Iraq war launch on trial in Britain
Three years into the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Blair government's decision to join the invasion effort is on trial in an obscure courtroom in Aldershot, west of London.
The actual case is a military-law prosecution of a New Zealand-born RAF medic called Malcolm Kendall-Smith, who is being tried for refusing to be deployed on a further tour to Iraq (which would be his third.) The charge is that he's "refusing to obey a lawful command". His defense is that the order to deploy is not lawful because-- as new papers recently revealed in Britain seem to indicate-- the original order to launch the war in which he's being asked to participate was itself not lawful.
The dedicated NZ journo Jon R. Stephenson had a piece in today's Sunday Star-Times describing the case, which continues.
Kendall-Smith's case is particularly interesting to me because there was another New Zealander, 90 years ago, who took exemplary and extremely brave actions in pursuit of his desire to be treated as a conscientious objector to all war. He was Archibald Baxter, a Christianity-inspired pacifist who was subjected to the most horrendous punishments and abuses by the New Zealand Army, which refused to recognize anyone's right to be a Conscientious Objector (CO) at the time.
Including, they sent Baxter to the front in France, completely against his will; and when he refused orders there to wear a uniform they gave him "Field Punishment Number 1" (I think it was), which essentially involved tying him nearly naked to a pole in a yard for a number of days, in a snowstorm.
Like Kendall-Smith, Baxter came from Dunedin in the South Island. Here's a link to info about Baxter's very moving memoir.
... So I'm pretty sure that Kendall-Smith won't face any punishment as brutal as that one. Indeed, according to this piece in The Independent, former SAS soldier Ben Griffin, who recently resigned because of his objections to the war, "had expected to face a court martial for his refusal to serve-- but instead was discharged with a glowing testimonial."
Does Kendall-Smith's defense have any chance of succeeding? It seems doubtful. But I wish the trial were getting more coverage in the MSM in both the UK and the US. Here, though, is a fairly full report from today's Independent.
"An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the "illegal" tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.
After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.
Ben Griffin
Ben Griffin told commanders that he thought the Iraq war was illegal
He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nsas12.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/12/ixhome.html
"Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1729396,00.html