So what ? We aren’t talking about flipping burgers, we are talking about killing people. And I personally am talking about morality, not the law; the law in such matters is hopelessly corrupted anyway. Of course they legally have to do whatever they are ordered to do, including killing innocents. The people who write those laws are the same ones who give the orders to kill those innocents in the first place.
No, they do not. They can desert, they can refuse to obey orders - neither of which is nearly as bad for them as the results of obeying orders is for others. Any soldier who kills in a cause he doesn’t believe in is a murderer, as are quite a few who for a cause they do believe in.
A tricky one. As a Brit I would have been a conscript and had no choice in the matter apart from deserting. Compared to the other really squalid things the British Army was up to in those times Korea looks pretty clean. It was authorised by the UN and unlike Vietnam it was the North and the Soviets who broke agreements and escalated border conflicts into a full scale civil war.
I would have objected strenuously to the sheer incompetence with which it was fought.
I’m by no means a pacifict, or anti-mlitary. I just object most strenuously to being lied to, being fed to a war that is unnecessary or led by stupid people using risible or barbarian tactics once I get there.
War should be a last resort, not the tool near the top of the box like it seems to be nowadays.
tagos, the grandfather I still have is Republican. He says that he realized they were going to lose when, four days into the uprising, every naval officer in the Republican Navy was murdered by the sailors.
Yes. The first shots in the fight against fascism and defending an elected progressive government. As just as cause as you could get in those dreadful times.
O…K… if you can consider “just” a cause where anybody who’s in charge of anything is promptly considered an adequate target, even those on your own side, then yes, I guess that was a just cause.
I thought you just had the usual oversimplistic, romanticized version of the 6th Carlista War as so many foreigners. Guess not.
Wars are messy horrible things and people are brutal and stupid but when one side are wearing jackboots and are using them to trample over an elected government and reverse progressive social reforms then the choice of sides is clear to me.
From a different perspective, I wish I could have joined the Air Force when I was an appropriate age. (Family’s branch. Grandpa was AAF, dad was AF) I’m not in physical condition to do so, and was less so then. (Asthma, blown knees, colorblind, etcetera) It would have been good for me, personally, and I think I would have been a better person for it, war on or not.
I think very few soldiers under fire are thinking about democracy, or UN resolution #1205. They are, at that moment, only trying to keep themselves and their buddies alive by whatever means possible. So, they really, really believe in their cause.
Cute, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the larger cause that makes what they are doing moral or not. They don’t spend most of their time under fire anyway.
No. I think that under such circumstances, the morally correct thing to do would be not to enlist (although I don’t know about trying to avoid things afterward). I feel that the sentiment that it’s your responsibility to let your country continue to fight for things you believe in has generally lead to nothing but pain.
It might be morally and otherwise appropriate, at such a time, to enlist now and hope to survive the war, so you can acquire the vital military skills that might be useful in a revolution later.
