Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía became the new face of the antiwar movement when he applied for discharge from the army as a conscientious objector.
After serving in the army for nearly nine years, he was the first known Iraq veteran to refuse to fight, citing moral concerns about the war and the US occupation. His principled stand helped rally the growing opposition and embolden other soldiers.
Mejía was eventually convicted of desertion by a military court and sentenced to a year in prison, prompting Amnesty International to declare him a prisoner of conscience. Here Mejía tells his own story, from his upbringing in Central America to his service in Iraq—where he witnessed prisoner abuse—to his struggle today to end the occupation there.
In this stirring book, he argues passionately for the end to an unjust war. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, “The issues [Mejía] has raised deserve a close reading by the nation as a whole. . . . He has made a contribution to the truth about Iraq.”
Includes a new afterword by the author.
Camilo Mejía grew up in Nicaragua and Costa Rica before moving to the United States in 1994. He joined the military at age nineteen, serving as an infantryman in the active-duty army for three years before transferring to the Florida National Guard. He fought in Iraq for five months. He lives in Miami.
Chris Hedges, whose column is published weekly on Truthdig, has written 11 books, including the New York Times best seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. Some of his other books include “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Hedges previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
Publication date: March 1, 2008