It's likely that the next US president will decide the fate of cases against five Guantanamo Bay detainees. The five had their charges dropped last week following an 'act of conscience' on the part of prosecutor Lieut-Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, who had resigned after accusing the military of suppressing evidence that could have helped clear them.
One of the cases involves an Afghan detainee accused of throwing a grenade at a US military jeep, injuring three people. Colonel Vandeveld said prosecutors knew that 24-year-old Mohammed Jawad might have been drugged before the attack, and that the Afghan interior ministry said two other men had confessed to the same crime.
It was early August, and Vandeveld was struggling with the order to prosecute the young detainee. The Los Angeles Times described Vandeveld as a 'hard-nosed lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, a self-described conformist praised by his superiors for his bravery in Iraq'. Vandeveld decided to send an email to well-known Jesuit peace activist John Dear, who visited Australia last year.
'I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country,' he wrote. 'I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with four children, and not only will they suffer, I'll lose a lot of friends.'
Dear, who described the email as 'surprising and moving', dashed off a reply urging Vandeveld to quit.
He said: 'God does not want you to participate in any injustice, and GITMO is so bad, I hope and pray you will quietly, peacefully, prayerfully, just resign, and start your life over.'
Vandeveld resigned in September, telling his superiors: 'I seek more restorative or reparative justice, rather than the rote application of the law'.
John Dear wrote in his National Catholic Reporter column last week that Vandeveld's decision is a 'rare sign of hope in terrible times'.
He went on to suggest the lesson is to follow Vandeveld's example and 'withdraw our cooperation from US militarism, torture, injustice and war making', and to urge friends and families to quit or not to join the armed forces, including in civilian roles.
What does this mean for Australia? Well there is increasing pressure for us to increase our troop commitment in Afghanistan. So far prime minister Kevin Rudd has talked down such further entanglement in the US 'war machine'. He told the National Press Club this month