Soldiers Choose Canada

[KamaAina]

and it's not for the hockey, or the beer, or Tim Hortons, or even Alanis, though all those things are fine...

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0414/solomon.php

Hughey did watch New York shut down Toronto in a fourth-quarter comeback that night—but on TV from St. Catharines, Ontario, where a Quaker couple has taken him in. He is the second American soldier who opposes the war to have applied for refugee status in Canada. As the occupation in Iraq drags on, morale among soldiers plummets, and talk of a post-election draft heats up, their cases will determine whether Canada will once again welcome young Americans resisting a questionable war....

That is the kind of argument Hinzman and Hughey's attorney, Jeffry House, will make before Canada's immigration board about eight weeks from now. Essentially, House will be putting the war itself on trial by contending that the U.S. wants to send these young men to jail—or worse—for choosing to comply with international law. "Rather than do something unthinkable or horrible as soldiers," House says, "they came to Canada. That's a huge step."...

Hinzman excelled at the drills and enjoyed the camaraderie, but, he says, "I started to question things as it became clear that basic training is all about breaking down the human inhibition against killing." In rifle training, he says, "You start out with targets that are black circles. Then the circles grow shoulders and then the shoulders turn into torsos. Pretty soon they're human beings."

He was a novice practitioner of Zen, and when he got to Fort Bragg in July 2001, the closest thing he could find "that wasn't too New Age-y" was the Quaker House in Fayetteville. He and Nguyen started attending in January 2002, and felt at home with its philosophy of nonviolence. Over time, Hinzman began preparing an eloquent application for C.O. status. "Although I still have a great desire to eliminate injustice," he wrote, "I have come to the realization that killing will do nothing but perpetuate it. Thus, I cannot in good conscience continue to serve as a combatant in the Army." He submitted it that August.

Read the whole thing. Plucking out those four paragraphs does this piece no justice whatsoever.