Conscientious Objectors In The All-voluntees U.S. Military

If one had a philosophical or religious objection to military service, why would they volunteer? The modern CO application, as it’s called, comes from those who sign up for service, but come to their conscientious objection during their tour of duty, like Dante Searcy and Fanny Garcia who tell us their stories of being granted “CO” status on this program. Also on this program, we hear from Maria Santelli, the Executive Director of the Center on Conscience and War, an organization that began in 1940 and today offers assistance to people like Searcy and Garcia to prepare their Conscientious Objection applications that go before Pentagon Panels for review. We placed three calls over the course of a week to the public affairs office at the Pentagon to get the Defense Department take on the Conscientious Objector discussion, but no one returned our calls.