Soldier of Misfortune

By Frida Berrigan, The Progressive. Posted November 18, 2004.

Jeremy Hinzman joined the military in early 2001. Like many others, he was attracted to the military by "the prospect of being able to go to college without incurring debt and be a part of something bigger than myself," he says.

He completed basic training, and in July 2001 moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with his wife, Nga Nguyen. He was a "White Devil": a member of the 82nd Airborne's 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

But during basic training, he began to have doubts.

"There is a strong, innate predisposition against killing," Hinzman says, "and the military breaks that down." In target practice, he recalls, we "started out with black circle targets. Then the circles grew shoulders and then the shoulders turned into torsos. Pretty soon they were human beings."

Hinzman can pinpoint the moment he realized he "made the wrong career decision."

"About five weeks into basic training, we were on our way to the chow hall shouting 'trained to kill, kill we will.' We were threatened with push-ups because we were not showing enough enthusiasm.

"I found myself hoarse yelling this and, when I looked around me, I saw that most of my colleagues were red in the face, but totally engrossed." Then he understood that the military was not just training him to kill, but "to kill with a smile on my face." He had to get out.

Easier said than done.

Hinzman was a "good soldier," he recalls. "I couldn't get out of it, so I decided to make the most of it. Meanwhile, I was having this heavy internal debate about the morality of what I was doing."

He and his wife found the Quaker meeting in Fayetteville, seeking a "shared spiritual life" as they prepared for the birth of their child. The quiet worship contrasted sharply with Hinzman's life at Fort Bragg, and his introduction to the Quaker peace testimony intensified his questioning.

Soon after their son, Liam, was born in May 2002, Hinzman filed for conscientious objector status. "Although I still have a great desire to eliminate injustice, I have come to the realization that killing will do nothing but perpetuate it," he wrote in his application. "Thus, I cannot in good conscience continue to serve as a combatant in the Army."

Told his application was lost, he reapplied right before he left with his unit for Afghanistan. While there, he was assigned to noncombat duty in the kitchen waiting for his hearing. Hinzman read week-old newspapers and watched satellite television, closely following the buildup to war in Iraq.

The fourteen-hour days of dishwashing in the desert can make a man think, and Hinzman did, concluding, "The pretense the U.S. was using to launch war in Iraq was bogus. I promised myself and my wife that I would not go."

At his conscientious objector hearing in Kandahar in April 2003, Hinzman was asked if he would use violence to protect himself. He responded he would not automatically turn the other cheek. His application for conscientious objector status was denied on the basis of that response.

"It happens all the time," says Steve Morse, a counselor with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. The law says you don't have to be a pacifist to be a conscientious objector. You have to oppose all war, but self-defense is a permissible answer, he explains. Morse says the military does not train its personnel in the rights of conscientious objectors, and it intimidates and stereotypes those who apply.

The Army says there have been ninety-six applications for CO status since the war in Iraq began, and it has approved forty-eight. But J. E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, believes the number of applicants is much higher. Plus, she notes, "there are faster discharges than a CO discharge," and some soldiers who are morally opposed to the Iraq War avail themselves of these discharges.

Hinzman has one regret: "I did not strip off my uniform right then and refuse to cooperate any longer." He felt like he was on a "100-mile-an-hour train" that wouldn't slow down for him to think.

The time to think came later that month when his unit returned to Fort Bragg, and he returned to his wife and son.

Through reading and discussions with Nguyen and friends in Fayetteville, Hinzman solidified his opposition to the Iraq War. "We were not attacking Iraq because we were under an imminent threat," he says. "Our aim there was economic in nature. To die or kill other people so that the American public could have cheap access to oil was wrong."

Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center in New York City.

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