We object to killing. Not dying.

When America gets war fever, the government starts to coerce its young men to take up arms and go to battle for American power. Many young men will join when asked, persuaded, cajoled, or forced. Many young men will not, and will avoid joining the military through any loophole they can find.

Men have an assortment of reasons to keep themselves away from America's combat. One of the most common reasons is because they are afraid of dying; they just don't want to die.

Mennonites don't want to be on the battlefield either. But our reasoning is slightly different than that of most non-compliant men. It's not the prospect of dying that causes us to avoid joining the military. It's the prospect of killing.

When young men are forced into the U.S. military, both those who are afraid of dying and those who object to killing will resist cooperation with the military induction process. The United States military is very skilled at changing the thought process of a young man who is afraid to die. Military induction includes a process of brainwashing that re-orients men to think that the most likely way for them to avoid their own deaths is to kill the foreigners the U.S. happens to see as the enemy at that moment in history.

For the typical young man who is afraid of death, the U.S. military's induction process is effective at transforming his desire to avoid his own death into a drive to kill the foreigner. The process is not effective for men with religious beliefs against killing.

Fear of death and objection to killing are very different.

The United States military used to lump all non-compliant inductees in the same category, assuming that the only reason any man would refuse to kill was a fear of death. This was not true. Mennonite church and family lore includes many stories of men who were forced into the United States military and subjected to America's violent attempts to brainwash its men. They endured increasing levels of pressure, then punishment, then torture, and in a few cases, death at the hands of U.S. military induction process. One story tells of an exercise for non-compliant men who were forced into the U.S. military: they were ordered to dig their own graves, then their drill sergeants would threaten to shoot them then and there if they wouldn't cooperate with orders to be trained to kill foreigners. If a man is simply afraid of dying, he would decide at this point to comply with America's orders to become a killer. We don't react like this; Anabaptists calmly instruct their drill sergeants to end their lives. We would rather die ourselves than kill.

A few Anabaptist men have become martyrs, victims of the United States military during these induction processes. Many more were simply released from boot camp and sent back to their communities. Our religious beliefs prevent us from cooperating with military superiors who order us to kill, and we will die before we kill. When a man would rather die than kill, the United States military doesn't know how to break him. The U.S. military no longer wants him.

This process of attempted brainwashing during military induction is not new to us. European militaries did this to our young men for 300 years before the United States became a country. We have been resisting such attempts, in many countries, and to the point of our own deaths, for longer than the United States has been forcing men to kill for American power.

A fear of death can be overcome through the U.S. military induction process. A religious objection to killing cannot.