S
Sid9
Guest
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/03/awol_in_canada/print.html
American soldiers are fleeing the Iraq war for Canada -- and U.S. officials
may be on their trail. North of the border is no longer the safe haven it
was during the Vietnam era.
By Gregory Levey
May. 03, 2007 | One morning in late February, Canadian police arrived at a
house in the small town of Nelson, British Columbia, and arrested Kyle
Snyder, a U.S. soldier who had gone AWOL from the Army. Snyder, a former
combat engineer who left the United States in April 2005 to avoid deployment
for a second tour in Iraq, was detained for several hours but never charged
with a crime. It remains unclear why he was arrested.
The local police said they were told to detain Snyder by the Canadian Border
Services Agency but acknowledged that the immigration agency was not their
"original source" for information on Snyder. In fact, Snyder was released
after a Canadian immigration official contacted the local police and
informed them there was no basis for Snyder's detention. After he was back
home, Snyder said he was told by Josie Perry, the Canadian immigration
official who ordered his release, that his arrest had come at the behest of
officials from the U.S. Army.
A few weeks later, in Toronto, three men wearing trench coats knocked at the
home of Winnie Ng, a Canadian resident who harbored an American soldier
named Joshua Key. Key, who'd also been a combat engineer, went AWOL from the
Army in 2003 after serving in Iraq. According to Ng, one of the men
announced they were Toronto police officers and told her they wanted to
speak to Key, though Ng was suspicious about their identities. One of the
three was in fact a local police officer, but according to a local news
report, a spokesperson for the Toronto police department acknowledged that
at least one of the other two men was an official from the U.S. Army's
Criminal Investigation Command, or CID.
The incidents have sparked allegations that Canadian law enforcement has
been collaborating with U.S. officials to help track down American soldiers
who have fled to Canada. Some critics, including a left-leaning member of
Parliament who represents Nelson, say they believe it is a campaign of
intimidation. "Our concern is that there could be other Kyle Snyders in
Canada," Alex Atamanenko, the parliamentarian, said following Snyder's
arrest on Feb. 23. "Are there those that are being apprehended now?" In a
formal letter of complaint to the Conservative Party Cabinet ministers
responsible for public safety and immigration, Atamanenko noted that Snyder
was apprehended without a search warrant or permission to enter the
residence. "Has Canada ever raised official objection to the U.S. about the
operation of U.S. police, security, intelligence or military officials in
Canada?" Atamanenko asked, adding, "It is important for Canadian citizens
and visitors to our country to know that our Canadian sovereignty is
respected."
With the Iraq war in its fifth year, an increasing number of American
soldiers have been going AWOL and fleeing to Canada, particularly over the
last six months. One lawyer who works on their behalf puts the number of
American war resisters currently living in Canada at 250 or more. Advocates
for them here talk of a kind of "underground railroad" that has developed
south of the border to help war resisters make their way north.
Ever since the Vietnam War, many Americans have viewed Canada as a liberal
oasis, ready to welcome those who no longer want to take part in Uncle Sam's
wars. But the reality is more complicated these days, especially with the
conservative Harper government in power since 2006. Although the Canadian
people are still largely welcoming, some war resisters say they have faced
hostility here. And all of them who are seeking refugee status to remain in
the country face complex legal obstacles, according to experts on Canada's
refugee laws. Meanwhile, the alleged cooperation between Canadian and U.S.
law enforcement authorities to track them down raises thorny legal questions
of its own.
Speaking by phone recently from an undisclosed location in the Canadian
prairies, Key told Salon that he generally feels safe in Canada, although he
said one person threatened to "put him on a boat and take him back to the
U.S." and another told him that his daughter "deserved to be shot in the
head." He said that he was unnerved after he heard about Snyder's arrest in
B.C. in February. "After what I saw in Iraq," he said, "I know that a
snatch-and-grab operation doesn't take long."
It would be illegal under Canadian law for U.S. officials to make an arrest
on Canadian soil, according to Audrey Macklin, a professor at the University
of Toronto Law School. "U.S. law enforcement officers have no jurisdiction
here," she said. The picture gets murkier, however, with the prospect of
Canadian police working on behalf of U.S. officials. "Sometimes officials
cooperate in cross-border criminal investigations," Macklin said. But the
incidents involving Snyder and Key, she said, didn't strike her as typical
cross-border cooperation. "It's sheer conjecture on my part, but I do wonder
if it is more about intimidation."
While the Canadian police have publicly acknowledged cooperating with Army
CID on the search for Key -- who has not committed a crime in Canada -- U.S.
officials have remained circumspect. In a recent report in the Globe and
Mail, a spokesperson for the CID, which investigates criminal matters for
the military, acknowledged only that they were "interested" in talking with
Key because of allegations he has made about the conduct of American
soldiers in Iraq. Key recently wrote a book called "The Deserter's Tale,"
published in February by Grove/Atlantic, in which he alleges war crimes by
his fellow soldiers. Key wrote, among other things, that he believes
American soldiers raped Iraqi women and that he watched soldiers from the
124th Infantry Division playing soccer with the heads of dead Iraqi
civilians. (Key also notes in the book that when torture at Abu Ghraib
became public in spring 2004, he was not surprised, because it struck him as
consistent with the brutality he had witnessed.) Key says he refused to
participate in such acts and is now seeking refugee status in Canada.
Requests to CID by Salon for further details about the Army agency's pursuit
of Key were not answered.
American war resisters who flee to Canada have no easy options. They might
seek legal immigrant status like any other immigrant who comes to Canada (a
status difficult to obtain once you're in the country), or they might simply
stay quiet and try to remain in the country illegally. But many of them seek
refugee status on political grounds. And many of them are now hearing about
a group called the War Resisters Support Campaign, which pledges to help
them whatever their chosen course of action.
Kevin Lee, a former private in the Army who served in Iraq in 2006, arrived
in Canada in March after going AWOL. He told Salon in a phone interview that
he hid in an apartment in Florida for several weeks before taking a bus to
Toronto. His original plan had been to flee to Mexico, but after using
Google to research his options, he came across the Web site of the War
Resisters Support Campaign and decided Canada was the best place to go. He
is now seeking refugee status here.
It was still a tough choice to flee. "I was sad to leave, but I don't regret
it at all," Lee said, "because the war is pointless and we're losing too
many troops." He was adamant that even if his effort to gain legal status in
Canada fails, he won't go home. "I'll go somewhere else," he said. "As far
away as I can get."
Jeffrey House, a Toronto lawyer who works on behalf of numerous war
resisters, contends that the war in Iraq contravenes international law and
soldiers therefore have a right to refuse to serve in it. It is on that
basis that he is fighting for them to be granted refugee status by the
Canadian government.
But the argument House is making has not yet definitively been put to the
test here. Canada has relatively generous refugee laws, but the situation
with U.S. war resisters does not fit neatly under the definition of
"refugee." According to Lisa Borsu of Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
the official agency that handles refugee claims, "the Government of Canada
is committed to protecting refugees who have a well founded fear of
persecution" based on "political opinions" or "membership in a particular
social group."
But whether facing jail time in the United States for breaking a U.S.
military law qualifies as "persecution" is a much stickier point. University
of Toronto's Macklin, an expert on refugee law, says that the case House is
trying to make is a tough one because past interpretations of Canadian
refugee law affirm that "prosecution is different from persecution." Though
war resisters are taking a political stand, Macklin says that the Canadian
system is more likely to view their plight back home -- facing a judge and
potential jail time -- as distinct from that of immigrants fleeing an
authoritarian regime, who could be imprisoned or executed for their
political or religious leanings if sent back home.
The War Resisters Support Campaign, headquartered in Toronto, is lobbying
the Canadian government to make a new provision in the immigration laws to
allow the U.S. soldiers to stay in Canada legally. It has helped roughly 40
Americans who have contacted the group from within Canada, according to Lee
Zaslofsky, the coordinator of the campaign, and more than a hundred others
who have made contact anonymously through lawyers. The group helps find them
housing, gives them some financial support, and coordinates legal services
needed for the fight to stay. Recently, due to the rising number of
resisters, the organization put out a call for housing and received more
than 300 responses from people across Canada, including from one former
Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament, whose name the group declined to
disclose.
The group has also given advice to many other resisters in the United States
who are considering darting to Canada, according to Zaslofsky. They have
also received responses from people in the United States offering their
homes as safe houses for resisters as they make their way to the Canadian
border -- what advocates refer to as an "underground railroad." Zaslofsky
said that his organization has not worked directly with anyone in the United
States, but said that if it necessary, "there are people in the U.S. who I
could refer them to."
For the Vietnam generation, all this might sound quite familiar. In fact,
the support movement here is led and staffed largely by people who refused
to fight the war in Indochina, and is seen by many of them as one generation
helping the next. Zaslofsky, himself an Army deserter during Vietnam,
acknowledges a generational difference; back then they were fleeing the
draft, while many of today's soldiers are fleeing an Army they were driven
into by economic struggle. "In my day people went to university to avoid
military service," Zaslofsky said. Now they go into the military in order to
get the money to go to college, he said, or because low-wage jobs at places
like Wal-Mart or McDonald's aren't enough to support their families.
Without a draft, the number of Americans fleeing north is a fraction of what
it was four decades ago. More than 30,000 fled to Canada during the late
1960s and early '70s. Only a few thousand have gone AWOL during the current
war, and most of them have apparently remained in the United States. Still,
as the war in Iraq drags on and disillusionment grows in the ranks of the
military, the numbers are rising. While 3,101 soldiers went AWOL between
October 2005 and October 2006, more than 1,700 soldiers deserted in the six
months between October 2006 and early April, according to figures released
recently by the Army. According to the War Resisters Support Campaign, the
number of soldiers coming to Canada over the past six months has risen
correspondingly.
Corey Glass, a former National Guardsman who worked in military intelligence
in Iraq before deserting to Canada in 2006, says he once considered it his
duty to serve. But he says that in Iraq, he was directed to "sanitize"
intelligence reports. "I was told to pretty much go with the story you're
given, take out the real details, and paint a picture for the commander," he
told Salon. Eventually Glass came to believe that "they used lies and plays
on words to get us over there, and ordered us to commit crimes, in my
opinion, against another country."
The growing strain on the U.S. military, manifest in multiple and lengthened
tours of duty, is helping to accelerate the desertion rate. According to
Zaslofsky, one U.S. soldier now living in Canada had served two tours of
duty and was awarded a medal for his service at a party held in his honor on
an Army base. It was supposed to be his last day in the Army. Afterward,
excited about his imminent freedom, the soldier drove back to his house,
where he found an Army official waiting on his driveway with orders for him
to return for a third tour. "That's it," the soldier said to himself,
according to Zaslofsky. "I'm going to Canada."
Jeffrey House, who represents Joshua Key, Corey Glass and other war
resisters, added, "People come to me and say, 'I can't look at one more
body' or, 'I can't stand to not be able to pass a car while walking without
worrying that it's going to be blown up.' People get beyond tired and you're
asking a lot of them, particularly when it's on such a doubtful venture as
the war in Iraq."
House, who was himself a Vietnam draft dodger, says 124 American soldiers
have come to his Toronto office alone, and he estimates that at least twice
that number are now in Canada. He says that it's not uncommon for someone to
fly up to Toronto from the northeastern United States just for the day and
say to him, "I'm supposed to be back in Iraq in three weeks. What are my
options?"
But U.S. soldiers fleeing to Canada today face a Canadian government that
may well be less hospitable than the one in power during the Vietnam era.
Back then, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau welcomed war deserters, declaring
"Canada should be a refuge from militarism." Richard Nixon called him an
"asshole," to which Trudeau allegedly responded, "I have been called worse
things by better people."
The government of Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper, by contrast,
seems to have something of a reverence for the Bush administration and its
worldview. Although this is never expressed openly in the more
progressive-minded Canadian political landscape, the Harper government has
implicitly echoed many of Bush's policies, values and rhetoric. Harper has
regularly spoken of a more muscular foreign policy, created strong ties with
evangelical Christians -- including those in the United States -- and sought
to curb some of Canada's generous social programs. Some Canadian
commentators have suggested that if Harper had been running the country in
2003, there would probably be Canadian troops in Iraq alongside the American
ones. (Canadian troops are serving in Afghanistan, but none are in Iraq.)
Still, the Harper government so far has not said or done anything to oppose
the American war resisters -- at least not publicly.
Of five Toronto-area Conservative members of Parliament contacted for this
report, only one responded. "Unfortunately, Minister Van Loan will not be
commenting on this issue," Michael White, spokesperson for Peter Van Loan,
the leader of the government in the House of Commons and a member of the
federal Cabinet, said in an e-mail. "However, if you want to do a story
about how the Government is strengthening democracy in Canada, then I'm the
guy you want to talk to." Spokespeople for both the Canadian Ministry of
Immigration and the ruling Conservative Party refused to say anything that
would either support or criticize Canada's providing safe harbor for
American war resisters.
Intriguingly, very few leftist Canadian politicians have been willing to
openly show their support, either. It is a touchy subject that often
provokes an uncomfortable response -- it seems that politicians of all
stripes here are torn between upsetting their constituents on one hand, and
the U.S. government on the other.
But so long as Canada doesn't deport them, many of the war resisters do not
appear to be going elsewhere anytime soon. Joshua Key, for example, says
that he stands firmly behind his decision and is determined to stay. Kyle
Snyder has recently married a Canadian woman and will gain citizenship, and
others are in varying stages of putting down roots.
Corey Glass says that the positive reception he has received from most
Canadians has helped make him feel at ease with his difficult decision to
flee. Most of the time, he says, Canadians welcome the war resisters,
"especially when they find out you were in Iraq and decided to step out,
because they're pretty proud of not engaging in the war."
"I know I made the right decision," Glass added. "I just wish I hadn't
needed to."
American soldiers are fleeing the Iraq war for Canada -- and U.S. officials
may be on their trail. North of the border is no longer the safe haven it
was during the Vietnam era.
By Gregory Levey
May. 03, 2007 | One morning in late February, Canadian police arrived at a
house in the small town of Nelson, British Columbia, and arrested Kyle
Snyder, a U.S. soldier who had gone AWOL from the Army. Snyder, a former
combat engineer who left the United States in April 2005 to avoid deployment
for a second tour in Iraq, was detained for several hours but never charged
with a crime. It remains unclear why he was arrested.
The local police said they were told to detain Snyder by the Canadian Border
Services Agency but acknowledged that the immigration agency was not their
"original source" for information on Snyder. In fact, Snyder was released
after a Canadian immigration official contacted the local police and
informed them there was no basis for Snyder's detention. After he was back
home, Snyder said he was told by Josie Perry, the Canadian immigration
official who ordered his release, that his arrest had come at the behest of
officials from the U.S. Army.
A few weeks later, in Toronto, three men wearing trench coats knocked at the
home of Winnie Ng, a Canadian resident who harbored an American soldier
named Joshua Key. Key, who'd also been a combat engineer, went AWOL from the
Army in 2003 after serving in Iraq. According to Ng, one of the men
announced they were Toronto police officers and told her they wanted to
speak to Key, though Ng was suspicious about their identities. One of the
three was in fact a local police officer, but according to a local news
report, a spokesperson for the Toronto police department acknowledged that
at least one of the other two men was an official from the U.S. Army's
Criminal Investigation Command, or CID.
The incidents have sparked allegations that Canadian law enforcement has
been collaborating with U.S. officials to help track down American soldiers
who have fled to Canada. Some critics, including a left-leaning member of
Parliament who represents Nelson, say they believe it is a campaign of
intimidation. "Our concern is that there could be other Kyle Snyders in
Canada," Alex Atamanenko, the parliamentarian, said following Snyder's
arrest on Feb. 23. "Are there those that are being apprehended now?" In a
formal letter of complaint to the Conservative Party Cabinet ministers
responsible for public safety and immigration, Atamanenko noted that Snyder
was apprehended without a search warrant or permission to enter the
residence. "Has Canada ever raised official objection to the U.S. about the
operation of U.S. police, security, intelligence or military officials in
Canada?" Atamanenko asked, adding, "It is important for Canadian citizens
and visitors to our country to know that our Canadian sovereignty is
respected."
With the Iraq war in its fifth year, an increasing number of American
soldiers have been going AWOL and fleeing to Canada, particularly over the
last six months. One lawyer who works on their behalf puts the number of
American war resisters currently living in Canada at 250 or more. Advocates
for them here talk of a kind of "underground railroad" that has developed
south of the border to help war resisters make their way north.
Ever since the Vietnam War, many Americans have viewed Canada as a liberal
oasis, ready to welcome those who no longer want to take part in Uncle Sam's
wars. But the reality is more complicated these days, especially with the
conservative Harper government in power since 2006. Although the Canadian
people are still largely welcoming, some war resisters say they have faced
hostility here. And all of them who are seeking refugee status to remain in
the country face complex legal obstacles, according to experts on Canada's
refugee laws. Meanwhile, the alleged cooperation between Canadian and U.S.
law enforcement authorities to track them down raises thorny legal questions
of its own.
Speaking by phone recently from an undisclosed location in the Canadian
prairies, Key told Salon that he generally feels safe in Canada, although he
said one person threatened to "put him on a boat and take him back to the
U.S." and another told him that his daughter "deserved to be shot in the
head." He said that he was unnerved after he heard about Snyder's arrest in
B.C. in February. "After what I saw in Iraq," he said, "I know that a
snatch-and-grab operation doesn't take long."
It would be illegal under Canadian law for U.S. officials to make an arrest
on Canadian soil, according to Audrey Macklin, a professor at the University
of Toronto Law School. "U.S. law enforcement officers have no jurisdiction
here," she said. The picture gets murkier, however, with the prospect of
Canadian police working on behalf of U.S. officials. "Sometimes officials
cooperate in cross-border criminal investigations," Macklin said. But the
incidents involving Snyder and Key, she said, didn't strike her as typical
cross-border cooperation. "It's sheer conjecture on my part, but I do wonder
if it is more about intimidation."
While the Canadian police have publicly acknowledged cooperating with Army
CID on the search for Key -- who has not committed a crime in Canada -- U.S.
officials have remained circumspect. In a recent report in the Globe and
Mail, a spokesperson for the CID, which investigates criminal matters for
the military, acknowledged only that they were "interested" in talking with
Key because of allegations he has made about the conduct of American
soldiers in Iraq. Key recently wrote a book called "The Deserter's Tale,"
published in February by Grove/Atlantic, in which he alleges war crimes by
his fellow soldiers. Key wrote, among other things, that he believes
American soldiers raped Iraqi women and that he watched soldiers from the
124th Infantry Division playing soccer with the heads of dead Iraqi
civilians. (Key also notes in the book that when torture at Abu Ghraib
became public in spring 2004, he was not surprised, because it struck him as
consistent with the brutality he had witnessed.) Key says he refused to
participate in such acts and is now seeking refugee status in Canada.
Requests to CID by Salon for further details about the Army agency's pursuit
of Key were not answered.
American war resisters who flee to Canada have no easy options. They might
seek legal immigrant status like any other immigrant who comes to Canada (a
status difficult to obtain once you're in the country), or they might simply
stay quiet and try to remain in the country illegally. But many of them seek
refugee status on political grounds. And many of them are now hearing about
a group called the War Resisters Support Campaign, which pledges to help
them whatever their chosen course of action.
Kevin Lee, a former private in the Army who served in Iraq in 2006, arrived
in Canada in March after going AWOL. He told Salon in a phone interview that
he hid in an apartment in Florida for several weeks before taking a bus to
Toronto. His original plan had been to flee to Mexico, but after using
Google to research his options, he came across the Web site of the War
Resisters Support Campaign and decided Canada was the best place to go. He
is now seeking refugee status here.
It was still a tough choice to flee. "I was sad to leave, but I don't regret
it at all," Lee said, "because the war is pointless and we're losing too
many troops." He was adamant that even if his effort to gain legal status in
Canada fails, he won't go home. "I'll go somewhere else," he said. "As far
away as I can get."
Jeffrey House, a Toronto lawyer who works on behalf of numerous war
resisters, contends that the war in Iraq contravenes international law and
soldiers therefore have a right to refuse to serve in it. It is on that
basis that he is fighting for them to be granted refugee status by the
Canadian government.
But the argument House is making has not yet definitively been put to the
test here. Canada has relatively generous refugee laws, but the situation
with U.S. war resisters does not fit neatly under the definition of
"refugee." According to Lisa Borsu of Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
the official agency that handles refugee claims, "the Government of Canada
is committed to protecting refugees who have a well founded fear of
persecution" based on "political opinions" or "membership in a particular
social group."
But whether facing jail time in the United States for breaking a U.S.
military law qualifies as "persecution" is a much stickier point. University
of Toronto's Macklin, an expert on refugee law, says that the case House is
trying to make is a tough one because past interpretations of Canadian
refugee law affirm that "prosecution is different from persecution." Though
war resisters are taking a political stand, Macklin says that the Canadian
system is more likely to view their plight back home -- facing a judge and
potential jail time -- as distinct from that of immigrants fleeing an
authoritarian regime, who could be imprisoned or executed for their
political or religious leanings if sent back home.
The War Resisters Support Campaign, headquartered in Toronto, is lobbying
the Canadian government to make a new provision in the immigration laws to
allow the U.S. soldiers to stay in Canada legally. It has helped roughly 40
Americans who have contacted the group from within Canada, according to Lee
Zaslofsky, the coordinator of the campaign, and more than a hundred others
who have made contact anonymously through lawyers. The group helps find them
housing, gives them some financial support, and coordinates legal services
needed for the fight to stay. Recently, due to the rising number of
resisters, the organization put out a call for housing and received more
than 300 responses from people across Canada, including from one former
Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament, whose name the group declined to
disclose.
The group has also given advice to many other resisters in the United States
who are considering darting to Canada, according to Zaslofsky. They have
also received responses from people in the United States offering their
homes as safe houses for resisters as they make their way to the Canadian
border -- what advocates refer to as an "underground railroad." Zaslofsky
said that his organization has not worked directly with anyone in the United
States, but said that if it necessary, "there are people in the U.S. who I
could refer them to."
For the Vietnam generation, all this might sound quite familiar. In fact,
the support movement here is led and staffed largely by people who refused
to fight the war in Indochina, and is seen by many of them as one generation
helping the next. Zaslofsky, himself an Army deserter during Vietnam,
acknowledges a generational difference; back then they were fleeing the
draft, while many of today's soldiers are fleeing an Army they were driven
into by economic struggle. "In my day people went to university to avoid
military service," Zaslofsky said. Now they go into the military in order to
get the money to go to college, he said, or because low-wage jobs at places
like Wal-Mart or McDonald's aren't enough to support their families.
Without a draft, the number of Americans fleeing north is a fraction of what
it was four decades ago. More than 30,000 fled to Canada during the late
1960s and early '70s. Only a few thousand have gone AWOL during the current
war, and most of them have apparently remained in the United States. Still,
as the war in Iraq drags on and disillusionment grows in the ranks of the
military, the numbers are rising. While 3,101 soldiers went AWOL between
October 2005 and October 2006, more than 1,700 soldiers deserted in the six
months between October 2006 and early April, according to figures released
recently by the Army. According to the War Resisters Support Campaign, the
number of soldiers coming to Canada over the past six months has risen
correspondingly.
Corey Glass, a former National Guardsman who worked in military intelligence
in Iraq before deserting to Canada in 2006, says he once considered it his
duty to serve. But he says that in Iraq, he was directed to "sanitize"
intelligence reports. "I was told to pretty much go with the story you're
given, take out the real details, and paint a picture for the commander," he
told Salon. Eventually Glass came to believe that "they used lies and plays
on words to get us over there, and ordered us to commit crimes, in my
opinion, against another country."
The growing strain on the U.S. military, manifest in multiple and lengthened
tours of duty, is helping to accelerate the desertion rate. According to
Zaslofsky, one U.S. soldier now living in Canada had served two tours of
duty and was awarded a medal for his service at a party held in his honor on
an Army base. It was supposed to be his last day in the Army. Afterward,
excited about his imminent freedom, the soldier drove back to his house,
where he found an Army official waiting on his driveway with orders for him
to return for a third tour. "That's it," the soldier said to himself,
according to Zaslofsky. "I'm going to Canada."
Jeffrey House, who represents Joshua Key, Corey Glass and other war
resisters, added, "People come to me and say, 'I can't look at one more
body' or, 'I can't stand to not be able to pass a car while walking without
worrying that it's going to be blown up.' People get beyond tired and you're
asking a lot of them, particularly when it's on such a doubtful venture as
the war in Iraq."
House, who was himself a Vietnam draft dodger, says 124 American soldiers
have come to his Toronto office alone, and he estimates that at least twice
that number are now in Canada. He says that it's not uncommon for someone to
fly up to Toronto from the northeastern United States just for the day and
say to him, "I'm supposed to be back in Iraq in three weeks. What are my
options?"
But U.S. soldiers fleeing to Canada today face a Canadian government that
may well be less hospitable than the one in power during the Vietnam era.
Back then, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau welcomed war deserters, declaring
"Canada should be a refuge from militarism." Richard Nixon called him an
"asshole," to which Trudeau allegedly responded, "I have been called worse
things by better people."
The government of Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper, by contrast,
seems to have something of a reverence for the Bush administration and its
worldview. Although this is never expressed openly in the more
progressive-minded Canadian political landscape, the Harper government has
implicitly echoed many of Bush's policies, values and rhetoric. Harper has
regularly spoken of a more muscular foreign policy, created strong ties with
evangelical Christians -- including those in the United States -- and sought
to curb some of Canada's generous social programs. Some Canadian
commentators have suggested that if Harper had been running the country in
2003, there would probably be Canadian troops in Iraq alongside the American
ones. (Canadian troops are serving in Afghanistan, but none are in Iraq.)
Still, the Harper government so far has not said or done anything to oppose
the American war resisters -- at least not publicly.
Of five Toronto-area Conservative members of Parliament contacted for this
report, only one responded. "Unfortunately, Minister Van Loan will not be
commenting on this issue," Michael White, spokesperson for Peter Van Loan,
the leader of the government in the House of Commons and a member of the
federal Cabinet, said in an e-mail. "However, if you want to do a story
about how the Government is strengthening democracy in Canada, then I'm the
guy you want to talk to." Spokespeople for both the Canadian Ministry of
Immigration and the ruling Conservative Party refused to say anything that
would either support or criticize Canada's providing safe harbor for
American war resisters.
Intriguingly, very few leftist Canadian politicians have been willing to
openly show their support, either. It is a touchy subject that often
provokes an uncomfortable response -- it seems that politicians of all
stripes here are torn between upsetting their constituents on one hand, and
the U.S. government on the other.
But so long as Canada doesn't deport them, many of the war resisters do not
appear to be going elsewhere anytime soon. Joshua Key, for example, says
that he stands firmly behind his decision and is determined to stay. Kyle
Snyder has recently married a Canadian woman and will gain citizenship, and
others are in varying stages of putting down roots.
Corey Glass says that the positive reception he has received from most
Canadians has helped make him feel at ease with his difficult decision to
flee. Most of the time, he says, Canadians welcome the war resisters,
"especially when they find out you were in Iraq and decided to step out,
because they're pretty proud of not engaging in the war."
"I know I made the right decision," Glass added. "I just wish I hadn't
needed to."
