Chris Hedges (War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) said on “Democracy Now” several months ago, that he intended to stop paying income taxes if the U.S. invades Iran.
Now this is, to me, how a patriot acts.
There are only a few people with this kind of courage, and of course, we all have perfectly good reasons not to join the tax resisters: we have parents, kids, dogs, cats, etc. We’re too young or we’re too old, too rich, too poor.
We do important work that might be interrupted.
But ultimately, we need to face the fact that if we continue to pay our taxes, we are enabling the U.S. war machine.
Pure and simple.
What we do about that is between each of us and our own conscience.
I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran.
I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture.
But an attack on Iran — which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election — will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions.
This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties.
It will solidify the slow-motion coup d’état that has been under way since the attacks.
It could mean the death of the Republic.
A country that exists in a state of permanent war cannot exist as a democracy.
Our long row of candles is being snuffed out.
We may soon be in darkness.
Any resistance, however symbolic, is essential.
There are ways to resist without being jailed.
If you owe money on your federal tax return, refuse to pay some or all of it, should Bush attack Iran.
If you have a telephone, do not pay the 3 percent excise tax.
If you do not owe federal taxes, reduce what is withheld by claiming at least one additional allowance on your W-4 form — and write to the IRS to explain the reasons for your protest.
Many of the details and their legal ramifications are available on the War Resisters League’s website (www.warresisters.org/wtr.htm).
I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account.
I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war.
Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression.
Maybe not.
I do not know.
But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran, Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo.
They will endure far greater suffering and deprivation.
I want to be able, once the slaughter is over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness.
Chris Hedges has written a follow-up that expands his war tax resistance pledge of .
Excerpts:
The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means.
It is an end.
I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars.
All I know is that it is worth doing.
The alternative, a complacency bred from cynicism and despair, is worse.
Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant violations of international law, refusing to attempt to turn back the tide of American tyranny, is surrender.
It is the death of hope.
Acts of resistance are moral acts.
They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism.
They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right.
Those who begin these acts are few in number and dismissed by the cynics who hide their fear behind their worldliness.
Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death.…
Those who recognize the injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited their rights as citizens.
By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged they become agents of injustice.
To do nothing is to do something.
They practice a faux morality.
They vent against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not resist.
They take refuge in the conception of themselves as moderates.
They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”
We face a crisis.
Our democratic institutions are being dismantled.
We are headed for a state of perpetual war.
We are paralyzed by fear.
We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights.
To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism.
It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative.
There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This number would be dwarfed by a war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the Middle East.
Not a lot is being asked of us.
Compare our potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iran.
Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to practice any other virtue.
Once we find courage we find freedom.
The Nation published some letters in response to Chris Hedges’s war tax resistance article, including one from me:
Chris Hedges has the right idea.
Too many Americans who should know better are content merely to disapprove, tsk-tsk, wave signs or protest at rallies.
It’s way past time to put our money where our mouths are.
I’m only surprised Hedges has drawn his line in the sand as far back as he has.
For me, the government crossed that line with the Iraq invasion in .
I stopped paying federal income taxes then and have since reduced or eliminated my contributions to other federal taxes as well.
Now I’m putting all of my time and money on the side of my values instead of letting Congress spend it on Pentagon priorities and political pork.
Why wait for the next atrocity?
Join the War Tax Boycott today.
There are many ways to resist taxes: legal ways and ways that require civil disobedience, safe ways and ways that take courage.
There’s a method that’s right for you.
[Chris] Hedges:
How do you feel about citizens’ movements, such as Code Pink, calling on people not to pay their taxes?
It is built out of that frustration.
Kucinich:
I understand that.
That is a civil disobedience tactic.
It also invites scrutiny by the IRS, which doesn’t really care about anyone’s politics.
They just care about getting the money they are owed.
It is a brave thing for people to do because there is a degree of risk in doing that.
Why should people have to do this?
Hedges:
Because the Democratic Party isn’t doing anything.
Kucinich:
I understand.
I am asking a rhetorical question.
People are feeling they have to do something.
While it doesn’t go as far as advocating war tax resistance, this methodical, thorough, Daily Kos post may spontaneously generate such seditious ideas in the minds of antimilitarist progressives.
If that doesn’t do it, maybe this commentary by Chris Hedges will do the trick.
Overly apocalyptic, even by my pessimistic standards, it nonetheless will resonate with concerned folks of a leftish bent.
Excerpt:
We have a choice.
We can refuse to be either a victim or an executioner.
We have the moral capacity to say no, to refuse to cooperate.
Any boycott or demonstration, any occupation or sit-in, any strike, any act of obstruction or sabotage, any refusal to pay taxes, any fast, any popular movement and any act of civil disobedience ignites the soul of the rebel and exposes the dead hand of authority.
Here are a couple of encouraging signs that the American anti-war movement
might be coming back to life:
A large coalition of anti-war groups are coordinating “a powerful and sustained nonviolent resistance” campaign beginning in in Washington, D.C..
Under this umbrella you’ll find groups like ANSWER, CodePink, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Progressive Democrats of America, Veterans for Peace, and World Can’t Wait, and participants like Ann Wright, Bill Moyer, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Cynthia McKinney, Dave Rovics, Derrick Jensen, Jodie Evans, Kevin Zeese, Medea Benjamin, Mike Ferner, Michael Lerner, and Ted Rall.
Meanwhile, the Come Home, America coalition is trying to make anti-war isolationism respectable again by coalescing a set of anti-war groups from across the American political spectrum around a call to bring American troops home from unsavory foreign wars.
“Signers include advisers to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton; former presidential candidates of the Libertarian, Socialist, and Green parties, as well as an independent, Ralph Nader; representatives of think tanks such as the Institute for Policy Studies, the Independent Institute, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Just Foreign Policy have signed on.
And editors from a wide range of publications, including The American Conservative, Antiwar.com, Black Agenda Report, Black Commentator, FireDogLake.com, Liberty for All, Liberty for America, OpEdNews.com, The Progressive, Progressive Review, Raw Story, and Reason have all signed on.”
