Soldiers of Conscience Filmmakers' Statement
Film Makers' Statement
When we made Soldiers of Conscience we wanted it to be a personal film and not a political one becausefor soldiers, war is personal. Each individual soldier, with their finger on the trigger,must answer the question: “Can I kill another human being incombat?”
Our nation asks that our soldiers kill.
The 10 Commandments tell them not to.
To kill or not to kill, that is the question.
We made this film with permission from the Army. We talked to dozens of soldiers who hadkilled. We found that every single one has suffered for the rest of his or her life for taking another life– no matter how much justification they had for doing so. Havingto kill another person - that act alone - haunted them. We made this film to honor those soldiers and hopefully to ease the moral burden that they bear.
This film is about conscience – the inner voice that we cannot escape that tells us when we have done something we feel is wrong. This film is about the burden of conscience. Television and movies make it seem like killing is easy, but the Army knows better. In fact, this film began to take shape in our minds on the day we read an official Army statistic about killing in war, a statistic that opens the movie: In World War II, research by the official US Army Historian, Brigadier General SLA Marshall, found that less than 25% of US soldiers who were in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. This does not include units far from action, but only actual US soldiers in combat, under fire, with their own lives at risk – of these, according to Marshall’s research, 75% percent did NOT try to kill the enemy.
Marshall wrote: “The average and normally healthy individual…still has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance toward killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…. at the vital point, he becomes a conscientious objector, unknowing.” (p. 79, SLA Marshall, Men Against Fire, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1978)
Wow.
If 75% of soldiers in combat, under fire, choose NOT to kill – that proved to us that human beings are NOT killers at our core – and perhaps war is not so “inevitable” as people so often believe. This realization came to define the film. We had found our mission. We wanted to make a film about war that breaks the taboo on talking about killing. We wanted to make a film to help individual soldiers with their consciences. We wanted to make a film that could hopefully lessen our “belief” in war…and perhaps increase our belief in peace.
Then came the biggest surprise: that is what most soldiers want also.
The film portrays two kinds of soldiers: the sincere war fighters (i.e., those who are willing to kill because they see it as their duty as soldiers), and the sincere conscientious objectors (who have refused to kill because they believe that it is wrong to do so). We naively thought that only conscientious objectors would be able to talk about why killing was wrong. But in fact, every single soldier we talked to could describe why killing is wrong – especially those who are willing to do so. Unfortunately, the Army does not offer them many opportunities to talk about their feelings or their moral qualms about having killed.
Nonetheless, the Army did allow them to talk to us about it – and we found that all soldiers had thought long and hard about this. They erupted with a volcano of emotions on the subject of killing. What we found was that the feelings that both kinds of soldiers have are the same, that they what they have in common is far greater than where they disagree.
We made this film to reveal their common ground. We made this film to honor them both.
This brings us to another goal we had in making this film: to build respect for each other – even when we disagree. Soldiers and civilians alike can explore our common ground. Where we can find common ground, we can eliminate problems, perhaps even war. But we, and the film, are realistic about this. We will never end war by telling people what to think. The film suggests solutions are possible, but it does not tell you what those solutions are.
Instead, the film asks that you think about it – and presents opposing points of view, each presented with so much respect that you have to listen and decide for yourself what is the truth. So the audience has to think.
And that too is what the film is really about.
The act of thinking, the act of sorting out opposing views, that is the act of changing yourself, and changing the world. That is the reason we made this film - for you to think and then to talk about it with your neighbor. This film is about what YOU think, what occurs inside your head – you the viewer, choosing what is persuasive and what values seem worthwhile to live a life by.
We worried that goals like these would lead to a film that sounded like a preachy sermon, and not a dynamic film about a complex moral issue. So we tried to take ourselves out of the equation. We made this film about war using only the voices of soldiers to tell it, for they know the truth of it.
We thank them for keeping the film honest.
And in return, we hope the honesty of the film will be genuine help to those who need it most. In our opinion, there is not one frame in this film that disrespects soldiers. We made this film to be a lifeline extended to the soldiers and vets who need to talk about this but can’t, and as an invitation for understanding to the families, friends, and other civilians who will never have to live through pain like this.
And one more thing, very personal but all the more important because of that. We made this film for Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson, who committed suicide at Abu Ghraib rather than obey orders to inflict harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners. We never met her or anyone in her family. We learned of her only through the newspapers. But we’d like to honor her as a true hero, and noble soldier, a woman brave enough to volunteer and to be willing to serve, but found herself torn between not wanting to disobey orders and not willing to torture prisoners. Apparently, she believed suicide was her only way out.
We think that perhaps this film could have saved her life. It might have suggested to her another way. Maybe it can save the lives of other soldiers in the future. Conscientious objection is honorable and legal, guaranteed by US law, enshrined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and governed by Department of Defense regulations. It is a deeply ingrained part of our American traditions. In the US military, soldiers do have the right to object, the right to disobey illegal orders. In fact, every US soldier has the duty to distinguish between right and wrong.
And for that matter, so do we all.
Thanks for sharing this journey of conscience with us.