Der Trihs has taken the baton in another thread.
Right, and knowing that you’re obliged as a soldier to follow orders means you need to think that much longer and harder about what you’re actually going to be doing as a soldier (going to Iraq) – as opposed to what you’re theoretically going to be doing (defending your country).
No sweat, and no offense taken. The way I wrote it certainly left it open to speculation that those were my thoughts and I was taking MD’s side.
Well, I know what he thinks, since I’ve read his posts before. Fuck him. Does he live in the US? If he had the balls his convictions call for he’d either be protesting in DC or he’d move to who-gives-a-fuck-where. He hasn’t taken a baton, he’s only whining and not doing anything about whats bugging him. Posting here doesn’t count as a revolutionary move.
I don’t know either, man, and I haven’t ever been in the military. All I can do is look at it and say, on the one hand, that I would probably go to Iraq (rather than try to desert) if I was in the armed forces, even though I would feel it was morally wrong. And on the other hand, I can picture things (e.g. My Lai) that I would never, ever do, regardless of orders or even if my commander was holding a gun to my head. Somewhere in between is that line. shrugs If I can’t put a finger on it, and I’m unlikely to ever be in that situation, then I’m going to be slow to judge others depending on what they choose to do in that situation.
Yes, I feel it’s very important for us to have a strong military, and no, we can’t have that without discipline and obedience. But when we, as humans, abdicate our individual judgment and morals in exchange for that discipline, it opens the door for evil to be done on a huge scale.
here’s the thing…say you joined the army and then some kind of crap happened like Iraq. You don’t have the luxury of saying “I morally object!”. They tell you to grab your stuff and report to this airfield at this time. You go. Thats it. The commander isn’t going to hold a gun to your head, he’s depending on you to do your job. (Though if you desert, there will be problems for you in the future. They may not actively search for you for very long, but once you get pulled over in traffic or something like that, they’ll be on you like white on rice) He’s not asking you to kill children or rape women. He just wants you to be on the plane and be there to support the mission he’s been given.
That mission is not the commanders decision. Yet people blame the troops for it. Its unfair and in a lot of ways childish. Its like saying “We enjoy the protection you provide, but you suck!”. Blame Bush and his cronies. Why should they NOT get this hostility when the men and women that serve the country do?
There’s a huge difference between an order like “board this airplane to Iraq” and “machine gun these civilians”. It is not even on the same continuum.
Of course every soldier has the obligation to disobey illegal orders. But deploying to Iraq is not immoral. Even if you think we shouldn’t be there, your presence as someone who thinks we shouldn’t be there is going to prevent the things you think we shouldn’t be doing. You can prevent your more idiotic compatriots from doing idiotic and/or horrible things. Your mere presence as a known person who won’t tolerate certain things means that certain things won’t happen while you’re around. You’re morally obliged to go, and morally obliged to serve as best you can, and that includes helping to enforce our laws against people who want to violate it, whether those are the enemy, or your superiors, peers, or underlings.
That’s right, I wasn’t. I’ll happily hypothetically kill billions if I was Superman, and I do want the US to lose in Iraq, but if that can happen without further loss of life, I’d be even happier.
That’s right too.
Done, I think
I’ve never said US soldiers had to desert, BTW, not even in that other pit thread. I said they had to refuse to deploy to Iraq. Sure, they’d land up in stockade, but it’s the morally right thing to do. And if enough people do it, well…
Read up on the South African End Conscription Campaign sometime. I know a few people who did gaol time rather than serve in an immoral war. If you ask me (to go back to the original thread) they are true heroes, superpowers or no.
I disagree
Not likely. Since one of the things you shouldn’t be doing is, you know,* being in Iraq*?
So they’ll do them behind your back - then kill off the witnesses so it doesn’t get back to you.
No, you’re morally obliged to resist going
The best way you can serve the US, and the world, is by refusing to go.
Why should your laws count for Iraqis?
You’re right, my mistake in missing the distiction between desertion and refusing to deploy.
Of course “laws” was a mistake in regards to insurgents. But look at it this way. So you’re an average guy wandering around Iraq. Just visiting. A tourist. And you see a guy with a suicide vest heading for a mosque. You happen to have a gun.
Do you shoot or not?
Do you have an obligation to use force to prevent someone from walking into a mosque and massacring men, women and children?
If you have an obligation to shoot someone heading for a mosque to blow up children, why wouldn’t a US soldier who happens to be in Iraq and who happens to have a gun also have that obligation?
I’d call the cops, personally. I have no obligation to shoot anyone - that’s one reason I don’t have, and won’t have, a gun. Because I believe in the rule of Law, not the Law of the Jungle.
MrDibble,
How is merely going to Iraq an immoral act? If you’re a medic and go, is that immoral. If you help your own wounded troops, is that the immoral aspect? If so, how about if you help Iraqis? Or how about the engineers and cooks, are they immoral? Or is it only those who carry rifles?
Let me also ask you this: what specifically is immoral about even a rifle-carrying soldier going to Iraq? If he kills bad guys, is that immoral? If so, how? If he kiils three suicide bombers on their way to blowing up a market, is that immoral? If some soldiers were able to kill those guys who drove the trucks into that school a couple of years ago, therby saving dozens of innocent children, is that immoral?
In fact, aside from the types of things that the army would prosecute soldiers for, what are the SPECIFIC moral acts that lead you to conclude that all U.S. soldiers in Iraq are immoral?
Granted thet there have been immoral actds committed by U.S. soldiers. But why is that a necessary component of their being? If you label all of them immoral, are you not giviing a pass of sorts to those who have clearly committed immoral acts?
Please try to address the specifics I raise.
The cops?
Excuse me, I understand that you used to live in a country where the cops were on the side of the bad guys, right? Where calling the cops could just as easily mean the cops would turn on you as help you?
In any case, calling the cops doesn’t solve your moral problem, because the cops are going to shoot the guy, that is, if they reach him before he sets off his suicide vest. The rule of law is in place, not for moral reasons, but for prudential reasons. The cops don’t have dispensation to use violence because they’re the cops. Calling the cops to shoot him is morally equivalent to shooting him yourself, and you know it. And of course, in Iraq the only “cops” around are American soldiers Are you going to help the invading American soldiers against this heroic insurgent?
It’s participating in the wrongful occupation of another country.
As part of the US occupation forces? Yes
Nope, that action is not, itself, immoral. I’ve changed my mind about that one in the last year or so. I think the Hippocratic Oath outweighs the aid-and-comfort-to-bad-people aspect.
That’d be great.
Yes. Ever hear the expression “Aid and comfort”?
No. There’s lots of blame to go around.
He’s participating in an immoral occupation?
Define “bad guy” - wanting to blow up US soldiers doesn’t equate to bad guy in my book, FYI. That’s a “good guy”. Moral points off for killing him.
How does he know they’re blowing up a market and not a military target?
Did he know what they were going to do ahead of time? Because otherwise it’s the same “what if” game.
They are occupying another country, wrongfully. I’ll skip over all the shit your troops get up to that they don’t get prosecuted for, like bombing weddings and sniping trash collectors. Just being there is wrong in-and-of itself.
Because the occupation is morally wrong.
Not in the slightest. Morality isn’t binary, nor is it a zero sum game. There’s enough around to mark all US occupation troops as immoral, while reserving much greater weight for Abu Gharib guards and rapist-murderers of 14 year-old girls.
The point of the exercise is to make clear that US occupation troops are in no way, shape or form, morally neutral or positive just by their presence.
I think I did.
Wait, I know this song, it’s called “What the FUCK does that have to do with anything!”. And no, I would still have called the cops for that sort of thing back in the day. I don’t approve of targetting civilians, even if it was MK doing it.
They don’t? I’m not sure I follow…
No, it isn’t. If I do it, I’m a vigilante. And I’d hope the cops would ask questions first, then shoot.
I thought there was an Iraqi police force, or who the hell is always getting blown up at recruiting stations?
I wouldn’t call the Americans.
You seem to think Iraq was fucked up by somebody else. The French, maybe?
So you’d let the guy go blow up the mosque rather than call American soldiers.
Nice.
Of course, you just endorsed mass murder in the other thread, so how exactly can you get upset about murder? You don’t think dropping an asteroid on a city is vigilanteeism? Or are you going to get a court order before you drop an asteroid on a city? What gives the cops and the courts and Iraqi insurgents the moral authority to use force, but not you or me or American soldiers? Your moral posturing is simply laughable. You don’t believe in vigilanteeism, yet you support irregulars shooting at American soldiers. What’s that if not vigilanteeism?
The answer is that the cops and the courts derive their moral authority to use force from us, the people. We delegate our natural right to use force to defend ourselves to the cops and the courts because we’ve come to see that we get better results that way. But a cop doesn’t have any more right to shoot a crazy man waving a gun than you or I do…it’s just that he’s trained to respond and will hopefully make better and safer decisions than you or I would.
You seem to have missed a key element of my post. As far as I can tell, every combat grunt in Iraq has to have either enlisted ro re-enlisted subsequent to March, 2003, so we should no longer have anyone over there who signed up to “defend our country” (or “to pay for college”) who did not know at the time they signed their papers that they were going to go to either Iraq of Afghanistan.
I am open to correction on that point.
In 2002, we had an entire military filled with people who had signed up to defend the countru or for whatever reason. They could not have known that the fools in Washington were going to deliberately lie their way into a wasteful and immoral war in March 2003. However, the terms of enlistment for those personnel, even the ones who have been backstabbed by the current Stop Loss program, should have, by now, had at least one opportunity to look at the world news and decide “that is not defending my country” and decline to sign the papers.
Mr. Dibble,
Okay, that was helpful. It helps me understand better where you draw the line and why. But here’s what’s troubling: on some of the questions I asked I your answers beg the question. You state that the soldiers sent to Iraq are immoral because 1) it’s an occupation and 2) an immoral one. Leaving aside number 1, are all occupations immoral? The obvious example that would suggest not was the U.S. occupation of Germany.
So, if not all occupations are immoral, what makes this particular one immoral? Is it immoral in concept? Or is it immoral because of the U.S.'s actual conduct there?
A few specifics:
Is that oath in particular the only oath that may save a soldier from a badge of immorality? How about chaplains? In your estimation are there any other soldiers who are excusable?
So, a soldier can go to Iraq and do something “great” by helping Iraqis? Is he still immoral?
How about if the engineers are rebuilding schools and infrastructure? How about if the cooks are feeding people whose homes have been destroyed, by either U.S. forces or Al Qaeda?
By bad guy I meant someone who would blow up innocent women and children.
Now you’re being disengenuous. You know full well that we could construct a situation where the known target would have been a market. You’ve argued in good faith up to now, please don’t start playing games.
Let’s make it a two-parter. In one scenario he knows the guy was heading for the school. In the other that information was not confirmed until after the fact. Either way, stopping a guy in Iraq with a truck load of explosives—unless you knew for certain that he was going to use them on U.S. soldiers—is a good thing, no? Just to clarify, the exception in that sentence reflects your position, not mine.
You keep saying that as if it’s a given—morally. But you haven’t proven that to be the case yet. And even if you do, you’re assuming that what may be an immoral decision made by higher ups is binding on people on down the line who did not and do not have all the information the President has, which, I might add, is why you may be able to label him so fairly.
Again, if you think that ALL occupations are immoral, show why. If it is just this one in particular, show why. Afterwards, build a case why people who were following orders and did not and do not have all the information are necessarily actiing immorally. You haven’t done any of these three things yet and they are central to your thesis. “They’re acting immoral because the war is immoral” doesn’t come close.Time to drop the mantra and step up to the plate, MrDibble.
Well, perhaps you should attempt to do that. “They’re acting immoral because the war is immoral” is an opinion based on an opinion AND is begging the question. Surely, if you are going to label someone as immoral you should be able to point to specific actions they’ve taken that so qualify them? This broad-brushing from you is not only fallacious, but immoral in itself.