Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War

We’ve got a new one who has refused his call-up from the Individual Ready Reserve, Benji Lewis who was discharged from active duty to the IRR in 2007. He was recalled earlier this year and he’s refused to report to complete his legal obligation to the Marines. He served honorably for two tours in Iraq and now he’s decided to make some kind of statement by potentially wiping out that honorable service.

Let me explain the discharge thing before I have a deja vu moment with Army Sergeant all over again.

A member of the military signs up for an eight year commitment, four or six years is usually on active duty, then they receive a DD 214 discharge certificate and they’re moved to the IRR for the remainder of their commitment. Servicemembers are made aware of this at the beginning of their service before they sign. The purpose of the two-year IRR service is in the case that the military might need their skills in the event manpower falls short the military has a pool of trained people from which to draw.

When the two years of IRR is completed, they receive a final discharge. The first discharge is from active duty, not from further military responsibility. Like Matthis Chiroux, Lewis claims to be discharged, but it’s dishonest. Just like last year when Adam Kokesh tried to tell the world he’d been discharged but caught flak from the Marines when he wore his uniform in a protest while still under obligation to the military. His final discharge was a General Discharge even though he’d gotten an Honorable Discharge from active duty.

You’d think that point would be clear by now, but apparently, it’s not.

Anyway, Lewis writes this idiot screed about how he was misled by the Marines into thinking they were some sort of humanitarian organization and in his words;

I joined because I wanted to help people. At the time I didn’t understand that the sole function of the military is the utter destruction of the individual. Furthermore, the fact that one is more likely to be punished than rewarded is a thick woolen blanket of oppression that stifles all humanitarianism, all creativity, and all individual thought.

Tearing up yet? He describes boot camp;

Boot Camp is full of this unwavering devotion to Flag, God, and Corps. Often we would start boot camp classes by watching footage of Iraqi buildings and people being destroyed to the tune of Drowning Pool’s ‘Let the Bodies hit the Floor.’

Immediately after the longest basic training of all the military branches, where drill instructors broke me down in order to build me back up, the Marine Corps way, I found myself in Camp Pendleton, CA, at the School of Infantry (SOI). Here sleep was rare, though at least we weren’t ordered to put all our tent stakes into the squad bay’s running laundry dryers and sleep at attention on top of our blankets. Order was still strictly enforced. Inspections of all our personal belongings were common, and reprimands were more severe under the citation that our disobedience would not get us killed in Iraq, but by the persons to our right and to our left.

Now, see I’ve heard plenty of times about this videos of war set to popular music stuff, but, having been a military instructor, I see no use for the practice. It would eat up more training time than it’s worth, so I call bullshit.

And who knew that basic training was going to be so uncomfortable, huh? I thought it was like Summer Camp, but Lewis makes it sound hard. Why would it be so hard? Poor guy.

How about this story from his time in Iraq;

After a short time operating as a provisional rifle squad in Haditha, where we accomplished nothing but getting hit by an IED on our first patrol injuring a couple marines and reservists, we received orders to break out our mortars and head to Falluja in retaliation for the hanging of four U.S. contractors. This was it, we were mortar men and this was going to be what we were trained for!

Few were excited, save for some officers and higher-ranking enlisted. Most looked at this as just another way we were getting screwed over by the “green weenie” as we affectionately referred to our beloved corps.

What we were not told was that the four U.S. contractors were hung in retaliation for an assassination of a quadriplegic Cleric named Ahmed Yassin by Israel utilizing an American attack helicopter in the Gaza Strip. The Marine Corps does not find this information pertinent to disseminate to us lowly grunts.

By some sort of circular logic, Lewis thinks it’s OK for terrorists to kill American citizens for the retribution of an act that didn’t involve anyone on either side of the actual retribution, didn’t happen within hundreds of miles of the dead cleric (who Lewis fails to mention was a co-founder of Hamas and was personally involved in directing suicide attacks against Israel despite his disabilities) and even though Lewis calls it an American helicopter that killed Yassin, he  was killed by an Israeli helicopter.

So Lewis tries to blame the Marines for giving him incomplete and unnecessary information while he himself gives us false and incomplete information for his own purposes.

I hope the military starts rounding these sociopaths up before they do more damage to our national security than they’ve already done. And I hope they toss them in the hoosegow before January, when I expect that they’ll be awarded medals for their “bravery”.