Feeling immensely grateful to read the story of one who saw through the world's insistence on might makes right, to embrace a non-violent stance, as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. I've long now wondered how such followers can not be pacifist. One person said in the following discussion what I believe...that is to take another's life is the height of egocentricity and about as far one can get from what a Christian can choose in good conscience. However, I've never been put to the test...which ultimately would be to take another's life in defense of someone I love. Thanks, to the Smithsonian for publishing this very significant story of one who's eyes and heart were opened by what he experienced and his mind convinced him that militarism is usually if not always anti-life, & a very serious idol, no matter who or for what reason. The insidiousness and seduction of military-trained establishment to turn any perceived threat to how a particular nation wants to live into the enemy to be destroyed is something to question and resist. Bob Dylan's song, "With God on our Side" said it so well!!! I'm grateful to have married a man who had in 1961 right out of earning his B.A., during the Berlin Wall crisis, been drafted into the U.S. Army, where during bayonet practice of basic training, became completely convinced he could not serve in combat, and fortunately since the U.S. wasn't at war, was able to achieve Conscientious Objector status, given the support of adults who'd known him well enough to verify his integrity and sincerity. At least he wasn't exposed to the horrific violent actions far too many military persons agreed to participate in,resulting in PTSD or premature death from such polluted air as killed Casteel!

It was Casteel's empathy that made him such an effective interrogator, while at the same time making him suffer by sympathy with the suffering of his subjects. When I started reading this article, I was expecting it to conclude by his being driven to suicide by PTSD. May the Lord rest his gentle soul, and offer solace to his grieving mother.

Joshua died for the sins of this lying, warmongering government. Thanks for the story!

I started reading this story, and had a feeling that it wasn't going to end well.
I was surprised at how it did end.

Sad how people like Joshua have to die, yet there are so many less moral people who have the privilege of life.

The ramifications of the decisions to torture continue to be felt and I feel the reckoning on this side of the divide is only starting to show. I made portraits of some of the innocent Iraqis who were victims of the flawed strategy: https://chrisbartlettstudio... Joshua was a hero and a patriot to stand up for what he believed.

This story must be spread far and wide to illustrate the savagery and futility of war. This beautiful man's story is an inspiration. He is surely up there with the angels.

I attempt here to avoid cliche or rant as I ponder what I've read. Attempting myself to follow Jesus Christ in the midst of what Kierkegaard called Christendom - his culture and our culture's Christendom "a Christianity without Christ" - it is profound to read someone's journey *with* Christ through Christendom's garbage dump. I can only thank Joshua Casteel, his mother Kristi, and his biographer here for this tear-inducing and painfully edifying portrait of faith's birth and growth in most inhospitable circumstances.

Beautiful man, beautiful story. I wish there were more like him.

As a Hindu who loves to study the teachings of the Christ, I read this story with fascination. It is so well written, the talent and heart of the writer is so clearly visible.

The story of this young man is so heartening as well as heart breaking. His sincerity, clarity and purity in the pursuit of his religion's teachings is uncommon in today's world. Though he was against war, he accepted the call to service, believing his participation would serve all sides better than if people with lesser values did it. He did not last long, and had to pay with his life eventually, but his life was of great value and will remain to be of value.

There were a number of oddities that stood out for me in the story. First, the talk about patriotism. Is patriotism really something to value? What is patriotism if not the feeling that one group of people are superior to another? For any man who believes his nation is the purest, with the greatest ideals, the greatest achievements, one can easily bring about references to less pure, lesser ideals, indeed great harm done by others of his own nation. And does patriotism not deal a blow to the idea that humanity is one? For a true patriot, the symbol of his patriotism is his faith, not his flag!

Then the fact of his reaching West Point, that too struck me as so strange! Did the young man not know by then that he would be a misfit there? Is patriotism narrowly and solely defined in the US as serving in the military? And is West Point so weak in its admissions, that it cannot conduct reference checks on its candidates?

But the weakest part of the story was the conversation with the Saudi Islamist? To me, the greatest teaching of Christianity is the passage- 'But I tell you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you. And pray for those that despitefully use you, and persecute you'. I struggle daily to understand this and apply this in my own life. So I am unable to understand, how the Saudi man of religion can refer to this, and still keep the option of harming the other, though the other may have given him reason to hate him. True, he was referring to an article of his interrogator's faith, but surely he valued it if he used it as an argument. Or was it just a game of the mind between the two men?

Bala said:"What is patriotism if not the feeling that one group of people are superior to another?' I think there are different connotations of "patriotism". The dictionary states: "Devotion to and vigorous support of one's country." I suppose that doesn't really fit for me. For me, I have a devotion to the Constitution and to what it stands for, and not any sense of a group of people or a nation of people being superior to another. I feel I am patriotic without that feeling of superiority over others.

Believing propaganda can be fatal.

This is a powerful story. Joshua Casteel was a good man who struggled to make sense of his faith, his army, his country, and his world.

I don't doubt that Casteel's illness was related to the war. I served 20 years in the Army, and I had friends and colleagues come back from the first Gulf War with strange medical issues. Whether it was from the pollution of burning oil fields, or the dust of depleted-uranium penetrators in high-velocity amor-piercing rounds, or something else, there were too many of them for it to be just coincidental. I have no doubt that at high levels of the armed forces there is information about this that has been covered up, just as there was about Agent Orange in Vietnam.

The article would be better if there weren't niggling military errors. The "military-issue" footlocker and its contents is an example. To the best of my knowledge, "the military"--at least the Army--doesn't issue footlockers. I imagine that was his footlocker at West Point, which is not the Army. The white hat in the footlocker is a West Point--not Army--dress hat.

Also, what Joshua Casteel experienced is not necessarily what other soldiers experienced. His small slice of the war was awful, but it wasn't universal. It's never all bad. Or all good, for that matter.

Amazing to read such a spiritually powerful story in a non-religious, secular magazine. It is a miracle that this kind of story made it into the Smithsonian. In an increasingly shrinking, market driven, shallow thinking mainstream media, quality, vision, depth, and scholarship are painfully lacking. Thankfully, the Smithsonian magazine continues to practice the founding vision of the Smithsonian Institution. The many buildings in D.C. and Northern Virginia, and its public presence in the nation as a public treasure still serves as a widely respected beacon of quality education and truthfulness when most of America's traditions and institutions are under assault daily. The Smithsonian and magazine are still deeply admired by the nation. It continues to reflect the highest values of our country. Thank you . . . And often public treasures save lives. For this 12 year old boy from a fine, poor, white trash pedigree living in nearby Northern, VA, taking the bus with my little sister in tow to wander through the great halls of mystery and wonder in the nation's greatest attic was a godsend! We were fleeing a wretched, impoverished PTSD producing existence in D.C., nearby McLean, Manassas Park, Vienna, Falls Church, and Tysons Corner before my damaged, wretched parents dragged us to Michigan after countless evictions, foster homes and orphanages. The Smithsonian planted seeds in me that blossomed into hope. It gave me a thirst for more. Eventually I became a public high school history teacher/debate coach reaching out to other lost souls, a newspaper journalist, and a museum archivist later in life. This was after years of mindless jobs and grueling factory work. For millions of us growing up as throwaways, free, quality public institutions can often serve as recycling stations keeping us off the streets.

This guy was a weirdo from the time he was a young boy and a CO serving in a war zone. He should have never been cleared to work in a position where men have to have a strong desire to protect their nation from terrorists and they are willing to do what is required to that end.

The grief and emotional and physical pain that is engendered by war is impossible to describe fully. This terrible story is just one of many. The US has been responsible for the deaths of millions, not from existential defensive wars, but from discretionary wars started by America for its own geopolitical purposes. The only way people can heal and stop the evil is to act for peace, Do whatever you can to keep war, a terrible idea and not a reality. First and foremost do not lend your body to the state to use as a weapon against other peoples and nations!

We were at Abu at the same time. I had been a young Marine in Viet Nam and then an old Soldier in Iraq. I was a CI analyst who worked with the information gathered during the interrogations. Didn't know him and didn't share his struggles. But my heart goes out to him and others like him. Soldiering isn't for everyone.

The individual pursuit of happiness, and in this context, the search for salvation, for eternal individual happiness, is held to be a self-evident truth in the individualist US, but countries like Iraq are built on communities. Americans in particular appear not to know that defining this right in strictly individualist terms is not acceptable to the Iraqis’ duties to his community. You can no more transplant religion than you can transplant Democracy. This man was a good man, but many Iraqis suffered dreadfully on his road to Damascus . Outsiders [I’m Irish] do not understand the American/colonial impulse to proselytise, to improve ‘backward’ civilisations, and do not see how spilling a drop of Iraqi blood can justify what they see as US arrogance.

To your last point, the U.S. government went into Iraq in 2003 in the belief that it would not be enough to topple Saddam Hussein. We couldn't just break Iraq and leave it a mess. As Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "If you break it, you have to fix it."

As for "U.S. arrogance," maybe that's a result of spending all the decades since World War II carrying the burden of defense for Western civilization.

As a retired interrogator, I know about the conflicts he faced as far as that period of his life. Both training and an on-going assessment systems available to professionals in this field failed him. I can not determine from the article whether he consciously rejected help due to his faith or whether his supervisors were incompetent and wrote him off because he was unique and did not fit into preconceived templates that allowed untrained supervisors to fill management positions for which they were unsuited. The physical degeneration and death of this complex man may have been hastened by the unfortunate and possibly deadly assignments given to him while waiting for final disposition of his conscientious objector case. His case may join other veteran claims into the far future. I know how that works because of my inclusion in a class action related to Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. The beat goes on.

I read this with great sadness. My eyes were drawn to the article because of a shared military profession. There is so much complexity to this story; so many causes, reasons, and excuses for "what happened?" that commentary about this man's story will be around for a long time.

My compliments to Kristi and her continuing work in honoring her son's life.

Thank you for sharing this good man's story with the world.

This is an extremely important story to be shared..... widely...

peace now!

Thanks... Jesus lives

The journey makes the reader a witness to the life of a very young humanitarian and the intense complex suffering inflicted so casually by war. Mizan
Nunes