What was it like for the family when Agustín decided to become a Conscientious Objector? How did the military treat you?
Helga: Agustín didn’t find out about the Conscientious Objector discharge until three days before his deployment. He knew he couldn’t kill, he knew he had these feelings, but we didn’t know that there was some way to categorize it. When we found out about it, he applied for it. And so he left for Iraq, and I was left behind with the girls. His whole unit knew that he had done that. It was in the Stars and Stripes paper that two soldiers had declared themselves COs.
I remember, he left in February, and I went to the unit Easter egg hunt in April or March 2004 in Germany. I remember walking into the room and feeling all this hostility. All the wives were there with their children. Their reaction across the board was, “Well why did he join? What a coward.” And then when I told people that he wasn’t loading his gun, it was just outrage: “Well what if my husband’s there with him?” It was isolating.
Agustín: There are a lot of misconceptions in the military about certain things. People don’t speak of conscience. I remember when I had just deployed and it would be a topic of discussion, people didn’t know how to respond. For a lot of commanders, their experience with my case was the first time they dealt with a Conscientious Objector.
Helga: And the confusion was compounded by the fact that he was turning in [the CO application] twelve hours before they deployed. I don’t know who came up with the idea to get me to get [the commander] to accept it.
The first CO went in with his wife and he completely dismissed her, and I thought, “No matter what, I have to get in there and I have to speak to him.” And somehow I even ended up sort of threatening him, saying that I would go to the media. And he just stood back—I guess no one had ever talked to him like that. And Agustín’s [standing] at attention and I’m just a civilian going in there. I said, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And he said, “You do that.” I didn’t want to get [Agustín] in trouble—I just really did hope that they would leave him behind. What wife doesn’t?
Agustín, what was it like for you to deploy to Iraq just twelve hours after filing your application for CO status?
Agustín: Verbalizing that and telling my unit how I felt, that I was a Conscientious Objector, was in itself a great load being lifted off my shoulders. I really found a lot of peace in doing that. Putting that packet out there meant that people around me knew what kind of person I was and put me at liberty to be more open about that.
But I really was targeted. The army argued that I was using the regulation to acquire Conscientious Objector status as a back door out of the army. No one would want to do that. When someone openly admits that they’re a CO, you automatically become an outcast. That’s very hard to deal with in the military, because we’re always being programmed to think that we all have to be the same and work together. Some see it as cowardice, some see it as an act of betrayal. Nobody wants to be not accepted in this way! When someone applies for CO status, that puts them on a very difficult road. It’s a very long process, a process where there are no guarantees, and you have to live in this state of pleasing yourself and pleasing the military. You’re walking a fine line. The more you do things [they tell you to do], they see that as proof that you’re not a Conscientious Objector.
And at the same time, it’s hard to openly resist when you are deployed.
Helga: That’s why he realized that he had no choice but to go AWOL.
Agustín: I was living a double life. But I came to a point when I went AWOL, where I thought, “I did all these things, I even got rewards and respect from people, but where did that get me?” In the end, I was not being true to myself and I was not taken seriously.
Helga: At the press conference, he said, “I have said I’m a CO, now I have to show them with my actions that I’m a CO.” They had not accepted his word, so he had to show them.
You have said that you made a lot of decisions as a family. Can you talk about what prompted the decision to go AWOL and how you both felt?
Helga: That was actually something we spoke about before he even missed the movement. We had a plan and a backup plan. Even the girls knew. We just knew that no matter what, he would not deploy. I remember talking about it, thinking, “Oh my God, they’re going to destroy us,” but we knew we had to do it.
Our main lawyer said, “We can’t advise you what to do, you have to follow your conscience. We have to advise you that if you do decide to go AWOL, there will be repercussions.” And I remember just feeling so alone. Up until then, we thought we had this defense team that would save the day, but at that point it was just me and him.
Agustín said, “Helga’s afraid that they’ll take me by force,” and J. E. MacNeill from the Center on Conscience and War said, “That has not happened in this war yet. It did happen in the Gulf War. They did take soldiers by force, and they even force-fed them when they refused to eat. But it hasn’t happened yet for this war.” And I told Agustín, “Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean they won’t try.” And then they did.
When Agustín turned himself in, they had him detained, and they were on the phone trying to get him a flight to Kuwait so he could catch up with his unit.
When did you come to the decision to go AWOL and how did you decide that you were going to go public about it?
Agustín: They finally told me in August that in September [2006] we were leaving [for Iraq] and I wasn’t going to be excluded. So I decided I was not going to go. They had pushed me into a corner where I was going to say no and I was going to be confined, I thought. The day of the deployment I left my home, to avoid a confrontation. So the next morning I show up and my whole unit has already left. And I get the sense that my words mean nothing. They don’t really care about what I have to say—the only thing that matters is that I’m a soldier and they’re ordering me to get on the plane. And my family’s in the middle of all this. It was just a last-minute decision that came out of a great deal of frustration and feeling that I did everything right for so long and that didn’t work. And even though I didn’t want to do it, that was the only thing that would send the message that [I was] not going to comply.
Helga: Well, before it all happened we had discussed all the possibilities of what we were comfortable with and if it gets ugly, we’ll go public. But the exact moment when we made that decision was when they brought him back home and they were trying to force him to put his uniform on, and I was telling him in Spanish, “Don’t do it, don’t do it,” but he did it.
So when he put his uniform on and the sergeant was walking him out the door I asked him: “Are we going public?” And Agustín said: “ The Army wanted it that way.” And then they walked out the door.
After they walked out the door, I went from the door to the computer and sent out a mass e-mail. And that’s when it began.
Agustín: I didn’t want to go public because I’m such a private person, but at that point, it just was inevitable. I did it because in my mind I was protecting myself. The more people that knew about my case, the better it would be for me. The military magistrate that recommended pretrial confinement argued that I tried to make myself this cause—that I was this horrible person that tried to make myself a celebrity. People who know me know that I would never do a thing like that. I really thought it would protect me in some way. A great deal of my concern was that I didn’t want to make the Army look bad.
Helga: I did.
Agustín: Even though I disagreed with the whole concept of the military, I was still a soldier, and I had been through this process. I think I’ll always have a certain amount of respect for what the members go through. The people within the system are just manipulated in such a horrible way. That really bothers me. They’re put in a position where they think they have to comply and they are powerless in that sense. No soldier wants to admit that he’s engaged in a conflict that legally or morally is questionable, but no one should ever give up their power that way and think that “whatever I do is okay because they told me to do it.”
What did you see as the goal for this campaign that you had started?
Helga: To rally support for Agustín. I knew he was going to need a good defense team and I knew I had to raise the amount of money that was needed so that he could have the best defense team that was out there. Yes, I wanted to make the Army look bad, I’m not going to deny that; but I also had to weigh that if I did that, would it hurt him. And ultimately I found out that it didn’t. I realized that no matter what I did or said the Army was going to continue to do what it was going to do. And so I should expose as much as I could, and so I decided to expose everything, and little by little it has come out. Like our experience and what we’ve gone through, and more comes out every day about what we went through and what we saw other people go through. It’s just so much that I guess that’s just how it works—it comes out little by little.
When I started the campaign for Agustín’s case, it was important for us to raise necessary funds for his case; but it was also important for me to allow families to realize that this was possible and I wanted people to write to Agustín. He got thousands of letters and we got letters from families, especially after the C-SPAN event, saying that they didn’t know what we did was possible. It reached outside the peace movement. We got letters from lieutenants saying that they too were fighting—but they were doing it quietly. There are a lot of soldiers, lieutenants, and captains fighting across the board. I think the most touching one was from a wife. She said that her husband had just had a heart attack and that they still wanted to deploy him. And she said, “We didn’t know it was possible to resist.”
How has speaking out and joining the antiwar movement affected you both?
Helga: I think for me, while he was in prison, I realized that I couldn’t just send this mass e-mail out and expect people to help. I had to go out and tell the story, and I was afraid at first. The Army does a really good job of putting fear in you, so I had to build this campaign and at the same time melt my fear away. I found out that no matter what I said or what I did, I just had this fear that they were going to kill him. I was so scared of them, but I kept speaking out and nothing happened except positive things.
But once I started speaking out good things just happened: Agustín’s defense campaign came together, we were supported as a family, and I finally felt like I had given my conscience a voice as well, and I had a platform. But reliving it over and over again is physically hard. But it’s something that just has to be done.
Agustín: At one point, I did want to go home very quietly and forget that the military experience had took place. I was against war and I didn’t know where that would lead me in my life, I really felt that the Army would discharge me and that I would leave quietly without people knowing who I was.
When I went AWOL and refused to go back, that was going to happen regardless of whether I had anyone’s support, but what that experience made me realize was how big the movement really is and that most people feel quite the same way I do: that we should avoid war at all costs. I realized that it wasn’t just about me doing this. I found myself very blessed by a world community of people supporting what I did. I realized that when I went to prison that it wasn’t just me doing this, that I was part of the world community that opposes war and that wants change.
When did you realize that you could make a contribution to help other people resisting war?
Agustín: When I first went to prison, people started to know who I was because they had read the newspapers, but I didn’t want to give myself too much importance at the time. I was really just focused on getting out.
I got a few letters from active-duty soldiers being very supportive. One person in my unit who was recovering from health problems contacted me. He said that he was told that he would be redeployed again soon and that he wasn’t ready, so he decided to go to Canada. I’m not going to say that I completely inspired him to make his decision, but I think he thought about what I went through.
I remember there was another captain that wrote in the Stars and Stripes and he was outraged that my name kept appearing so often in the newspapers.
Helga: He said, “Can we please stop talking about Agustín Aguayo—his name keeps coming up and this is a substandard soldier who has obviously cheated the system and we need to stop talking about this soldier so that others don’t strive to cheat the system”… something along those lines.
Agustín kept thinking he wasn’t important and I think it was when we went to the ISO (International Socialist Organization) convention, which was one of the first public appearances where we were together and people were chanting: “We support war resisters! They’re our brothers, they’re our sisters!” and I saw him and he was just, that was probably the first time where he realized people knew who he was. He said that night: “I can’t believe wherever I go people know who I am.” He just could not believe it.
When Agustín came back from prison, when he returned to the United States in May, our family almost disintegrated. I had held on for so long and been really strong and I knew he was coming home so I just fell apart—knowing there would be someone there to catch me. It was terrible. We picked up right where we left off the last time that we were together as a family. We were both having severe panic attacks. We were trying to pretend to be normal and OK for our girls, but we were both in really bad shape.
And then we have no income so we have to go on these tours and plus we want to publicize our story. We want people to have awareness and to keep fighting for peace and we want to heal ourselves. But it was really hard. I’m happy we did it because people really appreciated hearing our story. The way that we tell our story is the way it affects the whole family, not just the soldier.
How do you think this war is going to affect veterans and their families? Thousands of people are going to be returning from a traumatic experience and their families are going to be affected too.
Agustín: A neighbor of ours told me he has a cousin who also just returned from Iraq and the family had a big welcome back party for him. Everyone was there and this veteran went into one of the bedrooms and locked himself in and didn’t come out. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about his experiences; maybe he was told he’s not allowed to, we don’t know. It seems like many people have similar stories of veterans coming back and secluding themselves and withdrawing.
Helga: We knew of veterans that killed themselves, back from the first deployment. It just destroys the families.
Agustín: I think your question is a very important question. I think we can only begin to attempt to answer that, what is going to be the impact of these soldiers coming back.
The system is in a state of denial. Service members are supposed to be strong and hard. But we cannot think that things are just going to be normal. It’s going to be an epidemic of depression and PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].
Helga: There’s a study that shows that a huge proportion of the homeless population is veterans. The day that we went to feed the homeless [for Thanksgiving] there were so many veterans. The person that was with me was from IVAW [Iraq Veterans Against the War] and he was wearing their shirt and so the vets in the line would say: “Are you a veteran?” and some of them were just so disturbed. They said they were from [the war in] Vietnam, and I was like, “How are the soldiers from [the] Iraq [war] going to be?”
As a family we sacrificed so much, and the payback we got from this country—even if Agustín would have [been accepted as] a CO—would have been so insignificant. If you are talking about what the people give in comparison to what they get back, it just doesn’t correlate at all.
Agustín: They’re always going to take more than they give you.
Helga: You know, in one of the last high schools we visited, there was this kid and his great-grandfather died in World War Two, his grandfather died in Vietnam, and his father died in Iraq. And he said: “As stupid as it sounds, I’m joining the Air Force. I want to serve this country, I love this country.” And he is like the poster child for the military. This kid’s legacy is that for him to be a man, he has to be a part of the military. He has to join the military because that’s what the men in his family do. And I listened to him and felt such sadness because his family has sacrificed so much and what have they gotten in return? The thing that spoke to me was you have to do this for love of this country, for the greatest country in the world, and I thought: “No. You really have to educate yourself.”
The biggest pro-America person that we know is my brother, and then he saw Sicko. And he realized how much he is being lied to and he said that he never wants to get sick in this country. I mean, you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that there is much better out there. So when we say for love of this country, for service of this country, what are the better ways to do that? There’s definitely much better ways to do that than the military.
