Objection Overruled

There is an article on BBC about conscientious objectors in the US military. The soldier that they focus on in the report was able to get his discharge, but I think he should be shot. Now I’ll admit that I have little sympathy for conscientious objectors at the best of times. Why should they free ride on other’s sacrifice? But I’m willing to accept at least that people who have grown up in a culture or religion which disallows killing other human beings outright may have some sort of right to not be compelled to go to war. But this basically assumes that conditions are so dire that you need to be instituting a draft. If you enlist, get to a war zone, and then decide that you now object, I’m sorry, but it’s too late to be changing your mind.

Sadly I think it gets worse. Aidan Delgado is quoted in the article as saying "I straddled exactly the period when being in the reserves was a joke to being a deeply serious commitment and you were certain to be deployed." So joining the National Guard was just a joke to you? Well sorry, but military service to your country should never be considered a joke. It is a serious commitment at any time. You have no control over when a war might start, and when you may be called on to serve in a capacity which goes beyond spending your service weekend “drunk off your ass” as watching the Simpsons would lead me to believe.

He goes on… "In 2003 I began the formal process of saying I can no longer participate in this. My commander's reaction was that I was trying to escape from the deployment (in Iraq) and overnight I became a 'bad' soldier."

"To have the knowledge that members of your unit disliked you so much that they would assault you was really tough.

"I think they were hostile not because of what I was doing but because of the implicit judgement on them. It was as if I was saying 'I'm too moral to do what you do' or that I was looking down on them because they were a bad person."

Well I don’t know what he expected. You get to Iraq, see some combat and suddenly you are a Buddhist? What is your CO supposed to think? I also think he is wrong about what his fellow solders thought of him. I’m willing to bet they just thought he was a coward. There is nothing about moral superiority there, you just know that someone you have been training with for a long time, who is supposed to be watching your back in combat is now telling you that he is incapable of doing so, and is in fact going to go back to the safety of America while you still have to deal with the hell of Iraq. I’m mad at him and I’m not even in his unit!

I accept that having someone who is unwilling to fight in your unit is probably bad, and removal and replacement are probably the best option. Still, the fact that this guy got an honorable discharge really rubs me the wrong way. If I were someone who got an honorable discharge for a real reason, I would really feel like my sacrifice was being devalued. I bet that a few executions would put a stop to the tide of these objectors, but it’s probably too hard to sell on the home front. Still, if their objection is that strong, they should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.