Introduction
Chaplain (Colonel) Herman Keizer, Jr.
US Army (retired)
"In training for combat, young men and women are conditioned to set aside much of their moral upbringing and take on a different moral code." | Read more »
Chaplain Brian G. Koyn
"In polite conversation and pop culture, war is full of heroics, camaraderie and honor. While this certainly can be true, it is not the whole story. There exists one terrible constant in war -- young people will be called upon to kill." | Read more »
Charlie Clements, Vietnam War veteran and president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
"We need to give support and voice to the soldiers who, despite being trained to kill without thinking, actually begin to think."
Read more »
Deryck Durston, M.Div., S.T.M., associate director of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education
"Honest people come at the decisions relating to war in all sorts of different ways. We turn away from what we abhor." | Read more »
Kate Dahlstedt, clinical psychotherapist and co-director of Soldier's Heart
"Our military is made up of young people who want a future that seems out of reach otherwise. Many want an education they can';t afford on the wages offered them. Most are capable, disciplined, men and women who see honor in service." |
Read more »
J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War
"Of course, the problem is people of conscience often do cause trouble. It happens in the difficult situations they find themselves when they realize that conscience is the thing from which they cannot escape, the thing that suddenly drives their actions, drives their lives."| Read more »
Rev. Herman Keizer
Chaplain (Colonel) Herman Keizer, Jr.
U.S. Army (retired)
Soldiers of Conscience is a must-see film for all those concerned about issues of conscience in times of war. It portrays soldiers who struggle with war as well as those who are willing and not troubled in their conscience by war. It is a story that is repeated over and over in the military, especially by those soldiers and Marines who experience the realities of ground combat.
It is also a story told against the backdrop of training to go to war and experience in combat. Both of these environments bring home some of the stark realities of ground combat. In training for combat, young men and women are conditioned to set aside much of their moral upbringing and take on a different moral code. People are raised not to kill and in combat training they are made to shout out "KILL! KILL! KILL!" For some the words stick in their throat, for others their emotions flood out in tears, for others anger, but for all the mental picture of running another person through with a bayonet and taking a human life is a foretaste of what they can expect in battle.
When I was a chaplain in a basic training unit, I always went to the field site when this training was being conducted. I never had a time when I did not have someone wanting to talk to me about what they were experiencing. It was cathartic for them to be able to express these very real and usually troubling feelings to someone who would treat them with nonjudgmental warmth and hold their conscience in empathetic regard. I did not justify the training or try to talk them out of what they were feeling. It was important for them to honor both their training and their conscience. One of my ethics professors used to say, "If you sin against your conscience, you commit moral suicide." I was determined to protect the conscience of these soldiers.
Soldiers of Conscience is also very accurate in portraying the process established by the Department of Defense concerning conscientious objection. Department of Defense Directive Number 1300.6, Subject: Conscientious Objectors clearly states who will be recognized as conscientious objection.
Conscientious Objection: General. A firm, fixed, and sincere objection to participation in war in any form or the bearing of arms, by reason of religious training and/or belief.
Unless otherwise specified, the term "conscientious objector" includes both Class 1-O and Class 1-A-O Conscientious Objectors. A Conscientious Objector Class 1-O is, "[a] member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation in any kind of war in any form." And a 1-A-O Conscientious Objector is "A Member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation as a combatant in war in any form, but whose convictions are such as to permit a Military Service in a noncombatant status."
The definition recognizes only those who object to all war in any form. This is usually called pacifism. (There is another view, which I will get to later.) In the conscript Army, a person could state their position of conscience at the time of registration for the draft. So the vast number of conscience objectors were either not drafted or drafted into noncombatant positions. There were still those individuals drafted who were converted to a conviction that all war was wrong or who discovered in military training that war violated a position of conscience being formed in the crucible of training for war.
In an all-volunteer military, one would expect to find only a limited number of those who object to all war-fighting. But training for combat sharpens the issues of conscience in relation to war, so the directive still protects that part of the population. I am thankful for that protection, but the burden of proof is on the objector in the application and adjudication process. Going through the process is not easy, and the film documents a wonderful and sensitive portrayal of the struggles of the objector. I think it correct that the process should not be easy, because the human conscience should never be used as a shill to get out of duty and responsibility. However, in my 34 years as an Army chaplain, I was deeply disturbed by the atmosphere of disdain heaped on the objector. The objectors' patriotism was questioned and challenged as well as their courage. The worst challenge was the questioning of the objectors' faith. I have seen commanders, non-commissioned officers and some fellow chaplains try to reason and argue against the faith statements of the objector. I would remind those who issued the challenges that the Department of Defense honored conscientious objection by publishing a directive and designing a process to honor the conscientious objector and it was their duty to live in the spirit of the directive and the process.
There is another tradition that is meant to inform the conscience concerning war -- the Just War tradition. That tradition says that the state has the moral responsibility to protect its citizens by using its military power in a morally justified manner. The Just War tradition also says that when a state uses military power unjustly individuals have an obligation to object to the injustice. Through its long history, going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, criteria for the Just War tradition have been defined and refined to meet the conditions and realities of the changing political climate and advances in weaponry. Those who subscribe to this tradition do not object to all war. They object only to those wars that cannot be morally justified. An excellent book on this tradition is Brian Orend's The Morality of War. However, the current us Department of Defense directive does not recognize "Selective Conscientious Objection" of persons in this tradition.
Chaplain (Colonel) Herman Keizer, Jr. retired in 2002 after serving 34 years as an Army chaplain. He served in units in Vietnam and Hawaii; on the staff of senior officers and civilians in the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense; as command chaplain in European Command and as the military advisor to the Ambassador for International Religious Freedom at the us Department of State. He is currently the director of Chaplaincy Ministries for the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
Brian Koyn
Chaplain Brian G. Koyn
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest once said, "War means fightin', and fightin' means killin'." We expect such a brutal statement from a man like Forrest, but he cuts to the quick of what it means to be a soldier in combat. In polite conversation and pop culture, war is full of heroics, camaraderie and honor. Although this certainly can be true, it is not the whole story. There exists one terrible constant in war -- young people will be called upon to kill.
I have personally wrestled with the decisions discussed in Soldiers of Conscience -- as a Christian, as a former Infantry officer and now as an Army chaplain. My discussions with veterans of all wars reveal to me that most (if not all) soldiers will wrestle with this issue; my desire is that they settle the issue in their minds before -- rather than after -- the battle. Their thinking should be influenced by the reality -- not the misperceptions -- of what it means to be a soldier in war.
Traditionally, it was the combat-arms soldiers (infantry, armor, etc) who bore the brunt of direct combat and thus the issues of killing stood more in the forefront of their collective minds. But in this current war all soldiers, regardless of job specialty, must be prepared to face the same issues of killing. Two significant factors can be seen in the stories of the film's conscientious objectors: None were in the traditional combat arms and all seem to have had unrealistic expectations of what it meant to be a combat soldier.
It is incumbent upon leaders of all levels and branches in the military not only to train their units to kill, but also to lead them through frameworks for understanding what it means to kill in war. Our veterans from all wars can still serve our nation by providing young men and women in military service (or those about to go into military service) with reasonable and realistic expectations about the realities of combat as well as by helping returning soldiers deal with the emotional wounds of war. Our clergy and religious leaders can help guide the consciences of those who serve in combat and they must be there to minister to veterans once the sounds of bombs and bullets have faded.
General Douglas MacArthur, in an address to cadets at West Point, said "The soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war." In our discussions of the politics and rationale of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let us not lose focus on taking care of the less than 1 percent of our population who choose to don the uniform of our nation's armed forces. They bear the brunt of war on behalf of us all.
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the us Department of the Army or the us Department of Defense.
Chaplain (Captain) Brian G. Koyn is an Army chaplain serving at the United States Military Academy. He is a West Point graduate and was an infantry officer for six years before leaving the Army for full-time Christian ministry. He returned to active duty as a chaplain and recently returned from 15 months of combat in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division.
Charlie Clements
Charlie Clements
Vietnam War veteran
President and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
I found Soldiers of Conscience powerful and haunting. Haunting, because I was a pilot in Vietnam who, in the midst of war, made the lonely journey that ended with my deciding that what I was being asked to do was immoral. Powerful, because the soldiers who become conscientious objectors begin to see through the moral fog of war with a clarity that stands in stark contrast to those who soldier on.
I wonder about the sergeant who admits to having shot a 10-year-old boy in Iraq and claims he has no regrets. Then he adds "Looking back at it, you know, that's where the demons come back. That's where it haunts you." Is his PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) like unexploded ordnance, just waiting to "go off"?
The suicide rate in today's all-volunteer military is the highest since records have been kept, higher for the first time in history than the rate for us civilians. I thought that Maj. Pete Kilner, the West Point graduate and soldier-philosopher, touched on one of the underlying causes when he explained "We recruit people to serve their country and to kill. We train them how to kill. We as officers develop the orders for them to kill. We give'em awards, pat them on the back or credit them for being effective fighters and killers. But we never explain to them why it's okay. So that when they do what they've been trained so well to do they can be at peace with their consciences for the rest of their lives."
Is he referring to the Vietnam veteran who wrote him, after 35 years of not being at peace with his conscience, asking, "Now that I've been to the heart of darkness and done things I supremely regret, will I ever again be the person I used to like?"
The peace movement can learn a lot from the glimpses this film provides into how infantrymen are trained to kill on "reflex," to kill while purposefully avoiding any thought about the morality of taking a life, to kill whether or not their orders are legitimate. The sergeants who are training them and the soldier-philosopher clearly believe that such "reflexive" training may save the soldiers' lives and, in the context of war, is moral.
We need to give support and voice to the soldiers who, despite being trained to kill without thinking, actually begin to think. Though they've been taught to dehumanize the enemy, these soldiers begin to see that he or she has a human face, a family and places they call home. They begin to understand that maybe war is not the answer. In short, they become conscientious objectors. Though their heroism is not marked by military decorations, there should be no doubt that heroes are what they are. Their quiet and determined courage should be a source of inspiration for the peace movement.
As Veterans Day approaches, this film should remind us, too, of the importance of finding ways to help all veterans tell their stories and to honor their service even as we oppose the war in which they have served.
Charlie Clements, president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, is a well-known human rights activist and public health physician. Throughout the years, Charlie has faced several moral dilemmas that shaped his life. As a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Academy who had flown more than 50 missions in the Vietnam War, Charlie decided the war was against his conscience and he refused to fly further missions in support of the invasion of Cambodia. Later, as a newly trained physician, he chose to work in the midst of El Salvador's civil war, where the villages he served were bombed, rocketed or strafed by some of the same aircraft in which he had previously trained.
Deryck Durston
Deryck Durston, M.Div., S.T.M.
Associate director of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education
Wallace Stevens wrote in his 1940 poem "Of Modern Poetry" that modern poetry has to "think about war." In an article on the Inside Higher Ed website published October 13, 2008, professor Keith Gandal bemoans the lack of consideration of war in literature since the early 1980s. He points out that because most of the academics working today came of age during the Vietnam era, they were mostly against that war and did not want to have anything to do with war. "Since the Vietnam era -- and this marks a break with previous attitudes -- most American intellectual elites have not wanted to be in the military or to study it: They associate the military with an aggressive foreign policy and with homophobia, and the military's degree of complicity in these policies is of course a legitimate concern." Gandal goes on to point out that the military's contribution to society has been under-emphasized because of this reaction, and notes that its contribution to meritocracy and equal opportunity has been strong for most of the last century.
I saw Soldiers of Conscience with a sense of relief that this topic is being addressed. I was flooded with memories of my experience coming of age in South Africa in the 1970s after being sent to fight against the guerillas/freedom fighters in Namibia -- most of whom had left South Africa in order to turn around and fight against the destructive policies of apartheid. I, too, could not see the benefits to a society of war. I had a cousin who freely gave himself as a paratrooper in that war. He saw me as the lowest of the low because I refused to carry a rifle and ultimately left South Africa rather than inhibit the fight against apartheid. Watching Soldiers of Conscience, I was taken reeling back to those conflicted family discussions, accusations and differing perspectives. Honest people come at their decisions relating to war in all sorts of different ways. We turn away from what we abhor. As in the last 20 or 30 years in this country, not many have wanted to study war anymore, whether to promote it or to analyze its effects or to think in the classroom about it. War is not on the decrease and its consequences are far from clear. I applaud this film for raising the issues in the context of human stories without denigrating any of the perspectives that are in conflict.
Looking closely at the wrenching stories that speak to the agony of war is not an easy thing to do, but iIt is an essential task for people who do not want to keep the war machine running just because the economy has come to depend on it.
Deryck Durston, M.Div., S.T.M., is the associate director at the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, a multicultural and multifaith organization devoted to bringing theological students and ministers of all faiths (pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and others) into supervised encounter with persons in crisis. He earned his S.T.M in Pastoral Care from the New York Theological Seminary. Previously, Mr. Durston was a chaplain and clinical pastoral education supervisor at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Decatur, Georgia.
Kate Dahlstedt
Kate Dahlstedt
Clinical psychotherapist and co-director of Soldier's Heart
As co-director of Soldier's Heart, a veterans healing initiative, I have had the honor of meeting a great many veterans, most of whom are suffering in some degree from post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite medications and good coping strategies, they tell me time and again that the devastation they feel the most is in their heart and soul. It is not the terror and confusion of battle or the horrendous conditions of sleeplessness and hunger that burden them. But rather, the single most difficult experience is that of taking life. This is so even when they were protecting themselves and others from enemy fire. Afterwards, they tell each other, "It don't mean nothing." This is what they must do to be "good soldiers."
Our military is made up of young people who want a future that seems otherwise out of reach. Many want an education they can't afford on the wages offered them. Most are capable, disciplined men and women who see honor in service. Our military is the most highly trained in the world. That training requires stripping each recruit of individuality and autonomy to create a unified fighting machine, conditioned to act instinctively, without thinking. Successful missions depend on the trained muscle memory response of each and every member of the unit. But when they are actually on the ground in a war zone, being shot at, taking human life, something unpredictable can happen and another primitive part of our nature as humans takes over. And sometimes, even following orders, they do the unthinkable. Innocent people get killed. Our troops see it all around them. It seeps into their hearts and souls. They go numb to keep from feeling, which may, in fact, serve to help them stay alert and focused, able to protect themselves and their fellow troops.
After the mission, when the immediate danger has passed, the heart begins to register what took place. The human being inside has an innate sense that, despite politics and national interests, all human life is sacred and that taking life is abhorrently sacrilegious. Once the troops are home they are suddenly individuals again. Learned muscle memory no longer serves, and the mental memories of their war zone experiences, of taking human life, come flooding in. Their feelings of guilt and anger and sadness are compounded when they question the purpose and meaning of the war they have participated in. We call them heroes and warriors, when inside they feel ravaged and disillusioned.
Military training does not prepare troops for the inherent moral and ethical dilemmas that war poses. It is appropriately designed to diminish such concerns. It is the unique person who can undergo military training and still have the wherewithal to retain their moral compass enough to say no to killing. Regardless of how we may feel about any particular war, we must view those military men and women who stand up as conscientious objectors as true warriors. The film Soldiers of Conscience does a fine job of helping us to do that.
Kate Dahlstedt is a clinical psychotherapist and co-director of Soldier's Heart, a veterans' healing initiative. She and her husband Edward Tick, author of War and the Soul, lead veterans' healing retreats internationally, including journeys to Vietnam.
J.E. McNeil
J.E. McNeil
Executive director of the Center on Conscience & War
I speak with men and women in the military daily as the director of the Center on Conscience & War. The Center receives approximately 300 calls a month asking for help. The Center was founded to protect the rights of conscientious objectors to war caught up in a military draft in 1940. Even without the draft, we continue to protect the rights of conscientious objectors in the military -- whether they see themselves as such or not.
Most people, including the military, have a very narrow definition for the words "conscientious objector." Conscientious objectors -- especially ones who have never participated in the military -- are seen as an odd but harmless group. Generally, us citizens are willing to smile at us, proud that they protect us in our naiveté. We are tolerated as long as we don't cause trouble.
Of course, the problem is people of conscience often do cause trouble. It happens in the difficult situations they find themselves in when they realize that conscience is the thing from which they cannot escape, the thing that suddenly drives their actions and drives their lives.
The conscientious objectors in Soldiers of Conscience -- Camilo, Josh, Kevin and Aidan -- were all in difficult situations when they realized that they were compelled to turn away. They turned away, not from the blood on their hands (for none of us can do that), but from adding to it deliberately. And these four men are not alone. Soldiers of Conscience brings into focus the concept that all the men and women in the military are soldiers of conscience -- even those who do not turn away from war.
But the group is even larger than that. All of us in the United States stand with blood on our hands -- members of the military, the administration, Congress, even you and I. The question is not whether we are complicit in the killing, but what we do with that knowledge.
Many take solace that war may lead to justice and liberty for some. Many look only to the soldiers to their left and to their right to find justification. Some find protection within faith and patriotism and the logic of revenge, never daring to look at the beginning of the cycle.
What is not shown in the film are the silent men and women confronting the questions and burdens of killing in the name of the United States, men and women who never find peace again. Suicide is the number one cause of non-combat death in the military. Suicides of veterans number in the hundreds each month. The homeless are disproportionately veterans. Spousal abuse and sexual assault are at inordinate levels in the military.
None of us are free of the burdens of killing. None of us are free from being soldiers of conscience.
We only pretend we are.
J.E. McNeil, the executive director of the Center on Conscience & War (CCW), has been a practicing attorney for 25 years. Before becoming executive director, she worked with CCW on its legal committee, where she contributed to amicus briefs and represented conscientious objectors in court. She received the Alan Barth Service award of the National Capital ACLU in 1982 and the Washington Peace Center Peacemaker Award in 1987. McNeil has also represented military tax resistors and demonstrators. At the Center on Conscience & War, McNeil oversees the implementation of CCW's programs and is responsible for the fund raising.