US Army struggles with soldier who won't pull the trigger
Is the decision not to fight conscience or cowardice?
from the August 14, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Aguayo apologized for the trouble he'd caused: "But in the end, I had to obey a higher calling."
Prosecutors wanted him locked up for two years. "When soldiers are severely wounded, combat medics are the ones who hold their hands and tell them it's going to be OK," argued assistant prosecutor Capt. Jennifer Neuhauser. "This is a sacred trust." In wartime, she said, the military can't afford to send its service members the message: "You're a chump. You should have just taken your benefits and run."
Aguayo's civilian attorney countered that punishment wouldn't change the mind of such a soldier – and indeed, that the Army shouldn't try. A military is strongest, David Court argued, "if soldiers are told, 'You do have a conscience.' Otherwise we have automatons."
Judge Masterton gave Aguayo an eight-month sentence (with six already served, he had only a few weeks of confinement); awarded him a bad conduct discharge; and ordered that he forfeit all his rank, pay, and benefits. By April, Aguayo was released and sent to his old base here in Schweinfurt. The sergeants from whom he'd escaped avoided him. Other soldiers sought him out to offer sympathy and solidarity.
In May, Aguayo returned to Palmdale, Calif., to his wife and girls and an uncertain future. Antiwar groups and Helga are encouraging him to travel the country discussing his experience. But he remains uncertain about how the military should handle soldiers like him – men and women who volunteer for duty looking to put their lives on track, only to realize that they can't live with that choice.
In basic training, Aguayo explains, when soldiers jog in formation, "if there's a guy that is running and can't keep up ... somebody falls out and helps him – or somebody screams at him ... to encourage him, to push him." But when a soldier falls out of moral step with the military's mission and can't be threatened or cajoled back into line, Aguayo muses, what should an institution built on unity and common purpose do with him?
"How," he asks, "do you correct a person's mind?"
•Part 1 ran Monday.
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