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Today's Conscientious Objectors Still Face Difficulties

Travis Meadors/GLT News

Conscientious objectors -- those who refuse to fight in the military based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs -- have existed since the birth of the nation.

During the Revolutionary War, George Washington allowed conscripts from peace churches to return home.

At the start of World War I, conscientious objectors received some protections. Those were expanded and became official policy during World War II.  

Today's conscientious objectors still face many obstacles, according to  Maria Santelli, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War in Washington D.C.

Santelli spoke recently as part of Illinois University’s Spring International Seminar.

Despite much evidence to the contrary, Santelli said human beings have a propensity for making peace, rather waging than war.

"The human conscience tells us killing another human being is wrong. Over the decades military training  has evolved into a scientific and laser- focused experience to circumvent the human conscience, to teach a soldier to kill by rote, fire reflexively without thinking, and without filtering through the conscience," Santelli said on GLT's Sound Ideas.

Several churches, including the Quaker, Mennonite, and Methodist churches as well as the Church of the Brethren, played key roles in establishing a federal policy covering conscientious objectors. That policy came about largely in response to a mandatory military draft.

Today, with an all-volunteer military, those applying for conscientious objection status come from within the ranks of the military. They are people who have enlisted, but then have a crisis of conscience about what they are asked to do, Santelli said.

"They have to show they have a change of conscience," she added.

In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that conscientious objectors did not have to have to affirm a belief in a Supreme Being or cite religious objections, but could refuse to serve based on moral and ethical concerns in addition to religious beliefs.

The Department of Defense doesn't release statistics on the number of conscientious objectors, Santelli said, but requests to her office for help from those seeking CO status is rising. In 2015, the Center for Conscience and War helped process between 45 to 55 applications. Last year, the number jumped to over 80.

"One of the things that inspired a lot of objectors was the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan," Santelli said.

"I think people have more of an awareness of the role of the military and role of war, and that our wars, and wars in general, are not successful in bringing about peace, and only create a cycle of violence."

Most who succeed in getting CO status today are honorably discharged, though some apply for "non-combat status.".

While their applications are pending, many soldiers face ridicule, hostility and discrimination, Santelli said.

"We kind of say conscience is contagious. Commands obviously don't like  conscientious objectors because  if one person is questioning the morality of war, and reflecting on their conscience ... it causes other people to start thinking."