The Flag. Frisco, Colorado, 2013
I wrote the following letter back in February of 2004 when I was still an active duty Air Force officer. In retrospect, I wonder why I didn’t have the courage to do then what my fictional Army officer did.
With this month being the tenth anniversary of our “intervention” in Iraq, I thought it might be interesting to post.
An Officer Resigns Over the War on Iraq
On February 13, 2004, Major Lee J. Carey, an officer of the United States Army, offered his resignation in protest of the current Administration’s policy in general and the war in Iraq in particular. What follows is his statement:
Dear Mr. President:
When, upon graduating from West Point in 1991, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant, I raised my right hand and swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”. I took that oath freely and with the confidence that I was promising to defend the greatest civil society man has yet been able to devise. I still very much believe in my country. It has been and still is a grand experiment in democracy, able to give freedom, opportunity and happiness to a larger proportion of its population than any other system of government in the history of the world. Despite its faults, I am very proud of the United States of America. However, to continue to follow the leadership of the current administration, specifically with respect to its policy on Iraq, would amount to nothing less than executing an illegal order. I swore to defend the Constitution, and the rule of law that such a defense implies. To continue in the service of the current administration would be, quite simply, to deny the rule of law and contradict my oath.
As a military officer I cannot stand by while the lives of my troops—our soldiers, airman and seamen—are squandered in Iraq. These brave and talented men and women should not be called upon to go to war, to make the ultimate sacrifice, based merely on hearsay evidence, on an optimistic and egotistical view of our nation’s role in world events, or on some hidden national agenda. I would expect, given the moral standards our nation has traditionally tried to uphold, that my country would carefully consider and exhaust all of its options prior to taking military action. In the case of Iraq, it is now plain that our troops—my fellow soldiers, my personal friends and my companions—were and are committed to military action based on wishful thinking and a lack of comprehension of the facts, if not outright lies. On a daily basis, young men and women are losing their lives over what I, and most international experts, consider to be an illegal war.
Yet, there is another, more serious, element that concerns me. We, as a nation, have squandered in the sands of Iraq something crucial even beyond the lives of our brave and dedicated soldiers: our credibility as a nation and our international moral leadership. We seem to have confused military and technological superiority with moral leadership and moral superiority. Many allies now considered us a pariah, a rogue state uninterested in international cooperation and the rule of law, a nation committed to selfish unilateral action whenever we deem it necessary. It is quite revealing that the general European populace finds more to fear from the United States of America than from Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Furthermore, our current policies open the door for any other state to use force at any time they choose however flimsy may be the pretext. How could we deny them that right after the example we have set in Iraq? Is an America that advocates such a world worth defending?
The now-forgotten “Powell Doctrine” was a well-considered set of criteria which we ought to revisit: Is a vital US interest at stake? Will we commit sufficient resources to win? Are our objectives clearly defined? Will we sustain the commitment? Is there a reasonable expectation that the public and Congress will support the operation? Have we exhausted our other options? These questions were not fully debated or answered in this Administration’s headlong rush to war. In fact, several of these questions can easily be answered with a resounding “No!”
What, then, were our reasons for invading Iraq? Weapons of mass destruction? None found. Link to al-Qaeda? Tenuous at best. Saudi Arabia or Pakistan would have been more justifiable targets. Remove Saddam Hussein? Why him, and not Kim Jong-il, King Fahd, Than Shwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Saparmurat Niyazov, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, Omar Al-Bashir or Alexander Lukashenko? Was it to establish “democracy?” Democracy in the United States was the result of at least five centuries of evolution of the rule of law and democratic principles. In Latin America, democracy has been a work in progress for nearly two hundred years and is far from complete. What kind of conceit and cultural ignorance leads us to believe we can single-handedly and successfully impose our form of government in Iraq within a few short years? Should not a democratic government be earned and fought for by its own people? Is it now our national objective to unilaterally take on the world’s dictators when our own house is in dire need of attention? Such an unjustified expenditure of lives and resources borders on the criminal. No, it is criminal.
Finally, what has become of the real criminals behind 9/11: al-Qaeda and Bin Laden? They have been pushed to the back burner as our resources—especially our intelligence and special operations forces—are being sucked into Iraq. Our adventure in Iraq has forced us to abandon the people of Afghanistan before our work there was complete. There, we lost a perfect opportunity to demonstrate to the world the capacity of America to help a liberated nation rebuild for peace.
So, within the context of our current involvement in Iraq, is it still my duty to press on and carry out my military orders if I know that those very orders, by most accepted international moral and legal standards, are illegal? No. As I was taught as a military officer, I am obligated through duty to the US Army and the nation’s interest and through personal honor to refuse, and I fully accept the consequences of my decision.
The events of 9/11 have dramatically altered our country’s course, and the direction we are now headed will almost certainly harm the moral ideals upon which our nation was founded far more than any terrorist attack. Our international moral leadership is currently non-existent. It is my hope that my resignation will signal a warning—a warning that the current Administration is deliberately and systematically grinding away at the foundations of the international rule of law and our Constitution. It is imperative that we hold dear to our American ideals and choose the “moral high road”—the nobler path for which we must be prepared to pay the price. As we soldiers often say, the price of freedom is not free. This path would ensure that we would always have a Constitution worth defending—a Constitution that young officers, like myself some thirteen years ago, would be proud to swear to defend.
Therefore, as of this day, the 13th of February 2004, in defense of our Nation and the Constitution of the United States of America, I hereby resign my commission in the United States Army.
///signed///
Lee J. Carey, Maj, US Army
Ft. Bowman, Texas
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