by Joshua Key
Although some Canadians have disagreed with me, and one man in British Columbia even threatened to put me in a boat and drag me to the American border, most of the people I’ve met in this country have treated me well. Yet it remains to be seen whether I will be allowed to stay in Canada. Just as this book was going to press, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board rejected my application for refugee status. However, I am appealing that decision in court and will not give up my fight until I have explored every avenue to make Canada a permanent home for my wife, our children, and myself. I also believe that the other men and women who have deserted the American armed forces because they do not wish to serve in Iraq should be allowed to stay in Canada. I believe that it would be wrong for Canada to force me to return to a country that ordered me repeatedly to abuse Iraqi civilians and that was later found to be torturing and humiliating inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. I don’t think it’s right that I should be sent back to do more of the same in Iraq, or that I should serve jail time in the United States for refusing to fight in an immoral war.
Some thirty years ago, under the leadership of the late Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian government welcomed draft dodgers from the Vietnam War. The current Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has not looked favorably on such refugee claims made by recent deserters of the American army. My case is unusual because I am the first deserter in Canada to argue that I went AWOL after being ordered to take part in a steady stream of human rights violations in Iraq. Still, I am not optimistic about my future, and it is challenging to live in shadows of doubt. At some point soon, I could be told to pack my bags and leave. Any day now, my family could be completely torn apart.
If I have any choice in the matter, I will not return to the United States. I have lost my country, and it has lost me. I would reconsider this position only if the United States prosecuted President Bush and all the senior military officials responsible for sending our army into Iraq. I would be willing to sit in a jail cell with the president, for instance, but I would not use my hands on him. Much as I think the man deserves a licking, I’m through with physical abuse—in Oklahoma, in American boot camps, in Iraq, and everywhere else in the world. If I were alone in a jail cell with George W. Bush, I would use words with the man and try to talk some sense into his head.
If given the chance to have a man-to-man talk with the president of the United States, I would tell him to take a look at the laws and the constitution of his own country. He needs to know that during the time I served in the war in Iraq, soldiers and officers of the American forces violated the very values that we claim to uphold in our own. nation. If the president wishes to know exactly what values I am talking about, I would direct him to some of the first words of the American Declaration of Independence of 1776: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Although I would love to sit down with the president, I would like even more to have half an hour with every young American who is thinking of signing up for the poverty draft. As poor and as desperate as my young family was when I drove to the armed forces recruiting center in Oklahoma in March 2002, I never would have signed up if I’d known I would be blasting into Iraqis’ houses, terrorizing women and children, and detaining every man we could find—and all that for $1,200 a month as a private first class. Somehow, somewhere, I would have found a job and a way to survive. I never would have gone to war for my country if I had known what my country was going to do at war in Iraq.
Young people need to know that they don’t have to live with the moral anguish of fighting an immoral war. It is not true that a soldier’s first obligation is to the military. One’s first obligation is to the moral truth buried deep inside our own souls. Every person knows what is right and wrong. And we have a duty to live up to it, regardless of what our leaders sometimes say.
When I came home from Iraq I was a complete wreck. I had so many nightmares that I had to get a prescription for pills to help stave off the bad dreams. I had blackouts. I would cry one moment and scream the next. I was so paranoid that the simple act of standing in line in a grocery store seemed fraught with peril: somebody, surely, would pull out a gun or rip the pin from a grenade. Every day, I thought of the civilians I had seen arrested, beaten, or killed in Iraq. I could not focus. I could not sit still with a child on my lap. I could not deal with the sound of my own children crying, laughing, and calling out for my love. My son Zackary grabbed on to me for dear life in an effort to prevent me from disappearing back into “Sergeant World,” but I barely knew how to respond to his love or give it back to him. I was but a shell of the man who had left the United States just seven months earlier, and I intend always to remember that my wife, Brandi, loved me and encouraged me and stuck with me even when it meant that we all had to go into a long period of hiding, insecurity, and poverty. I participated in hurting the people of Iraq, and I paid a price for it. And I wasn’t the only one.
When I came home I told Brandi that I had seen innocent people die in Iraq. For the longest time, that is just about all she knew. But because she loved me that was all she needed to hear. In fact, she did not want to hear any details. Taking care of three young boys and me, as well as little Anna, who was soon growing in her womb, Brandi did not feel she had the strength to hear about everything I had seen and done in Iraq. Apart from one time in Philadelphia when I got drunk and began to shout about the young girl I had seen killed outside the hospital in Ramadi, I have never spoken to her directly about all the intimate details given in this book. She read the information form I gave the Canadian immigration authorities when I applied for refugee status. When she put it down, she said she never would have read it in the first place if she had known what she’d find in it. We both carry emotional wounds as a result of the war in Iraq, and I imagine that thousands of other Americans who served in Iraq have also brought their own nightmares back home. Their families, too, will be suffering. Ordinary Iraqis have paid very dearly for this war, and ordinary Americans are paying for it too with their lives and with their souls.
I have never been a man to run from a challenge, and I have never fled from danger or abandoned vulnerable people. I am neither a coward nor a traitor. When I was being recruited in Oklahoma City in 2002, I had to sign a paper to the effect that I had read and understood a warning from the military: “Desertion in the time of war means death by a firing squad.” That just about sums it up. We could do whatever we wanted to Iraqis. Yet if we ran from duty, there would be hell to pay. I will never apologize for deserting the American army. I deserted an injustice and leaving was the right thing to do. I owe one apology and one apology only, and that is to the people of Iraq.
At Al-Qa’im one morning after a night of guard duty
On top of an armored personnel carrier with another soldier
At the border with Syria near Al-Qa’im
With an Iraqi detainee in Al-Qa’im
Author’s Note
WE WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE CLOSE COLLABORATION THAT led to the writing of this book, and to thank the people who helped us.
After hearing Joshua Key speak on CBC radio in the spring of 2006, the Canadian literary agent Denise Bukowski contacted him and asked if he would like to write a book about his experiences as an American soldier in Iraq. In April 2006, Joshua Key and Lawrence Hill began to work together. The project began with a series of in-depth interviews conducted in British Columbia, the Canadian Prairies, and the Toronto area. Between these intensive sessions, the two were in touch regularly by telephone and e-mail while Lawrence sifted through hundreds of pages of notes and dozens of taped interviews and began to write Josh’s story. As the book took shape, Joshua reviewed every line many times to ensure that it accurately reflected his experiences, observations, and beliefs. Of the numerous incidents during his
service in Iraq, he was extremely careful to recount only what he saw and experienced himself.
Both authors are grateful to their literary agent, Denise Bukowski, for the enthusiasm with which she brought this book to the attention of publishers in numerous countries. We offer special thanks to Morgan Entrekin and Amy Hundley at Atlantic Monthly Press in New York and to Lynn Henry at House of Anansi Press in Toronto, for their commitment and courage in standing behind this book and bringing it to market.
—Joshua Key and Lawrence Hill
I thank my mother, Judy Porter, and brother, Tyler Barker, for believing in me during and especially after my service with the American army in Iraq. I also want to thank Michelle Robidoux and her colleagues at the War Resisters’ Support Campaign in Toronto, my lawyer, Jeffry House, and Winnie and Eugene Ng, Neil and Ruth Loomis, Al and Marjorie Stewart, Lynn Wytenbroek, and Elaine for their generous support. Many other people across the United States and Canada showed kindness to my family and me in times of need, and I thank all of them too.
—Joshua Key
It has been an honor to work with Joshua Key and to write his story. I thank Joshua and Brandi for the trust they placed in me during our many conversations. As well, I wish to thank my wife, Miranda Hill, for her unwavering support and encouragement.
—Lawrence Hill
About the Authors
JOSHUA KEY was raised in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and now lives in Canada. This is his first book.
LAWRENCE HILL is an award-winning Canadian writer. His books include the novels The Book of Negroes, which was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Any Known Blood, and Some Great Thing, and the non-fiction book Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. Formerly a reporter with the Globe and Mail and the Winnipeg Free Press, Hill has worked and traveled in the United States, across Canada, and in Europe and Africa. He lives in Burlington, Ontario. For more information on Lawrence Hill, please visit www.lawrencehill.com.
Author photographs: Lisa Sakulensky
About the Publisher
HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS WAS FOUNDED IN 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”