For 30,000 US families, 2010 is guaranteed not to be a happy new year. Their loved ones will be deploying to our nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan. They are being sent to a war that President Obama attempted, and failed, to defend as necessary in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech; a war that is set to become the strongest evidence of his failure both as Commander-in-Chief and as a peacemaker.
New private “Pentagon papers” (disclosed December 29, 2009 on The Rachel Maddow Show by journalist Richard Engel) add to a growing body of evidence that Afghanistan is another quagmire like Vietnam. Even that previous war’s chief architect, Robert McNamara, belatedly and impotently admitted it was an ill-conceived mistake. It was, like Afghanistan, an endless, poorly planned, losing war begun by one president and continued by his successors. Over the decades, Vietnam, too, faced growing opposition among the fighting ranks, as documented in the film Sir, No Sir.
Most debates about both Iraq and Afghanistan have focused on whether or not they are winnable. The president’s speech in Oslo, however, raised the bar to moral grounds. He tried to defend his decision to escalate Afghanistan by contrasting the nonviolent principles of previous Nobel laureates, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., with the principles of just war that have informed the Nuremberg Principles and Geneva Conventions, the current gold standards for leaders of nations conducting wars. His defense in the abstract was eloquent. In its practical application to Afghanistan, it was shallow and inept. As Catholic social ethicist Dan Maguire noted, his defense failed all six criteria for just war, though failing only one makes a war unjust. “It is ‘a pity beyond all telling’ that the ‘just-war theory’ he invoked condemns the warring policies he anomalously defended as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace.”
Soldiers now deploying to both wars are denied the choice of conscience that the president articulated in accepting his Peace Prize. The rights of Conscientious Objection (CO) are currently too narrow to protect the moral conscience of soldiers. To claim this formal status, you have to show that, on religious or ethical grounds, you object to “war in any form.” This requirement denies freedom of conscience to those serving in the military who follow religious or philosophical principles of just war.
Put plainly, if you are a soldier and believe a war (such as Iraq or Afghanistan) is morally wrong, it is illegal for you to refuse to deploy—even if you believe participation implicates you in an immoral war or in war crimes. Instead, soldiers refusing to fight face sanctions, and even court martial and imprisonment.
The current situation is ethically intolerable. It is, indeed, unconscionable. With high PTSD levels, unprecedented military suicide rates, and soldiers choosing prison or desertion rather than deployment, the time for expanding religious freedom and the exercise of conscience in war has never been more urgent.
Serious moral deliberation over this matter is demanded, now more than ever. On March 21, the Truth Commission on Conscience in War, a public gathering of community and religious leaders at the Riverside Church in New York, will receive testimony from veterans and discuss religious freedom and the rights of conscience in war. The Commission will explore the consequences of current CO policies for soldiers who would willingly fight to defend our country, but cannot, in good conscience, participate in a war they believe is unjust or violates international agreements on the conduct of war, and it will launch a national conversation about expanding current CO regulations. Supporting this Commission is an opportunity for people who support the military and those in the peace movement to work together to protect moral conscience in war.
What is called “selective conscientious objection,” eloquently articulated, in principle, by President Obama, was called for during the Vietnam War and the draft, but it was denied then. Why now, you might ask, without a draft, do we need selective conscientious objection?
The reasons are many: the need for freedom of religion, international agreements on the conduct of war, motivations for military service, and backdoor drafts. The majority of religions in the United States allow participation in what Christians call “just war.” President Obama asserted that the failure of just war in World War II compelled the United Nations to create agreements such as the Nuremberg Principles and Geneva Conventions. Nuremberg Principle IV states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Men and women volunteer for military service because they want an education, economic security, and/or a chance to serve their country. Military recruiting stations are not found in wealthy neighborhoods like Beverly Hills. But economics are not the whole story. Some sign up, as many did in World War II, because they want to fight a war they support. Lt. Ehren Watada, a college graduate, enlisted after 9/11 because he wanted to defend his country. Instead, he became the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq—he believed ordering soldiers to fight would make him a war criminal. He volunteered to go to Afghanistan or to resign from the military. Instead he was prosecuted in military court, where he was not allowed to use his moral and legal assessment of Iraq as a defense.
National Guard troops were ordered into a war they never expected to fight. Sherburne Baker, son of Celeste Zappala, joined the Pennsylvania National Guard to serve people in his community and protect people he loved. On April 24, 2004, he became the state’s first Guardsman to die in combat since 1943, and he was killed within weeks of arriving in Iraq while searching for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
With an all-volunteer military asked to prosecute two wars, stop loss has become a backdoor draft. Yet some soldiers called to redeploy have come to believe that Iraq or Afghanistan is immoral or illegal. Joshua Casteel, an evangelical Republican, studied Arabic in college and enlisted after 9/11. In the documentary Soldiers of Conscience, he describes his Christian moral journey from being an interrogator at Abu Ghraib to leaving the military as a conscientious objector.
While some soldiers like Casteel have chosen a CO path since 2003, hundreds more, like Baker or Watada, cannot honestly claim to object to war in any form. Yet, they may still be morally, deeply opposed to fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. For them, there is no court of appeals, no room for a CO just war argument; there is no way out.
When we punish soldiers who heed their moral compasses, we deny them religious freedom, and our democracy is threatened. Not only is the integrity of our military compromised; we break the moral backbone of our servicemen and women. When this happens, the international just peace community, which the president so eloquently valorized in Oslo, is weakened. And we trivialize our broader commitment to morally responsible public life.
President Obama asserted that a just peace can only last if it is grounded in the “inherent rights and dignity of every individual.” It is time our nation granted the individual women and men in the Armed Services the right of freedom of religion and conscience, the right to object to a particular war. They undertake tremendous risks and hardship to protect the nation. Let us not ask them to sacrifice their consciences to serve. Let us give them, instead, a chance to continue serving, in good conscience, the country they love.
Tags: afghanistan, conscientious objector, geneva conventions, just war, just war theory, nuremberg principles, obama, pentagon papers, rachel maddow, richard engel, vietnam war, war
Either you have a military or you don't. If soldiers get to pick and choose then you do not have a military. It is really just that simple. There is no draft and no one is forcing people into the military. When you choose the military as a career you make that choice with full knowledge that you will sometimes be fighting wars you don't like.
That is true. If people are allowed to enlist during times of peace, then object if we go to war, there would be a lot of people volunteering to enlist. There is a deeper problem. We went into Afganistan to go after OBL, but capturing or killing him would end our WOT before we had a chance to invade Iraq and go after the oil, so we had to let up on catching him. Now we have no justification for being in Afganistan or Iraq. Our soldiers are not really fighting to protect America, we are not at risk, our soldiers are fighting to protect the interests of our global capitalists, and they are actually making America less safe because of the wars they are fighting. Now the supreme duty of an American soldier is to make sure his mind is protected and he never understands the situation so that he can be patriotic.
This is not an ethical question it is a legal question. Once a person joins the military, no matter why, they are under contract. When that contract is up they have the right in most cases not to re-enlist.
If you do not like the War in Afghanistan, you can take political action against it.
I have no idea what the sentence about "supreme duty of an American soldier is to make sure his mind is protected" is about. The Supreme duty of the soldier is to follow commands.
Are they protecting America, or are they protecting the interests of the wealthy? Are they making America less safe through these wars that are greatly increasing dislike of us and helping the radicals recruit? What would the soldiers say about these things? Do they understand the issues, or is it better if they don't think about it?
Do have any idea of what a military is? If soldiers have choices then there is no military.
We should encourage them to think. If that turns out to be a problem, they can always be ordered to kill us.
Trying to get a soldier to think is kind of like trying to get a fundamentalist Christian to think. You just put the evidence out there in the clearest possible way, and try to make it as stressful as possible for them to ignore.
It is useless to talk to you. You don't make logical arguments or take a stand you just insult people.
Should soldiers be allowed to think? Should they be allowed to communicate freely on the internet? If you are in the business of secrecy and killing things need to be controlled. That is a soldiers life. Does he give up his religion and switch to one of the militarily acceptable religion when he signs up? Has the killing business learned to coexist with Christianity? The situation might be insluting and logic might not be a good fit in this business. Hopefully we don't ever decide to just get along and make our peace with war.
Choice is a funny word. It is a strong word. But here, regarding the military, choosing to join the military for some is the lesser of two evils (so to speak). If you come from a financially unstable background and have no way of paying for an education/training program, that GI bill sounds really nice.
It is also true that the idea of serving in the military turns out to be drastically different from the reality of serving for some people - so are they not allowed to change their minds? The CO regulations are set up so that an individual is able to not serve in a war that he/she finds morally/ethically wrong. It is, conversely, one of the hardest things to do in the military to achieve CO status. This isn't an issue of picking and choosing one's battles - it is a real issue about one's personal morals and ethics being made to feel compromised. Just because someone chooses not to fight a particular does make him or her any less supportive of their country or the military. In fact, their informed dissention, their criticism, is the sign of a healthy military & country, instead of having a bunch of 'drones' blindly running into situations they know nothing about. Fighting to protect your country's freedoms should not entail that you give up all of yours in return.
It is pretty clear that people do not have a clue what it means to be in the military.
I come from a family where most of the male relatives, and a few female, have served throughout all branches of the military, and many have seen combat situations; as have many of my friends. I may have not personally experienced military service, as my choice, but I do very well understand and remember listening to their stories of service. I also understand that choosing to serve in a military means you will be following orders, but there is also military protocol available for individual soldiers to question, dissent and refuse specific orders if it compromises her or his conscience. It is not 'popular' to do so and it usually results in some kind of punishment for that soldier; but the OPTION is there. If there were absolutely no allowances for soldiers to refuse orders we wouldn't even have a term for conscientious objectors, now would we?
If there had not been a draft we wouldn't even have a term for conscientious objectors.
well then it seems your problem really lies in the government's first instituting a draft, and not those who are now arguing to maintain the rights afforded to CO status seekers...
The idea of conscience, and its place in the life of American soldiers, raises even deeper questions about its absence in other spheres of life.
Why is it that we deny soldiers the right to exercise their conscience--choice--over how, when, and where they are prepared to sacrifice their lives for the greater good?
Who exercises that power over the military?
Could it be the American soldiers must fight, die and get exposed to trauma because, we as a society, are losing our conscience, our sense of duty, compassion and commitment to our sons and daughters in the military?
Could it be that we bury them in a vacuum--our strategic, military and morally bankrupt political system? Could it be that they are getting buried in the well and walls of a Congress and White House--a graveyard--in which we as a nation exercise no presence? Could it be that they are getting buried under the floor of a market that has, for all practical purposes, converts the price of their lives into the margins extracted out of barrels of crude oil and other commodities? Could it be that the uniform of the military has become a shroud for sanitizing private corporate interests that have monopolized government?
Could it be that soldiers who do exercise their conscience expose an ugly truth that the deficit makes more than obvious: that, we as Americans, are stripping our noblest children, not only of their future and their finances, but also of their faith and their flesh?
Perhaps the question should be reframed: "Who is it, and why is it, that we deny soldiers their conscience?" Could it be that we risk discovering our own?
Sincerely,
Amir Soltani
amisoltani@yahoo.com
Maybe the public attitudes have something to do with the fact that casualties are low and no one is being forced into the military.
In the news they may read yesterday 2-3 died in Iraq, and 6 died in their US city.
According to an expert on Conscientious Objection, the military hides the actual numbers of those who apply for CO status. And CO status is VERY hard to get.
http://www.alternet.org/story/144702/
My father was a veteran of WWII and Vietnam, and he knew why he joined the military, why he chose it as a career, and why he exited it after his second tour in Vietnam, 18 mo. short of full benefits. He was not a CO, but he decided he could not stay in the Army after what he saw his second tour (he was a medic and ran an aide station--he also refused to carry a gun). He was never the same after his second tour.
People in the armed forces are not ignorant dupes or lacking in conscience; they are ordinary and diverse Americans, like the rest of us and serve for a variety of reasons.
Conscientious Objection did not emerge because of a draft. It was allowed informally from the time of the Revol. War for religious pacifists, but was regularized during the Civil War by Lincoln. In 1971, the Supreme Court in Gillette allowed philosophical pacifists (not just religious ones) the right to apply for CO status but ruled objection had to be "war in any form."
One wonders if everyone gets a financial education as good as they should – whether it's from public or private schools, or from their parents. Perhaps a little debt education could have gone far, and fewer people would have entered into mortgages that they probably couldn't reasonably afford – and it would behoove just about everyone to lay off the credit cards. There is plenty of information out there now, since the advent of the internet – and everyone's future is in their own hands. You can easily learn how to take charge, and start having what you make serve your purposes, instead of running from credit cards to payday loans, and the despair of debt.
we do not like the War in Afghanistan, so we can take political action against it.
Blu ray Ripper
I would say about myself, that I am an pacifist, I dont like war and guns, thats all.
All the best, Mike at the down comforter guide.
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