Ominous, Indeed

A piece in the New York Times yesterday returns First Lt. Ehren Watada to public scrutiny. Watada is a young officer who last month refused his orders for deployment to Iraq. He's been on desk duty ever since, and is facing court martial with possible severe punishment. You can get Watada's backstory in this piece from the Seattle Times, or numerous other places available through any search engine. What I find interesting in the story as it appeared in the NYT, and also for a while Sunday morning on AOL's news screen, is this quote:

Lieutenant Watada’s about-face came as a shock to his parents, his fellow soldiers and his superiors. In retrospect, though, there may have been one ominous note in the praise heaped on him in his various military fitness reports: he was cited as having an “insatiable appetite for knowledge." (My emphasis)

Ominous. A young man highly respected by his superior officers, recommended for promotion over others, of obvious intelligence and diligent service to his country, has his "insatiable appetite for knowledge" listed as an ominous strike against him. And indeed, maybe the writer is correct, it is exactly what has led him to the position he has taken. Here is Watada in a June 8th interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, explaining the process by which he arrived at his beliefs:

When I learned that I was going to be deployed last year, I thought it was my responsibility as an officer to learn everything I could about the war in general -- its effects on people, its effects on the soldiers, and also specifically why we were there, what was occurring at that time, what had occurred in the past -- in order to get a better understanding, as was my job.

And the more I read different articles by international and constitutional law experts, and the reports coming out from government agencies and non-governmental agencies, and the reports and the revelations from independent journalists and the Iraqi people themselves and the soldiers coming home, I came to the conclusion that the war and what we're doing over there is illegal. And so, being so, I felt it was my duty to morally, and also legally, refuse any orders to participate in it.

If more young military officers had this ominous insatiable appetite for knowledge, this burning desire to gain a better understanding of the war, its causes and effects, perhaps more of them would refuse to follow orders that they come to perceive as immoral and illegal, and the whole shooting match would far sooner be over.

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