Some Disillusioned GIs Choose Not to Fight

Kevin Benderman spends his days sitting in a plastic chair in the stockade at Ft. Lewis, Wash., completing a 15-month sentence for “missing movement” with his unit. Jeremy Hinzman is raising his baby boy in Toronto, awaiting a court hearing on his request for political asylum in Canada. Aidan f is back in school, studying religion at the New College of Florida and practicing Buddhism.

The three are among a small but growing number of soldiers who have become disillusioned with the war in Iraq and are resisting deployment.

Increasing numbers of men and women in uniform are seeking honorable discharges as conscientious objectors. Others are suing the military, claiming their obligation has been wrongfully extended. Many have deserted, refusing to appear for duty.

Some are more desperate: A year ago, Army Spc. Marquise J. Roberts of Hinesville, Ga., persuaded a cousin to shoot him in the leg. The cousin was sent to jail, Roberts to the stockade.

“You sign a contract and you’re required to serve for whatever time period you’ve agreed to,” Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said. “There are certain standards the enlistment contracts oblige soldiers to, and they are required to fulfill them.”

But Pentagon policies do have exceptions, and soldiers are increasingly challenging their mandatory service.

Requests for conscientious objector status, which can qualify someone for an honorable discharge, have steadily increased -- about 110 soldiers filed the complex paperwork in 2004, about four times the number in 2000. Of those, about half were approved. Those who were rejected either went back to the war or refused to serve. Some are now on the lam. Others have been court-martialed and served time.

Former Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 30, of Miami Beach, Fla., says he had a change of heart while on a two-week leave last year after spending a year in Iraq.

“Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences and answering them took me back to all the horrors, the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood or an innocent man was decapitated by our machine gun-fire,” he said.

When it was time to ship out, Mejia went into hiding. For the next five months he didn’t use his cellphone or his computer. He stayed away from his family and friends.

Eventually, with the help of antiwar advocates, he found a lawyer and turned himself in. But his request to be deemed a conscientious objector -- which he filed after he went on the lam -- was denied. Mejia spent nine months in military prison and was dishonorably discharged in February.

Mejia was among the first from Iraq to request to be a conscientious objector. He now speaks at antiwar rallies and conferences, counseling other would-be resisters.

“As this war continues, we’re going to see more refusals, disobeying of orders, stop-loss lawsuits,” said Marti Hiken, who co-chairs the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force. “There’s going to be more and more resistance.”

Conscientious objection, as defined by the military, is a “firm, fixed and sincere objection to war in any form or the bearing of arms” because of deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.

Opposition to a particular war cannot qualify a soldier as a conscientious objector.

Requesting conscientious objector status is a labyrinthine process that includes a written application and interviews with a psychiatrist, a military chaplain, and an investigating officer.

“Being a conscientious objector is not an easy way to get out of the military and not a fast way to get out of the military,” said J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that supports the rights of conscientious objectors.

The 65-year-old organization runs the GI Rights Hotline, which McNeil says received more than 36,000 calls this year from soldiers interested in how to get out of their required service. Before the war in Iraq, they got fewer than thousand calls a year, she said.

McNeil said the calls are usually from soldiers who are already considered absent without leave or deserters. She said they often counsel soldiers away from trying to be conscientious objectors, pointing them instead toward other bases for discharge requests: hardship, parenthood, health problems, drug or alcohol use.

These are usually more appropriate reasons, she said. Military studies show the main reason deserters cite for leaving are “dissatisfaction with Army life, family problems and homesickness.”

Desertion has been decreasing in the military in recent years -- about 2,500 troops last year didn’t show up for work, down from almost 5,000 in 2001, according to the Pentagon public affairs office. Some of these men and women are in hiding in Canada, where about 20 have applied for refugee status.

Army paratrooper Jeremy Hinzman fled to Canada from Ft. Bragg, N.C., in January 2004, weeks before his 82nd Airborne Division was due to go to Iraq. His asylum petition is scheduled to be heard in February hearing in Toronto.

“Perhaps I made a mistake by enlisting in the Army, but the U.S. is putting the lives of its soldiers in jeopardy in order to line the pockets of big money,” he said.

Hinzman said he vowed to his wife that he wouldn’t go to Iraq, and then had to choose between a court martial or fleeing. He didn’t want to miss out on his son’s formative years, he said, so he chose Canada.

Hinzman’s attorney said as many as 200 American war resisters were hiding in Canada, waiting to see how Hinzman’s case played out before coming forward.

Hinzman said he and his wife planned to use every legal channel they could to stay where they were.

“We simply want to be granted some sort of status here and then sink into a life of obscurity where we can be decent, hard-working, tax-paying citizens,” he said.

About a dozen reservists have filed “stop loss” lawsuits, arguing that it is illegal to make them stay in the military once their required term of service is complete. The Bush administration has argued with success so far that the Pentagon can extend the deployment of any reserve officer who’s on active duty, if the president believes it’s essential to national security.

Several of these objectors, like Army Spc. David W. Qualls, had signed up for the so-called “Try One” program with the Army National Guard that the military says “allows a veteran to serve for only one year on a trial basis before committing to a full enlistment.”

Just a few months into his service last year, the Army told Qualls he was being recalled to active duty and his “expiration of term of service” had been extended for an undetermined number of years.

“What this boils down to in my opinion is a question of fairness,” Qualls said.

He filed a lawsuit, and even though he later accepted a $15,000 bonus and reenlisted for six years, the suit has not been dropped, his attorney, Staughton Lynd of Niles, Ohio, said.

“He felt that his family was on the verge of bankruptcy and he had no economic alternative but to reenlist,” Lynd said.

Many resisters complain that they were misled by recruiters. Others say their beliefs changed.

“When I enlisted I believed that killing was immoral, but also that war was an inevitable part of life and therefore, an exception to the rule,” said Texas Army National Guard Spc. Katherine Jashinski, 22, who in November asked a federal judge to order her release from service.

After joining the military, Jashinski said she “started to reevaluate everything that I had been taught about war as a child. I developed the belief that taking human life was wrong and war was no exception. I was then able to clarify who I am and what it is that I stand for.”

Jashinski, a cook, learned in October that her 2004 conscientious objector discharge application had been denied. Now awaiting a hearing, she says she will not deploy with her unit.

The U.S. government made conscientious objector status official in 1962 and four years later, during the Vietnam War, requests began to pour in. Desertion rates also hit historical highs, and thousands of soldiers who refused to deploy were court-martialed. In 1971, requests peaked when 4,381 members of the military applied for the status.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, conscientious objector applications rose to 44. At that time, about 500,000 soldiers were deployed in the region.

Aidan Delgado decided he was a conscientious objector last year, after spending a year in Iraq where he was stationed at Abu Ghraib. His application was approved and he was honorably discharged in January.

“When I met Iraqi prisoners firsthand, I saw the people who were supposed to be our enemies but I didn’t hate them. They were young, poor guys without an education, like us. They were supposed to fight us and we were supposed to fight them. It didn’t make sense,” said Delgado, who speaks Arabic and lived for a while as a child in Egypt. “I told my commander that I wouldn’t kill anyone. I turned in my rifle.”