Canada can keep our cowards

“We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.”
- George Orwell

Jeremy Hinzman is no such man.

A deserter from the 82nd Airborne Division, Hinzman is seeking asylum from Canada so he won’t have to face jail time in the United States.

Hinzman said he did not believe the war in Iraq was just, and therefore would not fight in it. Well okay then. Why didn’t you say so to begin with?

He said a court-martial would be unfair and he would be treated more harshly than other deserters because of his view on the war – despite the fact that other deserters with the same views, such as Staff Sgt. Camillo Mejia who was tried at Fort Stewart, Ga. earlier this year, received only a year in jail.

Anti-war activists love Hinzman and Canada has welcomed him with open arms, though he has not yet been granted asylum.

To help him out, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey testified at a refugee hearing that Soldiers in Iraq routinely shoot women and children and murder unarmed Iraqis in the streets for basically no reason.

Coincidentally, Massey also believes the Iraq war was unjust and criminal. “Any act of violence in an unjust war is an atrocity,” he said.

Is any of this starting to ring a familiar bell?

To anti-war activists it is reminiscent of the thousands of draft-dodgers who fled to Canada during Vietnam. The main difference, as Human Events columnist Michelle Malkin pointed out, is that Hinzman was not drafted. He volunteered for duty in the U.S. Army, which, in case you’ve all forgotten, exists for the sole purpose of fighting the nation’s enemies and following our commander in chief’s orders.

But to me, it sounds suspiciously like another guy from the Vietnam era – one who did not flee to Canada.

Let’s see, you go to war (Hinzman deserted before Iraq, but was deployed to Afghanistan), you come back, you protest the war, you smear your fellow brave Soldiers, you claim they commit murders and atrocities … yep, sounds like John Kerry to me.

Maybe Hinzman could be the democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential election. He could base the campaign on his war heroism.

In all fairness, at least Kerry was not a deserter.

I can’t say no atrocities have been committed in this war. I can’t say whether the war was the right thing to do or not.

But here’s what I can say.

I followed my commander’s orders to go to war and my conscience is clear. I did not kill anyone, thank God, but many of my friends did. They had to, they didn’t like it but they did it and I’m proud of them.

I saw Soldiers do incredibly heroic and brave things in the face of danger and I resent cowards like Hinzman who would degrade that heroism and dishonor their bravery.

I never saw innocent Iraqis murdered in the streets.

I saw Soldiers put themselves in harm’s way time and time again to help the Iraqi citizens who needed help.

Massey testified that Soldiers often open-fired on vehicles that refused to stop at checkpoints, killing all the occupants, who were later found to be unarmed.

Well, I hate to say it, but if they were unarmed, they should have stopped at the checkpoint. One of our enemy’s most common tactics is suicide car bombs, as I’m sure Massey knows. Our Soldiers have no choice but to defend themselves against that threat.

Massey himself said it was difficult to tell who was hostile and who was innocent. That’s because our enemy does not fight an honorable war. Our enemy dresses as a civilian, uses a civilian as his shield, plays dead, booby traps the dead, attacks from mosques, hides bombs by the road and murders his own countrymen.

This is an unconventional war and we must fight unconventionally. Those Soldiers out there who have to make those tough decisions are to be loved, supported and prayed for.

They should not be slandered by the likes of Hinzman who first deserted his comrades, then emphasized his cowardice by refusing to take responsibility for his actions.

If that’s the type of guy you want, Canada, well as far as I’m concerned, you can have him.