Ain't gonna study war no more
Sgt. Kevin Benderman, a veteran of a tour in Iraq, refused to return. Why did a 10-year military man become a conscientious objector?
By Phillip Babich
Jan. 17, 2005 | It was Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, 1500 hours. Sgt. Kevin Benderman's company, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., had been ordered to assemble and begin preparations for deployment to Iraq. Their plane was leaving for Kuwait that evening. Benderman wasn't with his unit.
Instead, the sergeant was waiting at Brigade Headquarters outside the office of Sgt. Maj. Samuel Coston, one of the battalion chiefs, to say whether he was going to follow orders and get on the plane. One week had passed since Benderman had filed for conscientious objector status, claiming he was morally opposed to war and could not, in good conscience, participate on the battlefield.
For an active-duty soldier, C.O. status is tough to substantiate. After all, Benderman had volunteered to serve and was aware that the Army was not the Peace Corps. He'd been scrambling all week to try to get the necessary visits with a military chaplain and a psychiatrist: According to Army regulations, his claim to be a conscientious objector and his mental stability needed to be evaluated so that his application could be considered. But the chaplain wasn't returning Benderman's phone calls, and the psychiatrist wouldn't see him until the chaplain had.
A spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, couldn't comment directly on Benderman's case, citing privacy issues.
If Benderman couldn't get his C.O. application considered before takeoff time, he would be faced with a difficult choice: Accepting redeployment, during which time his application would be considered, or disobeying a direct order and facing court-martial.
While Benderman waited in a vacant hallway with his wife, Monica, outside Coston's door, his unit was packing M-16s and 9 mm assault rifles and double-checking the contents of duffle bags against a manifest that specifies everything from the number of pairs of underwear to tubes of toothpaste.
Kevin Benderman, formidable at 6 foot 2 inches and 240 pounds, has a deep Southern voice and 10 years of decorated military service. He began having misgivings about war in general, and the Iraq war in particular, during his six-month tour of duty in Iraq in 2003. It's difficult for him to pinpoint exactly when it happened. Maybe, he said, it was when Iraqi children repeatedly climbed onto a wall and threw pebbles at his unit, and his commanding officer ordered the troops in the area to shoot them if they climbed back on the wall. Maybe it was when he was posted to the supposed site of the biblical Garden of Eden, and over a period of weeks watched green corn shoots sprout after a fellow soldier spilled a cooler of water on the parched soil. "I thought it was amazing that the seeds took root," Benderman said. "That showed me that the land was fertile, and that God's hand had not forsaken that land. Corn was growing in the middle of the desert."
Or maybe it was simply witnessing war itself. "When you see people having to drink water out of a mud puddle, and you see all of their homes destroyed, and when you're going up the main highway and you see young girls on the side of the road with their arms burned all the way up to their shoulders, you really have to say, Do I want to be responsible for that kind of action?"
In a letter he posted on the Internet, Benderman expanded on the story of the little girl with the burned arms. "Somewhere along the route there was this one woman standing along side the road with a young girl of about 8 or 9 years old and the little girl's arm was burned all the way up her shoulder and I don't mean just a little blistered, I mean she had 3rd degree burns the entire length of her arm and she [was] crying in pain because of the burns. I asked the troop executive officer if we could stop and help the family and I was told that the medical supplies that we had were limited and that we may need them, I informed him that I would donate my share to that girl but we did not stop to help her."
In October 2004, Benderman was informed that his service was being extended for eight months, as part of the military's "stop loss" program. He was also informed that his unit would be reposted in Iraq in January 2005. He could be in Iraq for 18 more months. That's when he went public with his views, giving interviews (including one with this reporter) and posting antiwar pieces on the Internet. He officially applied for conscientious objector status on Dec. 28.
A skeptic might question Benderman's sudden application for C.O. status, just after he was ordered to return to Iraq. But Benderman denies any connection. "No, my conscientious objector application is not a reaction to the stop-loss order," Benderman said. "Over a period of time I had been contemplating filing for C.O. status. You have to be 100 percent sure that's what you want to do. It takes time to think it over. I can't meet anybody else's expectations as to when I should have filed. You can't shoehorn me into a little box and say what I should have done."
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