Anitwar protestors outside a conscientious objector hearing in Oklahoma, June 2004. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
How Afghanistan veteran Perry O’Brien came to reject war.
Second in a two-part series. See the first part of this series here.
By Emily McNeill, Ithaca College
Tuesday, May 30, 2007
Anitwar protestors outside a conscientious objector hearing in Oklahoma, June 2004. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
When the Iraq war started, O’Brien, who is now a Cornell University student, was convinced that if the Afghanistan operation was unethical and counterproductive, the invasion of Iraq would be even worse. His political views were not always well received. On a few occasions, he says, officers counseled him to be more patriotic.
“I pretty early on alienated myself from a lot of other soldiers by being the token liberal in our unit,” he said.
The political differences between O’Brien and his comrades stemmed from other disagreements. When, in an attempt to flee privilege, he chose the military, O’Brien knew that he was joining an organization made up of people whose lives were on a different trajectory. The military was a choice for him, and he knew he would get out, go back to school, and move on to other pursuits. For many of his peers, though, the military was one of the few options they felt they had for getting a secure job or paying for college. Early on in training, O’Brien earned the nickname “college boy,” a somewhat pejorative title in a military context. He was learning, he says, that privilege is something you can never really escape.
On the ground in Afghanistan, O’Brien’s background gave him a different perspective on what he was seeing. He was questioning everything and trying to take a step back to look at the military critically. The questions continued after he left Afghanistan in August 2003, with two years left in his contract. He began reading Buddhist literature, particularly the contemporary Vietnamese-born monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, and thinking about nonviolence.
“If the Afghanistan war was wrong—and presumably Afghanistan was started for good reasons—I wondered what other war could be right, could be successful, morally speaking,” O’Brien says. “I came to the conclusion that really wars are never morally successful. They always create more problems than they solve.”
Afghanistan, O’Brien believed, was a prime example of this. The United States was just the latest in a long line of foreign powers that had invaded and occupied the country.
“Historically, I thought that it was interesting that I could trace my presence in Afghanistan all the way back to World War I, in terms of which conflicts created new conflicts, created new antagonisms that led to the next conflict,” he says. “I mean, there’s a clear cyclical relationship with violence.”
As he continued to read and talk with friends and family, O’Brien began to believe that his position in the military was in conflict with his beliefs. He was opposed to war absolutely now, and it didn’t matter much that he was a medic. Anything he did in the military would ultimately be supporting war in some way. And so before entering the final year of his contract, he began the process of becoming a conscientious objector.
Gaining CO status is a notoriously complex and wearisome process. To leave the military as conscientious objectors, service members must demonstrate both that they are opposed to all war in all circumstances and that they developed these views in the course of their military service. It’s the job of investigating officers in CO cases to use whatever evidence they can to poke holes in the soldier’s argument and disprove his claims. Many applicants face active opposition from officers who ridicule them or claim to lose their paperwork, O’Brien says.
O’Brien was lucky to have superior officers who he says were professional and took seriously the military’s protocol for dealing with conscientious objector applications. He made it through the hearings, and in November 2004, after 3 years and 2 months of service, he was awarded conscientious objector status and was honorably discharged.
The sun is sinking in the sky as O’Brien finishes his story. It’s approaching the end of the semester, and he has some studying to finish before he and his roommates head home for the night. In a year he’ll have his bachelor’s degree at last, in political theory. In his time at Cornell, he’s given speeches, established a website to advise would-be conscientious objectors, and has become involved in antiwar activism through the groups Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. After graduating, he plans to continue his work in all these areas; the need for his efforts, he fears, is only going to increase in the coming months and years.
But his real dream is to write fiction. He has pictures in his head and stories of war that he wants Americans to hear. It’s stories that will reach people, O’Brien believes, more than casualty statistics or revelations about lies and incompetence.
“We’ve seen over and over again that people in this country don’t really respond all that well to facts—or at least a large portion of this country. People’s emotions and their ideas about what war looks like are really what influences their political ideology,” he says.
Were it not for his experiences on one front of the “war on terror,” O’Brien doesn’t think Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings on pacifism would ever have made much sense to him. He has no illusions that he’ll ever win many people over to his absolute pacifism, a philosophy he admits he can’t apply to a larger foreign policy strategy.
But he does know things now that most Americans don’t. That’s another privilege of sorts, and since he can’t escape it, he’ll try to share it through words.
Emily McNeill is a senior journalism major at Ithaca College and an editor of the Campus Progress-supported publication Buzzsaw Haircut.
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Comments
I am a veteran and a student of Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay). At each of Thay’s North American retreats there is a affinity group for veterans. For more information on retreats, please go to http://www.greenmountaincenter.org/
— paul davis - May 31, 08:31 PM - #Paul Davis quest4pce@yahoo.com
Oh I wish more soldiers had his courage and insight and would just go AWOL—C.O. is great, but it takes to long….14 year olds should begin their C.O. status NOW—if you have a 14 year old, please start the process of C.O. now, before its too late….. get ready-cause, the draft is coming, and Im glad…. only when rich man feel it, (by loosing their sons and daughters) will this war end…
— a christiansen - Jun 16, 06:00 AM - #I am a soldier in the Army National Guard and I have just recently begun the process of becoming a conscientious objector, is there any way you can put me in contact with this man or any other successful C.O’s?
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I am a CO and should be getting a honorable discharge here in a few months. I am also a filmmaker and would like to extend my contact info to Perry in the event he would be interested in dicussing some of his fiction ideas…
— Nathan - Apr 17, 01:38 PM - #I am a CO and should be getting an honorable discharge here in a few months. I am also a filmmaker and would like to extend my contact info to Perry in the event he would be interested in dicussing some of his fiction ideas…
— Nathan - Apr 17, 01:38 PM - #i need help and direction becoming a CO. i have been going along with what i feel is wrong for too long…out of fear, out of not wanting to let anyone down.
— matthew - Dec 10, 09:09 PM - #