"ATTENTION US MILITARY PERSONNEL": A Follow-up
A reader has pointed out his grave concerns regarding the advice in "ATTENTION US MILITARY PERSONNEL". I'd like to take a moment to address them.
The clear point of the original post is that every individual solider is responsible for his actions, orders or not, allowed or restricted. The World Court, nor, I suspect, many US military courts, would not find "I was just following orders" to be a Necessary and Sufficient defense, even if you protest the order within the chain of command. In those (thankfully rare) cases where violations of human dignity are so obvious, the original poster's point is that the only solution is to step outside of the regs, and submit to the penalties for insubordination, etc., over committing a potentially much worse crime. It's not a light step, but it may be the only moral step.
You might protest that, without military discipline, you don't have a military, and you'd be 100% correct. At the same time, if more soldiers were willing to stand up against clearly insane and illegal orders, we'd not have had the horrors of Abu Ghraib - horrors that those soldiers were prosecuted for taking part in, orders or not, protestations or not; we know that many of them have accused higher-ups of, at the very least, turning a blind eye to their activities. In the end, I'm not aware of whistle-blowing absolving you of any crimes that you've taken part in, in either military or civilian court. Your advice that soldiers must follow every order would be counter-indicative, in those circumstances.
The clear point of the original post is that every individual solider is responsible for his actions, orders or not, allowed or restricted. The World Court, nor, I suspect, many US military courts, would not find "I was just following orders" to be a Necessary and Sufficient defense, even if you protest the order within the chain of command. In those (thankfully rare) cases where violations of human dignity are so obvious, the original poster's point is that the only solution is to step outside of the regs, and submit to the penalties for insubordination, etc., over committing a potentially much worse crime. It's not a light step, but it may be the only moral step.
You might protest that, without military discipline, you don't have a military, and you'd be 100% correct. At the same time, if more soldiers were willing to stand up against clearly insane and illegal orders, we'd not have had the horrors of Abu Ghraib - horrors that those soldiers were prosecuted for taking part in, orders or not, protestations or not; we know that many of them have accused higher-ups of, at the very least, turning a blind eye to their activities. In the end, I'm not aware of whistle-blowing absolving you of any crimes that you've taken part in, in either military or civilian court. Your advice that soldiers must follow every order would be counter-indicative, in those circumstances.
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FTR I fully agree with you that the horrors of Abu Grhaib should never have occured. They've found through the trials and investigation that in act there were never any 'direct orders' they were 'assumed orders' and ' The CIA/NSA/Spec Ops' men want us to do this, type stuff, but in reality 99% of what happenned at Abu NEVER should have happenned, and deserves to be punished under the full extent of the law. Those actions demeaned every single honorable member of the services and the cover up of them was just as atrocious.
As we previously discussed in the other topics, there are set guidelines for 'refusing' or 'questioning' orders, this never occurred. It should also be said that those who were responsible for Abu Grhaib even at the smallest level, were all Reservists who'd been on extended tours. Its not much of a excuse, but unlike Active Duty military who undergo extensive day to day training Reservists don't focus on the Military aspect of their life through the same preparation.
There has also been psychological studies done in the late 70's ( its been so long I can't remember the actual name of the study) but the extent of it is, when you put people in a specific position they begin to take on the characteristics of that role. I.E. Take normal everyday people and put them in a position of "Guard" and they'll begin to get used to the power and asserting it over people and abuse it, put other normal everyday people in the position of "prisoner" and soon their morale and health begins to decline. Once you reverse the positions they go 180º and take the other role over.
While the U.S. Military isn't perfect, and being a soldier myself I can tell you that it isn't with all honesty, there are rules and guidelines set in place for all the above actions, and there is supposed to be psychological assistance, chaplain assistance, for those undergoing stress and trauma, unfortunately 90% of the time the burden is on the soldier to say "Hey, I've got a problem" and it tends to affect a persons career.
BTW, I fully agree with you that Whistleblowing when said illegal acts needs to occur, its also a RESPONSIBILITY of a soldier to do such, otherwise they themselves are liable for prosecution and punishment under the UCMJ.