“The Vatican had a strong rebuke of the Iraq war, but the Iraq could not happen if it were not for Catholics. We're no longer a migrant minority in this country and we're potentially powerful but with that comes the temptation of taking 30 pieces of silver and not realizing when you're turning Christ over to be crucified.”

[Revilee]

AARON GLANTZ: You’re listening to “The War Comes Home.” Warcomeshome.org, project of KPFA Radio. I’m Aaron Glantz.

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GLANTZ Joshua Casteel is a former US Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib. He arrived at the prison in June 2004, a few months after the prisoner abuse scandal broke. He told me there had already been changes in the way the prison was run.

CASTEEL "By the time I arrived at Abu Ghraib, every camera in the world was pointed at us. So things had changed radically. We were not allowed to touch people except in acts of reassurance -- like if we wanted to calm someone down, we might be able to touch their hand. We were also being watched by cameras and audio recording equipment and by visiting dignitaries on occasion. So (interrogations) were more structured around just talking in a room."

GLANTZ The main problem, Casteel says, was that over 90 percent of the people he interrogated were innocent -- simply caught up in large-scale military raids. Because the U.S. military rarely releases detainees, Casteel says he was forced to interrogate innocent prisoners again and again.

CASTEEL "I was constantly being asked, 'Why am I being held here? I want answers!'" Casteel said. "But that was my job. We were supposed to be finding answers to our questions, but we kept being put into situations that were incredibly puzzling because talking to people was like trying to get blood from a turnip. They were the ones that had a greater justification for the need to have answers."

GLANTZ The Washington Post reported this July that the U.S. military now holds about 22,000 security detainees in Iraq -- double the number of Iraqis incarcerated when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke three and a half years ago. Most of those detainees will be held indefinitely, will never be charged with any crime, and will not be allowed to see a lawyer.
Joshua Casteel left the military in 2005 after requesting and receiving a discharge as a conscientious objector. He's now a graduate student at the University of Iowa studying playwriting and non-fiction writing.
Ironically, he said, it was an interrogation of a self-described jihadist that caused him to leave the service.

CASTEEL “I had an interrogation with a 22-year-old Saudi Arabian who was very straightforward that he had come to Iraq to conduct jihad. We started having a conversation about religion and ethics and he told me that I was a very strange man who was a Christian but didn't follow the teachings of Jesus to love my enemy and pray for the persecuted. My nickname in my unit was 'priest' because I spent a lot of time in the chapel."
"So I had this moment with a man who was a jihadi and he was giving me a lesson on the sermon on the mount. That was about five months into my time in Iraq and I had already had about 100 interrogations and I was so weary of the whole process. I told him that I thought he was right and that there was a massive contradiction involved with me doing my job and being a Christian."
"I wanted to have a conversation with him about ethics and the cycle of vengeance and how idiotic it was that his people said it was okay for him to come and kill me and my people told me it was okay to kill him. Why is it that we can't find a different path together?"

GLANTZ Since then, Joshua Casteel has been working hard to encourage other Catholics to come out strongly against the war. He says that while Pope John Paul II opposed the invasion of Iraq, the Church has not done enough.

CASTEEL “The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the US Military Archdiocese, Archbishop Edwin O’Brian, the Pope, they all wrote letters to the President saying ‘the criteria for Just War has not been met. Then somehow, once the war was made, they backed off and said ‘follow your leaders.’ Catholics are 30 percent of the military. They’re equally 30 percent of Congress. The Vatican had a strong rebuke of the Iraq war but the Iraq war could not have happened were it not for Catholics. We’re no longer a migrant minority in this country and we’re incredibly powerful, but with that comes the temptation of taking 30 pieces of silver and not realizing when you’re turning Christ over to be crucified and this time Christ has turned up in the people of Iraqi bodies and it’s Iraq that’s getting crucified and it’s largely Christain America that’s allowed to be prosperous in the midst of it.”

GLANTZ In March 2007, Casteel traveled to Rome, where he met with Pope Benedict XVI.

CASTEEL “We were seeking pastoral and ecclesiastical guidance from the Holy See as to how to best address the issue in America, which at the core is an issue of spiritual formation and catechists that people don’t know the history of Catholic conscientious objectors, especially in America. And this is where the issue of nationalism is front and center. In the days after the US entered World War I, in opposition to Pope Benedict XVI, who had a peace plan for Europe, Cardinal Gibbons, the highest ranking Bishop in America at that time, wrote what was a really reverential letter to the President at that time talking about how Catholics will always step up to the plate to the call to arms in direct opposition to what was the will of the Holy See and the only explanation I have for that is the issue of nationalism which is trumping Catholic identity. In this country, Catholic Christians often don’t act as if their Catholic identity is their primary identity – that somehow it’s ok to closet your Christianity when the State tells you to and that’s not the history that Christianity hails from, it’s simply not the case. And so we wanted to convey the experiences of Catholics in the military and to seek guidance on how to best address this issue back in the States.

GLANTZ You’ve been listening to the “War Comes Home,” warcomeshome.org: a project of KPFA Radio.