A Salute To Conscientious Objectors

As a pacifist any day that celebrates people who fought in wars and killed other people is a bittersweet one.  Some wars have had a more heroic tint to them than others depending on how much we fear or hate our opponents or how badly we want their resources and I know that many people enlist themselves because they believe that what they're doing is right.  I have watched exactly one veterans day parade and I can say that while all the hootin' and hollerin' young veterans who served in the Senior Bush's war in the middle east inspired nothing but disgust in me.  They acted like hooligans who have no idea how solemn it is to take the lives of other people.  Their conduct, compared to the old gents who fought in world war II, could not have been more different.

No matter how wrong I think all killing is, I do still believe there was provocation enough to give good reason to join World War II (though Americans love to think it was such an altruistic act, which it wasn't, we didn't join the war until the Japanese scared the shit out of us personally with their attack on Pearl Harbor.  Americans have always been extremely self centered.)... I watched those old men walk with silent dignity.  Quiet, proud, but not waving and shouting and self congratulating themselves.  The Viet Nam Vets also walked quietly with a solemnity befitting the office for which we were standing there to honor them.

If I had been of age during Viet Nam I would have objected to that war.  I would have signed petitions and gone on peace marches just like I did for Junior Bush's evil thinly veiled campaign to secure oil in the Middle East.  I would have gone to jail or if I felt I could settle myself elsewhere I might have run.  I would have been a conscientious objector. 

It takes a lot more strength to stand up for what you believe when that belief can cause you to do jail time than it does to simply follow orders.  People in the military constantly think people who won't kill other people are cowards.  They accuse politicians who haven't served in a war of being unpatriotic or less than manly or less American than those who stand up and fight.

What you are asked to do when you fight a war is to mutilate, kill, bomb, rape (yes, rape), and imprison other human beings.  I personally don't think it's manly to do any of those things.  I could never be married to someone who would agree to invade another country and kill human beings.  Who would agree to splatter other people's brains across their homes, their streets, and let their children see their mothers be raped.  I couldn't look someone in the eye who thought there was any just reason to take such actions on foreign soil.

I'll promise you all, my fellow North Americans, the next time our country is invaded, as it was during the American Revolution, I will take up arms next to you and do what I have to do to make them understand that I won't let them come onto my own turf and take over.  I am patriotic enough to feel that if my country, like my house, is invaded with people intending to kill me and my neighbors, I will fight.

But it's been a very long time since any other country has crossed the pond and brought their warships to our shores and unloaded themselves with guns and bombs and an army of people intending to enslave us.

So today, while so many Americans celebrate the willingness of man to smear other human beings across the soil, I am celebrating the people who have said no to killing; who have refused to be instruments of death and famine and terror in the name of patriotism.  I am celebrating people who are brave enough to stand up for what they believe in against the clamor of the bullies and the sick humans who brand them cowards for having a conscience that will not and cannot allow that killing is the right way to solve world problems.  I salute those people brave enough to stand for something better.

For the veterans who understand the solemnity of war, who respect how much it costs all humans to fight it, and who participated because it was really what they felt was right, I respect your choice even though I disagree with it.

Thank you, conscientious objectors, for having the integrity to stand up for who you are under pressure.  If I am ever in the same situation, I too will object and if imprisonment would imperil my family, I would leave this country if I had to.  Thank you.



And to the soldiers I saw whoopin' and hollerin' like war is a goddamn party: you really make me ashamed.