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Marine would serve time rather than serve bush

Michael Mayo

March 20, 2003

This is the point where some confused souls -- mistaking paternalism for patriotism -- think we should all shut up, rally around the flag and stand behind President Bush, no matter what dark alley he's leading us down or how we feel about this war.

These are not easy days for dissenters. But Travis Clark doesn't care.

"This is completely crazy," Clark said Wednesday, each minute bringing the United States closer to invasion of Iraq. "We're about to step off a moral cliff. We're talking about bombing a whole region, killing lots of innocent people and inflaming things around the world. This is the time we as Americans should be questioning and reviewing everything that's happening, not just going along with everything the president says."

Clark spent five years in the Marines on active duty, in Hawaii and Asia, but he will not serve a day more.

Now he is willing to make a different sacrifice for the country he loves.

He is ready to go to jail.

He might be arrested in the next few days for an act of civil disobedience near the United States Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, where several organizations plan to protest.

"We've told people to turn out at 5 p.m. the day the war starts," said Clark, 26, an activist with Peace South Florida. "We've told people to bring their banners, posters, whistles and drums. We want to make a lot of noise. I think it'll be chaotic."

Or he might be jailed if he formally breaks his military contract, which runs through 2004.

Every day, he goes to his mailbox in Plantation wondering whether the papers summoning him from his 3-year call-up period will arrive. If they do, he will refuse reinstatement and apply for conscientious objector status.

Clark moved to South Florida from Michigan last fall. He now works at a Starbucks, and you can make all the jokes you want about him being some latte liberal or cappuccino commie. Since he was quoted in a South Florida Sun-Sentinel story about conscientious objectors a few weeks ago, he's been called everything from a hippie to a terrorist.

"It's been kind of bizarre," Clark said.

He said his transformation has been a gradual process, born of self-education and exposure to the world.

"It wasn't one moment where I said, that's it, I'm a pacifist," Clark said. "I just started reading some different things and thinking." His influences include Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau and George Orwell.

Orwell came to his mind as he listened to President Bush's speech on Monday night. He couldn't help but notice how some of the language used to indict Saddam Hussein's regime ("reckless aggression," "thugs and killers") might also apply to the United States if bombs harm innocent civilians in Baghdad.

And Clark wondered what would happen if American troops followed the same logic Bush demanded of Iraqi officers when Bush said, "War crimes will be prosecuted ... and it will be no defense to say, `I was just following orders.'"

"Totally hypocritical," Clark said. "According to American military law, if a superior gives an unlawful order, you're not allowed to obey it. To me, invading Iraq would be unlawful."

He noted how Bush is quick to trumpet U.N. resolutions as justification for war even as Bush has turned his back on the United Nations and even though the United States will violate the U.N. demilitarized zone along the Iraqi-Kuwait border to launch a ground attack.

Clark now considers himself a different kind of freedom fighter, one who follows his conscience and not his commander in chief.

His thoughts as the deadline approached? "I'm excited in a way, because all the peace movements will kick up a step when the war starts. I'm pretty horrified, because Americans are for the most part supporting it and cheering it on. And I'm scared, because I've got a cousin and some friends in Kuwait. None of us know how this is going to turn out."

Michael Mayo is the metro columnist for Broward County. He can be reached at mmayo@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4508.



Copyright (c) 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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