Mother Jones

07/12/2025

But the emotionally grueling decision can come with a steep cost, from alienating military comrades and even family members to paying back tens of thousands of dollars for tuition and other military benefits.

Historically, the number of service members applying for conscientious objector status in the last quarter century from an all-volunteer force has been relatively low, with the Army seeing a dozen or fewer applications per year since 2019 and fewer than 75 in any year since 2001. By contrast, during the Vietnam War—the last US conflict to employ a conscripted force—some 170,000 men across multiple services were granted conscientious objector deferments, and about 61,000 in 1971 alone.

Volunteers who field calls from troops in moral quandaries say they recently experienced a surge that appears to be driven by another conflict: President Donald Trump’s contested order last month that sent 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests related to immigration enforcement operations.