A Fruitcake for Desert--II

[darrels joy]

A Fruitcake for Desert--II
"An American who deserted the U.S. Army to protest the Iraq War and who has been ordered deported back home will file a new appeal in Canada's Federal Court, his lawyer said on Thursday," Reuters reports:

Jeremy Hinzman is the first U.S. deserter in recent years to apply for refugee status in Canada. Immigration authorities determined that he did not face persecution or hardship if he were returned to the United States and told him on Wednesday he had until September 23 to leave the country.

Hinzman has already managed to drag this thing out for 4½ years; we first noted his case in February 2004. And there is something of a whitewash going on. Reuters describes him as having deserted "to protest the Iraq War." Congress authorized the use of military force in October 2002, and the shooting began in March 2003, but Hinzman didn't desert until January 2004. Why? Probably because he was about to be deployed.
At the same time, Hinzman was not only against the Iraq war; he seems to have been thoroughgoingly anti-American, as described by the Toronto Globe and Mail article we quoted back in '04:

On Sept. 11, [Hinzman's wife] heard a news broadcast and knew immediately that life was going to change. The young couple suddenly found themselves amid frenetic patriotism they didn't share. They were horrified by the jetliner attacks but intellectually (Mr. Hinzman read the left-tilting Nation and Noam Chomsky) saw them as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy.

What then motivated Hinzman to join the military? He wanted to go to college, and he didn't want to go into debt for fear of, as he put it, "starting a whole cycle of middle-class existence." It is a tribute to America's freedom that the military permitted him to join even though his motives were mercenary and his loyalty to the country apparently nonexistent. But he ought to pay a heavy price for failing to keep his end of the bargain.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121872697736340877.html