Judge Backs US Conscientious Objector
The Army should grant conscientious objector status to Michael Barnes, a Fort Richardson, Alaska-based paratrooper who had his request for that designation denied last year, US magistrate John D Roberts concluded yesterday. 
In a 26-page recommendation to the US District Court, Roberts noted that the Army failed to show “any basis in fact” to support its decision to deny Barnes’s petition to be honourably discharged due to his religious beliefs.
At the same time, the record includes strong reasons to justify the request, including Barnes’s own testimony, supporting letters from fellow soldiers and the opinion of an Army chaplain, the judge said.
“The evidence is overwhelming that Barnes, a motivated infantryman, is a person who takes his religious beliefs seriously, and there is strong evidence that his decision was motivated by those beliefs,” Roberts wrote.
The government has until Friday to object to the finding. Assistant federal prosecutor Richard Pomeroy was out of state yesterday and not available for comment. If the Justice Department appeals, a federal judge will hold a hearing in Anchorage this month. If the department doesn’t appeal, the judge could simply sign off on Roberts’s recommendation.
A native of Portland, Oregon, Barnes, 26, said he enlisted in the Army for five years in March 2005 with the idealistic goal of “defending freedom and helping other people in countries no one else would help”.
That same year, however, while training for deployment to Iraq as part of the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team at Fort Richardson, he grew increasingly troubled by the tales he heard from soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, Barnes noted in a statement he filed with his application.
“These stories included making the locals [do] degrading things so they could laugh at them, abusing the kids and taking others lives with ease. … I told myself it’s not really like that - that’s just a few soldiers’ perceptions of their experience.”
But after his unit landed in Kuwait, then Iraq, in the fall of 2006, he began to witness bad behaviour firsthand, Barnes said. He’d been transferred from an infantry company to the tactical operations centre, where he served as a radio-telephone operator. There he grew more depressed and began to spend long hours reading the Bible. He mourned the deaths of solders he knew.
“How would I justify to the Lord that participating in war is serving him?” Barnes wrote. “I cannot. War is evil, and nothing but evil comes from it. Many of those who participate in it lose their souls along the way.”
In late December 2006, he filed for conscientious-objector status. An Army review board denied his request last September - concluding that Barnes “did not present clear and convincing evidence of his sincere objection to war.”
Specifically, the Army investigator noted that Barnes didn’t regularly attend chapel services and earlier expressed a desire to fight on the front lines. He also pointed out that Barnes never conveyed his misgivings about the war to leaders in his chain of command until late in 2006 - after one of his friends was killed, and he was reassigned to serve as a gunner at a forward operating base.
“I do not believe that [Private First Class] Barnes … is sincerely opposed to participating in war,” wrote the staff judge advocate on the panel.
But in his ruling yesterday, Roberts said the Army needed to buttress such opinions with “hard, reliable, provable facts” - and failed to do so.
“And there is evidence aplenty in support of Barnes’s application,” Roberts wrote, noting the statements by an Army chaplain and an Army psychologist who each vouched for Barnes’s sincerity.
Anchorage attorney Sam Fortier, who accompanied Barnes in federal court on Monday, said he doesn’t want his client to comment until the government responds.
“The cumulative evidence is that he was not acting - as the Army tried to argue - in a manipulative or an expedient fashion,” Fortier said. “He was following his conscience to a much higher calling than whatever the Army was expecting him to do.”
Only one in about 10,000 soldiers files a request to be recognized as a conscientious objector, according to Army records. About half of all requests are denied.
© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers
Whoot!
Today, May 15, is International Conscientious Objector Day.
You can read about it here:
http://www.wri-irg.org/co/icodhist.htm
Everyday, each and everyone should participate in Conscientious Objectors’ Day. War is just plainly and simply wrong.
Score one for the good religious folks!
“He was following his conscience to a much higher calling than whatever the Army was expecting him to do.”
In other words instead of relying on what other people (army/Neo cons) told him, he decided to check it out for himself.
It’s a slippery slope that, letting people think for themselves. I don’t believe US education was ever much aimed in that direction — it was always getting people to think the same as anyone else — but it seems nowadays it’s better that people don’t even think at all. Look at GWB — he doesn’t, and he gets along just fine.
So just get back to your TVs, or go down a Walmart, and let’s just pretend this aberration never happened.
Every soldier has freedom of choice. It’s too bad that so many are making the bad choice to continue Bush’s war.
Barnes wrote. “I cannot. War is evil, and nothing but evil comes from it. Many of those who participate in it lose their souls along the way.”
What a powerful quote. I met a young man (20) today who works nearby and is eager to join the marines. He gave his family history as impetus plus the fact that he wants to see the world, and learn to use “good” weapons. He also mentioned he is a “gamer”. He spoke of the opportunities he believes joining the military can give him vs the lack of structure and discipline in his life now.
I used to work as a nurse in prison. This kid at 18 was in and was in solitary confinement to protect himself from his own fears… crying etc. I used to be a trained pre-draft counselor back years ago (as a public non- registrant, I was limited)… and felt powerless in my attempts to convince this young canon fodder. I intend to pass his name along to friends who do draft counseling now.
To be granted CO status is very challenging.
What are the beliefs that merit your being granted CO status?
How long have you held these beliefs?
What can you tell us to make us believe your holding these beliefs is sincere?
etc.
Answers cannot be political or idealogical.. must be based in ethics/ morals/ religion I believe it said…
I honor Mr. Barnes’ courage.
Think about those soldiers coming home, all screwed up, having done and seen things they will have nightmares about the rest of their lives. Finding it easy to abuse spouses and children, angry, suicidal, depressed. And with Bush having put “signing statments” on legislatgion for no additional funding for PTSD and mental health for vets. Every vet coming home should have mental health help and GI education benefits.
gfv
Tell your young acquaintance about my friend. In the Marines for over 30 years, he put together his papers when it looked as though Bush had a real chance for election.
The morning after the Supreme Court chose Bush, my friend was first in line at his CO’s office: he put in for retirement. When he announced his forthcoming retirement, he told his astonished friends, ‘That bastard’s going to start a war, and I’m not going to fight it!’ (He was wrong: that bastard started two wars, though they may be seen as two fronts in the same war.)
= = = = = =
honor the BOR
I agree about the benefits. The (WWII) GI Bill has not kept up with rising costs.
Personally, I think anyone signing up needs mental health screening.
If this is an all volunteer military why can’t he just quit?
The fact is, many of the true believers in Bush’s wars come out of churches in America. I know this first-hand, since I’m a Christian (a far left-wing one - one of the few in America, it seems). As children, a great many of these kids in fundie churches are told that joining the military and fighting in wars is among the greatest things they can do for God. How creepy is that?!
But these guys are there now - and they are witnessing firsthand the nature of war - the rapes, the tortures, the murders, the looting, the injustices (and a great many are perpetrating these acts) - and if they live, they will come home and try to live with PTSD. Surely the newly-brave and courageous Michael Barnes cannot be the only person who has woken up, and realized the lies told to him by his government and its religious institutions (in Althusserian terms, ideological apparatuses of the state)?
How many in the military (especially those who rushed to join after 9/11) consider themselves to be devout Christians? How many in the FBI? How many of Bush’s supporters and those who voted for him? It’s my firm belief that Bush and his wars are propped up the religious fundamentalists in the US - people who call themselves Christians and claim to love God and follow the Prince of Peace. How sick is that? sigh.
jude111,
It’s good to know you exist. I would say that you really got what Jesus taught. I’m being a bit presumptious here because I myself vacillate among Buddhism, Existentialism, Aestheticism, and Nihilism. But I always sing along when I hear the Doobie Brothers “Jesus is just Alright with me”. I guess I could never prove conscientious objector status on my own behalf. I don’t know. I read on CD a few months ago that West Point is intentionally training crusaders now. Scary to think that the U.S.A. could start out with the ideolologies of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson just to end up as the devil-in-disguise, reenacting the Crusades, but with weapons the magnitude of “Shock-and-Awe” this time.
jude111,
It’s good to know you exist. I would say that you really got what Jesus taught. I’m being a bit presumptious here because I myself vacillate among Buddhism, Existentialism, Aestheticism, and Nihilism. But I always sing along when I hear the Doobie Brothers “Jesus is just Alright with me”. I guess I could never prove conscientious objector status on my own behalf. I don’t know. I read on CD a few months ago that West Point is intentionally training crusaders now. Scary to think that the U.S.A. could start out with the ideolologies of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson just to end up as the devil-in-disguise, reenacting the Crusades, but with weapons the magnitude of “Shock-and-Awe” this time.
How is it that a soldier can be held to their 5 year contract but the military cannot with regard to their stop-loss redeployments? And if a soldier has a right to be a conscientious objector, why don’t taxpayers? As for the West Point training crusaders and pro-war Bushite Christian fanatics, the hijacking of formalized religion for nefarious deeds has been going on for ages. Nothing to see here. Move along.