Watch part two

US military casualties are on the rise in Afghanistan and Iraq, and post-traumatic stress disorders are increasing among soldiers who have returned from these war zones.

Hundreds of enlisted military men and women have refused to return to the front lines, many on conscientious objector grounds.

They say the US is engaged in illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they are fighting for honourable releases from the military. 

During the Vietnam war, tens of thousands of US citizens who objected to the war either fled to Canada or found other ways to avoid continued military service. 

The percentage of war resisters within the US military today is relatively small, but growing.

Soldiers in modern voluntary military forces have not been drafted to fight against their will.

This being so, do they have a strong moral ground on which they can object to deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq, or did they knowingly give up those rights for good when they joined the service?

Are they honourable objectors or dishonourable deserters?

Taking up the question on this Riz Khan show will be Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist and author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and also Beyond The Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

This episode of the Riz Khan show aired from Monday, August 17, 2009.