One of the most surprising statistics I’ve heard in a long time is that, according to a U.S. Army study done after World War II, only 25% of soldiers ever fired their guns at the enemy. The military changed its combat training, so in Vietnam 50% fired at the enemy. That increase, however, seems to have failed to help a war many thought was immoral. My father, a WWII veteran, was a medic in Vietnam, and he would not carry a gun. The documentary “Sir, No Sir” makes a case that Nixon was forced out of Vietnam because too many troops refused to fight and pilots refused to fly bombing missions. Charlie Clements, one of those pilots, was locked in a psych ward for refusing, a nonfiction case of Catch-22.
A new book, The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of our Soldiers, by ethicist and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman explores the psychological and moral impact of war on the inner lives of those in military service. In revealing their moral struggles, Sheman helps us see the profound emotional cost of war. The moral and spiritual costs are also deep, even for those fighting a war they believe is just. Her book supports the vivid and compelling case that the film, “Soldiers of Conscience” makes that every soldier is a soldier of conscience.Service members who refuse to fight a war on moral grounds face sanctions, prison, and dishonorable discharges. Only those who object to “war in any form” and go through the incredibly complicated process of applying for Conscientious Objector status can be exempted. I’ve seen the application papers—I have a Ph.D. and would find it a difficult process. If you apply and get deployed to fight, you have to go while you wait for a ruling, even if doing so violates your moral convictions.
The CO option is supposed to protect religious freedom and moral conscience in the military. However, most religious traditions follow some version of what Christians call “just war,” though I doubt many people of faith know exactly what this entails. Rev. Herman Keizer, Jr., a retired Army Chaplain (COL), who served for 34 years, and was chair of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces, notes that the military, from the level of basic training up to its war colleges, teaches ideas of just war. Yet, current CO regulations prevent soldiers from using these ideas when called to deploy in a war.
President Obama used a just war argument to justify his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan in his Nobel acceptance speech. He didn’t persuade me it was a just war, but I appreciate that he raised the question of the morality of a particular war. People tried during Vietnam to institute selective conscientious objection, without success—a way for soldiers to object to a particular war, not all wars. It’s hard to think about the tragedy of all the lives lost in a disaster of a war that even its primary architect, Robert McNamara, belatedly and impotently, called a stupid and terrible mistake.
Those in the Armed Forces who survive war return to us as members of our families and communities. It is hard enough to become a civilian again after fighting a war you believe is just. I don’t think veterans should have to try to rebuild a life with the burden of moral and spiritual injury from having to prosecute a war they believed was immoral and unjust. The current veteran suicide rate is up 26%. Gen. Shinseki of the VA says they have not figured out how to stop 18 veterans a day from killing themselves—these are the ones they can count.
Some of us want to find more effective ways to understand the effects of current CO policies on those in the Armed Services. We’re headed to Riverside Church in New York on March 21 for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War. The sixty commissioners will hear testimony from veterans about the moral and spiritual injury of war. In listening compassionately, we want to think creatively about next steps in supporting the moral consciences of those in military service. As Rev. Keizer, Jr., the Commission host, noted in a letter he sent to President Obama after his Oslo speech:
Those who subscribe to the Just War tradition do not object to all war. They object only to those wars that cannot be morally justified…The conscience of this selective objector deserves the same respect as the conscience of the pacifist.
We might disagree on the specifics of the morality of Afghanistan or Iraq, on whether a just war in a nuclear age is possible, or even on whether any war is morally justified, but I hope, at the very least, we should agree that the moral consciences of those in military service matter and should be respected.
This effort is complicated by today’s all volunteer military. During Vietnam people were compelled to serve and were apt to have all kinds of attitudes about it.
But today one selects a pay and benefits package and takes the job and you know you’re not working for UPS or Ben & Jerry’s.
I’m sure the Pentagon fears that, once you have signed up to serve in the military, to allow you to say, ‘but not in this war…’ risks turning the ability to deploy military power into a popularity contest among the troops. That won’t do.
Sonny,
I wish it were so simple. Conscientious objection is not about popularity, but about profound issues of individual moral conscience. Lt.Ehren Watada was willing to go to Afghanistan, but was told he had to go to Iraq, which he believed was illegal and immoral. He was willing to face jail for a long time, rather than deploy to a war that he felt made him a war criminal–this is not about his unwillingness to fight, but about his moral conscience. Others come back from wars and kill themselves.
Plus, we have a “draft,” three versions of it. First, stoploss prevents troops whose military time is up from leaving the military and makes them deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan repeatedly. The veteran suicide rate is at an all time high–the VA just admitted it has no idea how to deal with the current suicide rate.
Second, the use of National Guard troops forces people who never intended to fight in war to deploy. Some, even pacifists, join the guard because they want to serve their communities and country, but they never expected to be forced into combat.
Third, poverty drives many into military service as a way to an education and decent life. You do not find recruiting stations in Beverly Hills, but in Watts, and recruiters have to paint the rosiest, most noble picture possible to meet their quotas. This is how the poor, young, and naive wind up fighting wars planned by the privileged whose children rarely pay for their elders’ follies, and one more way the lives of the rich and educated are worth more than everyone else.
Yep, Rita, I’m sure the poor do pay more, in the costs of war as elsewhere. I don’t know exact stats, but I’m sure you’re right that there’s a disproportion of poor among those who sign up. Some among the poor who sign up are entirely patriotic in spirit. That doesn’t mean they fully understand consequences. My father was in the Battle of the Bulge, WWII. A mechanic, he and his buddy were behind one of the trucks they worked on when his buddy was blown up and killed, my father struck with shrapnel. Returned, he was a changed man and mom said she did not recognize him. He threw “fits.” There was no classification of Post Traumatic Stress. People just came home, buried the costs of war in hopes of renewal, resurrection of the economy, and mass forgetfullness or unmindfulness. My mom often ushered us kids out of the house, sometimes for hours, once for a week. She contemplated leaving altogether. Once, my mom had to stop a fit in process quickly and she brought a glass milk bottle across his arm to shock him out of it. My child’s 5 year-old brain is forever emblazoned with the red blood dripping down his arm as he stood in front of white icebox. The fits lessened over the years, and some wounds healed over time, I suppose, but we continued for a long time to “walk around” the deep gloom my dad sometimes fell into. Later, I took a class in grad school on Vietnam and social issues. Do you know how many Vietnam Vets did commit suicide after that war? I’m not sure of the number, but I think it was ultimately more than the number killed in action! I do remember being totally shocked at that number.
Yes, war has incredible costs. The main lesson to me was that the war doesn’t stay “over there.” It comes home.
Jenell,
Thank you so much for sharing the story of your father. It means a lot. My father also came home from WWII with PTSD, though I did not know this until long after he died. He had an eighth grade education and was one of four being cared for by his widower father in rural Mississippi. They were pretty poor. He joined the Army at age 17, was captured in North Africa, and spent a long time in a POW camp. When he came back, the Army gave him electro shock at Walter Reed, and he spent a year in a catatonic state. My cousin’s family, whose mother had epilepsy–so they weren’t too bothered that he acted odd–were able to take care of him til he came around. Then, he re-upped and went to Japan during the occupation, where he met my mother and married her.
While not perfect, he was a good dad. But his two tours to Vietnam changed him a lot. I left for college just after he got back from his second tour, so my younger siblings bore the brunt of his depression and need for control. He was never like he was before and died of a heart attack about 8 yrs after he got back.
I don’t know the stats of Vietnam vet suicides, but I know it is high, and it was deeply opposed by many who had to fight it. Suicide stats are just the tip of the iceberg on the suffering of vets. The longterm effects of untreated PTSD can be harmful or deadly in many other ways.