"To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me." -- Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who served one year in prison for refusing to return to fight in Iraq. (Thanks to Butler Shaffer)

UPDATE from Darren:

Also from Camilo Mejia:"To the troops, I want to say that there is a way out. We signed a contract, and we swore to protect the constitution and to fight for freedom and democracy, but that's not what we're doing in Iraq. And if it means jail, or if it means disgrace or shame, then that's what it's going to take.... [T]here is no higher freedom that can be achieved than the freedom we achieve when we follow our conscience, and that's something that we can live by and never regret."

UPDATE from Jack Ely:

Right on for Mr. Mejia. When I (very unexpectedly) stepped off a plane in Da Nang I wasn't afraid to die. It would probably be more accurate to say that I was afraid to kill but this really misses the mark also. There was NO WAY I was going to kill. Like my fearless leader Richard Nixon I was raised a Quaker but unlike him killing was not in me. I could not have done it. They would surely have called it cowardice if it had come to that (and it eventually did) but it just wasn't in me.