Carl Webb
Carl
Webb, 38, is a member of the Texas Army National Guard and a U.S. army
veteran. In 2001 following a 7-year break in service, he enlisted in the
National Guard expecting to serve for only three years. His term of
service ends August 22, however, less than two months shy of the end of
his service completion he was informed that his term had been
involuntarily extended and he would be sent to Fort Hood for training
and deployed to Iraq in November.
Webb is one of many reservists who is being compelled to serve in the
war in Iraq under the "stop-loss" program. "This policy is
practically an unofficial draft," Webb said. "It is conscription against
a person's will."
Webb's perspective is that "The war is unethical and illegal U.S.
aggression," he said. "It's all about oil and profits."
Carl Webb eventually received a "Less than Honorable Discharge from the military in August of 2004.
He told his story to Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now". Below is the transcript:
Transcript from March 2005
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about "AWOL in America" and our guest is
Kathy Dobie, who wrote the cover story for Harper’s magazine. We’re also
joined in the studio by Carl Webb, a member of the Texas Army National
Guard since 2001. We welcome you, as well. to Democracy Now!, Carl.
CARL WEBB: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: When did you join?
CARL WEBB: In August of 2001. Very bad timing.
AMY GOODMAN: A month before. A few weeks before.
CARL WEBB: Yes. About three or four weeks before 9/11.
AMY GOODMAN: September 11 attacks. Why did you join?
CARL WEBB: I was broke. I overspent my budget and behind on bills and
heading towards an eviction notice, and I needed some quick cash, more
than I could earn just by working immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: And so you joined, and what happened?
CARL WEBB: Well, I joined. I signed a contract for three years, which
would have ended in August of 2004. So, by July, I was very, very happy.
I was saying good-bye to everyone in my unit. On several occasions
throughout the three years, I had been approached about reenlisting and
I always had turned them down. So, in July, I was really happy, until I
got a phone call from my sergeant.
AMY GOODMAN: This is, what, a month before?
CARL WEBB: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You were going to be done.
CARL WEBB: Yes. I had one more drill to complete. And my sergeant called
and said she had bad news. And she said that you’re going to Iraq. And
immediately I was confused. I said, well, did the unit get activated all
of a sudden? She said no. The unit hasn’t been activated, we’re staying,
but you are not going to be allowed to finish your contract. You’re
being extended and loaned to a different unit, which is going to Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what did you do?
CARL WEBB: Well, first of all, I went into panic and denial. And I said
maybe there’s been some mistake, because my whole unit, my whole chain
of command, knew all along that I had no intentions of reenlisting, and
so I just went to the next drill thinking maybe it was some, you know,
paperwork that had gotten misplaced or some clerk hit the wrong stroke
on the keyboard or something, and that it would be all solved, you know,
when I got there.
But, no, when I got there, they told me, no, you are being held under
what is called "stop-loss policy," which is a policy that pretty much
makes null and void any enlistment contract you have signed with the
government. Typically when soldiers enlist in a military, for a specific
amount of time — three years, four years, five years — and when that is
complete, you are allowed to get out or reenlist if you choose. What
stop-loss orders do is involuntarily extends everyone’s enlistment in
the service. It’s been referred to as the "back-door draft" by somebody.
It’s actually conscription, except in this case instead of recruiting or
conscripting young soldiers, they keep — they keep the old soldiers in.
They won’t let them out. So, I got orders saying that I was to report to
Fort Hood one week prior to the date that I was supposed to get out of
the service.
AMY GOODMAN: What did you think when you enlisted — I know that’s the
standard question asked — Texas Army National Guard?
CARL WEBB: Well, when I enlisted, like I said before, I thought it was
relatively peaceful at that time. We had invaded everybody we could
possibly invade, and I thought, well, this will be — but I wasn’t
disillusioned like some of the younger soldiers. I knew that it was a
possibility that I could get activated within that three years. I did
not think that these new orders, these stop-loss orders, would be
implemented on a soldier one week before he was due to leave service.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you want to go to Iraq?
CARL WEBB: I believe it’s an unjust war on our part. I do not believe
what the government has told us the war is intended for. I do not
believe this government intends to spread democracy in the Middle East.
It’s not in the interest of their security or our security. I believe it
is all about oil and profits, or if not that, it’s about having a —
controlling a strategic part of the land in the Middle East. And I don’t
want to fight for that. That’s not a good cause to go to war. I’m not a
pacifist. There are conflicts in which I would volunteer to fight, which
is why I decided not to seek the C.O. status.
AMY GOODMAN: Could you be arrested at any time?
CARL WEBB: That’s kind of up in the air. My unit actually never reported
me as a deserter. Typically when a soldier goes AWOL after a certain
amount of time passes, the unit actually lists — drops him from rolls,
that means he is off his unit’s roster, and they assume he is not coming
back. And they report him as a deserter, and he can actually be picked
up even by local police at that time. But for some reason, my unit never
dropped me from its rolls and never reported me as a deserter.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone right now by an anonymous
soldier, AWOL, in the army for three years, June 2002 signed up, sent to
Iraq in March 2003. But let’s let him tell his own story. Welcome to
Democracy Now!
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: I’m glad to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about when you enlisted and why? And what
happened in Iraq?
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: Well, I enlisted my junior year of high school,
summer of 2002, before September 11th ever happened or the summer of
2001, before September 11th. I graduated May 2002, and in June I was
gone to basic training, 18 years old. I then went to my active duty unit
at Fort Hood in January of 2003 and then I was in Iraq by March 2003. I
was in Iraq from March 2003 to March 2004. A military policeman, I did
typical work. I did checkpoints, we raided homes, gate security, things
like that.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what you saw in Iraq, what you experienced.
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: Well, when I first went to Iraq, I actually
believed what the government was saying, that we were searching for
weapons of mass destruction, we were making the country safe for
democracy and things like that. But when we got there, I quickly found
another story. I very quickly found that the Iraqis didn’t want us there
and that the image they’re reporting in the news at home was that
everything is — everything is going well. And I really think the media
tried to make a face on that at the beginning. But we got there, the
Iraqis, they’d throw stones at us, unless you gave them money. If you
gave them money or food, they liked you for a little bit. But public
opinion was not very good over there at all.
One thing that I saw that very much bothered me was as a military
policeman some of our jobs. I was in Tikrit, Iraq. We would drive around
town and our sergeants, our officers, would get bored so they’d tell us
to go raid this whole block of homes, you know. And so we’d go into
every home, and if we found anything as small as a knife or a pistol in
any home, which I think you could go in any home in America and find a
knife or a pistol, but if we found anything like that, we’d arrest all
the males in the house, ages eight to 80 and leave all the females
behind crying their eyes out, and that was never very fun to watch. Then
what we’d go do is throw these men who maybe didn’t do anything in the
same jails as the ones that we knew had set off I.E.D.s and had set off
— and had tried to kill soldiers. So, you’re just throwing them all in
with each other, and eventually it is going to change their minds. You
know, you are going to make the distant relatives bitter, and you are
going to — you are starting a whole new war with people who really don’t
deserve it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, when did you come back?
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: March 2004. Once I came back, I realized very
quickly that my whole opinion had changed about the idea of war and why
the United States gets involved in it. So, I applied for conscientious
objector at that point. I didn’t know that civilian attorneys are
supposed to help out with that. They can. But the military didn’t give
me any idea of what is supposed to be in this conscientious objector
application. They didn’t tell me there was an appendix for it, they
didn’t tell me what the rules or standards were. So, that night I went
home, and I typed up 10 pages of just complaints and rants and, you
know, what I felt was wrong with the military and with our government,
period. And I turned it in the very next day, and a week later I was in
a chaplain’s office getting yelled at, and then a military
psychiatrist’s office pretty much getting harassed.
AMY GOODMAN: Getting yelled at by the chaplain?
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: Oh, I’ve been yelled at by chaplains many times,
including basic training. Chaplains are not what they pretend to be, men
of God in the army. They’re army all the way through. They are soldiers.
They would bleed green before they would ever consider God, at least in
— at least in my experience. But I didn’t know the process at all. And
so my application got denied very quickly. And at that point, I had
realized what the truth was. I had realized that if I really want to do
this the right way, I need to speak with civilian attorneys. So I got in
touch with the Veterans for Peace, and I also got in contact with the
G.I. Rights Hotline, and they got me in touch with a civilian attorney
who helped me to write a rebuttal to the original application. And all
this took nine months to have happen. And then when I turned in my
rebuttal, I found out that my unit would be leaving for Iraq again in
January of 2005.
So, I had never wanted to consider going AWOL. It was always the last
thing I wanted to do. I’d been brutally honest with these people that,
yes, this war is wrong, but if soldiers had come into our country and
had invaded us and had come into our homes, then I would have fought
back, too. So, I was more seeing how the war felt from a lot of the
Iraqis’ point of view. So, they said that doesn’t count as being a
conscientious objector, that I’m not against the idea of war, that I
would have fought in another war, and they just started lying, and that
was part of what — when they had said no and turned in the paperwork for
that, there was a lot of lies in it. And we proved that when I did the
rebuttal. But army law says that while you are waiting for an
application to be reviewed, and in this case it was my rebuttal being
reviewed, it could take up to six months. So, that would have been June
of this year. And my unit went back to Iraq in January. So when I went
on leave at the end of December, I did the thing I never wanted to do,
and I went AWOL.
AMY GOODMAN: Which is what you’re doing right now.
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: Yes. I’ve been AWOL since January.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the military knows where you are?
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: Well, they contacted my home of record, which is
in Colorado and my family, they don’t know where I am. So, we’re staying
with some friends of mine, and initially we stayed in a hotel under
another name, and then we’ve moved twice in the two months. So, we’re
just living here and there, just trying to give the slip. I am married.
So, it is a little more difficult than if I was by myself. But my wife
is working a job right now to try to support us right now.
I’ve been told not to get a job, not to apply for anything that requires
a background check, not to even drive my motor vehicle. So, because I
could be pulled over at any moment and arrested. And the other soldier
is right. You are supposed to be dropped off the rolls, that means you
stop getting paid, and then they’re supposed to put your name on the
deserter list, which is — there is a deserter hotline that I call twice
a week to find out if my name is on the deserter rolls, and then as soon
as my name is on that, I will be turning myself in at Fort Sill, which
is what I’ve been advised.
But the problem is, however, in my case, for some reason I was dropped
from the payroll, but my name hasn’t been put on the deserter list yet.
It has been almost two months, and my name is supposed to be on there
after one month. So I’m kind of playing the waiting game right now. I
just want to get this all over with. I want to be able to turn myself
in. I know at Fort Sill, I suppose in lieu of a court-martial, you ask
for another dishonorable discharge, and that looks pretty attractive to
me because the war in Iraq is wrong, and I want to be able to move on
with my life.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Sergeant Kevin Benderman. Can you talk
about your refusal to return to Iraq?
KEVIN BENDERMAN: Well, my refusal to return to Iraq was not based on
anything other than conscientious objection to war, period. I’ve gone
through some of the process that I just heard the other soldier talking
about, and the application you put in, D.A. Form 4187, to your immediate
commander which, in turn, he is supposed to take that and have a
chaplain interview and a mental health evaluation appointment set up for
you. And the case that I had, my immediate commander, he just
automatically refused to send it forward, and he had no knowledge of the
army regulation which covered conscientious objector, and that’s
AR600-43, conscientious objection.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you experienced in Iraq?
KEVIN BENDERMAN: Well, the things that I saw in Iraq was, that stick out
in my mind the most, was number one, the young girl I saw on the side of
the road as our convoy was passing on Highway 1. Her arm was burned,
third degree burn all way up to her shoulder. She was standing there
begging us for help, anyone to help her, and I was not allowed to do
that. And then the other thing that I saw while I was there was mass
grave sites full of just remains of old women, old men, you know,
children, and it was just a gruesome site there in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: You say you are a conscientious objector. Were you before
you first went to Iraq?
KEVIN BENDERMAN: Well, that’s — war is — it’s hard to explain in a few
short sentences what war is. And when you see it firsthand, it’s a whole
lot different than talking about it in your living room without everyone
experiencing it, if you understand what I’m trying to say. And no one in
their right mind, I believe, wants to go to war. That’s the last thing
any sane person really wants to do, but you cannot have a full
understanding of what it is until you’ve been there and you’ve
experienced it for yourself. And so, I mean, I have over nine years in
the service right now. And my family has a history, dating back to the
American revolution, of military service. So, you see all those things,
and you know what your family has done, and you have all those things
pushing on you, and you say, ok, military service is an honorable thing.
But once you get right down to it, and you experience war firsthand, you
realize that we should not be doing this in this day and age with all
the knowledge — advancements in knowledge that we have and technological
advances that we have. We should be able to figure out how to live in
this world with everyone without war. Because we can provide enough
stuff for everyone on this planet with the knowledge that we have. We
don’t need war. It is just an outdated, obsolete institution. We need to
leave it behind us.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re coming up on the second anniversary of the invasion.
Will you be speaking out? There are protests all over the country.
KEVIN BENDERMAN: Well, I don’t plan on speaking out against just this
Iraqi war. What I plan to talk about to people is war in general. We
need to leave it behind us. We don’t need to be participating in this
war or any other wars ever again. Because it robs — it robs a people
that are fighting the wars of their humanity, it robs the noncombatants
of their humanity, and it just destroys everyone’s soul in the entire
process because it is the most brutal thing that any human being can be
involved in. It’s kill or be killed, period. That’s all that war is for.
AMY GOODMAN: Carl Webb, will you be speaking out on this anniversary in
one of the protests?
CARL WEBB: Yes, I will. I was invited to New York from Tennessee by an
organization called Troops Out Now. And their website is
www.troopsout.org, and this
Saturday, starting at 10:00 from Marcus Garvey Park heading to Central
Park at noon and then on to Mayor Bloomberg’s house at 3:00, there will
be hopefully a big turnout for this, and I will be speaking out against
the war.
AMY GOODMAN: And on this second anniversary of the invasion to the
anonymous soldier on the phone, what will you be doing?
ANONYMOUS AWOL SOLDIER: I have spoken out twice before, once in Austin —
I went to a protest down there at the Capitol building — and once in
College Station. So, right now I’m in a situation where I can’t really
do much. I’m kind of isolated from the world. But as soon as this is all
done, I plan on turning myself in as soon as I get a chance to. And all
these veteran groups I’m working with, I plan on protesting very loudly.
AMY GOODMAN: We don’t, Kathy Dobie, hear very much about this number. It
may have surprised a lot of people listening and watching right now,
5,500, what, near 6,000. The Pentagon doesn’t talk about it very much.
Why not? And we don’t see a lot of people being rounded up, Carl. We
don’t see the military coming for you, at least at this moment.
KATHY DOBIE: Well, the military doesn’t have the manpower to go after
deserters. But I also think they do not want other soldiers to know that
this number of people leave and that also when they leave that they — it
is often possible after going AWOL, once you drop from the rolls, to get
out, to be processed out with an other than an honorable discharge. They
are trying the best they can. It’s — recruiting is down, that’s why they
put in stop-loss orders. They’re trying to keep this military intact,
and if they let soldiers know that people do leave and they do manage to
get out and get on with their lives, I think they’re afraid that there’s
going to be droves of soldiers leaving at that point.
AMY GOODMAN: And as you listen to these men speak, your final thoughts.
KATHY DOBIE: Well, my final thoughts are that they need to straighten
out the recruiting process, the military does. If the only way you can
keep the end strength, the troop strength we need is to lie to kids and
their parents, then maybe what you have to say is that we have to have a
smaller military. And if you have a smaller military, then you have to
look carefully at the countries we invade and where we go to war.
AMY GOODMAN: On that note, Kathy Dobie has the cover story of Harper’s
magazine called "AWOL in America." Kevin Benderman, I want to thank you
for joining us, sergeant who has applied for conscientious objector
status. Carl Webb in the studio with us here in New York, planning to
speak out at the protest on the anniversary of the invasion and to the
anonymous soldier on the phone, thank you very much for joining us, as
well.