"Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, New York City, May 31, 1954
This would never happen, of course. But let's just say the United States invades a sovereign nation because the oil-rich country in question is hiding weapons of mass destruction. Its cache of WMD is said to be an imminent threat to the United States and its allies (read: Israel). If we don't strike first then the last thing Americans could see is a mushroom cloud overhead, similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And as Washington knows, mushroom clouds signal the death of tens of thousands of civilians.
So at the urging of a New England-bred president with a native Texan swagger, Congress blesses the invasion despite loud objections from the world and the U.N. The ensuing conflict becomes a bloodbath best not viewed by our newest high-def TVs. Untold numbers of civilians are killed. Not ours, mind you. Theirs. Tens of thousands of working-class folk die, many in gruesome scenes; so many dead that the United States doesn't bother counting. Those who survive aren't only shocked and awed by the invasion, they are traumatized and/or wounded and/or orphaned and/or unemployed.
But, hey, war is ugly. Even I know that, and I'm sitting in a recliner with a laptop. Then -- and here's the twist to this Clancy plot -- the U.S. government is mistaken about caches of WMD. Let's say the threat turns out to not be exactly as it was packaged and sold. Soldiers and politicians were duped. But since we're already there, might as well finish the job.
See the twist? The protagonist becomes the antagonist. It would be cliche if it weren't so real -- real, at least, in the minds of many of the soldiers ordered to kill-kill-kill in this wrongheaded war. They signed up to defend the United States, not to invade and occupy its political enemies, the enemies of its allies and the perceived enemies of the American way -- be it the way of Wall Street and/or Washington.
This Sunday, March 21, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at The Riverside Church in New York City, the Truth Commission on Conscience in War will hold a public hearing on the moral criteria of "just war" and the international agreements on the proper conduct of war, e.g., the Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg Principles. Testimony from war veterans and religious leaders will explore, among other things, current-day logic and law as it applies to Conscientious Objector (CO) status, and the differences between just-war objections and pacifism. Military regulations recognize an individual's right to refuse combat for reasons of faith or conscience, but the CO status does not distinguish between wars of national defense and those of preemptive strikes, which can lead to invasion and occupation.
Sunday's event begins a six-month campaign by the Truth Commission to educate the public, especially religious communities, about the realities and conundrums of modern-day soldiers. Although U.S. armed forces are all-voluntary, political, religious and military leaders argue that soldiers are still drafted into service. Only today it's by economics. Lower- and middle-class soldiers often enlist because of limited access to a living wage and an inability to pay for college.
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war."
-- President Eisenhower, five-star Army general in World War II and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during invasions of France and Germany.
One of the soldiers testifying on Sunday will be Hawaii's Logan Laituri, an Army combat veteran who helped found Centurion's Guild, a nonprofit that assists military recruits with grants and other ways to pay for college tuition. The intention is to give lower- and middle-income kids options other than combat. When I returned to Iraq in January for a book's research, Laituri, 28, went along with me and several others. He traveled into Iraq's Al Anbar province, one of the war's hotbeds three years ago, the only way that he considered to be proper. Unarmed. In his world and mine, guests rarely bring guns to a host's house.
In 2006, Laituri, who had served one tour in Iraq in 2004-05, had submitted a CO request asking that he not be forced to carry a weapon. Although he he had not killed anyone in his previous tour, he'd seen enough to know that he could. Deep down in him there was a Pandora's Box that only combat could open. Even after Laituri had befriended everyday Iraqis such as his interpreter, empathized with Iraqi families subjected to random searches, and grieved for the dead he saw spilling from a morgue, he felt that the lines of his Christian morality were forever blurred. His "moral agency" was suspect. He didn't fear the enemy as much as he feared himself.
He put the gun down before he did something that would cause him to toss and turn forever. Before his moral agency became a casualty of moral injury -- and the victim of a wrongheaded war.
The Army eventually granted Laituri an honorable discharge.
"Moral injury does not occur only when you kill somebody, when you take somebody out. It's also when you reach that point where you thought about taking somebody out. When you realize for the first time that you could have done it, that you are capable of it," he says. "I just didn't want to do something that I would regret for the rest of my life. I didn't want to have to take someone out only because I was told to."
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That being the case, basic fairness demands that anyone given such an obligation must also have the capacity to exercise it, or our laws are merely arbitrary cruelty.
If we demand that soldiers be individually responsible for their acts, then we have to be prepared to enable them to do so.
Perhaps the problem runs deeper- our economic system, especially as more mundane jobs are exported, is dependent on the waging of war. I don't need to go into historic examples of excuses being made for the proverbial "breaking and repair of windows".
Snippets from http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/03/from-wall-street.html#more
"The industrial warfare of World Wars I and II, and even "the atom bomb," now seem quaint, compared to today's vastly more profitable technological warfare, which, unlike the previous warmaking style, we've come to embrace. Whereas the atomic bomb spawned the largest peace movement in both American and world history, techno-war spawned such things as computer war game market, with its virtual "mass combat role playing," and fantasy war making." We have embraced the machinery of our undoing as recreation.
somewhere over the Middle East, killer drones are being operated remotely by Americans in Nevada bunkers, as virtual and as removed from the blood and fire as any computer game. Both the real and the virtual warfare flourish, both fed on virtual money of the banking elites. If real money -- money not based upon endless future debt in an imaginary world of unlimited growth and perpetual war -- were required, neither would exist.
'nuff said.
That's why America goes to war often and sometimes for no reason. Because Americans do NOT care. Americans simply want to be top of the food chain and do whatever they want, screw the world.
- Albert Einstein, Ideas And Opinions
I don't understand and can't imagine how a person whose profession is in the military be other but a miserable failure.
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."
- U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, War Is a Racket, 1935
The fact that a soldier participates in military operations without analyzing, and studying the reasons of the operation, and taking the decision to participate or not is what makes that profession an "abominable business."
"War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves." - Leo Tolstoy
War crimes are illegal and part of our Supreme Law of the Land in accordance with US Constitution, Article VI, item 2, “... and all treaties made ...shall be the supreme law ...” as well as US War Crimes Act of 1966. By all relevant International and US laws, both Iraq and Afghanistan invasions were War Crimes. Statement of fact. Therefore, refusal to participate would not only be legal, but required. However, to be practical, in the current environment that would most probably lead to being prosecuted. In the last several years we have not paid much attention to laws
However, some of the actions of soldiers in the field were also illegal. Despite what the DOJ may have thought at the time, the Geneva Convention still applies. It will never be enforced against the US, but that doesn't excuse anything.
Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, two-time CMH recipient, wrote an essay, called 'war is a racket', long, long before Iraq was ever a twinkle in Cheney's eye. I think it should be mandatory reading in high school, so that kids who might be contemplating a military career read first-hand a long-deceased and highly successful general's thoughts on the matter. Why? Because we end up repeating the mistakes we fail to learn from, and Bush's best quote throughout should resound as both blunt and honest statement, and a warning akin to Eisenhower's farewell address: "We are addicted to oil". It is a condition that is part and parcel to the American condition, and until we become energy-independent, oil-independent, it is a condition that will continue to shape the future of this country, regardless of how people feel about war, regardless of who's in office, or what party, and maybe when all these college kids decide what their major's going to be, they'll major in energy, instead of becoming Majors and doing all the hand-wringing, and stuff.
But no matter where a young man is from, it would take a lot of courage to face your fellow soldiers, say "no" .... and walk out.
And in some circles, there might be too heavy a price for a young man to pay.
Afghanistan started when Carter signed on to use them to lure the Soviet Union to occupy not after they occupied, in order to give them a Vietnam experience, as such who started using who as collateral damage??
- Mike Prysner (Iraq War Veteran)
War is a hellish thing. I have done that and never gotten over it.. It is particularly hellish when you find out that your leaders have been lying to you about the motivations for the war. Like WMD or the Pentagon Papers. Is it any wonder that veterans are committing suicide at such an astonishing rate? Please stop the war and bring out kids home. the next time we go to war, the people who make that decision should be required to send their children to fight alongside the poor and working class kids. Fair is fair.
Modern U.S. soldier is a volunteer and highly motivated professional, paid for his/her work.
Afghanistan invasion is approved by United Nations Security Council. It is a measured and perfectly justified response to the challenge posed by a henious attack on U.S. by islamic militants.
One can certainly argue about tactics and strategy of that conflict.
But that's another matter.
Think about it...
Think about it...
Dear Grandpa,
Thank you for your service in Viet Nam as well as your humanity to reach out to the veterans of today & your understanding of what it must be like to live in an occupied country & have one's family under attack by the most powerful military forces in the world. I am waiting for another Daniel Ellsberg to bring us a new set of Pentagon Papers explaining why we are doing so much harm to so many, with our war-mongering, war-profiteering & occupation policies, including as much harm to ourselves as to anyone else.
It is often difficult to distinguish one from another. As in any other matter of jurisprudence, sometimes judges will get it right and sometimes not.
In all cases the burden of proof should be on the professional soldiers who knowingly and voluntarily signed a contract to, to be blunt about it-- to kill or die when asked. I mean that without approbation!
In the case of conscript army this would be different. But U.S. army is voluntary and professional.
Hence, the best case scenario for dissenters should be dishonorable discharge and loss of all benefits.
The statements you make in your comment are the best argument for reinstating the draft I ever heard. But this time, no deferments or exemptions for the poor little rich kids in college. That way the future Dick Cheneys, Rush Limbaughs, Bill Kristols, Newt Gingrichs, and Phil Bramms can understand what they are going to subject their children to before they start they next made up war.
No one is "coerced" into anything.
People exercise free will by taking responsibility for their own actions.
There are many ways out of poverty for motivated individuals.
Ever heard of college or work?