U.S. Army Sergeant Kevin Benderman Steps Up To The Plate, Conscientious Objector Status Pending

By Robert S. Finnegan
Managing Editor
Southeast Asia News

The ongoing saga of Sergeant Kevin Benderman’s denial regarding the legitimacy of war and his refusal to participate in it has now crystallized into a war of words and legalities, pitting his beliefs and first-hand battlefield knowledge against an action by the U.S. Government and Army prosecutors who are charging him with desertion for choosing to follow his conscience, in a war declared illegal by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Benderman is scheduled to stand trial before a General Courts-Martial at Ft. Stewart on May 11 on counts of desertion and missing a unit movement.

Benderman’s wife, Monica says that she is having a hard time expressing her feelings at this point. “Our lives right now have been put on hold by this issue. My husband is baring his soul. I don’t know what more proof these people need, something so simple, so basic, and they do not appear to have a clue.”

A Military Wife Speaks
Bruderhof Communities

A soldier’s wife, Monica Benderman of Hinesville, Georgia, used to be admired. But not anymore. In December 2004, facing a second tour of duty in Iraq, her husband, Sgt. Kevin Benderman, applied for conscientious objector status - and was promptly charged with desertion.

For the past several weeks, my husband, Kevin, and I have answered questions from reporters, and other interested citizens from almost every state in the union, and about eight foreign countries. After all of these interviews, I have a few questions and comments of my own.

What’s gone wrong when a man and his wife receive phone calls and emails from all over their country asking them to explain themselves, calling them cowards, wondering if they have ever read the Bible or studied the scripture, all because that man has chosen to speak out against war and violence, and his wife has chosen to stand with him?

Kevin Benderman is a mechanic who is trained to fix Bradley armored vehicles. On December 20, 2004, he applied for conscientious objector status. Yesterday he made time to talk with us about his decision.

The following is the interview conducted by Omar Khan, editor and ‘forum’ manager of www.dahrjamailiraq.com.

Omar Khan: Kindly tell us your name and a little about your background—your age, where you live, where you were born and raised, where you went to school, things of that sort.

Kevin Benderman: My name is Kevin Mitchell Benderman. Currently I’m living in Hinesville, Georgia, with my wife, Monica, and my stepson Ryan. I was born in Alabama. I was raised between there and Tennessee. I’ve gone to various schools, and I’m currently studying Criminal Justice out of Ashworth College for a Bachelor’s Degree.

OK: A Thursday, January 13 CNN article whose subtitle tells of your “claim” that others “just don’t know how bad it is.” But that article gives none of your or any other observations of how bad it is. Can you take a few moments to tell us something about how bad it is?

KB: The things that I have seen in the war zone that I’ve been to—and I am referring to this as all war, because my father told me about things he saw during World War II, and I’ve talked to Vietnam War veterans, I’ve talked to Korean War veterans, and they’ve all told me similar things that they’ve seen. And that is how peoples homes are destroyed. That’s how people are destroyed. And just how insane, really, the entire thing is. War destroys everything in its path. It’s the most destructive force on the planet that mankind has come up with, I can tell you that.

By Mike Ferner

No, this is not a military-oriented guide to keeping in shape. Yet it has made some people uncomfortable if not downright sore.

It’s about the peace movement and how a U.S. Marine company using downtown Toledo for “urban warfare” training provided an opportunity for activists to think and act beyond normal limits.

With barely a week’s notice, an article in the local paper announced that a weapons company of the 1st Battalion, 24th Marine Reserves would spend a weekend running around our downtown, honing combat skills by firing blanks at imaginary enemies. The North West Ohio Peace Coalition (NWOPC) and local Veterans for Peace (VFP) designed a response, different from what many in the peace movement had seen or that some were even comfortable with.

By Sgt. Kevin Benderman
January 10, 2005 (originally posted by Project for an Old American Century)

These are the chronological events that led me to conclude that I had no other choice than to refuse the deployment order to Iraq.

I was deployed to Iraq in March 2003 and returned in September 2003; while I was there I was with the 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. We staged our vehicles in Kuwait and then proceeded to move out into Iraq. We were carried on the back of heavy equipment transporters to about fifty miles south of Baghdad and then we downloaded the vehicles. We were in the vehicles while they were on the trucks, which I thought was a little odd considering that in the garrison environment those types of actions are considered unsafe and are therefore not allowed.

During the road march north through the country I saw the effects of what war does to people, those effect are such; homes were bombed, people were living in mud huts, people were obtaining their drinking water from mud puddles along the side of the road and were catching rain in buckets when it did rain, they begged us for food and water and we had enough, we would share it with the people that were there, the kids looked especially hungry and thirsty. The commander told us to stop giving the people food because they would get food from other sources after the trucks started bringing in relief supplies.

Somewhere along the route there was this one woman standing along side the road with a young girl of about 8 or 9 years old and the little girl’s arm was burned all the way up her shoulder and I don’t mean just a little blistered, I mean she had 3rd degree burns the entire length of her arm and she crying in pain because of the burns. I asked the troop executive officer if we could stop and help the family and I was told that the medical supplies that we had were limited and that we may need them, I informed him that I would donate my share to that girl but we did not stop to help her.