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A former Army Brigadier General was busted two ranks and fined $20,000 after being charged with sexual assault of an Army Captain -- a subordinate  he once threatened to kill if she revealed their affair. Jeffrey A. Sinclair’s multiple convictions should have gotten him thrown out of the military, sent to prison and registered as a sexual predator, but the judge in the case, Col. James L. Pohl, allowed him to retire as a Lt. Col. with full benefits and a pension worth $105,000 a year. Sinclair, 51, spent 28 years in the Army.
 
Meanwhile we just celebrated the retirement of peace activist Bonnie Urfer, 62, who has stopped answering the Nukewatch phone after co-directing here for 28 years.
 
Beyond her $662.00-per-month Social Security check which amounts to about $8,000 a year (Sinclair gets more every month), Bonnie won’t get a pension from our small, non-profit nuclear watchdog. Bonnie’s conscientiously self-limited income keeps her from supporting the war system which gets about half of everyone’s federal income taxes. Living under the taxable limit has always been part of her life of resisting militarism in thought, word and deed, in one form or another.
 
This is no hardship since Bonnie’s become a master of political economy and downward mobility. She lives rent-free and mortgage-free in a house she helped build with her own hands at the Plowshares Land Trust. She grows her own vegetables and has reduced her living expenses to a fraction of what most North Americans mistakenly believe to be bare minimum. Property taxes, groceries, gas, dog food and veterinary bills, insurance, art supplies, sundries and an internet connection are about all she needs to cover.

Bonnie’s been focused and committed in her work for nuclear disarmament and has done every sort of action to shine some light on the weapons complex: from interrupting a Gulf War “victory” parade in Madison, and sitting-in at the Oak Ridge, Tenn. H-bomb factory, to shutting down Wisconsin’s former nuclear first-strike ELF antenna with peace activist Michael Sprong (with a Swede saw). She’s served a total of over six and a half years in jail and prison for taking part in about 100 civil disarmament and anti-nuclear actions. And in addition to her Nukewatch work, she’s spent five decades using her art and direct action in defense of women’s rights and gender equality, and against any sort of bullying, sexual harassment or abuse. With Jane Simons she helped found the Women’s Jail Project in Madison, Wis.
 
Compare her record to Sinclair’s. He was initially charged with “forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, wrongfully engaging in personal relationships with subordinates, misuse of government travel charge cards (he set up trysts with the card), maltreatment of soldiers, conduct unbecoming an officer.” The L.A. Times reported that the Army Captain’s mistress accused him of threatening to kill her and her parents if she divulged the affair, and of groping and fondling her against her will in front of other soldiers. The charges of sexual violence and assault carried a possible life sentence and registration as a sex offender if proved.
 
In the course of Sinclair’s politically-explosive trial, the more serious charges were dismissed in exchange for his pleading guilty to “maltreatment,” adultery, soliciting explicit pictures from female officers, using derogatory and demeaning language toward female officers, impeding an investigation, disobeying an order to stay away from the Captain, and travel card theft. Jamie Bartlett, a lawyer for the Captain, called the sentence “a travesty” and said, “Now the Army has to face the reality that this is likely to happen again, and victims will be less likely to come forward.”
 
Almost anonymously, Bonnie wears her years of incarceration (she’s been “in the service” to the earth rather than to nationalism, the war system or self-promotion) as something of a badge of honor as she embarks on new adventures, although the “record” will keep her from landing conventional jobs for some pocket money. But Col. Sinclair’s plea bargain and Army record of warrior heroics and ambitious rank-climbing guarantee him a big pension and decades in which to pursue a second income-doubling career -- most likely with a weapons contractor.
 
Sinclair’s lawyer, Richard Scheff, said after sentencing, “He is a highly decorated war hero who made great sacrifices for his country, and it’s right that he be permitted to retire honorably.” But Army secretary John McHugh said he, “displayed a pattern of … illegal behavior both while serving as a brigadier general and a colonel.” Now, thanks to the Army Captain who brought the charges, Sinclair will be remembered only as a ruthless, violent, abusive sexual predator.
 
Bonnie on the other hand, with four decades of simple, sustainable living and three decades of nonviolent resistance to sexism, militarism and nuclear madness, is simultaneously a humble (if impish) laughing Buddha and a luminous living example of how a person can enjoy life harmlessly, thrive living below taxable income and still shame devils like Sinclair every day.


- John LaForge is a Co-Director of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and wrote its Jan. 2013 special report, “Drinking Water at Risk: Toxic Military Waste Haunt Lake Superior.”