It is an act of the highest honor because our soldiers have voluntarily placed themselves to stand in the most horrible of circumstances for us. You cannot have a a truly independent nation without a military and you cannot have democracy without civilian control of that military. When the civilian leadership that we elected orders the military to go do something, they do it. It is not for them to judge the moral righteousness of the cause. That is for us to do. If there is a moral failure here, it is ours.
Of course, and soldiers should know that when they enlist. They should know that, historically, the military has been ordered to do some pretty dicey stuff, and not just once or twice. Hence what I said about people exercising their moral agency at the time they enlist, or before they’re deployed.
Where do we get this idea that morality applies to everyone except the soldier?
What we, Quimo Sabe? I was fully informed prior to and during my military service that morality does apply to the Soldier. And also to the Sailor, the Airman, the Marine, and the Coast Guardsman.
Yeah, but that kind of morality is like “don’t fraternize with the enlisted men.” Supposing you’re an officer, of course.
It’s the same morality as “Professor, don’t be diddling any of your students. That creates the appearance of favoritism and/or coercion.”
Another part of the morality applied to the military is, “Don’t follow unlawful orders.”
And historically, the military has saved us quite a few times. But even within conflicts that most of us believe had to be fought, there were battles in which things happened which would make most of us ill.
Morality does apply to a soldier, but a soldier can only do so much to enforce that morality. When an ambush is sprung within a town, bullets and shrapnel do not care who they hit. There is no way to fight enemy combatants without endangering nearby civilians.
You cannot you have a military in which soldiers do not follow the orders of the civilian leadership. If every order is up for debate by every soldier than you will not have a military, you will have a mob.
There are decisions made by soldiers. Each soldier must decide whether to shoot or not shoot and must live with the consequences of that action be it the loss of a squadmate or the killing of a civilian. But the larger decisions, whether to invade or not to invade, must be made by our elected government. Otherwise you have the military deciding our foreign policy and that is a very bad precident to set.
There’s this great big circle, and if you go far enough right, you find Fred Phelps, and if you go far enough left, you run into Der Trihs. The funny thing is, they’re standing right next to each other, protesting a soldier’s funeral.
So if I support Iraq war, I’m an idiot? And if Der Trihs opposes any war he is also an idiot? And where does it put you? What do you stand for? That’s right, you stand for nothing, you useless waste of genetic debree.
Der Trihs is extremely dogmatic but at least logical and consistent. The reason we are going around the world and,- yes-killing people (for whichever reason), is because we have the best Military. “Imagine, all the people” would refuse to enlist? We wouldn’t be killing anybody, of course.
(Of course, somebody would be killing us, but that’s besides…)
Exactly. As a soldier, you have to be okay with killing civilians. And if the cause is dodgy – which is what Der Trihs is saying – then you’re blamable for willingly participating. I’ll repeat what I said in my first post: if you don’t believe in killing civilians for the cause, then it’s better and more honorable to take the court martial, if you can’t get conscientious objector status. But we’ve been indocrinated to believe that it’s better to shut up and kill civilians than to take a dishonorable discharge. That’s what I’m complaining about. We accept without reservation every contention that the military makes about itself – that it’s good, noble, operating in self-defense, trying to spare civilians, doing what it has to, etc., etc. Every soldier a hero, don’t you know. And meanwhile, every discreditable action is swept under the rug, attached to no one, or blamed on some scapegoat – Lynndie England, William Calley, etc.
We’ve become a culture that puts the military on a pedestal. Take the Vietnam vets. Reviled in some quarters after the war, it has now become the norm to lionize them – on the Left as well as the Right, and everywhere in the middle – and honor them for their service. Well, you’ve got a million or so (because who’s counting?) dead civilians in Indochina from that war, and suddenly no one on our side is to blame. Because heroes don’t kill civilians by the boatload, do they?
But that’s when you get when you insist on the non-culpability of everyone who enlists.
The vast majority of soldiers do not kill civilians by the boatload. Most don’t even get a chance to fire their weapons in combat. Is it morally right for a soldier to refuse to deploy and then later learn that his unit was tasked with security for food distribution? If a war is unjustified is then every mission in that war also unjustified?
Having created a mess in Iraq, is the moral thing to do to abandon the Iraqis to the chaos? Isn’t this the sort of decision our civilian government should make and not our military?
And when civilians* do *get killed by the boatload? “Oh, not me, not me!” Or else the Nuremberg defense.
No, but the vast majority of missions lose their justification. Especially where the missions involve killing people. And any mission that involves a non-negligible chance of killing a civilian in an unjustified war is unjustified, I believe, and among teh most unethical acts in which a person may engage.
Daniel
To magellan re the claims of protestors spitting on Vietnam vets:
To clarify, what I was describing as apparent urban legend was what is repeated confidently as fact on a frequent basis, that it was a common/widespread experience for returning vets in uniform to be spat on by protestors.
tomndebb said -
“The testimonies regarding beatings by angered vets (both by the vets and their victims) have similarly been on the order of two or three individuals having a brief encounter that would not have made the news.” -
This hardly meets the criterion for solid documentation, even acknowledging the likelihood that some vets got into arguments that turned physical with people who were anti-war. I’ve never even seen a police report that established the truth of a “spitting” claim in an isolated instance. All we have is a widely repeated story that either seeks to show how badly Vietnam vets were treated, or to indicate how loathsome antiwar protestors were. It’s the latter motive that bothers me most, especially in the hands of people who want to revise history to show that we would have won the war if not for unpatriotic people at home (sound familiar in an Iraq-esque way?).
It’s also interesting that the VIetnam Veterans Against The War (to whose site I linked) doesn’t buy the story of the spitting epidemic either.
Of course, this little sidebar does not change the fact that Der Trihs is an ass. Thoughtless blanket denunciations of the military only damage the cause that one alleges to support.
Ya know, every once in a while, I wish there were a draft so that some people could be compelled to walk in someone else’s shoes for a year before they talk about how easy it would be for soldiers to mill around, play philopher, and come up with their own idea of whether they wish to serve on this mission or that one.
And I’d love to see what these folks would think if they were all gung-ho to go right some injustice somewhere in the world, only to have half of their fellow troops leave them in the lurch because they didn’t think that the mission was the right thing to do. I can close my eyes and see some kind-hearted loadmaster readying to drop humanitarian rations in war-torn Sudan, but instead he’s just sitting on the ramp in a C-17 aircraft, because the pilots decided that it was against their own moral codes to intervene in the internal affairs of another country. Ah, if only all military orders were merely military suggestions…
Wha? I’m honestly mouth breathing with this one. I’m going to try and follow you on this. I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but most soldiers do not want to, or are even okay with the killing of civilians. Is an ordnance technician expected to not load bombs on an F16 because those bombs may get dropped on civilians? He does not decide where those bombs go. The leadership picks the targets, and the pilot deploys the weapons. This guy is just trying to do his job.
Now, if the pilot sees a bunch of kids out and playing around the target, and still chooses to destroy it, I have a problem. I think the majority of the American people would too. I don’t see this flagrant disregard for civilian life you’re speaking of in the attitude of the American people. I do agree that the media far underplays it, but I don’t think that individual Americans don’t care.
I believe the vast majority of soldiers and marines on patrol will do everything in their power to not injure or endanger civilians. I don’t believe that your average PFC will shoot at things that don’t have the potential to shoot back. Unfortunately those who are opposing our military as a combatant seldom make that distinction. Anyone ever stop to see who has killed more civilians, us or them?
Thanks to many factors, it is becoming increasingly difficult to cover up any sort of wrong doings by the military. This is a good thing. Accountability is at an all time high, and it is rising higher still.
Are you doing this on purpose or are you actually so stupid that you really don’t realize that the so-called Nuremburg defense was employed by people who were actively doing the very things to cause the deaths of millions of people.
And yet, as I’ll repeat ad infinitum, civilians get killed, in the thousands or the hundreds of thousands. By our people in uniform. And it’s been that way for a long time. What you’re focusing on is deniability – “Well, we didn’t see them, so we don’t feel accountable for killing them.” Out of sight, out of mind, in other words.
Accidentally killing civilians.
No. It is NOT for the soldier to evaluate the morality of the cause. He is there to follow orders and to weigh the morality of his actions against the rules of warfare and the U.S. code of military conduct. Plus, he will not know everything that congress and the White House knows, so he doesn’t have the required information. Never miind turning every batallion into a debating team.
NO. It is not for the soldier to judge the cause. It is for you and I and the people we represent. The soldier is there to carry out our wishes. Or not.
Now, any soldier is completely free to disobey any order, and there are channels available for him to do that. There are also consequences.
In today’s warfare, intentionally killing civilians is never the goal of a soldier. I believe it is also a crime. (Perhaps Monty or someone else who is in the service can share their knowledge on the issue).
And what would you have us do? Assume the opposite? It seems to me very logical for us to assume them innocent until proven guilty of transgression. The fact that inexplicably seems to elude you is that OUR military nedds OUR support. Do you prefer that we have a military and NOT support it? That is completely asinine.
Now this is one thing we might agree on. Every soldier is brave, patriotic, and couageous. But many of them will never be put into a situation where there actions will rise to the level of heroic.
No. When crimes are commited people go to jail.
I will say the the Vietnam vets got the rawest deal any American soldier ever got. They were over in those hellish jungles held on a leash, prevented from doing what was necessary to win the war. In the meantime, more and more soldiers got killed and maimed taking the same hill again and again, only to be pulled back so they could be asked to take it again a few weeks later.
Then you had Fonda and her "enlightened " crowd of the day giving aid and comfort to the enemy and prolonging the war further, not to mention a certain someone who spat on his supposed brothers in arms and told tall tales of the horrors that our honorable young men were supposedly committing willy nilly.
Then they come back and what do they get. No parades. Not the respectful welcome home that their fathers and grandfathers had received. But instead, scorn, ridicule, and, thanks to a certain someone, the label of baby-killer.
Yes, the war ruined many lives. But that is a fact of war. I ask you how many more lives were ruined at home, due to the contemp that was exhibited toward returning soldiers. Imagine, being it the jungles of Vietnam dreaming of coming home, and then you do, only to find people looking down there smug noses at you.
We owe the men and women who served in Vietnam a debt, with interest. There is nothing we can do now that will make up for the gross injustice these people suffered due to the contorted, ignorant, naive, holier-than-thou mutterings of people like Fonda and a certain someone.
I would think the we all—even you and der shit—would not want to commit the same mistake again.
So you want those who enlist to be culpable, yet when they are held accountable you claim that things are being swept under the rug or that people are being used as scapegoats. Make up your mind.
Look. You simply haven’t thought this through. You argument leads to NO military. Think about what the consequences—intended and unintended—of the world you describe. There would be NO military that could do what we need it to do when we need it to do it. And if you you haven’t noticed, there are people who would like to cause us great harm.
“Nuremberg Defense: a legal defense that essentially states that the defendant was ‘only following orders’ and is therefore not responsible for his crimes.” Quoted from Wikipedia. This is the sense in which I am using it – the ordinary sense, I might add.
Magellan, a million Indochinese civilians dead at our hands. Enough said.