The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan

Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, brings us inside the movement of military resistance to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 2006, a majority in the United States have opposed the continued occupation of Iraq, and increasing skepticism surrounds the escalation in Afghanistan. But how do the soldiers who carry out the American occupations see their missions?

Fragmented reports of battalions refusing orders, of individual soldiers refusing  redeployment and taking a public stand against the occupations have trickled into the mainstream reportage over the last five years. But how deep does the current of resistance run? What makes soldiers decide to go AWOL, file for conscientious objector status, and even serve sentences in military prison for their acts of refusal?

Dahr Jamail's comprehensive study of the today's military resisters sheds new light on the contours of dissent within the ranks of the world's most powerful military.

Praise for Dahr Jamail and The Will to Resist

“Dahr Jamail’s human portrait of the men and women who turned away from the project of empire should serve as a beacon. These returning veterans know the essence of war, which is death, and have been maimed by the trauma of industrial warfare. They have found, despite their pain, the moral courage to recover their conscience. The truth they tell demands that we find the courage to make our nation accountable for the crimes committed in our name.”   —From the Foreword by Chris Hedges

“Dahr Jamail is one of very few journalists who have displayed the courage—physical,  intellectual, and moral courage—to tell the truth about the invasion of Iraq. In this  outstanding book, he describes the often secret resistance within the U.S. military as soldiers reclaim their humanity and, with searing honesty, offer a glimpse of how  America’s wars on the world might end.” —John Pilger, award-winning independent journalist and author of Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire

“Based on his experiences as an investigative reporter in Iraq and in his frequent conversations with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, Jamail vividly portrays issues of conscience for military personnel during wartime. As a woman veteran, I thank him for exposing sexual assault and rape in the military—including the warning that of women seeking help from the Veteran’s Affairs, one in three has been sexually assaulted while in the military. Jamail’s work provides indispensible help in our understanding of the costs of war to our own military as well as to countries the United States occupies.”

 —Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserves Colonel and U.S. diplomat who resigned in opposition to the Iraq wa

Dahr Jamail is author of the book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. Jamail’s work has been featured on National Public Radio, the Guardian, The Nation, and The Progressive. He has received many awards for his reportage, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.