{"id":1567,"date":"2007-05-23T11:15:40","date_gmt":"2007-05-23T18:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2007\/05\/conscientious_objection\/"},"modified":"2007-05-23T11:15:40","modified_gmt":"2007-05-23T18:15:40","slug":"conscientious_objection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2007\/05\/conscientious_objection.html","title":{"rendered":"Conscientious Objection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If brave Olaf &#8220;whose warmest heart recoiled at war&#8221; were alive today, would he tell the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives\/2007\/01\/time_for_him_to.html\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>President With His Head Up His Ass<\/strong><\/font><\/a> what e.e. cummings once had him tell a West Point colonel? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives\/2006\/05\/what_would_brav_1.html\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>&#8220;I will not kiss your fucking flag.&#8221;<\/strong><\/font><a\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2007\/05\/23\/nytfrontpage\/scan.jpg\" class=inline target=new\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt title=\"Above the fold, the front page of The New York Times of Mayh 23, 2007 [Photo: Michael Kamber for The New York Times]\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/NYT%20May%2023%202007%20front%20page%20%28260%29.jpg\" width=259 align=right border=0 \/><\/a>It would be unfeeling at the least, given the stunning 5-column photo on the front page of this morning&#8217;s New York Times and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/05\/23\/world\/middleeast\/23search.html?ref=todayspaper\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>accompanying story<\/strong><\/font><\/a> of a young soldier killed, of others wounded, on a foot patrol in Iraq.<br \/>\nBesides, the absence of a military draft and the use of an all-volunteer force for making war tend to neutralize the very idea of Olaf the C.O. <i>If you&#8217;re a conscientious objector, what are you doing in the military in the first place?<\/i> (Pace <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives\/2004\/12\/a_sailors_prote.html\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>Pablo Paredes<\/strong><\/font><\/a>, the sailor who refused to deploy to Iraq, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views05\/0304-22.htm\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>filed a C.O. application<\/strong><\/font><\/a> and &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/article.pl?sid=05\/05\/13\/1437208\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>surprise!<\/strong><\/font><\/a> &#8212; avoided prison time.)<br \/>\nStill, Olaf certainly would not say &#8220;DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI,&#8221; the famous words of the Roman poet Horace that are etched above the west entrance of the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. (Translation: &#8220;It is sweet and fitting to die for one&#8217;s country.&#8221;)<br \/>\nOlaf didn&#8217;t believe in patriotic gore. And when saying so got him beaten up and reamed with a hot bayonet, he made it even plainer, &#8220;There is some shit I will not eat.&#8221;<br \/>\nWould that all of us were as brave as Olaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If brave Olaf &#8220;whose warmest heart recoiled at war&#8221; were alive today, would he tell the &#8220;I will not kiss your fucking flag.&#8221; accompanying story of a young soldier killed, of others wounded, on a foot patrol in Iraq. Besides, the absence of a military draft and the use of an all-volunteer force for making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-ph","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}