U.S. soldiers have faced moral dilemmas in Iraq from the earliest days of the invasion. That their problems of conscience have continued is not surprising, given the nature of a military occupation by a foreign power.

"Did you see all that?" the American lieutenant asked, his eyes filled with tears. "Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice." The reporter from The Times (UK), in his article entitled "US Marines Turn Fire on Civilians at the Bridge of Death" (30 March 2003), noted that the lieutenant´s third child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship heading to the Gulf.

A few days earlier at Nasiriya these troops had suffered the worst coalition losses of the war "and the humiliation of having prisoners paraded on Iraqi television." In one incident a US Army convoy had encountered a group of Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, apparently wanting to surrender. When the American soldiers stopped, the Iraqis pulled out AK-47s and sprayed the US trucks with gunfire.

The baby girl held by the lieutenant was among 12 dead civilians, who had tried to flee the town to escape the oncoming forces. "Their mistake," the writer commented, "had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved."

The reporter saw one man's body which was still in flames, hissing; a girl about five dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father, who had lost half his head; nearby, a dead Iraqi woman slumped in the back seat of an old Volga. Other bodies of civilians were strewn about, one next to the carcass of a donkey. "A US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies."

The US officer expressed anguish over killing children but felt that he and his buddies had no choice. In reality, he did have a choice before spraying the civilians with heavy fire, but his fundamental option had come earlier: when he chose the military as his career and then shipped out to Iraq, placing himself in a hornet´s nest of violence, killing in order to avoid being killed.

Had he ever questioned any elements of the president´s stated rationale for the invasion (connection between Al-Qaeda and Hussein, large stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction")? Ever wondered whether oil and world dominance had anything to do with his holding that little body in his arms?

Had he ever heard of Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps, twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, who in 1933 made a candid confession: "I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps.... And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914.... In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."

Does the Marine lieutenant in Iraq believe that "preventive war" is anything more legal or justifiable than "aggression," as the pope labeled it? Does he know that the classic "just war" doctrine condemns a war when it starts to victimize civilians in large numbers?

If he had dealt seriously with these questions at any time before finding himself in a massacre in progress, he might have become a conscientious objector and avoided getting into the situation. Even there, he could have refused to fire on the civilians. (An inspiring moral lesson in this regard is being given by the Israeli pilots and soldiers who refuse to take part in the oppression of Palestinians.)

Thomas Gumbleton, auxiliary Catholic bishop of Detroit, and many other spiritual leaders have issued an invitation to people in military service to reflect on the morality of contemporary warfare and to follow their conscience, even if that means the possibility of court martial and prison. "We knowingly and willingly make this plea to you in violation of 18 USC Sec. 1381 and 2387," they said. "We knowingly and willingly embrace some of your risk by urging you to refuse duty in the U.S. military.

"We plead with you, as Bishop Oscar Romero pleaded with Salvadoran troops: `When you hear the words of a man telling you to kill, remember instead the words of God: Thou shalt not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God.... In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people who have suffered so much and whose laments cry out to heaven, I beseech you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God, stop the repression!´

"If you choose to leave the military," the invitation concludes, "please know that our hearts and homes are open to you."

Jonah House, a community of active non-violence in Baltimore, is one of the groups extending this challenging invitation to the military. The late Philip Berrigan, a founder of Jonah House, served prison sentences for actions of resistance against the Vietnam war and for his ongoing anti-nuclear work. In his autobiography, "Fighting the Lamb´s War," he wrote: "Compared to the suffering of the Vietnamese, a few years in prison seemed a very small price to pay."

Henry David Thoreau in his essay on civil disobedience had spoken about the pain of a violated conscience: "When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man´s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now." (Thoreau was jailed for his opposition to the U.S. war against Mexico.)

"Is non-cooperation more difficult than living with the poisons of war in your body and spirit?" Gumbleton and the other signers ask. "Do what your heart says is right."

Joseph E. Mulligan, a Jesuit priest living in Nicaragua, works on human-rights issues in Central America. He and about 44 others will go on trial on Jan. 26 in Columbus, Ga., charged with trespassing; on Nov. 23, 2003 they walked onto the base at Ft. Benning to protest against the School of the Americas (now called Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). For more information, see www.soaw.org

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