Soldier
Who Chose Jail Over
Iraq Goes Home
By Aaron Glantz
05 Ocotober, 2006
Inter Press Service
SAN FRANCISCO, California,
Sep 6 (IPS) - Last week, a 41-year-old U.S. army sergeant from
Hinesville, Georgia was released from prison after serving 13 months
of a 15-month sentence for refusing to board a plane bound for Iraq.
Born in Alabama and raised
in rural Tennessee, Sgt. Kevin Benderman first joined the Army in 1987
out of sense of purpose and tradition. His family has a history of fighting
wars. Both grandfathers fought in World War I. His father served in
World War II. His uncle served in Korea.
Benderman had served 10 years
in the military before refusing to obey orders. He filed an application
for conscientious objector status after serving a tour in Iraq in 2004.
The military turned him down.
He spoke to IPS this week
following his release.
IPS: You've
just been released from 13 months in a military prison. Did your opinions
on the war in Iraq change or develop at all during your incarceration?
K. BENDERMAN: After
I made my decision to file as a conscientious objector, my opinion hasn't
changed on the [Iraq] war or any war that may come along afterwards.
It's all the same. If you go back and look through the history of wars,
you can see that they're all the same. There's violence. It's young
men killing each other for whatever reason, and I think we should have
learned that a long time ago and been working toward eliminating war
from our daily lives.
IPS: Were
there any experiences that you had while you were over in Iraq that
helped lead you to this conclusion?
KB: A lot
of people have asked me if I've had an epiphany and I can't say that
I've had one. It was just the total sum of [seeing] all the people who
lived in that region and how they were affected by wars -- seeing the
young men and some of the other men and what it did to them and what
it made them become in order to survive in that kind of a situation.
IPS: In
your first tour, you served in Khanaqin, that's an area where the population
is mostly Kurds. Most of them would probably have positive feelings
about the U.S. invasion. Did you feel any of that?
KB: From
what I saw in the particular area I was in, we had a pretty good relationship
with the people living there. It was kind of an odd situation because
there were still people who could have caused serious bodily injury
because just the type of situation it was. It was war. So you never
know where anything is going to come from.
IPS: While
you were over there you were in a relatively peaceful area and there
weren't a lot of attacks on your unit. Given that, what's pushed you
to take this decision that caused you to spend this time behind bars?
KB: It's
war. There were mass graves [from Saddam Hussein's 1988 ethnic cleansing
campaign against the Kurds] in that area that I was in. So when you
see a mass grave full of bodies of old men, and old women and children
and then you realise that it was war that put them there -- I'm not
saying it's us that put them there, but war put them there, and that's
something that I saw that made me think that war is not something we
need to be doing in the modern world.
IPS: What
would you say to someone who said, "That's something that Saddam
Hussein did against the Kurds and what the U.S. military was doing was
to make it right?"
KB: Well,
I can tell you that I don't think that war is the way to make it right
because war is what put them there in the first time. I don't think
it's a good idea to continue to kill people with war when all that does
is create more mass graves.
IPS: Now
you're out having not served your full court-martial pending an appeal.
What is your feeling about the appeal given your experiences with the
military justice system so far?
KB: I talked
to my military attorney and he seemed to believe that we have a chance.
I don't know. It may be 50/50. I'll have to wait to reserve judgment
until I see how it turns out.
IPS: While
you were in prison, Amnesty International called you a prisoner of conscience,
who should be released. While you were in prison, there were a number
of other people who applied for conscientious objector status. Some
have gotten it. Just last week there was a young gentleman, Mark Wilkerson,
who turned himself in at Fort Hood after being AWOL for a year and a
half. Do you believe there's a trend? Or, based on your experiences
in the military, to believe we are likely to see just a few very isolated
cases?
KB: Each
individual is going to have to come to a conclusion about how to conduct
their lives. There may be more that come out and apply for conscientious
objection. They're going to have to make their minds up themselves.
IPS: The
nut of the military's argument to the denial of your petition is that
you signed up for the military and didn't have any qualms about killing
people for 10 years. Since then you haven't gone through a religious
conversion or anything like that. What do you have to say about that?
KB: I guess
I'm not your perfect conscientious objector who has heard angels singing
and all the rest of that, but I can deal with reality. When I see the
reality that war makes our young men and women do things they might
not otherwise do and puts them in situations where killing is just ---
Well, its kind of hard to say really, because everybody looks at war
in a certain way. It's all glamorised on TV and in the movies and everything
else and you see all the stories.
Personally, I was influenced
by stories from my family members. Growing up in the neighbourhood that
I did, [the military] was held in high regard. But once you see the
reality of war up close and personal -- people say you should know what
this is, but sometimes it's hard until you see it yourself. It's hard
to see because the way war is presented in the media is so different
from the way it looks up close.
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