One of the first things Josh Stieber does during his presentations is ask his audience to repeat after him.
"I went down to the market where the women shop / Pulled out my machete and began to chop / I went down to the park where the children play / Pulled out my machine gun and began to spray."
It's a cadence the Maryland resident used to sing with his Army unit, while he was deployed to Iraq in 2007. It's the kind of moral disconnect that caused him to question, well, just about everything he believed.
"I grew up in a kind of evangelical mega church, which linked a lot of religion to nationalism and militarism," Stieber says. After 9/11, he wanted to defend his country. He bought the idea that the U.S. was justified in invading Iraq. But that notion didn't last long. He found himself ripping up Iraqi's homes, rounding up and detaining family members. He found himself singing songs that glorified violence.
"How do go from being concerned about your family to saying words like that?" he says.
He posed that question to students in Kansas City yesterday.
"I knew after my tour in Iraq it wasn't something I could keep doing," Stieber says. "It was wrong for me keep going. My original plan was to throw the money back at the government and say that I'd rather finish my enlistment in prison." He'd already decided to walk all the way to the address on his paychecks, in Indiana, when he realized the government would just use that money to "keep doing what they're doing." That's when he found out about conscientious objector status.
"It's a pretty lengthy process," he says. "It took 10 months for me. You have to fill out a bunch of questions and paperwork about your beliefs and how they changed and do a lot of writing. Then you get interviewed by psychologists and a chaplain and an investigative officer investigates you, questioning the people who know you and your leaders. And then they combine all that into one report that they file that up the ranks to a review board in DC." Stieber says only 30 people get approved each year. He was released as a conscientious objector in April.
A month later, he started his latest project, walking and cycling across the country to talk about his experiences and raise money for organizations creating positive change, like Bike Not Bombs and the Central Asia Institute. His low-tech transit, he says, is to meet as many people as possible. That's why he's calling it the Contagious Love Experiment.
"I'm really trying to get beyond just the politics of opposing one specific war and look at a lot of the things that led to it, that led me to believe in it, that fear and paranoia that we're so wrapped up in," he says. "I'm calling the trip the Contagious Love Experiment with idea that fear and terror was so contagious [after 9/11] that, hopefully, by living out my beliefs, my idea of contagious love, I can spread that just as much and be just as powerful as fear and terror."
He struggles to pick out any particularly memorable moments over the past three months on the road. Not only has he been meeting plenty of peace-niks who share his concerns, but he's been falling into conversation with people who don't agree with his pacifism. Those encounters have been telling, as well.
"I was in a restaurant wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt and a Korean war vet started talking to me, started giving me all these reasons why war is good, that if we hadn't gone into Vietnam the communists would have taken over the world," he says. "How Asians and Arabs are lesser species than Americans; just a lot of stuff I really disagreed with. But, talking deeper, he was able to talk about when, in Korea, kids would run up with grenades strapped to them and stuff. So I realized that, if he had to do anything to those kids, the process of not viewing those people as the same would leave some of that guilt off him. That's such a common temptation."
Yesterday, he stopped in Kansas City, meeting with students at Bishop Ward High School and Avila University. To begin his presentation, he asked students to stand up if they care about their family and friends. They all did. As they stood, Stieber asked them repeat that military song. Then he had them ponder the same question that started his trek across the country: What if those women and children were people you knew?
To keep track of Stieber and his adventures, visit his often-updated blog.
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