed there.

The war must be stopped, not because it is a war against terrorism, but because it is the opposite.

Dahr Jamail provides another excellent account of the inefficacy of war. As with his first book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, Jamail takes the reader where mainstream media refuses to go. This time he skillfully exposes the resistance inside the military machine -- enlisted men and women who see the immorality of the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are acting out to make change happen. Art as resistance, resistance against homophobia, resistance against sexism, these struggles and more are uncovered in Jamail's new work. Reading it, I couldn't help but think of the great nuclear weapons resister, Sir Joseph Rotblat. The only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project before the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he received a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1995 for Pugwash, an international movement of scientists and others seeking to ban the production and use of weapons of mass destruction. In his acceptance speech in Oslo, Sir Rotblat said

"What we are advocating in Pugwash, a war-free world, will be seen by many as a Utopian dream, It is not Utopian. There already exist in the world large regions, for example, the European Union, within which war is inconceivable. What is needed is to extend these to cover the world's major powers. In any case, we have no choice. The alternative is unacceptable. Let me quote the last sentence of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto:

We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open for a new paradise; If you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than by compulsion; if in the process we learn to combine the essential with the enjoyable;, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task
Above all, remember your humanity."

Jamail insists that humanity inside and outside the military industrial complex be remembered. Buy this book and work to make its contents a relic of history.

There are so many things the American people don't know about America.
Anyone who wants America to be better than it is should understand what our military is doing to our young men and women and the people of the countries that we occupy.
Our young people shouldn't be forced to join the military because there aren't other possibilities for them and we should be aware of the way the military dehumanizes our young minds and turns them into professional murderers who cannot live with the things they are forced to do to maintain the American Empire.

This book took my breath away. I am making my way through the War Resister field, this was my third book on it and by far the best. I don't want to out the other books as I think there should be as many books as possible in this field! The writing is fantastic, the quotes are (mind blank)- emotionally provoking. I read with a highlighter and I highlighted almost this entire book. Bravo! to the editor as well, because not a single word of this 220 pg book could be spared. Don't forget to read the intro! As to the content, plainly I am a new comer to the anti-war movement (I am only 24), but the GI resistence movement is by far my favorite. My brother in law is in the military and against the war though not in the resistence movement, and I read this book with my cell phone in my lap calling my sister every half hour! Of all the anti-war books I've read this and one other is my favorite- the other is- and I know this doesn't SOUND good, but it IS, Grandmothers Against the War by Joan Wile. I was planning on getting active in the movement anyways, so I wouldn't say this spurred it, but it definately gave me direction. It tells you which organizations to look into and where the movement needs help. I'm ordering his other book today because I liked this one so much. KEEP WRITING!!!!

Dahr Jamail who authored "Beyond The Green Zone" speaks from first hand knowledge obtained from beyond being imbeded with our military authorities. His insights based on facts are presented in a way that can lead us away from violence into a way of peace. Going to war is easy. Resisting violence is what is difficult. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to at least consider another approach to the security we hope to achieve by spending Trillions of $s and precious lives of innocent &/or well meaning human beings. Another way is possible!