Mother Jones has this War Horse story about in-service conscientious objection within the U.S. armed forces in light of the Gaza war and domestic deployment issues. Excerpts:
The ongoing legal dispute leaves troops little choice for now but to follow Trump’s order, said Carrie A. Lee, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a former professor at the US Army War College.
“It’s actually a very high bar for thinking about disobeying unlawful orders,” Lee told The War Horse. “There is no provision for what a service member decides is immoral or unethical, because those are personal judgments based on personal decisions about morality and ethics. And you know, you can’t be injecting every unique individual’s own ethics into military orders.”
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The number of would-be conscientious objectors has remained relatively small in the years since September 11, 2001, but the numbers rise around new missions. The post-Vietnam peak followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In the Army, the largest of the military services and the most commonly represented in both foreign and domestic missions, the highest number of conscientious objector applications over the last quarter century came in 2005, with 74 applications, of which 39, or 52 percent, were approved. By comparison, more than 73,000 soldiers joined the Army that fiscal year, and about 60,000 soldiers transition annually out of the service for all reasons.
In 2024, the Army granted five applications and denied one; to date this year, three have been granted and two are pending, according to data provided by Army headquarters. Given the work required to submit a conscientious objector application, it’s unlikely these numbers reflect any recent callers to the GI Rights Hotline.
The United States does not recognize selective conscientious objection.
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