I Call Bullshit

Waco, TX — An AWOL Soldier accused of plotting to detonate bombs in a restaurant filled with Fort Hood troops and then shoot any survivors was expected back in court Thursday to be arraigned on six new charges. Among the new charges Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo faces is trying to use a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He also was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Waco on one count of attempted murder of officers or employees of the United States, two counts of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a federal crime of violence, and two counts of possession of a destructive device in furtherance of a federal crime of violence. …

You can read the whole thing at Military.com News (H/T: Mandy), but it here’s the part that stuck in my craw, from the very end:

Abdo, 21, was approved as a conscientious objector this year after citing his Muslim beliefs, but that status was put on hold after he was charged with possessing child pornography. He went absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Ky., in early July.

We no longer have the draft. “Conscientious objector status” is an obsolete relic of a bygone era,¹ when people were conscripted against their wills. We now have an all-volunteer fighting force. If you’re a “conscientious objector,” you don’t enlist. If you enlist, you have made an informed choice as a legal adult, and have sworn an oath. Nobody held a gun to your head. If you join up, you are not a “conscientious objector.” Period.

As for “citing his Muslim beliefs” – exactly who the fuck does he think the US Army’s been shooting at for the last ten years?! Anybody who has joined up in the last decade knows they will probably face action, and that said action will probably take place in a Muslim country and that the people against whom they will have to kill or be killed will be Muslims. Unless you’ve been living in a cave (which I suppose is possible in his case) you know that the US military has been in Afghanistan for ten straight years now, and for most of that time was in Iraq as well (not to mention “kinetic actions” against Libya, and various sundry actions taken in Yemen in elsewhere).

Anybody who enlists knows this. There is absolutely no justifiable excuse for signing up in the military now, and then complaining that you can’t fight, or that you can’t fight muslims. If those are a problem for you, you don’t enlist.

¹like labor unions and the UN.