Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s
Toronto Sun
No sympathy for her
Hard to bleed for U.S. mom who should have known better than to join army
By MICHELE MANDEL
She is the first known female Iraq war resister to have fled to Canada, but Kimberley Rivera is hardly the poster girl for a movement that argues all American army defectors are conscientious objectors who deserve asylum.
Fact is, I've had some sympathy for the estimated 200 soldiers who have travelled north to escape deployment to Iraq -- men who objected on ideological grounds, who came to believe what millions of others would as well -- that despite their president's assurances to the contrary, there were no weapons of mass destruction, no ties that linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida, no reason to be part of a war unsanctioned by the United Nations and opposed by most nations, including Canada.
Like the majority of Canadians -- 64% in the last poll -- and a non-binding motion passed by Parliament last June, I think they should be allowed to stay.
But try as I might, I can't drum up much empathy for this young Texas mom of three who was ordered deported on Jan. 27 by an immigration judge yesterday.
Rivera should have known what she was getting herself into when she went into an army recruiting office in 2006 and signed up for active duty. By that time, most everyone was aware of the non-existent nukes, the quagmire of violence and the war's vague underpinnings. No one promised it was going to be pretty or safe or easy to miss her young family.
But with just a high-school diploma and two little children at the time to support with her husband, Rivera concluded that a career in the army still beat her photo lab job at Wal-Mart. "I wanted my life to be better for my kids."
Her husband, Mario, insists the recruiter promised that she wouldn't be sent to Iraq and even if she were, it wouldn't be to a combat zone. "That's why he let me sign," the 26-year-old says, cradling their Canadian-born daughter Katie, born six weeks ago.
The Americans are running out of soldiers, forcing units to redeploy over and over again, and she wasn't going to be sent to Iraq?
Even Rivera wasn't that naive.
"In my mind, I knew I was probably going to Iraq," she admits after the rest of the media have packed up their cameras and left the news conference at the office of the War Resisters Support Campaign. "I was very gung ho. I wanted to make this a career."
Her goal was to be a warrant officer but when she didn't score high enough on her entrance exams, she was relegated to gate guard duty when her unit was deployed to Iraq in October 2006. After just three months, when she was home on leave, Rivera decided she'd seen enough and wasn't going back to serve out her remaining 12 months.
So what horrors did she see that led to her desertion?
Her blue eyes slide away into the past. Yet the first thing she offers is her problem with phoning home. After initially being allowed to call her husband every day, staying on the free line for at least an hour, the military later cracked down and limited calls to just 15 minutes.
Ah, the rigours of war.
The Texas native then speaks of her sadness at losing soldiers whom she befriended who didn't come back to the base and her discomfort at hearing the disturbing boasts of those who did.
But what haunts her most of all is the face of a terrified Iraqi girl who was shaking with terror as she accompanied her father to the base. "I was seeing my little girl," Rivera explains.
That look of fear changed her life, she says, and her entire opinion about what Americans were doing to Iraqi civilians. It's an epiphany that hardly seems clear but she insists you had to be there. "I don't think you fully understand what you're getting into until you're actually in it."
Still, I'd argue that coming under intense mortar fire weighed a tad more heavily on her decision not to go back. "There was the stress of not knowing if you're going to live," she admits. "I felt I was just waiting to be killed off."
So after learning about the War Resisters Support Campaign from the Internet, she and her husband hightailed it to Canada in 2007 with their son Christian, now 6, and daughter Rebecca, now 4, and settled in Parkdale where they've been overwhelmed by a welcoming community.
Now with their new baby, they are praying to stay.
If returned to the States, Rivera knows she faces prison. Robin Long, the first war resister deported back to the U.S., is currently serving a 15-month sentence. There are four others facing deportation this month alone.
So while they are hoping their new incoming president may declare an amnesty for military deserters, Rivera would still rather stay in Canada.
But on a day when we lost yet another brave Canadian soldier who did not shirk the responsibility he had willingly signed on for, it was hard to put out the welcome mat for someone who did.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/michele_mandel/2009/01/08/7953646-sun.html