Civilian Court Sides With "Conscientious Objector"

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Civilian Court Sides With "Conscientious Objector"
Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 5 (IPS) - University of California Santa Cruz student Robert Zabala joined the Marine Corps thinking it would be a "place where he could find security" after the death of his grandmother in 2003.

But when he began boot camp in June 2003, Zabala said he had an ethical awakening that would not allow him to kill other people. He was particularly appalled by the boot camp's attempts to desensitise the recruits to violence.

"The response that all the recruits are supposed to say is 'kill,'" he told San Francisco's KGO-TV. "So in unison you have maybe 400 recruits chanting 'kill, kill, kill,' and after a while that word becomes almost nothing to you. What does it mean? You say it so often you really don't think of the consequences of what it means to say 'kill' over and over again as you're performing this deadly technique, a knife to the throat."

When Zabala realised he couldn't kill another human being, he submitted an application for conscientious objector status to the Marine Corps reserves. He saw two chaplains and a clinical psychologist, who all agreed his moral objections were legitimate and that he should be discharged from the military. Hundreds of such applications have been granted in recent years.

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Zabala sued and on Mar. 29, a federal judge in Northern California overruled the military justice system, ordering the Marine Corps to discharge Zabala as a conscientious objector within 15 days.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware noted Zabala's experiences with his first commander Captain Sanchez. During basic training, Sanchez repeatedly gave speeches about "blowing s*** up" or "kicking some f***ing ass." In 2003, when a fellow recruit committed suicide on the shooting range, Sanchez commented in front of the recruits, "f*** him, f*** his parents for raising him, and f*** the girl who dumped him."

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37233

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1. K&R! nt