c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Nineteen-year-old Aidan Delgado had just signed the papers that made him an Army reservist when he heard the news that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.

In 2003, he found himself deployed at Abu Ghraib, just as the notorious prison’s abuse scandal was erupting around the world. By then Delgado was a convert to Buddhism and awaiting word on his quest for conscientious objector status _ which was granted after his one-year tour in Iraq.

He is now an anti-war activist. His stories of Iraq are captured in his new memoir, “The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector in Iraq.”

Q: You were raised by American parents in Egypt, Thailand and Senegal. What was your religious background?

A: Both of my parents were strongly suspicious of all religions, and they encouraged me from an early age to be a critical thinker. While my family lived in Thailand, my father was nominally a Buddhist … and generally being sympathetic to its ideas, but he’s not very observant now.

Q: What drew you to Buddhism?

A: After I enlisted on Sept. 11, I withdrew from college, and I had nothing to do for about a month before I started Basic Training. I had always had an intellectual interest in Buddhism, which started when I was very young. When I finally had this chance to read about it thoroughly and deeply, I had this sense of homecoming. It was not so much that I converted, but that I recognized I was already a Buddhist.

Q: You write about bursting into tears as an 11-year-old when your father asked you to kill a fish. Given that revulsion toward violence, what were you thinking when you joined the military?

A: I’m still unsure. I wanted a break from college; I wasn’t doing very well there. At that time, the violence seemed abstract. I guess I was thinking I’d blunder my way through and make things work out as they went along. I didn’t have a realistic perception of the requirements of being in the military.

Q: Was it a mistake for you to join the Army?

A: It was a mistake in one regard: I am not morally on board with the military and what they are doing. But in a larger sense, I think it was a benefit. You need to have questioning, critical people on the scene when things like Abu Ghraib are happening; I tried to influence my peers, to bear witness to what was happening. So in that sense it wasn’t a mistake.

Q: What did you have to prove in order to win your conscientious objector status?

A: I had to prove a firm, fixed sincere objection to war; all wars _ that’s the legal language. You can object for philosophical, religious or moral reasons, but you can’t be selective and say another type of war might be justified.

You have to prove your objection through your conduct. Membership in a religious sect is taken as evidence of sincerely held belief, but it’s not enough. You can’t just say, “I’m a Buddhist, therefore I’m an objector.”

Q: And how did you demonstrate your beliefs

A: I had become a vegetarian. My sergeant testified that I had not only declined to use my weapon in Iraq, but I had declined to step on ants or kill flies. That made quite an impression, given how many flies there were in Iraq.

Q: You had the luxury of being able to interpret Buddhism to those deciding your case. Would it have been more difficult to be awarded CO status if you were, say, a Protestant or Catholic?

A: The first sergeant who was assigned to my case ran into a Buddhist chaplain and asked for his advice. The chaplain said something like, “That’s not right, you can be a Buddhist in the military.” There are many interpretations, and he had his own. Historically there have been a great number of Catholic conscientious objectors even while many Catholics serve in the military. Belief is not monolithic.

Q: According to one American Buddhist organization, there are now about 2,500 identified Buddhists in the U.S. Armed Forces. How do you answer those who say reconciling Buddhism and militarism is in fact possible?

A: The view that practicing Buddhism means pacifism may not not universal, but it is well-supported by scripture and an overwhelming number of scholars.

Q: In your view, does Buddhism allow for self-defense?

A: Yes, but, self-defense must always be limited by a mindset of loving kindness. In my mind, being in that compassionate state of mind makes it almost impossible to kill someone.

Q: Looking back, do you wish you had done more to stop the abuses you saw at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq?

A: I think I did as much as I could do. I did go up to soldiers and say, “Don’t put your gun in that guy’s face, don’t treat the Iraqis that way.” But as a single, isolated private, there was a limit to what I could do.

Q: What advice would you have for those enlisting now in the military?

A: I enlisted very naively. My advice would be: Do some serious moral thinking about participation in the military. Signing up, I think most people would say, “No, I don’t want to kill anyone.” If you’re just a cog in a big machine, it’s easy to rationalize your involvement and still think you’re a good person. You should realize that whether you pull the trigger or not, you have some culpability.

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