Wednesday, June 9, 2010

I GOT THE ARMY STOP LOSSED ME AND STUCK ME IN JAIL BLUES

Imagine you’re a soldier in the United States Army. A stretch, probably, since less than two percent of Americans join the military, but try. You served with a combat unit in Iraq for 14 months, but as you near the end of your active-duty time, you’re becoming increasingly uneasy about carrying a gun. You’re counting the months – less than six – till you’re out, when you learn that you’ll probably be redeployed because the Army is invoking the small print in your contract that allows it to retain you as long as it likes. What do you do?

The vast majority of soldiers suck it up and deploy, figuring that if they don’t go someone else will have to go in their place. Around 3,000 soldiers a year desert. Specialist Marc Hall composed a hardcore rap song titled “Stop lossed,” which ended up at the Pentagon. As a consequence, he spent over four months in jail awaiting court martial for what he considered his right to free expression. 


Hall, 34, aka hip-hop artist Marc Watercus, enlisted in the Army in 2006 and served in Baghdad with the 3rd Infantry Division from October 2007 to December 2008. He was stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia the following July, when he learned that his unit was being sent back to Iraq before the end of the year. His contract would be up soon after, but he would still be required to deploy under a policy known as stop loss, which allows the Army to extend terms of enlistment involuntarily. Stop loss was authorized by the President just after September 11, 2001. It has been called a “backdoor draft,” and though it is being phased out, as of May, 6,451 soldiers were still retained under its provisions.

Hall poured his frustration into a profanity-laced, in-your-face rap. Putting his anger to music seemed natural for him. “It’s how I get my frustrations out,” he says, “instead of acting on them.“ A CD of the song got mailed to the Pentagon in July -- Hall insists that was never his intent and he doesn’t know who sent it – and made its way to Col. Thomas Beane, Chief of the Army’s Enlisted System Division, who sent it on the Hall’s commanders at Fort Stewart in September. Among his reasons for doing so, Beane later testified, was to get Hall the mental health attention he needed.

“My First Sergeant called me in to his office to discuss [the CD],” Hall wrote in an open letter to supporters. “I explained that the rap was a freedom of expression thing. And that it was not a physical threat, nor any kind of threat whatsoever. I explained that it was just hip hop. He told me that he kind of liked the song.”

Meanwhile, Hall was experiencing considerable distress. He felt burned out and betrayed, probably suffered from PTSD, and was uncertain that he could trust himself to carry out the duties of a soldier. “The very thought of holding and being around a loaded weapon again gave me the chills. I did not know who my enemies were anymore,” he wrote
 
He tried explaining that to his commanding officers and chaplains and in the few counseling sessions he attended, but emerged as disaffected as before. A cursory mental health evaluation, according to an email from LCT Eric Bloom, spokesman for the First Armored Division, found no mental health issues.

On December 12, Hall was arrested and charged with 11 counts of communicating threats under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a catch-all provision covering actions “to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces.”

It was hardly unreasonable that the Army would react cautiously and defensively, given that five weeks earlier Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, had killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas. Though Hall had a clean, even exemplary, record, he had made no secret of his unhappiness with being stop-lossed and, as a soldier on base, he was in a position to carry out the threats in his song. Still, the Army’s response seemed vindictive. Over four months had elapsed since Hall’s song had reached the Pentagon, and it was probably no coincidence that, only days before his arrest, he had filed a grievance about his inadequate medical treatment. When the Army shipped Hall to jail in Kuwait in March with plans to try him far from his lawyers, friendly witnesses and supporters, it was hard not to read that as punitive, 

On the face of it, the case turned on the question of how literally to take the words of a song, but here the Army’s case seemed weak. As any student of postmodernism or common sense knows, words can function on more than one level and meaning varies with context. David Gespass, president of the National Lawyers Guild and Hall’s civilian lawyer, notes that “not everybody who writes a song about shooting a man in Memphis just to see him die actually shoots somebody in Memphis.”

Members of the military retain many of their First Amendment rights when they enlist. They may not encourage violence or join any organization whose purpose is violence – excepting the military – but with some restrictions, they may say, write, publish, and read what they want. Hall had written and produced his CD on his own time, out of uniform, and not as a representative of the Army, and if his lyrics were violent and raw, so is much of the music soldiers listen to and so are the cadences they march to. Soldiers are trained in violence; their language, jokes, bellyaching, and off-hand comments reflect that regularly. 

At Hall’s Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent to a grand jury proceeding, the Army’s witnesses tended to strengthen his case more than theirs. He was joking, said his battle buddies, no one took it seriously, it was no big deal. “Those who do understand hip hop didn’t take it as a threat,” Hall says, adding wryly, “Those who don’t understand hip hop run the military.”

It’s still possible that Hall’s song crossed the line from protected speech to threats. As Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist, which partnered with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) to organize support for Hall, suggests, “It would have been an interesting argument to have in court.”

It never got there.

The investigating officer recommended going forward on only five of the original charges – an unusual move -- and a court martial was set for some time in April. But Hall was spending his days filling up sandbags in a military jail in Kuwait and had had enough. He applied for a discharge in lieu of a court martial, pled guilty to one of the charges against him, as required, and on April 17, was released from the Army with an other-than-honorable discharge and loss of most of his benefits. Now back in the States, he plans to appeal to upgrade his discharge and to apply for treatment of a service-related disability. It seems only fair, he says. “I did my time. I just expressed myself.”

In the end, the Army maintains that this was never a First Amendment issue, and to some extent, Hall, his lawyers and supporters agree, charging that the Army meant to make an example of him. It is common for prosecutors to make examples of the accused; equally commonplace seems to be the military’s callousness in dealing with soldiers who have suffered psychological or moral harm. As Gespass argues, there were other possible responses which would have attended to the good of the Army and of Hall.

“I think that they care only about people accomplishing the mission,” Gespass says of military’s the top brass. So when Hall became increasingly distrustful of the mission and his role in it –– he joined IVAW in September 2009 and filed for Conscientious Objection last January – the Army was “less and less concerned with his well-being and more and more concerned about what they could do to deal with him in a way that would ensure that others would not go down the same path.”
 
A shorter version of this was published in In These Times, May 2010
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The link above is to the audio of Hall rapping "Stop Lossed." Here are the lyrics (expurgating from the original).

"Stop Lossed" by SPC Marc Hall Now this is real days When s--t hit the airwaves Somebody gotta say F--k you colonels, captains, E-7s and above Think you're so much bigger than I am I've been too good of an American Stop-lossed, Stop movement, Got me chasing If I do drugs, I'll get kicked out But if my time is out I can't get out So the good die young I heard it out your mouth So f--k the Army And everything you're all about Like Obama says "Somebody be held responsible" But some of y'all gonna be held in the hospitals whenever possible To pursue my own journeys in life, through my own main obstacles Since I can't pinpoint the culpable. They want me cause misery loves company I'm gonna round them all up Eventually, easily, walk right up peacefully And surprise them all Yes, yes ya'll up against the wall Turn around, I gotta a motherf--king magazine with thirty rounds On a three round burst, ready to fire down Still against the wall I grab my M-4 Spray and watch all the bodies hit the floor I bet your never stop loss nobody no more In your next lifetime of course, no remorse Yeah You don't stop till the Army is the only military branch That still got the stop loss in effect So the only thing I got to say Is prepare for the consequences When people want to get out, let them get out.

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