Galen Beery was drafted during the Vietnam War and applied for and was granted Conscientious Objector status. During the war he worked with an organization called the International Voluntary Services in Washington, DC, and eventually went to Laos to assist with refugee resettlement. Because of his deep knowledge of Southeast Asia he spent most of his career working with refugees, directing resettlement programs, and acting as a translator. Galen is an historian and journalist and has spent many years researching and writing about CO history.
"I never thought about [Pacifism] as ideals and stuff like that. It was kind of an automatic way of thinking. I don't think I was gullible or anything. It was just the way I was born and raised. Somebody else may be born and raised another way. I sat down and wrote a letter to the Gospel Messenger once that said we're going to have problems until we start outlawing guns. And my friend, who then was the editor of the thing, he told me years later that he was raised in southern Virginia and everybody has guns. He said there were some Brethren that would automatically disagree with me. But they printed it anyway. I forgot about that until I ran into it recently.
"I think being in Iraq is one of the most foolish things any American president has done. Historically I think he's going to go down in history along with the late, great, lamented Colonel George Armstrong Custer. It's just terribly foolish."
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