Noah Pollak asks, who is Chris Hedges?

Writing in The Nation, Chris Hedges would like you to know that in these times, he is suffering a terrible ordeal of conscience — and that it is not just his ordeal, but indeed the entire nation's.

I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran—which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election—will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'etat that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic.
...
I will put the taxes I owe in an escrow account. I will go to court to challenge the legality of the war. Maybe a courageous judge will rule that the Constitution has been usurped and the government is guilty of what the postwar Nuremberg tribunal defined as a criminal war of aggression. Maybe not. I do not know. But I do know this: I have friends in Tehran, Gaza, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo. They will endure far greater suffering and deprivation. I want to be able, once the slaughter is over, to at least earn the right to ask for their forgiveness.

Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes.