Recall previous article: USAF 2nd LT: “It’s thanks to the Air Force Academy that I currently have an anti-war stance.”
Apparently she is still in the Air Force as she is “waiting for her conscientious objector package to be approved.”
WHEN will she pay back her American taxpayer-funded tuition of $500,000+? She received a free B.S. degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 2023 and is now getting a masters degree in it at Georgia Tech.
Also, WHO recruited her to USAFA, WHY was she accepted and WHY was she not told she is going into an academy whose purpose is military warfighting? Why wasn’t that apparent to her? Is it because the academy had touted itself as being one of the “top liberal arts colleges” in America?
The Problem With Heritage: An Open Letter to US Military Members
By Joy Metzler, 2nd Lt, USAF | CounterPunch
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, Department of Defense or the US Government.
Have you ever noticed that the military tends to surround itself with stories of grandeur, daring missions, and larger-than-life heroes? From young ages, we’re taught to thank veterans for their service.
Big department stores like Hobby Lobby are swamped with cheap decorations with messages such as, “Land of the free because of the brave.”
My mom got one of these when I first joined the military, and I believe it continues to sit above the microwave, even as I’ve come to question how much the military contributes to freeing our land.
This idea of military heroes isn’t just limited to little tchotchkes and vague sayings on Veterans’ Day; it was also a foundational idea at the US Air Force Academy, unsurprisingly.
One particular rule I remember from basic and Doolie year was to never allow your uniform to touch the ground. Doing so – dirtying the uniform in any way – was disrespectful, and it is because of the actions of those who came before that we should respect and honor the uniform, as people have given their lives while wearing it.
This idea of heritage, that we belong to something larger than ourselves, is what I believed made serving in the military so special. It was the opportunity – perhaps even the challenge – to be something more than you could achieve individually.
But lately, this heritage that the military holds so dear seems to be weaponized against critics as a guarantee that the military and the government we fight for can do no wrong, rather than used as a standard to always work towards or lessons to learn from.
We are distracted from asking questions about our role as military members with tales of individual heroism, cherry-picked to best appeal to passion. This is a dangerous sentiment, especially as the policies of the current administration align more and more with the policies of a government our country fought against in the 1940s.
It is time to stop parading people around in the name of heritage, and it is time to start listening to the lessons they teach.
How can we claim the heritage of men and women like the Tuskegee airmen when we stay silent as racial injustice – from police brutality to mass, privatized incarceration to even the rolling back of DEI policies – pervades and festers in the very foundation of our country? How can we celebrate the return of Vietnam veterans while thousands of veterans still have no homes to return to?
How can we declare ourselves a bastion of freedom while so many countries – the Congo, Palestine, Sudan, to name a few – suffer as a result of our country’s greed and interference? While we cruelly deport people searching for freedom from oppression and danger in a new land? Not to mention that we also deport veterans after they have volunteered to serve this country, many of whom have honorable discharges.
We are brought to near worship of our veteran and military communities, and we lift them beyond reproach. We don’t remember our military’s own war crimes. We don’t remember the civilians killed in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even during WWII. Like blinders on a horse, our heritage cloaks our ability to see injustice around us, replacing the reality of war with larger-than-life figures for whom we might be willing to die – or kill.
It is time for this generation of fighters to decide what is worth fighting for, regardless of whether you believe some past militaries may have been on the right side of history. I’m talking about here and now. The excuse of following orders was the defense presented by those who perpetrated the My Lai Massacre. It is what the Nazis used to defend themselves at the Nuremberg trials. And military members still throw this sentiment around with abandon.
We, as military members, have the unique responsibility to understand the conflicts we are in and may take part of, just as Lt Ehren Watada did when he concluded the US war on Iraq was illegal.. And it is our obligation to do all we can to be honest about the true costs of war and stem its spread, even if it means standing against our own government’s policies.
After all, it must be the most patriotic thing to uphold the values that formed this country – true freedom, life, liberty – even when those who are supposed to safeguard those values seek to tear them down.
Lt. Joy Metzler is currently on active duty, waiting for her conscientious objector package to be approved.
From a November 2024 story from The Guardian, ‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza:
For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.
But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.
“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian. “All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.” . . .
. . . Metzler said she was raised to believe that Israel is “the nation of God’s chosen people” and “terrorists were morally bankrupt people, who hate us because of who we are”.
When the war in Gaza started, the images of Palestinian civilians’ suffering disturbed her, but it wasn’t until Bushnell’s self-immolation that she started reading about the history of the conflict and the role of the US government in it. “A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.
The war pushed Metzler to re-evaluate her time in the air force academy. She recalled laughing with her classmates as they watched footage of people running from a drone – she wasn’t sure in which country. She felt ashamed.
“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”
Metzler learned about the conscientious objector option when she met a group of veterans at a pro-Palestine protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s completing a master’s in aerospatial engineering.
The defense department first introduced the objector application process in 1962. Tens of thousands obtained the status over the following decade, as the Vietnam war, and a mandatory draft, sparked a mass antiwar movement. But since then, the number of applicants has fallen drastically, with many members of the military unaware that the option even exists.
“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”
For the few who embark on it, the process is rigorous and lengthy – Metzler’s application filled 19 pages and she is still waiting for final word after filing it in July. Applicants must demonstrate that they are opposed to all wars and that their beliefs about military service changed after they enlisted. They have to interview with a chaplain and with a mental health professional before an investigating officer reviews their case and makes a recommendation to a committee that decides whether to grant the status. In the past, the military has approved about half the conscientious objector applications it received. . . . .
From a commenter on Service Academy Forum:
“For all of you cadets current and future, your primary job is to break things and kill people. If you aren’t ok with that, get out now.”
USAF 2nd LT: “It’s thanks to the Air Force Academy that I currently have an anti-war stance.”
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