Looks like the Left has found itself another of their “war heroes”:

In a rare case of officer dissent, a Fort Lewis Army lieutenant has refused orders to head out to Iraq this month to lead troops in what he believes is an illegal war of occupation.

1st Lt. Ehren Watada was scheduled to make his first deployment to Iraq this month. His refusal to accompany the Stryker brigade troops puts him at risk of court martial and years of prison time.

“I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration,” Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. “It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war.”

In a statement released today, Watada said the “war in Iraq violates our democratic system of checks and balances.

“It usurps international treaties and conventions that by virtue of the Constitution become American law. The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice, but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes.”

Apparently, this sterling example of the Left’s concept of honor and fidelity to duty signed up shortly after the Iraq war began, but offered not a peep of protest about it until he got orders to go and fight the “illegal” war himself — you know, the “illegal” war overwhelmingly voted for by Congress after a year and a half’s vigorous debate by both the people and their representatives. Y’know, the one based on all that phony evidence cooked up by Bush, evidence that was also used as justification for years of corruptly-administered UN sanctions years before Bush ever had control of the CIA, and for Operation Desert Fox. Which was — well, I guess “perpetrated” would be the word — by the Clinton administration, and which for some reason has never been condemned as “illegal” by liberals. Although I’m sure they’re planning to get around to it eventually, since to fail to do so would be hypocritically inconsistent and all, and that would be so unlike them.

Got that? This guy evidently was just fine with the war as long as it was being fought by others, but now conveniently wants to claim some sort of retroactive CO status when called upon to fight himself. And now this self-seeking deserter/mutineer is being feted as some kind of courageous lion of honest opposition to the war by those troop-supporting antiwarriors.

Doesn’t that amount to some sort of inverse violation of the Left’s beloved “chickenhawk” rule?

Either way, as I said, the Left has found themselves a new “hero,” and at least this one actually IS a soldier, if a pretty poor example of one. But then I suppose to Lefties, whose only glancing familiarity with the American military is born exclusively of their contempt for it, this is what an “officer and a gentleman” does actually look like. And especially compared to most of them, who wouldn’t know honesty or fidelity to duty if it kicked their pasty faces down their throats, he’s certainly something of an improvement, I have to admit.

“There has been an outpouring of support in the Puget Sound area,” said David Solnit, who works with the anti-war group Courage to Resist.

I bet so. Hope this guy knows how quickly his new-found bestest friends will desert him once he’s sitting in jail and his PR value has faded away. Because he’s going to be sitting there a good, long while, and rightly so, if the facts of the case are as they now appear.