TCCW 1: Securing Soldiers' Rights to SCO

*Originally published at Sojourners' God's Politics blog, September 30, 2010. It has since been removed.

Last March I testified at the Truth Commission on Conscience in War (TCCW) at the Riverside Church in New York City. Later, in July, I was on a panel at the Peace Among the Peoples conference in Elkhart, Indiana. Both events placed a much needed emphasis on service members and the place of moral conscience in war. Selective Conscientious Objection (SCO) played prominently in each instance, but it is important to understand that SCO is very different than the prevailing framework that has defined conscience in war.

Current regulations are clear that conscientious objector status is to be granted only to those individuals who object to "participation in war in any form." Therefore, conscientious objection, as it is currently acknowledged by the Department of Defense, is reserved to those who identify as strict pacifists. Selective objection, wherein a service member objects not to the idea of warfare as a whole but to particular wars, is not yet recognized.

To understand selective conscientious objection, it helps to imagine objection and obedience as two ends of a scale. The current regulations recognize the extreme ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, legitimate objectors are only those who would deny that the conduct of war has any moral, ethical, or religious legitimacy. On the other, service members are expected to obey orders basically without qualification, since "unlawful order" is nowhere defined in the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice.