Resisting the enemy as a PoW isn’t just about the damage it does to the enemy, it is also about the psychological effect on the prisoner him or herself. For a combat soldier, being captured can, I imagine, be a crushing mental experience, even without the inhumane conditions these men experienced. Maintaining one’s ability to spit in the face of one’s captors, to refuse to do what they want, to hamper them in any way possible, even if minor, might be, for some, essential to maintaining mental health. And if that involves some self inflicted physical harm, might not that be worth it in exchange for the mental benefits?
From what I can see, there is more than a small element of it being the only way people could maintain any degree of control over their own environment, when all other avenues had been taken away. Lots of people in many different situations do presumably self-destructive things. And they can be rational in a many different definitions of that word.
McCain (after several days of torture) signed documents confessing to war crimes (not that I blame him. I would have signed in triplicate before they ever laid a finger on me). I wonder if Stockdale would want to bring charges against him.
So if people just show up to crack you over the head, turn fire hoses on you, or sic dogs on you, then it is brave, but if they kidnap you, then you are foolish. Is that the distinction you want to hold?
But the trouble with the whole “sob like a little girl” strategy is that it singles you out among the captives as the weakest one. And so, instead of getting the captors to treat you nicely, it means they’re going to single you out as the prime candidate for further manipulation. What if they ordered you to assist in the “interrogation” of other POWs? Would you refuse? After all, your fellow prisoners are going to get interrogated anyway, so refusing to assist doesn’t help them.
They’re going to use you and use you, until you reach the point where your personal moral code would be violated by further cooperation, and then you’ll still have to make the choice whether to cooperate or face torture, except now it isn’t over some trivial matter like signing a piece of paper.
I would totally sell out my fellow captors. Better them than me. They volunteered to be there, so fuck them. The only thing I wouldn’t do is hurt my own family.
I doubt it. I doubt Dio would. He’s far too stubborn.
The specific case may be foreign to your understanding, Dio, but if you feel something is important, will you back down, even if it hurts you? If someone would hurt your wife if you wrote a letter, but would hurt you if you did not, would you write the letter? How long would you stop from writing the letter? How much could you take?
I don’t know if I could take what these men did, but that is the attitude they had.
Maybe Stockdale’s own words, grabbed from his Wiki article, will shed a bit of light on his motivation.
It is certainly possible to view that as a misguided belief about what constitutes character, but it appears to me that he adhered to a strongly held belief out of a sense of duty and leadership.
What if your kid gets beat up in school because his daddy over in Viet Nam is playing Hanoi Rose? What if you knew you’d spend 20 years in Leavenworth for torturing fellow soldiers?
Or turn it around. You’re with your unit in Viet Nam, and your Sergeant tells you to shoot a bunch of villagers. And he tells you that if you don’t, he’s gonna make your life a living hell. Do you sob like a little girl and massacre the villagers (after all, they aren’t your family)? After all, not killing those innocent women and children would result in some minor inconvenience to you, and killing them doesn’t harm anyone you actually care about. And if you don’t kill the villagers, Sarge is just gonna do it himself anyway. We’ve established that you don’t give a damn about anything other than the welfare of your family, so why not go ahead and shoot?
There’s also a personal benefit to resistance. It helps many POW’s psychologically to feel that they are still in control of some portion of their life because they are choosing not to cooperate with their captors. I think it’s likely that while the POW’s who actively resisted probably suffered the most in captivity they made the best recoveries after being released.
None of the pilots in the Hanoi Hilton were draftees. They were officers and pilots. You don’t draft officers. I don’t know the percentage of draftees with regards to other POWs.
It is also about your fellow soldiers. Not selling them out. Counting on them to not sell you out. It helps everyone survive. That is what the code of conduct is about.
From the intro to the CoC:
Hell no. It is the obligation of every soldier to follow the code of conduct. That is backed up by the UMCJ. If those named harmed their fellow captives by not following the CoC then they should have been prosecuted. I don’t know the actual circumstances. If they broke under torture then no they shouldn’t have been prosecuted. If they folded like Dio then yes they should. The CoC was written after reviewing the actions and circumstances of Korean war POWs. They were not ready to handle such conditions. Many didn’t survive and those that did were seriously fucked up. The CoC is not in place mainly to protect military secrets. The information that almost all prisoners have becomes outdated rather quickly. The main reason for the CoC is for the well being of the POWs themselves.
Dio after many threads hearing the same thing we all understand you don’t care about anything or anyone as long as it doesn’t effect you or your family. Why don’t you just put it in your signature and save everyone some time?
No. I wouldn’t. Even so, I think maybe a better analogy would be a bunch of street pervs grab you, and try to get you to tell them where you live, what time your wife is home, and where she changes her clothes, all so that they can set up across the street and peep at her, take pictures, and post them on the internet.
Sure, no one would be really hurt. The information you give them may or may not be useful to them. (Your wife is her own person, after all, with her own schedule, etc) But I still wouldn’t do it. Because in either case, it would betray values that I hold very dearly.
Of course, the irony is that in real life, Diogenes is such a collosal egotist that within five minutes of captivity he’d be screaming, “You’re not the boss of me!” and spitting broken teeth into the face of his interrogator.
He only says he’d cooperate with his captors because that’s his personal way of sticking it to The Man. Uncle Sam tells him not to cooperate? Fuck Uncle Sam sideways. But once Uncle Ho replaces Uncle Sam as The Man, Dio’s personal code would require that he stick it to Uncle Ho.
I hope that you would have shown enough strength of character to stay the fuck out of Vietnam in the first place. If you truly opposed the war, surely you would not have joined up. Nor taken the extra steps needed to qualify as a pilot.
For those who opposed the war, I believe that avoiding the draft was an honorable course. (Guys I knew faced that situation.) But some who avoided the draft–by whatever means–turned into Hawks years later. When they wrapped themselves in the flag & started another war…
I guss you never know unyil you’re in those situations, but I’m assuming I would behave in the most craven way possible. That’s not a moral argument or a calculated strategy, just a sober assessment of my own lack of spine. I have no faith that I could hold up to any torture at all.
ETA It’s not that I don’t CARE about anything but my family, it’s just that my family is the only thing that would give me the sack to stand up. I don’t lack compassion, I just lack character and courage.