Deserter's journey fraught with angst, hope

MySA.com ^ | 05/11/2004 | Roy Bragg

[SwinneySwitch]

Second of two parts

SAN ANGELO — It was late March and David Hughey hadn't heard from his son Brandon in more than three weeks.

No calls. No letters. Nothing.

David Hughey, 51, a computer technician for a state agency in this West Texas town, feared there was a problem.

And there was.

His son, then 18 and a troubled Army private, wanted out of the service in a bad way. He had spent most of February AWOL from his unit at Fort Hood in Killeen. The young soldier had begun to question the reasons for America's invasion of and subsequent fighting in Iraq.

The two last spoke March 2, when David Hughey, a single parent, called his son's wireless phone.

"I think his unit was deploying that day," David Hughey said. "He told me he was on the post.

"He wasn't."

As David Hughey would later learn, his son was in the middle of a 17-hour drive to Louisville, Ky., the beginning of a three-day-long undercover trip to the Canadian border.

Brandon Hughey, the quiet kid who fit in at Central High School and bagged groceries at Albertsons, was deserting the U.S. Army and his country.

On March 24, David Hughey found a cryptic message from a San Angelo auto dealer. Someone named Carl Rising-Moore called the dealer to say Brandon Hughey's silver Mustang was in Indianapolis.

On the night before Hughey's unit was slated for deployment, the desperate young soldier called Rising-Moore, an Indianapolis-based anti-war activist, for help. After Hughey assured Rising-Moore that he was serious about desertion, Rising-Moore told him to flee.

David Hughey arranged to meet Rising-Moore in Indianapolis two days after the phone call and took a day off from work to fly there.

Upon landing, he phoned Rising-Moore, who instructed him to walk through an airport parking garage to an adjacent hotel, where they met.

They ate at a nearby Denny's restaurant.

"He tells me that Brandon is in Canada, and I say, 'Oh, my God! Is he in with a bunch of druggies?'" David Hughey recalled. "He says, 'No, he's with a Quaker family.'"

On the 1,100-mile drive back to Texas in his son's Mustang, David Hughey began to realize the significance of his son's decision.

David Hughey, whose brother and grandfather served in the military, began to understand the depths of his son's beliefs.

"It bothered me that Brandon didn't come home, but the last time he did, I took him back to the Army," he said. "And knowing Brandon, he probably didn't tell me anything because he didn't want me to get involved with it."

Twenty-four days earlier, Brandon Hughey had taken a similar, soul-searching cross-country trip.

Blaring music and driving nonstop, he followed Rising-Moore's advice — drive the speed limit and remain calm.

Hughey checked into a motel in Louisville, picked because it was close to Indianapolis. The next day, he met Rising-Moore for the first time at a restaurant outside of Indianapolis.

After Hughey spent a day of sleeping and reading anti-war material at Rising-Moore's home, the two left for Niagara Falls, accompanied by Cathy Oberg, who had written an article on Rising-Moore that piqued Hughey's interest.

As Oberg videotaped events, they drove through Cleveland and to upstate New York. They bought New York Knicks caps for the trip. It was March 5.

When questioned by border guards, Rising-Moore said they were attending that night's NBA game in Toronto between the Knicks and the Raptors.

Hughey sat silently in the passenger seat. Oberg filmed surreptitiously from the back seat.

They crossed over unchallenged.

Rising-Moore told Hughey to call his father, but there was no answer.

Within 15 minutes, they arrived at the home of Rose Marie Cipryk and Don Alexander, members of the small Quaker community in St. Catharines, a town of 130,000 residents 15 miles from Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, are pacifists. Members are opposed to violence in any form, Alexander said.

Alexander and Cipryk had been active in anti-war and peace demonstrations since the Vietnam War. In the '60s, they allowed their Toronto apartment to be used as a safe house for draft dodgers.

They got involved in Hughey's desertion when their phone rang March 4.

"I got a call from a friend who asked me if we could help out a soldier who needed short-term accommodations," said Cipryk, who agreed to help.

Hughey arrived at the house during the middle of a Quaker potluck supper. She put him up in an empty bedroom in the basement of the quaint frame home.

To Cipryk, greater forces were at work.

Months earlier, an American Quaker organizer had stayed at the house, en route to a meeting, and talked vaguely with Alexander and Cipryk about the possibility of another exodus of Americans to Canada.

A month earlier, her teen son had moved out, leaving the empty bedroom. And with the potluck supper planned for weeks, the entire Quaker community was there to greet Hughey.

Since arriving in Canada, the young man has tried to fit in.

Hockey has become his passion. Until the Toronto Maple Leafs were eliminated recently from the Stanley Cup playoffs, Hughey planned his days and weeks around games.

After Cipryk and Alexander threw him a 19th birthday party, he used some of his birthday gift money to buy a jersey bearing No. 13, the number of his favorite player, Mats Sundin. He wore it while watching games in his basement bedroom.

"This is an absolute stress reliever," he said with a laugh while watching a 4-1 Leafs win. "There's so much stuff going on in my life now. I really need this."

With hockey season over, however, the real game begins.

Hughey has applied for refugee status before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, an administrative tribunal that's independent of the government.

Without addressing Hughey's case, Charles Hawkins, a board spokesman, said such hearings are nonadversarial and essentially fact-finding exercises.

Hughey's attorney, Jeffry House of Toronto, is confident Hughey has a strong chance to win his case and stay in Canada.

American authorities can't ask that he be extradited because, under international treaty, that can happen only if a person has committed an act considered a crime in both nations. Deserting the U.S. Army, House said, isn't a crime in Canada.

As for asylum, House said there are two key elements in Hughey's case.

First, Hughey must establish that he fled the United States because he was being forced to fight in a war that he believed to be immoral and illegal and in violation of international law.

Key to that argument, House said, is the Canadian government's position on the war.

Canada opted not to assist the United States, Great Britain and others in the war effort, but it has not made a public declaration of its legal opinion on the invasion.

A legal opinion in opposition to the war's legality — if it exists and if it could be made public — could bolster Hughey's case.

Second, Hughey must establish that he's fleeing what he believes to be persecution — not prosecution — in the United States.

House, who evaded the draft but was subsequently pardoned by the Nixon administration, said Hughey's belief that he'll be jailed for leaving the Army constitutes a fear of persecution.

The U.S. Army criminal code appears clear about cases such as Hughey's. Being absent without leave is a violation. Deserting the Army is a crime.

So far, U.S. State Department officials said there have been no efforts to get involved in the case. The Army, for now, isn't pursuing it either.

Audrey Macklin, a University of Toronto law professor and a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board from 1994-1996, doesn't share House's confidence in Hughey's chances.

"It's going to be a difficult case to prove because he voluntarily joined the Army," she said. "And they'll have to decide if this guy is sincerely opposed to the war, or whether he just didn't want to go" to Iraq.

Furthermore, it will be difficult to convince the Canadian government — trying to mend fences with the United States — to declare the war an illegal act. Decision-makers, mindful of the importance of a friendly relationship with the U.S. government, might not want to risk that relationship for the case of a wayward GI, Macklin said.

And then, Macklin said, there's the persecution argument.

"Under Canadian law, there's this presumption that liberal Democratic states protect their citizens from violations of their rights," Macklin said. "The U.S. Army offers the conscientious objector regulations. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights assure Hughey a fair trial and the assumption that he's innocent until proven guilty."

Hughey's first hearing, House said, hasn't been set yet.

Jeremy Hinzeman, another U.S. soldier seeking refugee status, has a hearing slated for July 7. Hughey might not see a hearing until September. If the board rules against him, there's an appeals process.

And, Hughey said, overtures have been made to the consulates of some European nations who were openly opposed to the war to offer asylum if the Canadians reject the case.

Hughey holds out hope he could return, but only on his terms — a general or honorable discharge and a guarantee of no prison time.

He knows it's unlikely.

Although he's received death threats and hate mail, he's grateful that his family hasn't borne the brunt of his unpopular decision.

Co-workers and neighbors in San Angelo, David Hughey said, haven't said anything about it to him, even though it was a front-page story in the local paper on April 17.

"They're walking on eggshells around me," he said. "They feel bad for me."

Nor has Brandon Hughey's younger brother, Brian, felt a backlash. Beyond discussions in classes after the local article appeared, he hasn't seen or heard of any anger directed at the family.

David Hughey said he's researched many of his son's arguments, and while he still wishes his son hadn't left, he understands elements of his position.

And he agonizes over how his son has mishandled everything — from enlisting to deserting to going public about it.

A retired military officer agrees.

"If you're enlisted and you decide you want to protest the war, you petition for release," says James J. Carafano, a retired colonel and a Heritage Foundation analyst. "Then, when you're released, you're an American citizen and free to exercise your rights of free speech."

Brandon Hughey's actions, Carafano said, go beyond a change of perspective.

"I can't think of anything more sacred than raising your hand and taking an oath to defend your country," he said.

"And then to abandon that? The system is about promoting the notion of truth and honor. (Desertion) is a plain and simple criminal act."

David Hughey fears his son's efforts to publicize his case — ostensibly to pay attorney fees — are part of an orchestrated effort to use his son in anti-war propaganda.

Gary Black, a teacher who supervised Hughey's high school work-study program, agreed.

"It's another thing that (anti-American factions) can use against us," Black said. "I don't feel comfortable with it. I served. I disagree with what he did. But I don't want to say anything that will hurt him. I just hate that he's being caught up in it and being used."

"This has been a comedy of errors," David Hughey said. "He may be intelligent, but he's been lacking common sense at this point."

And regardless of international law, Hughey's proclamations of political activism and war resistance, U.S. military courts and Canadian refugee status, David Hughey remains Brandon Hughey's father.

"I worry about him," the father said. "I don't sleep regular hours."

Out in the front yard of the family home is a flagpole where David Hughey flies the U.S. flag on weekends. He tied a yellow ribbon around it when the war started, as a show of support for all of the troops.

"Now it's for Brandon," he said. "I'm keeping it there until he comes home."

Brandon Hughey understands his father's optimism but doesn't share it.

"The Army is not going to let me come home," he said flatly. "I knew that when I came here. There's still hope in my mind, just like my dad's, but even if I took down the Web site and stop doing interviews, the chances of me going home, with or without an honorable or general discharge, are slim to none, leaning toward none."

-------------------rbragg@express-news.net

[SwinneySwitch]

Part I: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1133071/posts

"Deserting the U.S. Army, House said, isn't a crime in Canada."

Well, would deserting the Canadian Army be a crime in Canada, jerk?

[AQGeiger]

The sympathy this article has for a coward and deserter is sickening.

Can someone hold my hair back while I puke?

[gilliam]

Deserter's journey fraught with angst

good!

[noscreenname]

Well so much for an all volunteer force!

[noscreenname]

(Hit enter too soon).

This kid probably would have voted demoncrat anyway; 'well I deserted before I enlisted to desert'.

[usurper]

Enjoy your new citizen Canada; we are happy to rid ourselves of him. Don’t expect much from him in the way of taxable income.

[68skylark]

Hughey holds out hope he could return, but only on his terms — a general or honorable discharge and a guarantee of no prison time.

This part gave me a good laugh.

[68skylark]

Well, would deserting the Canadian Army be a crime in Canada, jerk?

Yeah, I wondered the same thing (without the "jerk" part). If so, Canada should take action so they don't become a haven for other misfits and losers who shirk their military obligation.

[68skylark]

Well so much for an all volunteer force!

I'm not sure I understand your point. We have something like 2.4 million folks in the military. A few of them are bound to be losers, weirdos, or otherwise just messed up or confused. That doesn't mean our current recruiting and retention methods are a problem, does it?

[noscreenname]

No, not at all. Just a veiled (probably too obtuse for my own good) reference to the dems call for re-instituting the draft. Also, why did this kid enlist in the first place? And, he's not the first to decide he disagreed with the war after the fact.

Guess I need to sign off today, I'm not being coherent and it's causing a great deal of misunderstanding to my posts. Must be an 'age' thing......

[68skylark]

No problem -- I just wanted to catch your meaning, and I think I do.

I occasionally have a nice discussion here with some pro-draft folks. It's always cordial, but I couldn't disagree more with the idea of bringing back a draft. We'd have tens of thousands of non-military misfits like this mope, instead of just one or two.

[Looking4Truth]

Good riddance!

Wanna bet this 'Rising-Moron' character is some metrosexual pansie who's 'partner' wears the pants?

[Let's Roll]

Hopefully, "Mr." Hughey soon learns the difference between wartime desertion and draft dodging.

[maxwellp]

Let Canada keep him. He's of no use to America. I'm 64 years old and a woman and if push comes to shove I'll die for America - this America that has been so good to me. This fellow is young and it's his choice to live in fear for the rest of his life or live like a man.

[walford]

First of all, as a student minoring in Journalism, I can tell you that such ponderous, long-winded frustrated novelistic writing would not pass the muster.

Someone who deserts in time of war, I believe is subject to death by firing squad. Well, he should at least be automaticaly forfeit his U.S. citizenship, as should the hyphenated-named knucklehead who aided and abetted.

Insofar as the Quakers are concerned, they may need to be informed that our soldiers are there to build a democracy, not foment gratuitous violence. The deserter had plenty of opportunity to file as a conscientious objector -- hey wait a minute, he wasn't drafted, he volunteered!

He could have taken a non-combat MOS.

No, this kid is on a vacation/road trip a-la Gary & Mike. Stay in Canada, kid and don't come back.

[noscreenname]

I heard a Marine on our local talk radio make a very telling statement the other day regarding the draft; (I'll paraphrase since I can't recall his exact words) but he said something to the effect that all the draft did was fill the military with many (though not all) drug addict/dealers, thieves and low level criminals of all ilk and nature that it took ten years to rid the services of.

No, I am against reinstating the draft. I would much rather see the incentives, better pay, health care, family care and other benefits raised to the level to promote a better sense of a honorable treatment and thus build a truly professional military (all branches).

[tet68]

Hang him.

[BraveMan]

I think I'm in love . . .

[CWOJackson]

Real simply solution. Seal the border between the U.S. and Canada until they return the deserters. Absolutely nothing, people or goods, crosses the border.

[Landru]

"I think I'm in love..."

No-no, are you sure?

Methinks you're really seeking a "Mother Figure."
And before you start protesting, just know Freud would [probably] agree with me. :o)

Say Einstein, have you noticed a durge of crap by our quisling pals in the Liberal-Socialist lamestream lately?
They're using the very same modus operandi as the queers did for their "liberation" push.

Uh-huh, the loving *parent* who's conflicted between a parent's love for their [worthless] brat & doing what they know is right?

Yea.

...the stench is overwhelming.