Beyond the Border of War

McDowell had joined the military after 9/11, while finishing up his information technology degree. He was 21 years old at the time, and the 2001 terrorist attacks had filled him with a sense of destiny.

"It sounds kinda cheesy," he says now, "but however we handled this event, I felt it would define our generation."

He spent four years in uniform with a communications unit, including a year in Iraq, where skepticism soon replaced his zeal. "They'd already been there a year, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. They'd given up searching. We were told the mission had changed to helping the Iraqi people, to bring them freedom and democracy.

"But then we'd go on convoys and they'd instruct us to run cars off the road if they were in our way."

He began researching the war, and reached an unsettling conclusion: "It's a hard personal realization to join the Army out of patriotism and accept your country was wrong."

When he came home to Rhode Island on two weeks' leave, his bitterness only deepened. "Nobody was even talking about the war. It didn't faze anybody. Nobody knew what was going on, and nobody cared."

Back in Iraq, McDowell was promoted to sergeant. He finished his tour and completed his last year of service stateside, where he says he readily shared his opinions with a fresh recruit who asked what he made of this conflict: "We were lied to."

He was honorably discharged in June 2006.

Faced with orders to report back to duty, McDowell "made a promise to myself, to Jamime and my family: Whatever happens, I'm not going back. It would've been easy to go to Iraq and have it done with again. But being a sellout to my own beliefs -- I just felt it was wrong on so many levels."

McDowell had heard of some soldiers fleeing to Canada. He began considering exile as an option.

"I'd never broken any law before," the 27-year-old says. A computer search soon linked him to something called the War Resisters Support Campaign.

Could he legally enter Canada? Yes. What would happen then? No one knew.