By Matt Malcom, World BEYOND War
I never expected to become a conscientious objector.
If you would have asked me two years ago to name the first things that came to mind when I heard this title, it would have been words like coward, afraid, selfish, ignorant, and unpatriotic.
I guess it’s how growing up tends to work. Now I see that these words couldn’t be farther from the truth.
This is my story, but it’s also the story of hundreds who have come before me, only some of them known. It’s the story of every unnamed fearless lover of peace who, never needed to don the uniform to realize that violence can never be a realistic solution to any conflict. For those wise enough to understand that war has so little to do with solutions, and so much to do with ego-centricism, manipulation, wealth and power.
I now realize that those people I was so quick to dismiss as idealistic and weak, are in fact the meek that might just inherit the earth.
My journey started with an idea, one wrapped in youthful ideas to succeed, project my own self-important image to the world, to be a warrior, to be brave and validated. This personal image became an obsession. I wanted validation, and wanted to go all the way. I worked out that I wanted to follow my father and grandfather in military service, that I wanted to be an officer in the Army like them but I wanted my own challenge too, a notch that only I would have under my belt. My father received his commission through the University of Texas, and my grandfather went through Officer Candidate School on the heels of a prestigious enlisted career. I was going to make it through West Point.
…….. (snip)
I started having very visceral aversions to my environment. First, it was the standardization and control of an institution like West Point. Not the usual sort of frustration with “plebe year” as it’s known, but a developing deep moral aversion to what we were doing and how we were doing it. Then, I started feeling uncomfortable about the type of people we were training so hard to become; detached, amoral, apolitical, unaffected executors of violence and various state sponsored acts of aggression. Then I saw the effect the lifestyle was taking on the Captains and Colonels that came back to teach. It became abundantly clear that if I did not get out quick I too would slip into disconnection, numbness, brokenness, and finally (the worst stage) acceptance.
……..(snip)
I’m not saying they’re bad people, I’m saying this life did something to all of us, and I wasn’t sure it was healthy or helpful to the rest of society.
So I was then faced to asked, is this worth it? Not only for me, but what about the people that my occupation is to effect, those who are “over there” and those who are to receive the blows of my future aggressive acts in combat.
This question took the spotlight off of my own future and my own well-being and shined it brightly onto others, specifically the people I was being trained to kill.
Even more specifically, the innocent people caught in the middle chalked up to “collateral damage.” Of course no one wanted collateral damage, though this was often viewed from a strategic perspective without attaching the notion to human life. It was more like a margin of error that we were taught to stay within. If you went too far outside that margin (i.e. too many civilians died as a result of your decisions) the consequence would be jail time.
Around this time I was getting into my major—philosophy—in which these why questions were much more relevant. I learned how to ask really good questions, I learned how to listen to voices I had always disdained, I learned to open my mind and consider more than just what I had always known. I allowed myself to be challenged, and I challenged that which didn’t make sense.
One day standing on the granite steps of the cadet mess hall I remember asking my friend, “Mike, what if we’re the bad guys?”
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