Veterans’ Billboards to Troops: Refuse Illegal Orders to Kill

Campaign doubles to 19 boards in 13 cities and Puerto Rico.

A national veterans organization is expanding its billboard campaign to 13 cities, urging active duty and National Guard troops to “follow the law and their conscience” and refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace is doubling the number of billboards since its campaign began in late January.

Mike Prysner, an Iraq War combat veteran and now director of the Center on Conscience and War, said, “The number one thing cited by our callers as a breaking point for them was the U.S. bombing of the Minab girls’ elementary school, that being the moment where they realized, ‘I’m not going to take part in the killing of children.’”

He added, “When the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran there was a shift. We used to get a handful of calls a week; now it’s three or four a day … people with really accomplished careers, in very elite jobs like Special Forces, Top Gun fighter pilots, physicians, surgeons. … Our highest-ranking CO client right now is a major in the military.”

U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Retired) said in support of the VFP campaign, “No officer, warrant officer, non-commissioned officer or enlisted man or woman should carry out an order they know is illegal. Instead, they should carry their objection to the next higher person in the chain of command—and continue doing so until they get to an individual in that chain who will support them—even if they have to go all the way to the Commander-in-Chief.”

VFP President Susan Schnall explained, “Many soldiers refused orders in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently to protest U.S. support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Schnall, a former Navy nurse, was featured in the documentary, Sir, No Sir! for disobeying orders and protesting the war in Vietnam. “We know it takes courage. We also know we have to live with ourselves and our consciences long after military service.”

G.I. Rights Hotline coordinator Steve Woolford said, “Our phones are busier than ever at the GI Rights Hotline, with the biggest increase in calls coming from military members who are opposed to the ways the U.S. military is currently being used.”

In a now-famous video, Senator Mark Kelly and five other members of Congress, all military veterans, told active duty and National Guard troops they have the right and the duty to refuse illegal orders. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution,” they clearly advised.  Veterans For Peace (VFP) publicly supported their statement.

Veterans For Peace billboards have run or are now running in:

• New Orleans
• Tucson
• Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago
• Norfolk, VA, outside the Norfolk Naval Station
• 3 in Watertown, NY, outside Ft. Drum, home of the Army’s 10^thMountain Div.
• Fort Benning, GA
• Aguadilla, PR, near a U.S. drone base
• San Diego, CA
• 2 in Fairfield, CA, outside Travis AFB
• 2 in Portland, OR
• Fort Campbell, KY
• Palm Springs, CA, outside 29 Palms Marine Base
• 3 near Dayton, OH, outside Wright Patterson AFB.

VFP has 100 chapters in the U.S. and overseas. Since 1985, its mission has been to “abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”