So, if I were a betting man.....US Deserters in Canada

[MAJOR_Baker]

I think I would say 70 - 30 Canada will allow those F****N' deserters safe haven.   For the sake of what is left of the realationship between our two countries I hope not!   The reason why I bring it up, they had those F****RS   on the news, of course I am currently in Ft. Benning Georgia, home of the Infantry, however if they had walked in through the door it would not have been pretty!

 

[Jarnhamar]

You should feel sorry for them sir, not be angry.
Anger leads to the dark side after all

 

[Jarnhamar]

You should feel sorry for them because they will spend the rest of their life knwoing they ran away.   Sure some of them will cling to the line that they are proud of themselves and they did the right thing. They didn't agree with the war and didn't wanna be a part of it etc..

I still think deep down inside theres a small voice that will say to them "You chicken shit, the guys you trained with are over there right now and your hiding" The worst feeling ever is letting your platoon down.

Personally though I would rather a soldier run away from his duty when he's safe  then have to share a trench with him when it's in the middle of a firefight...

Same reason i'd rather someone go home off basic training if they don't like it than have their buddies carry them through the course and end up with a crappy soldier who never shuts up about how much he hates the army.


US Army --> Someone doesn't want to go to war? Keep them in the US and send them to military prison for the rest of their contract then give them a nice dishonourable discharge.  Im pretty sure in canada theres some thing where if you get a dishonourable discharge or a type of discharge it shows up on your records and you cannot get a government job ever. Now the loser who ran away from his duty will be working at mcdonalds and won't even have any war stories to tell the teenie-boppers.

 

[Scott]

I have to agree with Ghost where he says that the deserters have to live with what they did forever. Take a drive up the Alaska Highway sometime on the British Columbia side. It's odd how one of the greatest Military Engineering achievements of the 20th century offered safe haven to draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. Hamlets like Pink Mountain, Wonowon, Sikanni Chief, Prophet River, Steamboat, Buckinghorse River, I have been told by locals that alot of these hamlets, and the businesses established there were thanks to American Ex Pats escaping the draft. True or not, it is interesting.

None of this is to say that deserting or draft dodging is okay, I do not think that it is. I think that if you are in one of these two groups that somehow you are saying that you are better than the rest of the poor b**t**ds going over.

Cheers!

 

[casing]

I won't be pleased if they are allowed to stay in Canada.   I think that there is a very good chance the Canadian gov will ship them back to the US.   Sure, draft dodgers were given refuge in Canada before, but that statement itself indicates the big difference here--draft.   These current low lifes were not drafted, ergo they joined up of their own free will in an effort to collect on the benefits.   If the Canadian gov doesn't see the difference here, it'll just be one more thing for us little guys to be embarrassed about.   I can say more, but this thing has been previously been discussed into its death throws and there is no point.

 

[Scott]

I have to agree with you Casing.

 

[K. Ash]

There's only one way that a person can view this situation. If you join the military you should except the fact that the day may come when you have to go and fight. Those guys aren't only cowards but they're fuckin idiots as well.

As for Canada sending them back to the States, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. They're probably claiming refugee status by now.

 

[Spr.Earl]

So, I should feel sorry for them that they "missed movement" to a combat zone?   I don't think so, they volunteered!   I will be in tyhe thick of things this Saturday or Sunday, my boss asked me to go for a few weeks so I said I would go.   Funny how, duty, honor, country works, isn't it?  

I will say one thing, if I ever see them on the street in Toronto, lord help them, because I will kick their goat smelling a**es! :warstory:

Yet, on the reverse side I think the State's we would  do the same for a Canadian under your Constitution and Bill of Right's.

 

[loyalcana]

Canada to the best of my record has not accepted a American citizen as a refuge(at least not for the last 10 years). So it is unlikely they can permanently stay here.

 

[Goober]

There's only one way that a person can view this situation. If you join the military you should except the fact that the day may come when you have to go and fight. Those guys aren't only cowards but they're fuckin idiots as well.

As for Canada sending them back to the States, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. They're probably claiming refugee status by now.

How can you call them cowards? One of them served in Afghanistan, (the other I don't know) so he's not running from combat itself. Its simple, he disagrees with the US govt's policy on Iraq so much, he risks exile, imprisonment and life long ridicule to be free of it.

Although he did volunteer to join the US military, in his eyes, the US military went from a defencive force, to an invasion force.

Just playing devil's advocate...

 

[Ex-Dragoon]

If you always question what is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do then you have no business being in the military. I am not saying its right to massacre the local populace or anything like that but you have to realiize that you might be called to fight in a war you may not agree with abd if you can't see that then the military is no place for you.

 

[K. Ash]

Whatever those guys reasons are, it really doesn't matter. The bottom line is they signed their name on the dotted line so therefore if they were given an order to go to Irag they had no choice but to go.

The fact that they didn't go stinks of cowardice.

 

[Scott]

They broke laws. Enough said.

 

[K. Ash]

scott1nsh,
nail on the head.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

scott1nsh,
nail on the head.

And if the US government orders them to break the law, they are bound to disobey those orders.  In Canada, we call it the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct.

If they can make a case that the US Government or their military superiors gave them illegal orders, they are innocent.  They may or may not still be cowards, of course.

 

[Scott]

Now this post gets very interesting and open to interpretation. So, exactly what constitutes an "unlawful order"?

"Private Bloggins, go rape those women and set the village on fire after you have mowed down the schoolchildren with your C9" I think it's pretty obvious here.

But what "unlawful" order did these men receive and how can you use the issuance of an unlawful order as a defence for desertion? To me one has nothing to do with the other. If you are given the unlawful order you address it according to your version of the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct. I do not believe that you will find desertion as a method of conflict resolution anywhere in that document.

If these men were truly given an unlawful order then deal with it accordingly, by deserting they have lost all credibility they may have had concerning this unlawful order and have left themselves wide open to share a jail cell with the person who issued the order in the first place.

I must admit that I am not entirely familiar with the circumstances surrounding this issue, but the laws seem pretty cut and dried to me.

I am open to corrections and rebuttals.

Cheers

 

[atticus]

Did these guy's desert because they didn't want to fight? If so why couldn't they just have switched into a non-combat arms MOC? Then they don't have to fight but at least they haven't totally ditched their buddies.

 

[Troopasaurus]

Well, I may not fully agree with the war on Iraq; however I know that if i was ordered to go I would because that is what I have committed to. They signed their lives to their country and thus they should serve out their required service and then leave. I see this as being immature (as immature as I am I realise what a commitment is). They made a commitment, they didn't keep it, they should suffer the consequences.

 

[Torlyn]

scott1nsh,

I absolutely agree with you...there is no connection between what they are accused of and an unlawful order.  I think it is distortion on the media, lawyers, anti-war groups to think otherwise.  It makes me wonder what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot and the CDN soldiers were requesting asylum in the US.  I could only think this would happen if Canada was a Communist nation, i.e. North Korea, the Soviet Union, etc...... I do remember an incident where some soviet sailor defected aboard a US ship and the US CPT gave him back....so then maybe it doesn't always happen.

Speaking as someone who works for that same government in foreign affairs, I can assure you that, as per our glorious Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we will hold him in Canada until such time that his story is heard.  What bothers me about this the most is that he is compounding his own problems.  Like someone said earlier in this post, he could have asked for non-combat duty, and, given the military's (on both sides of the border) abhorrence to bad press, they may have granted it.  Else, he could have bucked for that dishonourable (note CDN spelling...    ) discharge.

What people don't see is that this ignorant bastard will be tying up so much of our time with the media circus, the high-profile lawyers trying to get on the 6 o'clock new, that the people he believes he is helping by not going to Iraq will be further punished by his actions.  Taking up this much time and money (you have NO idea how much this will cost us, CDN taxpayers...  We're looking in the hundreds of thousands already) takes that time and money AWAY from those who truly need asylum in our country.  I say we ship this guy to Sudan, and trade his request for someone who truly needs it.  THe US government is persecuting him because he won't go fight in Iraq?  What about all the Iraqi citizens that have been killed because they dissagreed with Saddam (pre-US invasion)?  What about the 1 million refugees in western Sudan who, if they return to their homes, will be tourtured, beaten, raped, and then killed?  I hope that his conscious plays heavily upon him, and that god may have mercy upon his soul, becuase no one in their right mind should grant mercy to him alive.

Sort of got off on a bit of a tangent there, but being in the government, when I see things like this, and I see the people who need our help,  it sickens me to think that shitbrick from the US will be granted special priviliges because it's become political.  Screw politics.  Politics should have no place in the running of government.  He DID agree to sign up, and I'm sure there WERE options for him not to fight a war he feels strongly about,.  I will defend to the death his right to bitch about the war, but I will grant no clemency to one who refuses to live up to his obligations.  Fin.  (I need to learn to type less...    )

 

[Scott]

So, even if he is given the chance to stay in Canada wouldn't the US be able to apply to have him extradited back there? Jump in here Mr Baker or Torlyn, the two of you should know this one.

In regards to my last, I see the only ways Canada would deny extradition would be:
1) The US planned to send him back to the place and situation he ran from (Highly unlikely, I think this guy's Military days are effectively over)

2) The US was planning to put him to death for the crime(s) he has committed. Canada may feel obligated to keep him because we do not support the death penalty.

I, too, will lose a great amount of respect for the Canadian Gov't should they allow this dink to stay. ONCE AGAIN, He broke the LAW! He joined the Forces, therefore he is no better/no worse than any other person serving. Look at the fella who was in the NFL and dropped a multi-million dollar salary to go fight. WOW. I do agree with earlier posts that he will be tormented by the memories that he did run, probably for the rest of his life. He is branded a coward. However, and I can not say this enough, he broke the law with his act of cowardice. He may have received an unlawful order, but refusing to do something you believe is unlawful has not one thing to do with desertion. I know I am repeating myself but it seems so simple to me.

Cheers