Canada's romance with US military exiles

When I was very young, during the Vietnam War, there was an American draft dodger in our rural Canadian community who had tie-dyed clothes, a guitar, stories to tell, and a number of young followers. They thought him romantic.

But my father - an anti-Vietnam war liberal and big Richard Nixon basher (he brought a TV to our rustic cottage the summer Nixon resigned so he wouldn't miss a glorious minute of the downfall) - was disgusted.

This boy, he said, was no hero. Look up to Muhammad Ali, and to others with the courage of their convictions, he suggested. Look up to the soldiers who are in Vietnam. But you should not look up to a draft dodger, my dad admonished.

He'd be disgusted again, if he saw Canadian reaction to Privates Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey. Both are US soldiers gone AWOL in Canada - Private Hinzman, 25, lives in Toronto and Private Hughey, 19, lives in St. Catharines. Both say they can't participate in what they believe is an illegal war. But their values do not, apparently, extend to facing the legal consequences of their beliefs.

Both say they joined the Army to pay for their education. Many others have as well, but have accepted that the military is, first and foremost, about war. But they chose to run from war, in contrast to Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who turned himself in to the US for refusing to fight in a war he opposes - a move that may earn him respect even as it earns him a court-martial.

Both Hinzman and Hughey are being treated with kid gloves and tepid questioning from media. But this wouldn't have been the case 30 years ago, as the intervening years have seen Canada become more isolationist and Euro-smug. The result is predictable: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), not known for objectivity when reporting on the United States, has barely been able to contain its glee over the problems in Iraq.

So it should not come as a surprise that the baby-faced Hughey has already been featured on two CBC shows, with promos declaring, "For more than 200 years, Americans have been escaping war and strife in the US by heading north," and, "They came during the War of Independence, the Civil War, the Vietnam War ... and now there's that other war in Iraq. It's only a trickle, but it's starting to happen again."

More disturbing still, some have drawn a comparison between these two and slaves traveling the Underground Railroad - as though someone who voluntarily signed up for military service could rightly be compared to human beings bought and sold as property.

Other news stories claim that both young men "escaped" from the US, that they were "lured" into joining the Army. No one appears interested in the matter of free will, that they joined the Army of their own accord.

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