Olympia, Wash. — THE soldier stands in his living room eyeing all the cool soldier stuff he never got to use in a real fight. Like the helmet with not a single ding and the sleek body armor with not a scuff. The gear piles high on the carpet.
First Lt. Ehren Watada is giving it all back and, out of courtesy, packing it up. The Army had treated him with the utmost respect until the moment it decided to court-martial him. It was nothing personal. The Army does what it has to do.
Just as Watada himself did what he felt he had to do seven months ago when he became the first -- and only -- commissioned officer in the United States to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq.
His conscience, he said, had overtaken him. He told the world what he had privately told his superiors months earlier: that he believed the war was illegal and immoral, and he would play no role in it.
Watada tried to resign; the Army respectfully denied him. He said he was willing to fight in Afghanistan; the Army refused him again -- a soldier can't pick and choose where he fights. As his unit shipped off to Iraq, Watada stayed to face the consequences.
Thousands of GIs have gone AWOL or voiced opposition to the Iraq war, but when an officer says he won't go, the whole military machine must take note. It means dissent has crept up the chain of command, potentially undermining the war effort.
The Army felt compelled to respond forcefully, charging Watada, 28, with one count of failure to deploy and four (later reduced to two) counts of "conduct unbecoming" for making public statements against the war and against the Bush administration. His court-martial begins today at Ft. Lewis, 15 miles north of here.
Watada ponders the prospect of spending four years in military prison, and he muses on his spiral from exemplary military man to reviled antiwar poster boy.
"Life has been ... " He laughs nervously and shakes his head, searching for words. "A little abnormal."
His living room, like the rest of the apartment complex, feels boxy and new and unmistakably inexpensive -- made for function rather than form. A balcony looks out at a parking lot crowded with pickups and SUVs.
In the middle of the room he stands in stocking feet, wearing baggy fatigues like pajamas, hands on hips. He's deciding where to begin the packing. When all the world seemed chaotic, it made sense to organize. Should he start with his barely mussed chemical suit or his spotless all-weather traction-control camouflage boots?
