Conscientious Objectors in Military Want Out

Every morning the Air Force technician puts on her uniform, she's painfully reminded of how desperately she wants to get out of the military.

It's not easy being a conscientious objector when 90 percent of your countrymen support military attacks, your comrades in uniform are bonding tighter than a family, and there is no one nearby to share your fears. In retrospect, the 22-year-old airwoman, first class, from Tennessee questions why she joined the military two years ago.

"You know how they talk about a 'poverty draft,' about recruiting people who were uneducated and poor, well . . ." she said, her voice trailing off. She asked not to be identified while military officials review her conscientious objector -- or CO -- case.

Although there hasn't been a draft since 1973, today's military has people who assert they are conscientious objectors. Just as 1,000 soldiers inquired about objector status during the Gulf War, and tens of thousands applied during Vietnam, many have quietly surfaced since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the American bombing of Afghanistan, according to organizations that assist those seeking conscientious objector status.

Experts say the young airwoman's fears are typical of soldiers who realize too late that military life isn't for them. While many share the same moral or ethical conflicts with their conscripted counterparts of the Vietnam War, others in today's all-volunteer military belatedly realize that, in the parlance of Silicon Valley: They've made a bad career move.

"A lot of people enlist in the military today for vocational opportunities, " said Eric Silverman, a professor of cultural anthropology at DePauw University in Indiana. "Maybe they're thinking, 'I'll do a couple of years, get my stuff together, then get out.' (War) is at the back of their minds."

For many sorting out their emotions, the real-life combat and bloodshed of the last month has reminded them that the 9-to-5 Army they signed up for has become something more deadly than they envisioned

HELP FOR OBJECTORS

One of the first places that doubting GIs call is the 53-year-old Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Oakland, one of the country's main refuges for objectors, along with its co-headquarters in Philadelphia.

Since Sept. 11, the Oakland organization's paid, four-person staff has been fielding twice as many calls as usual. It has doubled its volunteer staff to 40 and filled three training clinics on how to counsel those in the military.

An objector must prove that he or she objects to participating in war. They must show that their beliefs have changed since they entered the military.

"The calls have been more desperate since Sept. 11," said Marc Liggin, an Oakland fire dispatch supervisor who spent five years in the military in the mid-1970s before being granted a discharge as an objector. Once a week he counsels GIs on the committee's hot line.

Liggin counts himself as one who made a "bad career move," which helps him to relate to many calls he fields from people in the military's delayed entry program, which allows recruits to wait up to a year before reporting for active duty. Liggin said many such recruits have been shaken by the events of the past month. "They're saying, 'Hey, this isn't what I signed up for.' "

Liggin realizes that sounds unbelievable to veterans and to the vast majority of people who support the military action against terrorism. He has heard the question: How could a military recruit not know what he or she is signing up for?

"Yes, they know they're in the military, but it was pitched to them as 'learn a trade, get experience,' " Liggin said.

BREAK STUFF AND BOMB PEOPLE

The airwoman from Tennessee can relate. She spent her first year in the Air Force receiving technical training. She was so immersed in the minutiae of learning the inside of an airplane that she was startled by her instructor's comment that "our job is to break stuff and bomb people."

"That was an awakening for me," said the airwoman, who filed her application for conscientious objector status in February. "It made me think about the moral implications of my job."

Getting out as a conscientious objector takes patience -- Liggin's committee tells people to expect a nine- to 12-month bureaucratic odyssey.

Although the draft was discontinued in 1973 and shows little sign of being restarted, many young people of draft age are worried about recent talk of ground troops and a "protracted" conflict.

When American forces attacked Afghanistan last Sunday, Tim Foley knew time was running out to make his decision. The Fremont resident turned 18 in May, but he hasn't yet registered for Selective Service.

"I know one thing: I can't kill. I just can't," said the soft-spoken nurse's assistant. Raised as a Quaker with a marrow-deep devotion to nonviolence, he would choose his loyalty to his faith over his country. He would be a conscientious objector.

Still, the dilemma gnaws at his soul.

"Why should I stay home when there are other people my age, with the same hopes and dreams and fears, and they would be willing to go?"