Here is an update on the soldier who refused to go!

[Diamond]

The question is here, why should the majority cater to the needs of the minority when the minority wants to put lives in jeopardy for no good reason than to achieve a nonsensical goal that has no real merit?

Yeah! Like gay marriage, for example... "

[metadigital]

Should soliders be accountable for the orders they follow, meta? Yes or no.

 

Yes, he joined the Army after Iraq, but at the time the truth about the falsified intelligence reports were not known. If he knew the reports were false do you think he would have still joined? I don't think so. He joined on false pretenses set by the Bush administration.

It's irrelevant. He signed up. There is no back-out clause. You don't have a full set of citizens' "rights" as a soldier, you have orders and you must follow them or be court-martialled, which (in times of war and depending on the country) can punish the guilty by firing squad.

[Sand]

So, he should just follow orders that he is given no matter what those orders are?

[Calax]

so... what would you think if he were a conscript Meta?

[Walsingham]

so... what would you think if he were a conscript Meta?

 

I was wondering when we would get to that.

 

I believe it would depend on the circumstances of the conscription. I suppose that, legally speaking, if an act of the people's legislature were to bind by law certain individuals to adhere to military discipline that would be as binding as a personal subscription. However, some sort of Plymouth knock on the head and waking up at sea would not.

 

In the non-legal sense I would suggest that a conscript is far less bound to adhere to mliitary discipline. Which is exactly what we find.

 

In either case, committing war crimes is against international law. However, as we perhaps need to reiterate, an act of war, duly constituted by the elected head of state is NOT ILLEGAL in any domestic sense. Thus noone in military service can object.

[Sand]

So how can a soldier determine if the orders are against the law or not? What does he have to gauge it by? After all international law does not equal national law. If your country is doing something questionable, such as invading another nation that poises no threat, how can not be seen as not a illegal order compared to a legal order? How can one determine which one is legal and which one is not when it is the duty of the soldier to obey no matter what, right or wrong?

 

If he has no choice but to "just follow orders" he shouldn't be held accountable for war crimes.

Edited February 18, 2007 by Sand

[Walsingham]

The default setting is that orders are correct and legal.

 

An order being 'questionable' as you put it, does not equal illegality.

 

For the record, the attorney general has ruled that there are three circumstances under which invading a country is legal.

 

1) Direct imminent threat of attack by that country.

2) UN mandate

3) Intervention to prevent a humanitarian disaster - as was used quite cheerfully in the Balkans. *

 

Of these three, for some reason your president chose the first. Probably so he could invoke the 'clear and present danger' argument with Congress. It has subsequently proven stickier than anticipated.

 

Does this answer your question?

 

 

*By some strange coincidence Russia, France, and China didn't object to the Balkan intervention nearly so strenuously. Which I'm sure had nothing at all to do with economics.

[Sand]

Iraq was no threat and had no means to attack the US. This has been proven over and over and over again. There were no WMDs. Iraq had no way of even getting the WMDs to the US if they had them. Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda. Everything Bush has said about Iraq on how it was a threat was a lie. He lied to invade anothe country that was no threat whatsoever.

 

That makes it an illegal invasion.

[Walsingham]

Iraq was no threat and had no means to attack the US. This has been proven over and over and over again. There were no WMDs. Iraq had no way of even getting the WMDs to the US if they had them. Iraq had no ties to Al Qaeda. Everything Bush has said about Iraq on how it was a threat was a lie. He lied to invade anothe country that was no threat whatsoever.

 

That makes it an illegal invasion.

 

May I draw your attention to points 2 and 3? POint 2 coud be argued within reasonable doubt using the failure to comply with the earlier ceasefire. Point three cannot be argued with.

 

EDIT: Any ONE of the circumstances must be met. You don't need all three at once.

[Sand]

Then the UN should have approved and asked us to invade. They didn't.

[metadigital]

So, he should just follow orders that he is given no matter what those orders are?

Yes. The ONLY circumstance that allows a soldier to not follow orders is if they contravene the Geneva convention. So the soldiers in Abu Graib should have disobeyed orders to torture civilians.

[Sand]

They don't exactly tell you what the Geneva convention say is legal or not legal in boot camp so how is a soldier to know? They just drill into you that you are to follow orders no matter what and no questioning of those orders are allowed. So, with that in consideration the best course of action is not get into the situation of Abu Graib at all by not going to Iraq in the first place.

Edited February 18, 2007 by Sand

[Tale]

They don't exactly tell you what the Geneva convention say is legal or not legal in boot camp so how is a soldier to know? They just drill into you that you are to follow orders no matter what and no questioning of those orders are allowed.

You're not informed of most laws that exist, but that doesn't mean you can make up new ones.

[Sand]

Irrelevant Tale. If there are international laws that dictates what a soldier can and cannot do when occupying a foreign country such laws need to be readily available and our soldiers trained in obeying them to the letter. Our military does not do this, yet seeks to hold them accountable. A soldier cannot afford to second guess him or herself in the field. There are only 2 recourses. One) Train our soldiers in International Law in regards to the Geneva Convention or Two) Not place our soldiers in such positions of accountability in the first place.

[Guard Dog]

So, he should just follow orders that he is given no matter what those orders are?

Yes. The ONLY circumstance that allows a soldier to not follow orders is if they contravene the Geneva convention.

Or the UCMJ. Incidently, Iraq is not a Geneva signitory therefore not entitled to protections. We give them anyway though.

[Walsingham]

As a matter of fact in the UK we take the trouble to teach our serving men and women what the law actually says. Which can be ambitious given the average reading age of our infantrymen is around that of an eleven year old. I can't speak for the US, but I'd imagine they try too.

 

Returning to your original point, I'm a little aggrieved that you've ignored the third option. Should I write it again inbig red letters?

 

As for point two, your response is correct. Yes, in my opinion the duty of the security council was clearly to mandate military action given Iraqi noncompliance. However, as I've said on on numerous occasions Russian, French and Chinese oil/military interests dictated that they did not. *shrugs* That's just realpolitik. It's also why the UN isn't what I would call a uniformly fair judge of what is or isn't moral.

[Sand]

I don't really care about point 3 to tell the truth. Each nation needs to be responsible for their own actions and their own people. If the people of a nation doesn't like the government then it is their responsibility to change it, not a foreign power.

[Walsingham]

I don't really care about point 3 to tell the truth. Each nation needs to be responsible for their own actions and their own people. If the people of a nation doesn't like the government then it is their responsibility to change it, not a foreign power.

 

*pained look*

 

Whether you care about it is irrelevant. It is a legally recognised casus belli.

[Sand]

It shouldn't be.

[metadigital]

so... what would you think if he were a conscript Meta?

Makes no difference. The government REPRESENTS THE WILL OF THE SOCIETY. If the government decides that it needs all citizens to to bear arms for the collective good of the society, then any person(s) who renege against the state are illegals.

 

To quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau, I'll need to define his terms:

Chapter 4 The Limits of Sovereign Power

If the state, or the nation, is nothing other than an artificial person the life of which consists in the union of its members and if the most important of its cares is its preservation, it needs to have a universal and compelling power to move and dispose each part of each part in whatever manner is beneficial to the whole. Just as nature gives man an absolute power over all his limbs, the social pact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of sovereignty.

Now, what are citizens' responsibilities to this body politic (he terms the sovereign):

Chapter 7 The Sovereign

...

For every individual as a man may have a private will contrary to, or different from, the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest may speak with a very different voice from that of the public interest; his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which would be less painful for others than the payment is onerous is for him; and fancying that the artificial person which constitutes the state is a mere fictitious entity (since it is not a man), he might seek to enjoy the rights of the citizen without doing the duties of a subject. The growth of this kind of injustice would bring about the ruin of the body politic.

So the state would not survive long unless it is built on robust and equal membership of all members to form a common agreement.

 

What is this common agreement? Well, Rousseau illustrated how people might live together, under the only equitable basis, the social contract:

Chapter 6 The Social Pact

...

'How to find a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each person with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remains as free as before.'

The freedom he defines cleverly (see below), and further explains the difference:

Chapter 8 Civil Society

The passing from the state of nature to the civil society produces a remarkable change in a man; it puts justice as a rule of conduct in the place of instinct, and gives his actions the moral quality they previously lacked.

 

... We must clearly distinguish between natural liberty, which has no limit but the physical power of the individual concerned, and civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and we must distinguish also between possession, which is based only of force or 'the right of first occupant', and property, which must rest on legal title.

 

We might also add that man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes the man master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom.

Now, any contract has an exit clause, and that has conditions:

Chapter 18 Means of Preventing the Usurpation of Government

... Grotius indeed thinks that each citizen may renounce his membership of the state, and recover his natural liberty and his goods on withdrawing from the country.*

 

*It being understood that none may leave the country to evade his duty, or avoid saving his country when it needs him. In such a case flight would be criminal and punishable; it would not be withdrawal but desertion.

Basically, using the duty of soldiership as a political weapon is not appropriate (much less fit for purpose).

 

If you don't like the government policy, make them change it through the political system. Otherwise you will just destroy the society.

[Walsingham]

It shouldn't be.

 

That's your prerogative to disagree. It does, however, mean that even if our soldiers WERE supposed to decide on their own what was and wasn't legal, this chap would be sent down.

[alanschu]

Irrelevant Tale

 

I thought it seemed quite relevant.

[Tale]

Irrelevant Tale. If there are international laws that dictates what a soldier can and cannot do when occupying a foreign country such laws need to be readily available and our soldiers trained in obeying them to the letter. Our military does not do this, yet seeks to hold them accountable. A soldier cannot afford to second guess him or herself in the field. There are only 2 recourses. One) Train our soldiers in International Law in regards to the Geneva Convention or Two) Not place our soldiers in such positions of accountability in the first place.

It's not irrelevant at all. Ignorance of the law is not considered an excuse in any court in the world.

[Calax]

so... what would you think if he were a conscript Meta?

Makes no difference. The government REPRESENTS THE WILL OF THE SOCIETY. If the government decides that it needs all citizens to to bear arms for the collective good of the society, then any person(s) who renege against the state are illegals.

 

To quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau, I'll need to define his terms:

Chapter 4 The Limits of Sovereign Power

If the state, or the nation, is nothing other than an artificial person the life of which consists in the union of its members and if the most important of its cares is its preservation, it needs to have a universal and compelling power to move and dispose each part of each part in whatever manner is beneficial to the whole. Just as nature gives man an absolute power over all his limbs, the social pact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of sovereignty.

Now, what are citizens' responsibilities to this body politic (he terms the sovereign):

Chapter 7 The Sovereign

...

For every individual as a man may have a private will contrary to, or different from, the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest may speak with a very different voice from that of the public interest; his absolute and naturally independent existence may make him regard what he owes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which would be less painful for others than the payment is onerous is for him; and fancying that the artificial person which constitutes the state is a mere fictitious entity (since it is not a man), he might seek to enjoy the rights of the citizen without doing the duties of a subject. The growth of this kind of injustice would bring about the ruin of the body politic.

So the state would not survive long unless it is built on robust and equal membership of all members to form a common agreement.

 

What is this common agreement? Well, Rousseau illustrated how people might live together, under the only equitable basis, the social contract:

Chapter 6 The Social Pact

...

'How to find a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each person with the collective force of all, and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remains as free as before.'

The freedom he defines cleverly (see below), and further explains the difference:

Chapter 8 Civil Society

The passing from the state of nature to the civil society produces a remarkable change in a man; it puts justice as a rule of conduct in the place of instinct, and gives his actions the moral quality they previously lacked.

 

... We must clearly distinguish between natural liberty, which has no limit but the physical power of the individual concerned, and civil liberty, which is limited by the general will; and we must distinguish also between possession, which is based only of force or 'the right of first occupant', and property, which must rest on legal title.

 

We might also add that man acquires with civil society, moral freedom, which alone makes the man master of himself; for to be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom.

Now, any contract has an exit clause, and that has conditions:

Chapter 18 Means of Preventing the Usurpation of Government

... Grotius indeed thinks that each citizen may renounce his membership of the state, and recover his natural liberty and his goods on withdrawing from the country.*

 

*It being understood that none may leave the country to evade his duty, or avoid saving his country when it needs him. In such a case flight would be criminal and punishable; it would not be withdrawal but desertion.

Basically, using the duty of soldiership as a political weapon is not appropriate (much less fit for purpose).

 

If you don't like the government policy, make them change it through the political system. Otherwise you will just destroy the society.

Well what I meant was that you seemed to have a fairly large beef with the fact that he joined VOLUNTAIRLY then decided that the war was illegal and refused.

 

Now if you were to draft an 18 year old into a war he REALLY didn't want to go into and then he said no... I think you'd be on the boy's side rather than the nations.

 

I personally never EVER asked to be made a citizen of the US, nor am I a proud member. BUT I still need work, so what am i supposed to do?

 

besides, you still didn't answer my question about how the tyrrany of the majority affects the presidential election process.

[Sand]

It isn't about being ignorant of the law, but the mental training that is conducted to ensure that orders are obeyed without question.