Career Soldiers Want Out

When the people who have served longest start asking to leave on moral grounds, one may well ask: what are they seeing that is causing this?

On Wednesday, MS NOW reported a surge in conscientious objector applications in the American military, six months into the Iran war.

The director of the Center on Conscience and War, Mike Prysner, says applications are running at 6 times their normal rate since the war began. He says the rate is the highest in 25 years. In a normal year the group works with about fifty service members. Since February it has taken on about 140.

Quaker House, established in 1969 to counsel soldiers, logged more than 400 calls in March, and again in April.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth touts recruiting that is way up. Who is applying to leave on moral grounds has changed. It’s the ones who have been in the longest.

A government study of the Gulf War found that objectors then were junior enlisted men under thirty in their first years of service. But Prysner says his clients today have served more than a decade and hold every rank up to major. Many graduated from the service academies.

One applicant told MS NOW that the American military struck civilian bridges in Iran. The command answer to that was that the bridges served military purposes too.

When the people who have served longest start asking to leave on moral grounds, one may well ask: what are they seeing that is causing this?