Evan's Website

Press Release

7-day Tower Guard Vigil, Washington, DC
In Protest of the Immoral and Unethical Policies Perpetrated
Against US Soldiers and My Friends

by Evan Michael Knappenberger, 1st BDE, 4th Infantry Division

I am spending one entire week on a scaffold on the National Mall in
the District of Columbia in protest of the US military's STOP-LOSS and
INACTIVE RESERVE (READY RESERVE) policies, which are being used as a
substitute for conscription in a political war -under the pretense of
a non-existent national emergency- and destroying our military
readiness, as well as the lives of our young men and women.

I joined the Army in 2003 at the age of seventeen. I believed at the
time that the war in Iraq was necessary, if not morally justified.
(Since then, I have learned the hard way that the ends never justify
the means.) I served nearly four years as an intelligence analyst in a
combat unit, including Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF '05-'07). I spent
97 nights on tower guard–time contemplating the nature of our
destructive zeitgeist, which is inspiring the better part of this
protest and my other protests this year.

The truth of the matter is that our armed forces are being destroyed
by a collective neurosis; something obvious even to President Bush and
his staff. The mishandling of post-war Iraq is only one minor symptom
of the illness; but what is the cause of this neurosis? I believe that
fundamentally conflicting values are being forced onto the institution
by a fundamentally conflicted administration. The lack of moral
integrity at the head of our government is monadistically infecting
all levels of government, military, and culture. Notwithstanding a
treatise on the ethics of something political in nature, I argue that,
if nothing else, the current administration policy of STOP-LOSS 1 (as
well as their call up of the IRR)2is immoral, destructive, and often
overlooked. Not only does it devalue the fragile constitutional
legality of the process; it devalues all legality, reason, and sound
judgment in general.

STOP-LOSS is being used as a circumvention of the contractual
agreements between the federal government and soldiers. The irony of
volunteerism-exploitation-politics is not lost on soldiers who signed
up fully trusting in the ability of our elected officials to hold
accountable the chief executive. If nothing else, those soldiers who
have difficulty thinking in terms of moral integrity do understand
injustice: they too are victims of egregious moral fraud! Ask any one
of them that has been extended to 2030 or beyond.

As actions typically resound louder than words, it is all but obvious
that we can add "volunteer conscript" to the oxymoronic vocabulary
that has resulted from our conflicted status as liberator-occupiers
and freedom-crusaders. It is not, therefore, surprising that
soldiers who are treated like slaves (and their 'contractor' mercenary
counterparts) are able and willing to commit terrible acts of violence
on harmless civilians in places like Abu Ghraib prison. These are
the acts of humans who have been robbed of their moral judgment by a
malicious and harmful few who happen to occupy the seat of power in
the federal government.

In short, we must hold it as our duty as responsible citizens to
"bring to justice" an administration that has broken the contracts of
almost 200,000 young patriots as a way of exploiting a political
situation. But more than that, we owe our sons and daughters the moral
integrity we would expect in a county founded by Thomas Jefferson and
Patrick Henry. You as a human being with a conscience owe my friends
the dignity they deserve in facing the outrageous policy enslaving
them on their way back into the maelstrom. Please join me in my
efforts to bring STOP-LOSS to an end so we can begin rebuilding a
shattered service and halt the suffering of my comrades-at-arms. War
cannot and should not be won when the cost is our conscience and
integrity, because that is all we have. WE MUST END THE STOP-LOSS AND
RESTORE TRUE JUSTICE AT THE RISK OF LOOSING EVERYTHING, BEFORE IT IS
TOO LATE.

Notes:

1 When a person enlists into the armed forces, (s)he signs a contract
stating a specific amount of time which will be served on active duty.
The remaining time, the difference that makes eight total years, is
spent on what is termed inactive ready reserve (IRR). There is no
mention of "stop-loss" in the armed forces contract. Similarly, the
contractual connection between stop-loss and the IRR stipulation
(paragraph 10A) is non-existant. The Department of Defense has
broken the contract of thousands of soldiers whose IRR time has
expired, thereby negating this phrase as the basis for STOP-LOSS.
Paragraph 9C, which has been claimed as the legal basis for the
measure, is flimsy at best, and relies upon semantics which the DOD
interprets as it pleases. It is one small sentence in 50 pages of
fine print, and the Military Entrance Processing and Recruiting
Command routinely avoid discussion of it during enlistment.

2 According to U.S.C. 10 § 12301-12305, IRR is only to be called upon
in times of "war".