By Chris Hedges
Spc. Robert Weilbacher during an outing on Dobongsan Mountain in South Korea. He says he would go to the picturesque area “to escape the military and clear my head.” Another way he dealt with stress while stationed in South Korea was to meditate in Buddhist temples. (Robert A. Weilbacher)
Spc. Robert Weilbacher as a new Army combat medic stationed in South Korea listened to stories told by combat veterans, many suffering from trauma and depression, about the routine and indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was horrified. He had believed the propaganda fed to him over the years. He considered himself a patriot. He had accepted the notion that the U.S. military was a force for good, intervening to liberate Iraqis and Afghans and fight terrorists. But after hearing the veterans’ tales, his worldview crumbled. He began to ask questions he had not asked before. He began to think. And thinking within any military establishment is an act of subversion. He soon decided he did not want to be part of an organization that routinely snuffed out the lives of unarmed people, including children. He applied in February 2014 for a classification known as Conscientious Objector (1-0).
He instantly became a pariah within his unit. No one wanted to associate with him. He was taunted as a “traitor,” “coward,” “faggot” and “hippie.” He was assigned to the most demeaning jobs on the base. And the military bureaucracy began making him jump through hoops that he is still trying to negotiate two years later. He became an example to his fellow soldiers of the physical and emotional harassment, as well as humiliation, that is visited on all who dare within the military to challenge the sanctity of war and discipline.
“I feel as if my own government is torturing me,” he said when I reached him by phone in his barracks at Fort Campbell, Ky.
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