Journey of Self Discovery Brings Conscientious Objector to Greater Boston

Cambridge, MA - It was September 2001 and Josh Steiber was in middle school in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The TV footage of airplanes flying into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon made an indelible impression on the young man. Years later, he would carry thoughts of revenge with him as he fought those he was taught to think of as the enemy.

Gradually, he came to learn that the “them vs. us” mentality he had been trained to embrace was much too simple to explain his situation. He was an infantryman stationed in Iraq. And people he thought would be glad for his presence wanted desperately for him (and his army buddies) to leave.

“I learned that the Iraqis weren’t waiting for us with open arms. Men, women, and children from the town we were in protested our presence,” Steiber writes on his website: “Contagious Love Experiment.”

He also learned, he says, that “…innocent people die. I learned that it doesn’t matter what uniform you have on, it’s about what’s inside. And sadly, the military tries to rob you of what’s inside and the result is people treating killing like a joke and showing little care for human life.”

Last year, after returning from a 14 month tour in Iraq, Steiber struggled to make a decision about the rest of his life. For months, he had been grappling with the two sides of his moral and religious upbringing: the “love thy neighbor” teachings of Jesus and the daily barrage of patriotic drumbeat for war. From the pulpit and from his family, he heard that the war was the right and moral response to the attacks on the U.S.

At first he thought he would return the money he had earned as a soldier. Throw it in the face of the military hierarchy.

But his experience in Iraq, including what he says were atrocities committed against innocent Iraqis, helped him make up his mind. He would apply for conscientious objector status and refuse to go back to war.

“As I waited until April of 09 for final approval [of conscientious objector status,]” he writes on his website, “my plan of spite, of throwing the money back in the government’s face evolved into the walk I’m on now. If I am saying no to war, I want to find out what to say yes to. I want to take a negative and invest it into a positive. In a country where war is preached from the churches, I want to do a little to remember the man who those churches are built for, the man who visited the orphans, served the poor, clothed the naked, fed the hungry… and loved. So that’s what I’ve set out to do and I hope that that love is contagious.”

Josh Steiber is walking (and riding a bicycle for part of the trip) from his home in Maryland to California. This past week, he stopped in the Boston area where he visited the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, spoke at the New England offices of the American Friends Service Committee, and met with MIT Professor, author, and critic Noam Chomsky.

The following OMB Audio is an edited version of his presentation at AFSC in Cambridge. His visit to the AFSC was sponsored and coordinated by MASS Peace Action. He begins by singing the lyrics of a song used to indoctrinate soldiers to the necessary killing that comes with the job:

Web Resources:

http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com/
http://www.masspeaceaction.org/template2media/media-index2.html