News » July 18, 2005

A Different Duty

By Lisa Sousa

Aidan Delgado has put down his gun.

I don’t like doing this. It’s not something I want to do,” says Aidan Delgado of his public presentations. “I feel like I have to do it.”

A veteran of the Iraq war, Delgado, 23, has spoken to students, churches and peace groups across the country. “The media’s not giving the full picture,” he says. “Nobody’s seeing the ugly side, the underside of the war, and it’s something that I’ve seen, so I feel like I have to share it with people.”

In March, Delgado participated in a daylong teach-in on military recruitment at Berkeley High School in California. Students and concerned teachers organized the event in response to the increased presence of recruiters, who are able to target high school students like never before, thanks to Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act. “There’s a lot about being in the army that recruiters are not going to tell you,” Delgado says.

Delgado signed up for the Army Reserves on the morning of September 11, 2001. Shortly after signing his contract, two infamous planes hit the World Trade Center, gravely affecting the consequences of his enlistment. Like a lot of enlistees, Aidan was looking for something meaningful to do with his life and the Army seemed like a good opportunity. However, joining the reserves no longer means part-time weekend duty; it increasingly requires seeing “action.” About a year and a half after joining the reserves, Delgado was deployed to Iraq.

Unlike most soldiers, Delgado speaks Arabic, having grown up in Egypt as a diplomat’s son, and was able to communicate with Iraqis. He thought differently about fighting after interacting with prisoners of war. “When I came face to face with the people who were supposed to be my enemies, I thought that I had no reason to fight them,” he says. “They were the same as the guys in my unit.” The captured men were mostly young and uneducated, and did not have many choices in life.

“I felt like they were trapped in the war as much as I was and we were all victims of it, so I felt that fighting them would be wrong,” he says.

During his third month in Iraq, Delgado told his commander that he wanted to be a conscientious objector. “I turned in my weapon, I said ‘I’ll stay. I’ll finish my duty, but I’m not going to fight. I’m not going to kill anyone.’”

Obtaining conscientious objector status was difficult. Delgado endured investigative interviews, bureaucratic paper work, and harassment from his superiors and his peers, some of whom regarded him as a traitor. His commanders also confiscated part of his body armor, rescinded his leave time and assigned him to 16-18 hour shifts. Delgado was granted conscientious objector status and an honorable discharge only after completing his year-long tour in Iraq.

At Berkeley, Delgado began his slide show by explaining, “I’m not trying to shock you. I’m not trying to show you war pornography, but you’re getting to the age now when you’re going to have to deal with this stuff … if you’re old enough to fight, you are old enough to see what the reality is.”

The teenagers gasped as Delgado presented one of the more gruesome slides of a man’s head ripped open by machine gun bullets—a prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison, where Delgado’s unit was stationed during the final six months of his deployment. Delgado was at Abu Ghraib when the infamous torture occurred. Although he did not have direct knowledge of the incidents, he had heard rumors of abuses.

The man depicted in Delgado’s slideshow was killed during a prison protest on November 24, 2003. Armed with sticks and stones, the prisoners demonstrated against their harsh living conditions. The soldiers on duty secured permission to use lethal force in response, wounding nine and killing three. Afterwards, a few of the soldiers photographed each other posing with the corpses. “This was real common stuff at Abu Ghraib,” Delgado says.

Delgado challenged the students to think critically before enlisting in the military. After receiving a chorus of boos in reply to his question of whether the students liked high school, Delgado said that the military was quite similar to high school, only “your toughest teacher lives with you and has a gun.”

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• Reader Comments

  I so totally agree that the military is so completely like high school, seriously for real the only difference is like “your toughest teacher lives with you and has a gun” because that is so completely like, dude, I’m going to shoot you if you don’t pay attention!
  Delgado knows the scene, and he knows, just like high school with gun teachers, that the military will totally just shoot yo butt. This is so not reported. Military = teachers with guns in High School. Try getting that info in the Economist!

  Posted by fake name on Jul 18, 2005 at 1:43 PM

  ” “I felt like they were trapped in the war as much as I was and we were all victims of it, so I felt that fighting them would be wrong,” he says. “

  Same could be said for our prison system here. Still someone has to impose order somehow.

  I would like to think order can be established in Iraq better than how it was done under Saddam, but only time will tell. . . For better of worse, the Iraqis are going to decide what type of country Iraq is going to be - a decision that will affect it for perhaps decades.

  Posted by Thomas on Jul 18, 2005 at 1:45 PM

  “‘When I came face to face with the people who were supposed to be my enemies, I thought that I had no reason to fight them,’ he says.”

  He’s damn right they’re not his enemies.  It’s not his war or anyone else’s but Bush’s and Cheney’s.  It’s a war for oil, no-bid contracts, and kick-backs (to Bush and Cheney), in exchange for no bid contracts, and, oh yes, the execution of a vendetta against Hussain and his sons.

  I sure would have liked Ms. Souza to flesh out in more detail exactly what Mr. Delgado thought the purpose of the war was from his perspective.

  If Bush and Cheney don’t spend eternity in hell (with the rest of Bush’s family and ancestors), there is no God.

  Posted by Lefty on Jul 18, 2005 at 1:47 PM

  Thomas,
  Order has to be imposed somehow? Have you ever cared to consider that most of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib are there not because they committed a crime but because they were arbitrarily rounded up in one of those infamous search and seizure missions by the military? The International Red Cross has estimated that up to 90% of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib are not criminals or terrorists at all. They have every right to protest!! Don’t even get me started on our own prison system. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world! It is even worse in G.W.‘s Texas, where black men disproportionately constitute the prison population even though they do not commit the majority of crimes in that state.

  Posted by Bud on Jul 18, 2005 at 2:10 PM

  Its good to know that the leathal force is so easily authorized in Iraq. I get a warm tingly feeling when I realize that we can beat them, humilate them, and when they stand up for basic human rights we get to kill them. Smiles all around, hail the new Democracy!

  Posted by Vanella on Jul 18, 2005 at 3:11 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 47 posts.

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