Support our troops....

[Willravel]

Okay, this is a tough one. We've been reading "Support our Troops" bumper magnets for 3 or 4 years now. We've heard it as a middleground between pro and anti war up until very recently, whether it be the I support our troops, so we need to be in Iraq rhetoric or the I support our troops, so we need them home rhetoric. I'm sure we all know someone, are related to someone, or even are someone who has served in the military. It's recently become a very heated subject due to the vast polarization and also prison, torture, and rape scandals. Our troops get injured, lose limbs, or even lose their lives.

So here we go:
Do you support the troops?
Yes: why, and how do you support them?
No: why, and why not?
I don't know: what makes you think twice?

I'll start. I know that the US never really had any business being in Iraq in 2003. Saddam had been steadily losing power for over a decade, he had goe back and fourth between being open with the UN inspectors and being an arrogant asshat. The question of whether he had weapons kept being brought up again and again. It was clear that under Clinton, Iraq would be bombed, but never invaded. We sanctioned, killing an unknown number of innocent people that had nothing to do with the invasion of Kuwait. The 9/11 happened, and Bushco took advantage of our patriotism. Iraq was invaded based on either falsified or massively incorrect information. Many civilians died in the "Shock and Awe" campaign. We invaded claiming that Iraq had not abandoned the UN resolutions, even though we had no real connection to the situation besides being a member of the UN. The US was never really in any danger. The whitehouse claimed that there was a link between Iraq and the al Qaeda. There was, of course, no link. Our soldiers, the main portion of the Coalition Provisional Authority, took the brunt of the responsibility for keeping the peace after the "War" was declaired as a victory. That's when the insurgency started. Soldiers were attacked. Insurgents were attacked. Civilians were attacked. Children were attacked. The military wasn't sure how to deal with the problem. Prisoners were heald without trial, because as we weren't technically at war, they were not POWs and were not subject to the Geneva Convention. They were tortured. Innocent people were incarcerated. It was covered up pretty well until some very immature and bad soldiers took some very disgusting pictures that were leaked to the media. Suddenly the "support our troops" standby line wasn't so simple.

Kidnappings. No trials. Humiliation. Torture. Coverups. Accedental killings. Murders. Rapes.

IMHO, the soldiers are like a cross section of our society. There are brave people, there are smart people, but there are also cowards and idiots. A lot of very smart people have weighed the moral implications, then they have made an informed decision whether to continue serving or to leave. Some have stayed, some have left. Those are the troops that I support. Some, however, simply serve. They follow the party line and they do whatever they're told. Shooting guns and driving tanks is fun, and damn the consequences because it's a party. Then reality sets in and fun is replaced by anger. These are the troops I don't support. Those who say that they are in Iraq to protect our freedoms, as if lining the pockets of our rich is somehow saving our freedom of speech. They say that torturing detainees (we can't call them POWs) is saving me from terrorism, even though any expert trained in psychology could explain how useless intel from torture is completly unreliable. I cannot support them. I'm sorry, I know they think they're risking their life for me or for some high ideal like liberty or justice, but that's just not the case.

I'm sure some might say that I'm not a soldier so I can't understand. Well I've made a lifetime commitment before. I've been shot at. I've defended people from danger. I'm an active member of the ACLU, the anti-war movement, and the impeachment movement. I vote at every opportunity, and have done so since I turned 18. I do serve my country in the way I think serves it best.



Also, I'd like to apologize if I offended you, NCB. I am very opinionated, that's the way I've been since I was a sophmore in HS. Sometimes my big opinions piss people off. I never set out to disrespect someone, just to speak my mind. Sometimes I do both.

[Ch'i]

I'm borderline "Yes" and "I don't know." Usually its the leaders of our forces that I have a problem with. That and trust.

I see troops as people, mainly because they are. This makes it difficult since there will always be those people who are dishonorable, misguided, unaware, and sometimes sadistic. While, on the other hand, there are also those who uphold proper conduct, refuse to blindly follow their commanding officers, are proactive, have a conscience, ect. It takes trust to support our troops, which is something I don't give out lightly, if at all. So while I mainly support our troops, its very hard to do with that lack of trust.

[Deltona Couple]

A very good OP. Lots of good insight and as always Will, I love that you are one of those who think and research before you say something.

Personally I support our troops, unconditionally. Whether I believe in what they are there for or not, whether I support the reason for them to be there or not, I support them by wishing them well, welcoming them home when they come, sending care packages periodically, and always taking time to talk to any of their families that are here, waiting for them to return.

While our opinions differ Will, I hope that you will agree with me that even if they don't like why they are there, or WE don't like why they are there, we should ALWAYS let them know that their Country loves them, and hopes for a safe return from duty.

You and I DO have a big difference in opinion when it comes to the military. Personally I know, from experience, that if members of the military do not follow orders, liked or not, people die. We may not agree with the orders given, but in MOST cases (remember, I said MOST cases not all), unless the order is illegal, and I don't mean in the MORALITY sence, but the LEGAL one, i.e. UCMJ laws, orders must be followed. Period. The members of our military CANNOT be afforded the luxury of picking and chosing what orderes to follow, and what ones not too. The moment you hesitate to decide if the order is the right one, someone may die, and USUALLY itwinds up being a friend, or worse, yourself. Now I am NOT saying that we should be ther, personally I have on MANY occasions expressed my dissatisfaction with how things were done. But we can't just let the military pick and choose. If you don't like the order, and you think there is something immoral about it, then afterwards, voice your opinion. I don't care what people say, I have seen morality orders questioned after the fact, and NOBODY was ever chastized for bringing it up. It happens all the time. Now if you know that an order is ILLEGAL in the UCMJ, then you CAN refuse the order, and even as an enlisted person, you can arrest the officer giving the order. Of course you better hope you can prove it, but thats another thread right there.

Whatever your viewpoint, we should ALWAYS let ALL of the troops know that we care. Otherwise, why should they fight for us EVER?

[NCB]

I'm going to say that this poll is pretty much going to come down political lines, as well as whether or not someone (or someone's spouse) has actually served. Yeah, I know, a real Capt Obvious there

[ratbastid]

Originally Posted by NCB

I'm going to say that this poll is pretty much going to come down political lines, as well as whether or not someone (or someone's spouse) has actually served. Yeah, I know, a real Capt Obvious there

Why? Do you think anyone from any political leaning or level of exposure to service life is actually going to say, "No, I don't support our troops"?

I support the individuals our country has in the military. I fervently hope for their safety and their expedient return home. I am vocal in my opinion that they are being used as pawns in an unjustified war. I am furious with the political apparatus that needlessly put them in harm's way.

Now: just because they're in the military, does that give them a free pass on all behavior? Of course not. There are Lynndie Englands in the world. It's not a surprise that they show up in the military. There are lots of reasons a person might join the service--noble notions like honor and patriotism are great, but I suspect more people are in the military for what they can get out of it: the training, the education assistance, and in some cases the opportunity to play out aggression and violence that they can't do legally at home. I believe and hope that the latter category is a vast minority.

All the military people I know personally (and I know several) are above all professional adults, competently trained and capable of accomplishing any job they're given. I have the highest respect for them.

What I find really regrettable is the way "you don't support our troops" has become a political club. It seems like the days of using that accusation against anyone who questions the war are over--the tide has turned so thoroughly on the war that criticism of the policy is generally accepted to be valid. But for a couple years there, any questioning of the war or its motivations meant you were a treasonous non-troop-supporting terrorist.

[pan6467]

Very very simply put from a veteran, I support and will always support our troops, those that are active and those that served their time.

Do I support this war? No. When I signed into the Navy, I did so for one purpose to protect and serve MY COUNTRY, not someone else's. To this day, if my country needs me I will serve in any way I can. But I can not go and fight and possibly die in a country that our leaders, 1) lied to us for the reason we are there, 2) fight in a country where they do not want us, and 3) fight in a country while leaving our own borders unsecured.

What is going on in Iraq meets all 3 of those criteria I am against. We can not afford this war, our troops are not international police, we should not ever go into a country simply because we do not like their leadership, and we should not be in a country where they had no true way to threaten our safety.

All this Iraq war did was divide the world and make us look horrid. It did nothing in making us safer, if anything it made us even more vulnerable and gave fuel to our enemies to recruit more people.

North Korea and Iran have laughed at us, have built up their nuclear programs, have threatened us and we sit in Iraq for reasonings only a mad, egomaniacal, little man with a Napoleonic complex can truly believe.

[shakran]

read Pan's post twice guys. He's spot on.

[host]

Originally Posted by Deltona Couple

A very good OP. Lots of good insight and as always Will, I love that you are one of those who think and research before you say something.

Personally I support our troops, unconditionally. Whether I believe in what they are there for or not, whether I support the reason for them to be there or not, I support them by wishing them well, welcoming them home when they come, sending care packages periodically, and always taking time to talk to any of their families that are here, waiting for them to return.

While our opinions differ Will, I hope that you will agree with me that even if they don't like why they are there, or WE don't like why they are there, we should ALWAYS let them know that their Country loves them, and hopes for a safe return from duty.

You and I DO have a big difference in opinion when it comes to the military. Personally I know, from experience, that if members of the military do not follow orders, liked or not, people die. We may not agree with the orders given, but in MOST cases (remember, I said MOST cases not all), unless the order is illegal, and I don't mean in the MORALITY sence, but the LEGAL one, i.e. UCMJ laws, orders must be followed. Period. The members of our military CANNOT be afforded the luxury of picking and chosing what orderes to follow, and what ones not too. The moment you hesitate to decide if the order is the right one, someone may die, and USUALLY itwinds up being a friend, or worse, yourself. Now I am NOT saying that we should be ther, personally I have on MANY occasions expressed my dissatisfaction with how things were done. But we can't just let the military pick and choose. If you don't like the order, and you think there is something immoral about it, then afterwards, voice your opinion. I don't care what people say, I have seen morality orders questioned after the fact, and NOBODY was ever chastized for bringing it up. It happens all the time. Now if you know that an order is ILLEGAL in the UCMJ, then you CAN refuse the order, and even as an enlisted person, you can arrest the officer giving the order. Of course you better hope you can prove it, but thats another thread right there.

Whatever your viewpoint, we should ALWAYS let ALL of the troops know that we care. Otherwise, why should they fight for us EVER?

Deltona Couple, I can't avoid taking issue with nearly every sentiment that you posted. I cannot "love" or "support the troops" who were just "following orders" with regard to the war crimes described in the shocking LA Times reporting, just a few short months ago, about what happened in Vietnam.

I also consider that those troops, of another generation, were in signifigant numbers, drafted involuntarily into military service. US troops today who do not question and resist immoral or illegal orders, are part of an "all volunteer" force, and should reasonably be held to a higher standard of humane, legal, and moral conduct. The still small, (when one takes into account a concerted DOD and Bush admin. effort to distort and conceal this sensitive and damning information)....but steady stream of information about abuse of Afghani and Iraqi residents is indicative of my suspicions that not much has changed since the Vietnam war.

I'm posting the entire LA Times Aug. 6, 2006 article here, because I am not convinced that the information contained in it has elicited a reaction commensurate with what it tells us, if we choose to seriously consider it. Instead, the reaction seems to be, over and over....one of denial and or downplaying what we should have learned, by now.

Some of your statements remind me of the plot of the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/">movie</a>, "Groundhog Day" .

US troops are members of a professional fighting force. IMO, we must give them credit and hold them responsible for discerning what is a bullshit, illegal, pre-emptive "war of choice", and what constitutes fighting a direct and imminent threat to our national security. Maybe not on day one of any given conflict that they are ordered to participate in, but surely when the fight is a thousand or more days old, as this phoney, GWOT now is.

The acceptance by many of "our troops" of the bullshit that Saddam's Iraq was somehow, "behind the planning and execution" of the 9/11 attacks is too pervasive and too ingrained to be an anomoly. It would seem that too many troops want to believe this crap. IMO, this is a mitigating circumstance that puts even more pressure on them to behave honorably, but instead seems to be a deliberate excuse for refusal to question illegal orders that originate from a US CIC who is himself, a war criminal, guilty of the cardinal Nuremberg trial sin; instigation of aggressive war against a sovereign nation.

I think Deltona.....that you are somewhere between a "one and a "two" on the "scale" described in the immediately following quote box. I think that the only way we can hope to stop the unfolding repeat of what happened in Vietnam.....happening again now, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, is for all of us to be closer to "threes". We have no hope of avoiding the circumstances that our soldiers of today, now find themselves in, if we cannot even sincerely deal with what US soldiers did to the people of Vietnam, and what the small slice of information reaching us since late 2001, indicates that they might be doing to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

When it comes to who we vote for and the use of military force that we support, we are all in the same shoes as our soldiers. When we embrace the idea of reflexively letting them "off the hook", no matter what orders they decide to unquestioningly follow....issued by the flawed politicians who we have supported....isn't this all really a "game" of letting ourselves "off the hook"? It will only stop when each of us adult Americans, in uniform, or in civilian clothes, finally says ENOUGH !! and works towards ending the depraved cycle of US involvement in armed conflict that does not reach the threshold of neccessary to counter an imminent threat to our national security.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeeho..._straight_talk

On November 26, 2006 - 7:32pm Mxxxxx Mxxxx said:

Wars tend produce three types of veterans. The first type feels bitter and betrayed and wants to spend the rest of his civilian life refighting the last cause, either because he lost or because he didn't think he won enough -- it doesn't really matter which. The second type just wants to forget the whole thing, good or bad, and get on with the normal life of home, family, work, community, et cetera. The third type wants to know why it all happened and devotes the rest of his life to finding an explanation in the hope that such an understanding might help him prevent another such tragedy from ever happening again.

John McCain belongs to the first type. I belong to the third type. John Kerry once belonged to the third type, but then he became one of the second type before considering that the job of President might require him to become one of the first type. McCain believes the wrong things for the wrong reasons. I believe the right things for the right reasons. Kerry doesn't know what to believe.

We veterans have our counterparts in the larger civilian population. By far the largest cohort, or Type 2 Ambivalents, never fought in any wars and would prefer to leave the entire subject of armed national belligerence up to someone else: by default, the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists who think of nothing except war but who prefer to leave the actual fighting to someone lower down the socio-economic totem pole. The Type 3 Pacifists don't want anyone to fight in any wars, but their attempts to prevent the ones they clearly see coming usually fail. The Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists usually succeed in starting at least one war in every generation. The Type 2 Ambivalents passively allow this to happen without ever becoming aware -- of anything. The Type 3 Pacifists, although they rarely stop wars from starting, do occasionally help bring them to a somewhat earlier conclusion. Naturally, this good deed (or "Syndrome") never goes unpunished by the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists while the Type 2 Amibivalents, a.k.a., "The Nation of Sheep," a.k.a., "The Fate-Driven Herd," disinterestedly await their next fleecing.

The Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists like Sheriff Dick Cheney and Deputy Dubya Bush have had a good run, thanks to much help from the first type of veteran like John McCain, John Warner, and John Murtha. They enjoyed the usual amount of zero opposition (i.e., hapless acquiescence) from the second type of veteran like John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and others of that disappearing ilk. Interestingly, John Murtha now seems to have become almost a third type of veteran in that he would like to stop (or at least diminish) the present unnecessary war because it now (as opposed to previously) seems too damaging to the prospects of keeping the army beefed up on pork and so ready for the next needless conflict.

The purging from the national memory of the third type of Vietnam Veteran -- me -- by the first type of Vietnam Veteran -- McCain -- allowed the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists -- Cheney and Bush -- to do their thing yet again only worse than almost ever before in American history. Now we see once again the newly survived veterans of another needless disaster (those who have managed to make it home) falling out into their predictable categories: with the professional officer corps -- generally if not genetically the first type of veteran -- lining up with the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists for another grab at the "long war" brass ring before the merry-go-round breaks down and they lose their last career opportunity forever.

I, of course, identify with and salute the (third veteran type) Iraq War Veterans Against the War; although a new "syndrome" appears already in the making to discredit them. Unfortunately, the (first veteran type) Iraq War Veterans For the War (only somehow done better) will probably join with enough of the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists and their captive Type 2 Ambivalents to make the aging and blustering John McCain only a pale shadow of his future -- and possibly far more dangerous -- incarnation. I mean, who could have thought after Vietnam that America would get both George W. Bush AND John McCain: two know-nothing-and-care-less relics of the self-satisfied Baby Boomer generation -- the worst of both civilian and ex-military components of that dreadfully dumb demographic.

I don't know who except the Iraqis "lost" Iraq, but I do know that America has lost itself -- again. With nothing much in the way of judgment or competence shaping up as the usual take-it-or-take-it Hobson's "choice" in a couple of years, I can only hope that (the first veteran type) "More Bombs and More Troops" John McCain never achieves his pathetic grasping after the commander-in-brief's silly little Napoleonic baton. Neither do I wish to see the Type 2 Ambivalent You-Know-Her ascend to "the top of the greasy pole" (as Disraeli called the summit of political office) because then the Type 1 Orwellian Nationalists and first type of embittered veteran will combine to bully her inexperienced self into bombing Sudanese pharmaceutical plants or the Chinese embassy in Belgrade again -- just like they did her Type 2 Ambivalent husband.

Actually, I think I've just analyzed myself right into a conviction that unless the third type of veteran and Type 3 Pacifists somehow get the better of the argument (an event rare in human history), that America might sink even lower into the Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism that have now almost ruined the country beyond hope of recovery. Only immediately doing what we did in the mid-nineteen-seventies can save us from our own schizoid-on-steroids, Lunatic Leviathan government: (1) cut off the money for occupying Iraq, (2) revoke the "Authorization" for occupying Iraq, and (3) punish the perpetrators for occupying Iraq. Screw McCain and You-Know-Her. They haven't got a single useful idea between them.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines
Civilian Killings Went Unpunished
<b>Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai.</b>
By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson
Special to The Times

August 6, 2006

The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam's central coast.

They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened his bandoliers and lighted a cigarette.

Just then, the voice of a lieutenant crackled across the radio. He reported that he had rounded up 19 civilians, and wanted to know what to do with them. Henry later recalled the company commander's response:

Kill anything that moves.

Henry stepped outside the hut and saw a small crowd of women and children. Then the shooting began.

Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.

Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter and held a news conference to air his allegations. Yet he and other Vietnam veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre.

Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was telling the truth — about the Feb. 8 killings and a series of other atrocities by the men of B Company.

The files are part of a once-secret archive, assembled by a Pentagon task force in the early 1970s, that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S. forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known.

The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army investigators — not including the most notorious U.S. atrocity, the 1968 My Lai massacre.

Though not a complete accounting of Vietnam war crimes, the archive is the largest such collection to surface to date. About 9,000 pages, it includes investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military brass.

The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese — families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity.

<h3>Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.</h3>

Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task force, says he once supported keeping the records secret but now believes they deserve wide attention in light of alleged attacks on civilians and abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

"We can't change current practices unless we acknowledge the past," says Johns, 78.

Among the substantiated cases in the archive:

• Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians died.

• Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.

• One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.

Investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners was strong enough to warrant formal charges. These "founded" cases were referred to the soldiers' superiors for action.

Ultimately, 57 of them were court-martialed and just 23 convicted, the records show.

Fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but most won significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a military intelligence interrogator convicted of committing indecent acts on a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967.

He served seven months of a 20-year term, the records show.

Many substantiated cases were closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or, in more than half the cases, no action at all.

There was little interest in prosecuting Vietnam war crimes, says Steven Chucala, who in the early 1970s was legal advisor to the commanding officer of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. He says he disagreed with the attitude but understood it.

"Everyone wanted Vietnam to go away," says Chucala, now a civilian attorney for the Army at Ft. Belvoir in Virginia.

In many cases, suspects had left the service. The Army did not attempt to pursue them, despite a written opinion in 1969 by Robert E. Jordan III, then the Army's general counsel, that ex-soldiers could be prosecuted through courts-martial, military commissions or tribunals.

"I don't remember why it didn't go anywhere," says Jordan, now a lawyer in Washington.

Top Army brass should have demanded a tougher response, says retired Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, who oversaw the task force as a brigadier general at the Pentagon in the early 1970s.

"We could have court-martialed them but didn't," Gard says of soldiers accused of war crimes. "The whole thing is terribly disturbing."

Early-Warning System

In March 1968, members of the 23rd Infantry Division slaughtered about 500 Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet of My Lai. Reporter Seymour Hersh exposed the massacre the following year.

By then, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam at the time of My Lai, had become Army chief of staff. A task force was assembled from members of his staff to monitor war crimes allegations and serve as an early-warning system.

Over the next few years, members of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group reviewed Army investigations and wrote reports and summaries for military brass and the White House.

The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by law, and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — about a third of the total — <b>before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.</b>

In addition to the 320 substantiated incidents, the records contain material related to more than 500 alleged atrocities that Army investigators could not prove or that they discounted.

<b>Johns says many war crimes did not make it into the archive.</b> Some were prosecuted without being identified as war crimes, as required by military regulations. Others were never reported.

In a letter to Westmoreland in 1970, an anonymous sergeant described widespread, unreported killings of civilians by members of the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta — and blamed pressure from superiors to generate high body counts.

"A batalion [sic] would kill maybe 15 to 20 [civilians] a day. With 4 batalions in the brigade that would be maybe 40 to 50 a day or 1200 to 1500 a month, easy," the unnamed sergeant wrote. <b>"If I am only 10% right, and believe me it's lots more, then I am trying to tell you about 120-150 murders, or a My Lay [sic] each month for over a year."</b>

A high-level Army review of the letter cited its "forcefulness," "sincerity" and "inescapable logic," and urged then-Secretary of the Army Stanley R. Resor to make sure the push for verifiable body counts did not "encourage the human tendency to inflate the count by violating established rules of engagement."

Investigators tried to find the letter writer and "prevent his complaints from reaching" then-Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland), according to an August 1971 memo to Westmoreland.

The records do not say whether the writer was located, and there is no evidence in the files that his complaint was investigated further.

Pvt. Henry

James D. "Jamie" Henry was 19 in March 1967, when the Army shaved his hippie locks and packed him off to boot camp.

He had been living with his mother in Sonoma County, working as a hospital aide and moonlighting as a flower child in Haight-Ashbury, when he received a letter from his draft board. As thousands of hippies poured into San Francisco for the upcoming "Summer of Love," Henry headed for Ft. Polk, La.

Soon he was on his way to Vietnam, part of a 100,000-man influx that brought U.S. troop strength to 485,000 by the end of 1967. They entered a conflict growing ever bloodier for Americans — 9,378 U.S. troops would die in combat in 1967, 87% more than the year before.

Henry was a medic with B Company of the 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. He described his experiences in a sworn statement to Army investigators several years later and in recent interviews with The Times.

In the fall of 1967, he was on his first patrol, marching along the edge of a rice paddy in Quang Nam province, when the soldiers encountered a teenage girl.

"The guy in the lead immediately stops her and puts his hand down her pants," Henry said. "I just thought, 'My God, what's going on?' "

A day or two later, he saw soldiers senselessly stabbing a pig.

"I talked to them about it, and they told me if I wanted to live very long, I should shut my mouth," he told Army investigators.

Henry may have kept his mouth shut, but he kept his eyes and ears open.

On Oct. 8, 1967, after a firefight near Chu Lai, members of his company spotted a 12-year-old boy out in a rainstorm. He was unarmed and clad only in shorts.

"Somebody caught him up on a hill, and they brought him down and the lieutenant asked who wanted to kill him," Henry told investigators.

Two volunteers stepped forward. One kicked the boy in the stomach. The other took him behind a rock and shot him, according to Henry's statement. They tossed his body in a river and reported him as an enemy combatant killed in action.

Three days later, B Company detained and beat an elderly man suspected of supporting the enemy. He had trouble keeping pace as the soldiers marched him up a steep hill.

"When I turned around, two men had him, one guy had his arms, one guy had his legs and they threw him off the hill onto a bunch of rocks," Henry's statement said.

On Oct. 15, some of the men took a break during a large-scale "search-and-destroy" operation. Henry said he overheard a lieutenant on the radio requesting permission to test-fire his weapon, and went to see what was happening.

He found two soldiers using a Vietnamese man for target practice, Henry said. They had discovered the victim sleeping in a hut and decided to kill him for sport.

"Everybody was taking pot shots at him, seeing how accurate they were," Henry said in his statement.

Back at base camp on Oct. 23, he said, members of the 1st Platoon told him they had ambushed five unarmed women and reported them as enemies killed in action. Later, members of another platoon told him they had seen the bodies.

Tet Offensive

Capt. Donald C. Reh, a 1964 graduate of West Point, took command of B Company in November 1967. Two months later, enemy forces launched a major offensive during Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year.

In the midst of the fighting, on Feb. 7, the commander of the 1st Battalion, Lt. Col. William W. Taylor Jr., ordered an assault on snipers hidden in a line of trees in a rural area of Quang Nam province. Five U.S. soldiers were killed. The troops complained bitterly about the order and the deaths, Henry said.

The next morning, the men packed up their gear and continued their sweep of the countryside. Soldiers discovered an unarmed man hiding in a hole and suspected that he had supported the enemy the previous day. A soldier pushed the man in front of an armored personnel carrier, Henry said in his statement.

"They drove over him forward which didn't kill him because he was squirming around, so the APC backed over him again," Henry's statement said.

Then B Company entered a hamlet to question residents and search for weapons. That's where Henry set down his weapon and lighted a cigarette in the shelter of a hut.

A radio operator sat down next to him, and Henry was listening to the chatter. He heard the leader of the 3rd Platoon ask Reh for instructions on what to do with 19 civilians.

"The lieutenant asked the captain what should be done with them. The captain asked the lieutenant if he remembered the op order (operation order) that came down that morning and he repeated the order which was 'kill anything that moves,' " Henry said in his statement. "I was a little shook … because I thought the lieutenant might do it."

Henry said he left the hut and walked toward Reh. He saw the captain pick up the phone again, and thought he might rescind the order.

Then soldiers pulled a naked woman of about 19 from a dwelling and brought her to where the other civilians were huddled, Henry said.

"She was thrown to the ground," he said in his statement. "The men around the civilians opened fire and all on automatic or at least it seemed all on automatic. It was over in a few seconds. There was a lot of blood and flesh and stuff flying around….

"I looked around at some of my friends and they all just had blank looks on their faces…. The captain made an announcement to all the company, I forget exactly what it was, but it didn't concern the people who had just been killed. We picked up our stuff and moved on."

Henry didn't forget, however. "Thirty seconds after the shooting stopped," he said, "I knew that I was going to do something about it."

Homecoming

For his combat service, Henry earned a Bronze Star with a V for valor, and a Combat Medical Badge, among other awards. A fellow member of his unit said in a sworn statement that Henry regularly disregarded his own safety to save soldiers' lives, and showed "compassion and decency" toward enemy prisoners.

When Henry finished his tour and arrived at Ft. Hood, Texas, in September 1968, he went to see an Army legal officer to report the atrocities he'd witnessed.

The officer advised him to keep quiet until he got out of the Army, "because of the million and one charges you can be brought up on for blinking your eye," Henry says. Still, the legal officer sent him to see a Criminal Investigation Division agent.

The agent was not receptive, Henry recalls.

"He wanted to know what I was trying to pull, what I was trying to put over on people, and so I was just quiet. I told him I wouldn't tell him anything and I wouldn't say anything until I got out of the Army, and I left," Henry says.

Honorably discharged in March 1969, Henry moved to Canoga Park, enrolled in community college and helped organize a campus chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

Then he ended his silence: He published his account of the massacre in the debut issue of Scanlan's Monthly, a short-lived muckraking magazine, which hit the newsstands on Feb. 27, 1970. Henry held a news conference the same day at the Los Angeles Press Club.

Records show that an Army operative attended incognito, took notes and reported back to the Pentagon.

A faded copy of Henry's brief statement, retrieved from the Army's files, begins:

"On February 8, 1968, nineteen (19) women and children were murdered in Viet-Nam by members of 3rd Platoon, 'B' Company, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry….

"Incidents similar to those I have described occur on a daily basis and differ one from the other only in terms of numbers killed," he told reporters. A brief article about his remarks appeared inside the Los Angeles Times the next day.

Army investigators interviewed Henry the day after the news conference. His sworn statement filled 10 single-spaced typed pages. Henry did not expect anything to come of it: "I never got the impression they were ever doing anything."

<b>In 1971, Henry joined more than 100 other veterans at the Winter Soldier Investigation, a forum on war crimes sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The FBI put the three-day gathering at a Detroit hotel under surveillance, records show, and Nixon administration officials worked behind the scenes to discredit the speakers as impostors and fabricators.

Although the administration never publicly identified any fakers, one of the organization's leaders admitted exaggerating his rank and role during the war, and a cloud descended on the entire gathering.

"We tried to get as much publicity as we could, and it just never went anywhere," Henry says. "Nothing ever happened."

After years of dwelling on the war, he says, he "finally put it in a closet and shut the door."

The Investigation

Unknown to Henry, Army investigators pursued his allegations, tracking down members of his old unit over the next 3 1/2 years.

Witnesses described the killing of the young boy, the old man tossed over the cliff, the man used for target practice, the five unarmed women, the man thrown beneath the armored personnel carrier and other atrocities.

Their statements also provided vivid corroboration of the Feb. 8, 1968, massacre from men who had observed the day's events from various vantage points.</b>

Staff Sgt. Wilson Bullock told an investigator at Ft. Carson, Colo., that his platoon had captured 19 "women, children, babies and two or three very old men" during the Tet offensive.

"All of these people were lined up and killed," he said in a sworn statement. "When it, the shooting, stopped, I began to return to the site when I observed a naked Vietnamese female run from the house to the huddle of people, saw that her baby had been shot. She picked the baby up and was then shot and the baby shot again."

Gregory Newman, another veteran of B Company, told an investigator at Ft. Myer, Va., that Capt. Reh had issued an order "to search and destroy and kill anything in the village that moved."

Newman said he was carrying out orders to kill the villagers' livestock when he saw a naked girl head toward a group of civilians.

"I saw them begging before they were shot," he recalled in a sworn statement.

Donald R. Richardson said he was at a command post outside the hamlet when he heard a platoon leader on the radio ask what to do with 19 civilians.

"The cpt said something about kill anything that moves and the lt on the other end said 'Their [sic] moving,' " according to Richardson's sworn account. "Just then the gunfire was heard."

William J. Nieset, a rifle squad leader, told investigators that he was standing next to a radio operator and heard Reh say: "My instructions from higher are to kill everything that moves."

Robert D. Miller said he was the radio operator for Lt. Johnny Mack Carter, commander of the 3rd Platoon. Miller said that when Carter asked Reh what to do with the 19 civilians, the captain instructed him to follow the "operation order."

Carter immediately sought two volunteers to shoot the civilians, Miller said under oath.

"I believe everyone knew what was going to happen," he said, "so no one volunteered except one guy known only to me as 'Crazy.' "

"A few minutes later, while the Vietnamese were huddled around in a circle Lt Carter and 'Crazy' started shooting them with their M-16's on automatic," Miller's statement says.

Carter had just left active duty when an investigator questioned him under oath in Palmetto, Fla., in March 1970.

"I do not recall any civilians being picked up and categorically stated that I did not order the killing of any civilians, nor do I know of any being killed," his statement said.

An Army investigator called Reh at Ft. Myer. Reh's attorney called back. The investigator made notes of their conversation: "If the interview of Reh concerns atrocities in Vietnam … then he had already advised Reh not to make any statement."

As for Lt. Col. Taylor, two soldiers described his actions that day.

Myran Ambeau, a rifleman, said he was standing five feet from the captain and heard him contact the battalion commander, who was in a helicopter overhead. (Ambeau did not identify Reh or Taylor by name.)

"The battalion commander told the captain, 'If they move, shoot them,' " according to a sworn statement that Ambeau gave an investigator in Little Rock, Ark. "The captain verified that he had heard the command, he then transmitted the instruction to Lt Carter.

"Approximately three minutes later, there was automatic weapons fire from the direction where the prisoners were being held."

Gary A. Bennett, one of Reh's radio operators, offered a somewhat different account. He said the captain asked what he should do with the detainees, and the battalion commander replied that it was a "search and destroy mission," according to an investigator's summary of an interview with Bennett.

Bennett said he did not believe the order authorized killing civilians and that, although he heard shooting, he knew nothing about a massacre, the summary says. Bennett refused to provide a sworn statement.

An Army investigator sat down with Taylor at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. Taylor said he had never issued an order to kill civilians and had heard nothing about a massacre on the date in question. But the investigator had asked Taylor about events occurring on Feb. 9, 1968 — a day after the incident.

Three and a half years later, an agent tracked Taylor down at Ft. Myer and asked him about Feb. 8. Taylor said he had no memory of the day and did not have time to provide a sworn statement. He said he had a "pressing engagement" with "an unidentified general officer," the agent wrote.

Investigators wrote they could not find Pvt. Frank Bonilla, the man known as "Crazy." The Times reached him at his home on Oahu in March.

Bonilla, now 58 and a hotel worker, says he recalls an order to kill the civilians, but says he does not remember who issued it. "Somebody had a radio, handed it to someone, maybe a lieutenant, said the man don't want to see nobody standing," he said.

Bonilla says he answered a call for volunteers but never pulled the trigger.

"I couldn't do it. There were women and kids," he says. "A lot of guys thought that I had something to do with it because they saw me going up there…. Nope … I just turned the other way. It was like, 'This ain't happening.' "

Afterward, he says, "I remember sitting down with my head between my knees. Is that for real? Someone said, 'Keep your mouth shut or you're not going home.' "

He says he does not know who did the shooting.

The Outcome

The Criminal Investigation Division assigned Warrant Officer Jonathan P. Coulson in Los Angeles to complete the investigation and write a final report on the "Henry Allegation." He sent his findings to headquarters in Washington in January 1974.

Evidence showed that the massacre did occur, the report said. The investigation also confirmed all but one of the other killings that Henry had described. The one exception was the elderly man thrown off a cliff. Coulson said it could not be determined whether the victim was alive when soldiers tossed him.

The evidence supported murder charges in five incidents against nine "subjects," including Carter and Bonilla, Coulson wrote. Those two carried out the Feb. 8 massacre, along with "other unidentified members of their element," the report said.

Investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Reh with murder, because of conflicting accounts "as to the actual language" he used.

But Reh could be charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the killings, the report said.

Coulson conferred with an Army legal advisor, Capt. Robert S. Briney, about whether the evidence supported charges against Taylor.

They decided it did not. Even if Taylor gave an order to kill the Vietnamese if they moved, the two concluded, "it does not constitute an order to kill the prisoners in the manner in which they were executed."

The War Crimes Working Group records give no indication that action was taken against any of the men named in the report.

Briney, now an attorney in Phoenix, says he has forgotten details of the case but recalls a reluctance within the Army to pursue such charges.

"They thought the war, if not over, was pretty much over. Why bring this stuff up again?" he says.

Years Later

Taylor retired in 1977 with the rank of colonel. In a recent interview outside his home in northern Virginia, he said, "I would not have given an order to kill civilians. It's not in my makeup. I've been in enough wars to know that it's not the right thing to do."

Reh, who left active duty in 1978 and now lives in Northern California, declined to be interviewed by The Times.

Carter, a retired postal worker living in Florida, says he has no memory of his combat experiences. "I guess I've wiped Vietnam and all that out of my mind. I don't remember shooting anyone or ordering anyone to shoot," he says.

He says he does not dispute that a massacre took place. "I don't doubt it, but I don't remember…. Sometimes people just snap."

Henry was re-interviewed by an Army investigator in 1972, and was never contacted again. He drifted away from the antiwar movement, moved north and became a logger in California's Sierra Nevada foothills. He says he had no idea he had been vindicated — until The Times contacted him in 2005.

Last fall, he read the case file over a pot of coffee at his dining room table in a comfortably worn house, where he lives with his wife, Patty.

"I was a wreck for a couple days," Henry, now 59, wrote later in an e-mail. "It was like a time warp that put me right back in the middle of that mess. Some things long forgotten came back to life. Some of them were good and some were not.

"Now that whole stinking war is back. After you left, I just sat in my chair and shook for a couple hours. A slight emotional stress fracture?? Don't know, but it soon passed and I decided to just keep going with this business. If it was right then, then it still is."

Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.

*

About this report

Nick Turse is a freelance journalist living in New Jersey. Deborah Nelson is a staff writer in The Times' Washington bureau.

This report is based in part on records of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group filed at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The collection includes 241 case summaries that chronicle more than 300 substantiated atrocities by U.S. forces and 500 unconfirmed allegations.

The archive includes reports of war crimes by the 101st Airborne Division's Tiger Force that the Army listed as unconfirmed. The Toledo Blade documented the atrocities in a 2003 newspaper series.

Turse came across the collection in 2002 while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.

Turse and Nelson also reviewed Army inspector general records in the National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records; documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan.

A selection of documents used in preparing this report can be found at http://www.latimes.com/vietnam

[shakran]

Host, when we talk about the troops as a collective unit, we can still support them while not supporting the few individuals who commit atrocities. To say otherwise would be no different than saying "I saw a black guy rob a convenience store once, so all black people are criminals." I don't think anyone on here supports the atrocities that individual soldiers have committed, but I also don't think that the rest of the soldiers, who are innocent, should have to suffer for those atrocities.

[Bill O'Rights]

Support the troops. Support. The. Troops.

Hmmm...lemme tell you something. Putting a $2 yellow magnetic ribbon on the back of your SUV is not supporting the troops. Give the lip service a rest. I grow weary of it. You really want to support the troops? You really want to actually get up off of your ass, and actually do something about it?

In fact, I challenge everyone here, that says that they support the troops, to call, write, or e-mail thier congressmen, and thier senators, and demand that the VA is adequately funded. It's quick. It's simple. Hell, you don't even have to break a sweat. But, if everyone that ever said; "I support the troops.", or put a yellow magnet on their car, would do that one simple act of support, then there would not be a one year wait for returning vets, some of which are returning with fewer body parts than we sent them over there with, to see a VA doctor.

How about if everone that ever displayed ('cause I don't see a whole lot of 'em, anymore) one of those ribbons, were to donate an amount double the cost of the ribbon (you paid $2 for your ribbon, then you donate$4) to their local veterans organization. VFW, American Legion...what have you. Or...if you're eligible...join. It's not just an old man's drinking club.

[Willravel]

Really, truely facinating reads, Host. I hope that we are able to get a realistic scope of what's going on in Iraq eventually, before history is rewritten.

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

Support the troops. Support. The. Troops.

Hmmm...lemme tell you something. Putting a $2 yellow magnetic ribbon on the back of you SUV is not supporting the troops. Give the lip service a rest. I grow weary of it. You really want to support the troops? You really want to actually get up off of your ass, and actually do something about it?

I've written most of the senators in the US about getting our troops home. It'd be nice if, now that we are no longer controlled by the sith...ehm er I mean Republicans, we can actually get moving on some sort of withdrawl. I've also been involved in numerous protests and public gatherings to rally support for the movement to leave Iraq for the past 3 years. I don't have bumper magnets because the proceedes go to corporations and not to the troops.

[MuadDib]

As with all sound bytes this is a loaded issue. There are two real questions we have to ask. What does 'support' mean? And what is meant by 'our troops'? I think any debate really breaks down into a symantical argument over what these terms mean.

So, as for me, if support means unquestioning affirmation then I say no. If it means wish them well then I say yes. As for our troops, if that means the individual people serving in general then yes. However, if it means the overall structure and institution of 'our troops' then no. Also if it means all troops without exception then no, since I will not stand behind those troops that unjustly take life, rape, or abuse. To sum up then, I don't want any of the individuals sent overseas for war to come to harm and I will actively do what I can to protect them and help them do their jobs, however I will not turn a blind eye to the activities of some troops that I feel act contrary to the general principle I just stated or basic human decency. I further, will not support a policy, institution, or administration that I feel act contrary either. I support the troops in my prayers for their well being, in my votes to elect officials I think can best handle the situation they are in, and by exercising the rights I feel they are risking their lives for.

I think a more accurate question is 'What does supporting our troops mean to you?'. I think that would more accurately present a balanced sentiment towards our feelings on this issue, but maybe that is just me.

[roachboy]

"support our troops" was floated as a political meme from the outset.
i dont know folks, bt to my mind you'd have to have been blind not to recognize that.
it has nothing to do with meaningful support of anything, really: on this pan and bor are exactly correct.

it was one of those wedge memes designed to split those who supported the bush people from those who did not, and which functioned to displace debate away from the myriad political problems attending the iraq war to something else, something dispositional and abstract. in itself, it means nothing. functionally, it was a pretty effective little meme, and the residuum of its effectiveness is playing out across this thread.

functionally, it meant: if you focus on the people being sent into disaster, if you feel for them, then it follows that you have to see any situation into which they are sent as legitimate (otherwise people would die for nothing, and that is not acceptable)...

have fun squaring that one in november 2006.

[NCB]

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

Putting a $2 yellow magnetic ribbon on the back of your SUV is not supporting the troops.

Unless I missed the memo, but since when does anyone claim that putting a yellow ribbon on your car prove that one supports the troops? Besides, its just a bumper sticker illustrating drivers sentiments on the issue. Its nothing more than having some dumb shit putting a sticker on her VW Jetta stating "Buy bread, not bombs". Is that indicitive of her supporting the peace movt? No, it just lets others know her sentiments on the issue. Thus, this whole ribbon/sticker thing is a straw dog.

If you really want to support the troops, give to them. Here are a few orgs that help. Do what you may with them

http://www.christmasbibles.org

https://www.treatsfortroops.com

http://soldiersangels.org

Oh, and here's one for will

www.pissonthem.org

[Deltona Couple]

Originally Posted by host

Deltona Couple, I can't avoid taking issue with nearly every sentiment that you posted. I cannot "love" or "support the troops" who were just "following orders" with regard to the war crimes described in the shocking LA Times reporting, just a few short months ago, about what happened in Vietnam.

Host, as I am far too often having to say; since you do not know me personally, I find it difficult for you to label me as any one type of person by a single post. At NO POINT in any of my posts did I say that I agreed with military members taking the law into their own hands, or doing things as stated in your 'LA Times" article. I as SERIOUSLY offended that you would even THINK that. My reference is based on the average military person who is serving our country. Not the selected groups that can't handle military life, and therefore do whatever they CHOOSE to do.

I find it somewhat humorous that the article you referenced was all based on atrocities during the Vietnam war, not the current war. The military has changed much since that time. The people choosing to enlist are different, usually better educated than those of that time as well. I am not saying that the things that happened then are not happening now, but in todays military, they are MUCH lower in number of incidents, and if you read the news as often I you appear to, you would know that these things are being brought out to light, and those responsible ARE being punished for their crimes. This STILL does NOT suggest that we shouldn't support our military men and women! In the same sense you could by analogy say that if you found 3 or 4 bad apples on the tree, you should cut the whole dang tree down....it is just absurd to think that way. War sucks for everyone directly involved, plain and simple, it sucks. But that doesn't mean we should abandon ALL our troops support because of the way we despise our leader(s).

US troops are members of a professional fighting force. IMO, we must give them credit and hold them responsible for discerning what is a bullshit, illegal, pre-emptive "war of choice", and what constitutes fighting a direct and imminent threat to our national security.

YES! they are professionals, and we should hold them responsible for their actions, but again, our military would NOT be the force it is today if everyone took the time to question orders, or just to ignore them because we don't agree with them! The military is a VOLUNTARY entity as it is now, and we cannot afford the luxury of freedom of choice. If we do that, our military would be doomed for failure. History has shown that the country with the most conviction of self is the one that wins, NOT the one who decides as individuals what wars to fight, and what wars to stand back from.

You paint me by your post as a warmonger, and this is not true. You show me a world without wars, without conflict, without crime, and I will gladly lay down my arms and live peacefully. I don't WANT to go to war, I don't NEED to go to war, but if I am called to duty, I will serve my country, because I love my country, and I love everyone in it. I served so that you and yours CAN choose to voice your opinion, you CAN choose to have the liberties afforded to you.

You have those rights because men and women like myself are willing to go where needed, and when needed. The war in Iraq IS ridiculous, and yes, we should bring our troops home. We have no valid reason to be there, but REGARDLESS I will ALWAYS support our troops WHEREVER they go.
THAT DOES NOT MAKE ME A WARMONGER...It makes me a loving countryman and patriot!

When it comes to who we vote for and the use of military force that we support, we are all in the same shoes as our soldiers. When we embrace the idea of reflexively letting them "off the hook", no matter what orders they decide to unquestioningly follow....issued by the flawed politicians who we have supported....isn't this all really a "game" of letting ourselves "off the hook"? It will only stop when each of us adult Americans, in uniform, or in civilian clothes, finally says ENOUGH !!

You make a good point...if we don't like the way our country is being run, then VOTE. I am all for punishing those in uniform who break the law.... But the key word here is what orders you "unquestioningly" follow. I never said to follow all orders, regardless, I said that if the orders given are within the UCMJ, then as a member of the armed forces, you are REQUIRED to follow them. I didn't say 'blindly go forth and kill everyone, because that is what I was ordered to do'...you appear to be twisting my words and intent above.

As I have said to WillRavel before, I am not as eloquent or well worded as he is, and from your text, I am probably not as eloquent as you either, however I still believe in my convictions. I have seen things in combat that would probably make most of the people on this forum lose their lunch. I have seen first hand the way the news and media twist some things that happen to "sell" their news, while crucifying innocent men in uniform. It is unfortunate in all aspects.

[mixedmedia]

I suppose I support the men and women in the military the same way I support anyone. There are a lot of things in this world that I don't like, lots of livelihoods and ways of life that I, personally, do not agree with. But to say that I do not support those who chose as such, whatever that means, I think everyone would agree is ridiculous. Why should I demarcate those who choose to serve in the military and support or not support them? I wish them all the best and hope they come home safely. For whatever that means and whatever good it does.

[ubertuber]

Originally Posted by host

...US troops today who do not question and resist immoral or illegal orders, are part of an "all volunteer" force, and should reasonably be held to a higher standard of humane, legal, and moral conduct.

______________________________________________________________

US troops are members of a professional fighting force. IMO, we must give them credit and hold them responsible for discerning what is a bullshit, illegal, pre-emptive "war of choice", and what constitutes fighting a direct and imminent threat to our national security. Maybe not on day one of any given conflict that they are ordered to participate in, but surely when the fight is a thousand or more days old, as this phoney, GWOT now is.

host, I'm troubled by your interpretation of the responsibility to not follow illegal orders. This is an established tenant, and as deltona couple points out, applies to the legality of an order, which is subject to court interpretation, not the morality, which is not (and indeed is the product of opinion polls, in that moral scales differ). Your interpretation is a recipe for quick anarchy. More than that, I'm flabbergasted at the idea that this legality of orders argument can be applied to directives issued by the civilian government. The idea that the military itself can declare a war "bullshit, illegal, of choice, etc" is dangerous. Down that path lies a 4 branch government - executive, legislative, judicial, and military. That is not a place any of us wish to end up (MacArthur almost put us there, and as it is we're close enough) - especially since one branch would obviously have its own guns, to go with an incorporated judicial system. How many years would it be until the military found that a war not yet authorized was essential to the national security. In this circumstance would we have entered WWII a month earlier? A year? What about the Cuban Missile Crisis? After all, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you start to look at the whole world as one giant collection of nails. Apply that to a self-directed military and consider the consequences. I think that, for all its flaws, the current system is best. The military must remain absolutely subordinate to the civilian establishment, which we at least have an indirect control over through our votes.

In fact, I think that the idea that the Iraq war is unequivocally illegal is naive. You may argue that the war has been waged in a criminal way (possibly) or that its moral or ethical basis was fundamentally flawed from the beginning (probably), but the idea that existing UN resolutions allowed for the use of force has enough traction that the idea would be tied up in any judicial proceeding for a long, long time. In this case, the legal bar may have been set far below the ethical and moral ones. That doesn't render the bars interchangeable.

P.S. Just because we haven't learned all of the lessons of the Vietnam War does not mean that we are repeating our mistakes in their entirety.

P.P.S. Nice thread willravel.

[host]

Originally Posted by ubertuber

host, I'm troubled by your interpretation of the responsibility to not follow illegal orders. This is an established tenant, and as deltona couple points out, applies to the legality of an order, which is subject to court interpretation, not the morality, which is not (and indeed is the product of opinion polls, in that moral scales differ). Your interpretation is a recipe for quick anarchy. More than that, I'm flabbergasted at the idea that this legality of orders argument can be applied to directives issued by the civilian government. The idea that the military itself can declare a war "bullshit, illegal, of choice, etc" is dangerous. Down that path lies a 4 branch government - executive, legislative, judicial, and military. That is not a place any of us wish to end up (MacArthur almost put us there, and as it is we're close enough) - especially since one branch would obviously have its own guns, to go with an incorporated judicial system. How many years would it be until the military found that a war not yet authorized was essential to the national security. In this circumstance would we have entered WWII a month earlier? A year? What about the Cuban Missile Crisis? After all, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you start to look at the whole world as one giant collection of nails. Apply that to a self-directed military and consider the consequences. I think that, for all its flaws, the current system is best. The military must remain absolutely subordinate to the civilian establishment, which we at least have an indirect control over through our votes.

In fact, I think that the idea that the Iraq war is unequivocally illegal is naive. You may argue that the war has been waged in a criminal way (possibly) or that its moral or ethical basis was fundamentally flawed from the beginning (probably), but the idea that existing UN resolutions allowed for the use of force has enough traction that the idea would be tied up in any judicial proceeding for a long, long time. In this case, the legal bar may have been set far below the ethical and moral ones. That doesn't render the bars interchangeable.

P.S. Just because we haven't learned all of the lessons of the Vietnam War does not mean that we are repeating our mistakes in their entirety.

P.P.S. Nice thread willravel.

ubertuber, I am concerned about your comments because you do not recognize that my opinions about US soldiers appropriate response to illegal orders, are parallel to US legal precedent of at least the last 60 years. US prosecutors convinced a court at Nuremberg to hang men who claimed to be "just following orders", when they committed war crimes, including what US Nuremberg prosecutors Robert Jackson and Benjamin Ferencz defined as most serious of crimes against humanity[ illegal war of aggression.

What you describe as a "recipe for quick anarchy", is the process of soldiers reasoning....on the spot, sometimes....whether what they are ordered to do, conflicts with their sworn oath.....detailed in the second quote box, below.

You leave me with the impression that there is nothing a soldier can do, in real time, to prevent a war crime from happening, or to avoid complicity, if he is ordered to participate in a plot to commit, or in commission of what he should reasonably know to be a war crime or a serious treaty violation.

Your stance seems to leave no option to avoid following orders to commit illegal acts, at the time that the opportunity to avoid or to try to prevent the commission of these acts occurs.

Let's review where soldiers currently serving in Iraq, are at. Allegedly, 80 percent of them back Mr. Bush, politically, and a majority of them believed, as recently as in Feb., 2006, that Saddam's Iraqi government aided the 9/11 hijackers or conspired with them to carry out the "airliners as missles" attacks on US domestic targets. I personally cannot respect soldiers who not only do not question their CIC...because I believe that he is a war criminal, along with other key officials in his administration, but who wholeheartedly offer their political support to him, and.....3-1/2 years into this war crime of an invasion and occupation, would still do anything that their CIC asks of them....even as they have allowed him and his psy-op propaganda machine to "fool" them into believing that the "fight" in Iraq is a bout "pay back" for 9/11, and about "fighting them over there, so we won't have to fight them here".

I see the question of supporting troops possessed of such blind loyalty and unquestioning zeal towards their criminal CIC and his hopelessly warped and disingenuous mission, as akin to "supporting" a battered wife, who keeps re-admitting her abusive husband into their dysfunctional household, only to end up back in an emergency room for more sitiches or in a dentists office to repair the teeth knocked out of her head, yet again, by her violent, abusive, partner. How many rounds of arrest of the abusive partner, release and return to the home, and succeeding episodes of assault on the "victim", would it take before you lost respect, and withdrew support from the "victim"?

I see no excuse, anymore. Where once, any soldier could point to support for war from nearly 90 percent of the American people, as a reason not to look deeper at what they were actually being ordered to do.....participate in the invasion and occupation of a distant, small, weak nation that had not attacked us, after their CIC, promised to obtain the neccessary resolution for the invasion from the UN, but then backed out of that promise, and ordered the invasion, anyway.

I'm not saying that a soldier must mutiny as a condition for my support or respect, but I do require, as a condition, after the information available 3-1/2 years into this situation is considered, and it must be considered, if for no other reason, the fact that some of our military have been to Iraq four times, and because the security situation there still deteriorates, that the "firmness" of the unquestioning political and ideological support for Bush, and the justification for the price some of our soldiers have paid....the risks that they still are taking......shoe some signs of "softening". I don't buy the excuse that the military avoids politicizing "the mission", the evidence is that this has clearly not been true.

The dissatisfaction, seen last spring by 18 former military commanders, aimed at Rumsfeld, must now be aimed where it should have rightly been aimed in the first place....squarely at Mr. Bush. So far, the biggest "mission accomplished" achievement of US soldiers in Iraq, seems to be the unification of Iraqi shi'a with their Iranian brothers. IMO. not worth American troops dying for, and past the time when at least some US soldiers should be reacting to that outcome....in the way that they vote, greet Bush when he uses them as "props" in his staged media events, and in their response to orders for 5th and 6th trips over to Iraq, and.....in their rates of enlistment, and re-enlistment!
Uber....it seems neccessary to repost an excerpt of an article that roachboy and I have both already posted on these threads, since late spet., 2006:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...54&postcount=7

.....Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.

But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."


Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."

Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.

Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."

Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:

U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."

Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."

As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."

The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.

George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?

http://www.counterpunch.org/mosqueda02272003.html

February 27, 2003
A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders
An Advisory to US Troops

by LAWRENCE MOSQUEDA

DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

As the United States government under George Bush gets closer to attacking the people of Iraq, there are several things that the men and women of the U.S. armed forces need to know and bear in mind as they are given orders from the Bush administration. This information is provided for the use of the members of the armed forces, their families, friends and supporters, and all who are concerned about the current direction of U.S. policy toward Iraq.

The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:

"I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God"

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the "lawful command of his superior officer," 891.ART.91 (2), the "lawful order of a warrant officer", 892.ART.92 (1) the "lawful general order", 892.ART.92 (2) "lawful order". In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, "The uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, 'Members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.' This principle was considered so important that we-we, the government of the United States, proposed that it be internationally applied in the Nuremberg trials." (Bill Moyers, "The Secret Government", Seven Locks Press; also in the PBS 1987 documentary, "The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis")

Senator Inouye was referring to the Nuremberg trials in the post WW II era, when the U.S. tried Nazi war criminals and did not allow them to use the reason or excuse that they were only "following orders" as a defense for their war crimes which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent men, women, and children. "In 1953, the Department of Defense adopted the principles of the Nuremberg Code as official policy" of the United States. (Hasting Center Report, March-April 1991)

Over the past year there have been literally thousands of articles written about the impact of the coming war with Iraq. Many are based on politics and the wisdom of engaging in an international war against a country that has not attacked the U.S. and the legality of engaging in what Bush and Rumsfield call "preemptive war." World opinion at the highest levels, and among the general population, is that a U.S. first strike on Iraq would be wrong, both politically and morally. There is also considerable evidence that Bush's plans are fundamentally illegal, from both an international and domestic perspective. If the war is indeed illegal, members of the armed forces have a legal and moral obligation to resist illegal orders, according to their oath of induction.

The evidence from an international perspective is overwhelming. The United States Constitution makes treaties that are signed by the government equivalent to the "law of the land" itself, Article VI, para. 2. Among the international laws and treaties that a U.S. pre-emptive attack on Iraq may violate are: · The Hague Convention on Land Warfare of 1899, which was reaffirmed by the U.S. at the 1946 Nuremberg International Military Tribunals; · Resolution on the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons and Prevention of Nuclear War, adopted UN General Assembly, Dec 12, 1980; · Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; December 9, 1948, Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the UN General Assembly; · Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Adopted on August 12, 1949 by the Diplomatic Conference for the Establishment of International Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War; · Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, 1108 U.N.T.S. 151, Oct. 5, 1978; · The Charter of the United Nations; · The Nuremberg Principles, which define as a crime against peace, "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for accomplishment of any of the forgoing." (For many of these treaties and others, see the Yale Avalon project at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm. Also see a letter to Canadian soldiers sent by Hamilton Action for Social Change at http://www.hwcn.org/link/hasc/letter_cf.html)

As Hamilton Action for Social Change has noted "Under the Nuremberg Principles, you have an obligation NOT to follow the orders of leaders who are preparing crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. We are all bound by what U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert K. Jackson declared in 1948: [T]he very essence of the [Nuremberg] Charter is that individuals have intentional duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state." At the Tokyo War Crimes trial, it was further declared "[A]nyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent commission of the crimes."

The outcry about the coming war with Iraq is also overwhelming from legal experts who have studied this in great detail.

By November of 2002, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030201114036/http://www.the-rule-of-law.com/IraqStatement/">315 law professors had signed a statement entitled "A US War Against Iraq Will Violate US and International Law and Set a Dangerous Precedent for Violence That Will Endanger the American People."</a>

Other legal organizations such as the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and the Western States Legal Foundation have written more extensive reports, such as that by Andrew Lichterman and John Burroughs on "War is Not the Path to Peace; The United States, Iraq, and the Need for Stronger International Legal Standards to Prevent War." As the report indicates "Aggressive war is one of the most serious transgressions of international law." In fact, at the Nuremberg trials, the issue was not just individual or collective acts of atrocities or brutal actions but the starting of an aggressive war itself. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson stated,

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy." (August 12, 1945, <a href="http://www.lcnp.org/global/IraqLetter.htm">Department of State Bulletin.</a> )

In another report written by the same authors and also by Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, and Jules Lobel, Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh entitled "The United Nations Charter and the Use of Force Against Iraq," the authors note that:

"Under the UN Charter, there are only two circumstances in which the use of force is permissible: in collective or individual self-defense against an actual or imminent armed attack: and when the Security Council has directed or authorized use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security. Neither of those circumstances now exists. Absent one of them, U.S. use of force against Iraq is unlawful."

The authors were specifically referring to Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defense. Nothing that Iraq has done would call that provision into effect. The report also states that:

"There is no basis in international law for dramatically expanding the concept of self-defense, as advocated in the Bush Administration's September, 2002 "National Security Strategy" to authorize "preemptive"--really preventive--strikes against states based on potential threats arising from possession or development of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and links to terrorism. Such an expansion would destabilize the present system of UN Charter restraints on the use of force. Further, there is no claim or publicly disclosed evidence that Iraq is supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist.

The Bush administration's reliance on the need for "regime change" in Iraq as a basis for use of force is barred by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." Thus the rationales being given to the world, the American public, and the armed forces are illegal on their face. (For a copy of this report see www.lcnp.org/global/iraqstatement3.htm)

It is important to note that none of the authors cited thus far or to be cited have any support for Saddam Hussein or the Government of Iraq whatsoever. They and others who do not support an illegal war in Iraq believe that government of Saddam Hussein is corrupt, vile, and contemptible. So is the leadership and governments of many of our "allies," such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan-governments that the United States may very well attack within the next decade. It is important to remember that Saddam Hussein was an important "ally" during the 1980s and that many of the weapons that may be faced by our armed forces will bear a "Made in the USA" label. The issue here is not the "evil' of Saddam Hussein, nor the international community doing nothing, but an illegal march to war by the Bush administration.

Even former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a very conservative Republican from Texas, has warned that an "unprovoked attack against Iraq would violate international law and undermine world support for President Bush's goal of ousting Saddam Hussein." Armey explicitly states "If we try to act against Saddam Hussein, as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation, we will not have the support of other nation states who might do so. I don't believe that America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation." (<a href="http://commondreams.org/headlines02/0809-08.htm">Chicago Tribune, August 9, 2002</a>, available at

Other articles demonstrating the illegality of this war can be found <a href="http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-ilaw.htm%20and%20at%20www.lcnp.org/global/SCIraqletter.htm."> here.</a>

In addition to the violations of international laws, which have been incorporated into U.S. law, the impending attack on Iraq is a direct violation of national law as Bush claims that he has the authority to decide whether the U.S. will go to war or not. The U.S. Constitution is very explicit on this point. Only the Congress has the authority to declare war, Article 1, section 8, Par. 11. Congress does not have the right to give that power away, or to delegate that power to the president or anyone else. The President as the "Commander in Chief" (Article 2, section 2, Par. 1) can command the armed forces in times of peace and war, but he does not have the authority to declare the war or determine if that war is to occur, especially if he is engaged in illegal conduct in violation of the Constitution itself or his oath of office. The Constitution spells out very clearly the responsibility of the President and his oath, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (Article 2, section 2, Par. 8). The President also has the primary duty to make sure "that the laws be faithfully executed," (Article 2, section 3).

The vaguely worded resolution passed by the Congress in October was both illegal and an act of cowardice, as noted by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd's remarks were made on the floor of the Senate on October 3, 2002. In part he said:

"The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the President's authority under the Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on its head."

The <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021011212453/byrd.senate.gov/byrd_newsroom/byrd_news_oct2002/rls_oct2002/rls_oct2002_2.html">full texts</a> of his remarks are well worth reading, not only on the illegality of the war but also the illegality of Congress in abandoning its duty under the Constitution.

MORAL CODES AND LAWS

The United States is a secular country with a great variety of religions, which are adhered to by the majority of the people. Political leaders who claim to speak in the name of God are rightfully looked upon with suspicion, whether they are foreign leaders or the president of the United States. This is especially true when the issues are those of war and peace. Nevertheless, the U.S. often blends the border on issues of Church and State, including in public oaths, such as the oath which is taken at the time of induction. This author will not claim to know the will of God, but it is valuable to examine what the religious leaders of the country are saying about this war. Virtually every major religion in the United States has come out against the Bush plans for war. Again this is not because of any support for Saddam Hussein, but rather the Bush plans do not meet any criteria for the concept of "just war." One would expect this from the religions that are respected and pacifist, but it also true from those who have supported past U.S. wars, and even have Chaplains in the service. Below is a sample of the analysis of U.S. religious leaders: ........

[Deltona Couple]

Again Host, you are making an ASSUMPTION that we are defending those who carry out unlawful orders. THIS IS A TOTAL FABRICATION. I am all for prosecuting war criminals. But you cannot go around and blindly call all orders given while in our current situation as illegal. Example: Assuming our current purpose of being in Iraq is illegal, a soldier is given the order to take his troops and patrol the base entrance, to not allow ANYONE on base that does not have a military ID, and to prevent any action taken against their orders. If someone attempts to enter base without first providing ID, and the above mentioned soldier gives the order to use deadly force, he DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE THE ORDER GIVEN. If he were to refuse the order, and allow that person entry onto base, he is in violation of orders, and should be tried as such. In the same sense, I am NOT saying that he would be lawful to use deadly force on that person as well as say the 4 people sitting in the car behind them.

The law is NOT OPEN FOR INTERPRETATION AT THAT TIME. It is finite and is not to be questioned. You cannot CHOOSE to take action above what is ordered, nor are you to CHOOSE to take a lesser action because you feel that it would be MORALLY wrong to follow the orders. BUT AT NO POINT DO I EVER CONDONE TAKING ACTION ABOVE THE LAW! And I tell you, don't EVER think that I support someone doing that. You are using too wide of a brush to paint the picture here. I love how all these annalists sitting comfortably in their chair can "armchair quarter back" what is going on over there, and soooo many people can just sit there and agree with them. Are you over there? do you see with your OWN TWO EYES what is going on? Then stop accusing our military men and women of "blindly" following orders. They are in it, they live it day in and day out! Just because you feel like many others that we are not justified to be there, doesn't mean you have the right to sit back and accuse every troop over there of committing war crimes. I have ran out of time to go on, I'll add more later.

[ratbastid]

A question for both of you, both for my own clarification, and to bring some focus to what I believe Host is trying to say.

Let's say I'm a soldier whose unit is ordered to Iraq. Let's say I believe our country's presence in Iraq is illegal. Is my order to ship out to Iraq therefore illegal? If so, what should I do?

[Psycho Dad]

Strange how those little yellow magnets always get debated in posts like these. Still though somewhere in the back of my mind, I like to think that when people see one of them on the back of a vehicle, that perhaps they think of, or say a prayer for someone like my son. Then again I'm biased and think of my son every minute of every day and don't need the magnets as a reminder.

BTW, NCB's suggestion to send things to the troops is a good one. Hygiene products are just as welcomed by these men and women as snacks and candy. We send DVDs when we send packages. After the movies are watched, they get passed around from Marine to soldier to Marine and back again until it is unwatchable. http://marineparents.com/ always has suggestions on what to send as well as the best way to send it.

[NCB]

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Let's say I'm a soldier whose unit is ordered to Iraq. Let's say I believe our country's presence in Iraq is illegal. Is my order to ship out to Iraq therefore illegal? If so, what should I do?

The question is unanswerable, for you clearly dont have a clue in how the military operates. Youre operating under the flawed assumption that soldiers are permitted to have a say in whether or not they agree with a particluar policy.

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by ratbastid

Let's say I'm a soldier whose unit is ordered to Iraq. Let's say I believe our country's presence in Iraq is illegal. Is my order to ship out to Iraq therefore illegal? If so, what should I do?

"I, ratbastid, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Seems pretty cut and dry, to me.

[mixedmedia]

I have to agree with ubertuber on this one. I don't think this war is a cut and dry case of illegal warmaking and, in my opinion, any effort to condemn ourselves from within takes away much needed attention on how we will work toward a solution to this mess.

Its also important to remember that the men and women in our military are our neighbors and fellow Americans. I'm not at all comfortable with our questioning the legality of simply being part of the military regardless of how popular the war is.

[ratbastid]

So, NCB and BOR, you're saying that, having joined the military, I relinquish any rights I might ever had about objecting to any particular policy or initiative I might be used to further? That when I join up, I'm signing a blank check to be cashed however the administration and my superiors see fit?

(This isn't a trick question--I'm actually curious about how this works. And you're right, NCB, I don't have a clue how the military operates. Hence the questions.)

[roachboy]

war is a legal status attributed to a political state of affairs.
the state of war. being at war.
it seems that state power is so constructed (by us, but we forget) that any war is necessarily legitimate except when it isnt.
when is a war not legitimate?
generally, it seems, a war is not legitimate ex post facto when you lose.
in certain cases, after you loose, a court can be convened that retroactively delegitimates a war and thereby exposes to prosecution all the agents who acted within the bounded rationality shaped by the assumption that that war was legitimate.
in the case of nuremburg, part of the problem was that the germans in particular had created real problems for the notion of nationalism by, well, going kinda far with it, and the allies liked nationalism, they relied on it themselves, just not the same kind of nationalism exactly, not precisely the same kind no, but close, in the same ballpark, the same sort of nationalism, but not exactly the same----so there had to be a process of bad apple naming and locating and there we have it.
nationalism uber alles.
huzzah.

so it follows for example that genocide is only genocide when you loose a war involving "genocidal acts"--acts that one might argue tend toward genocide but which do not themselves constitue genocide.
if you win, then there is no genocide.
think manifest destiny instead.
it is nice to have holidays that do and do not bring to mind that sort of thing, the non-genocide genocide particular to nation-states that do not loose the war. we gather together and eat tremendous amounts. thanks for not letting us loose, we do not say.

but i digress.

in the context of a "legitimate" war--that is of a legal status attributed to a political state of affairs--there are extensions of policy that unfold within a frame of reference that is taken by the actors as being necessarily legitimate. war involves killing lots of people and policy directives can be issued such that lots more of a particular category of people are killed than others and so it goes.
the legitimacy of the war---the logical framework within which the various actions that unfold are oriented---at one level is decided by the actions of the state.
so from the viewpoint of a military, any officially sanctioned action is necessarily legitimate because it is officially sanctioned.
and any official sanction is legitimate.
so in principle there is never any reason for members of the military to not follow orders because there can be no illegitimate war.

there is the possibility of refusing to follow a patently illegal or unethical order.
but there is no absolute position from which an order can be judged patently illegal or unethical.
and the military itself operates within a bounded rationality that would tend strongly to exclude this kind of consideration. this is referred to as hierarchy, discpline, espirt du corps, that kind of thing.

it is a problem.

you would think that states would be very reluctant to deploy their military because the military is not a deliberative body and so exists to apply directives shaped by political decisions concerning state interests, those which are sanctioned by the legal category "state of war"...you would think that states would only deploy their military in situations where the basis for the action was unproblematic...like as a defensive move...a defensive move directed at an adversary who actually did what that adversary is accused of doing. in other words, you would think that states would not make shit up as the basis for deploying their military, wouldnt you?

remember the maine. the gulf of tonkin. wmds. war on terror.

and you would think that the political consequences of making shit up as the basis for a war would be quite dire, wouldnt you?
that making shit up as the basis for war would be outside the limits circumscribed by immunity from prosecution enjoyed by state actors.
because would you not agree that the responsibility for all the damage, to all sides, inflicted in the context of a war without adequate justification would rebound onto the holders to state power who undertook that war?

but this too would be ex post facto. sometimes afterward, a legal proceeding could happen that would retroactively declare a previous war to have been a problem. o you guys sholdnt have done that. that was bad.

in real time, however, people die.
and there is no legal basis for refusing orders like that which host outlines.

but i would think that "supporting our troops" would extend to a demand that war not be undertaken for arbitrary reasons. that an administration be held to account for fabricating reasons to use the military. you would think that "support our troops" would entail not wanting to see the folk who are in the military placed in traumatic situations unless there is a clear and compelling reason to do so.

i would think that "support our troops" would go way beyond simply sending folk in the military stuff....tho i suppose doing so is a good thing as the people who are charged with executing an irrational and unnecessary policy are not the ones responsible for making that policy, now are they?
i mean, who is?
ultimately, i would think that the people who politically supported george w bush are responsible for the iraq war and that the least they can do is send some stuff to those folk, since it was their political actions that resulted in the military being deployed to iraq in the first place, isnt it?
i wonder how much stuff you have to send to the folk stuck in the increasing lunacy that is iraq to enable conservatives to forget that their political actions are directly responsible--are a condition of possibility--for the military being in iraq in the first place?

[Xera]

Yes ratbastid, when you join the military you VOLUNTARILY forfeit many of the rights that you then fight to preserve for others. You do NOT get to make a moral call on orders. Doing so can, has, and SHOULD result in criminal charges being made.

If the order given is UNLAWFUL, then you can refuse to follow it. However unless you can later prove that the order was unlawful you may still be charged with insubordination which is a CRIME according to the UCMJ.

Militaries only work when all people are working as a single unit. Having orders run through EVERY moral compass that EVERY soldier has before being followed would destroy that cohesiveness. It's like any other organization, in order to function there can only be ONE leader, with several followers.

I support our troops by sending out care packages, and writing to my Representative regularly asking him to support resolutions to shorten the amount of time soldiers are spending overseas, bringing every soldier home sooner. I had not thought to request more funding for the VA hospitals. I would love to support the idea of bringing them all home now and ending this farce, but we’re in to deep now to just stop. Though we do need to set up a timeline for getting out and getting home.

I find it interesting that our government justified this war in Iraq by claiming the existence of WMD. North Korea has begun target practice with their WMD and I have yet to hear the call for arms issued by our president over this.

If it looks like hypocrisy, it smells like hypocrisy, and it sounds like hypocrisy- what else can it be?

Yes ratbastid, when you join the military you VOLUNTARILY forfeit many of the rights that you then fight to preserve for others. You do NOT get to make a moral call on orders. Doing so can, has, and SHOULD result in criminal charges being made.

If the order given is UNLAWFUL, then you can refuse to follow it. However unless you can later prove that the order was unlawful you may still be charged with insubordination which is a CRIME according to the UCMJ.

Militaries only work when all people are working as a single unit. Having orders run through EVERY moral compass that EVERY soldier has before being followed would destroy that cohesiveness. It's like any other organization, in order to function there can only be ONE leader, with several followers.

I support our troops by sending out care packages, and writing to my Representative regularly asking him to support resolutions to shorten the amount of time soldiers are spending overseas, bringing every soldier home sooner. I had not thought to request more funding for the VA hospitals. I would love to support the idea of bringing them all home now and ending this farce, but we’re in to deep now to just stop. Though we do need to set up a timeline for getting out and getting home.

I find it interesting that our government justified this war in Iraq by claiming the existence of WMD. North Korea has begun target practice with their WMD and I have yet to hear the call for arms issued by our president over this.

If it looks like hypocrisy, it smells like hypocrisy, and it sounds like hypocrisy- what else can it be?

[MuadDib]

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

"I, ratbastid, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Seems pretty cut and dry, to me.

What if you consider the orders you receive from the POTUS to be contrary to the Constitution? Basically what should a soldier do when he feels he cannot both obey the legitimate orders he received and defend the consitution from those orders which he, personally, considers to act as a domestic enemy to the Constitution

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by MuadDib

What if you consider the orders you receive from the POTUS to be contrary to the Constitution? Basically what should a soldier do when he feels he cannot both obey the legitimate orders he received and defend the consitution from those orders which he, personally, considers to act as a domestic enemy to the Constitution

"I, MuadDib, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign... "and domestic"; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Then that soldier has that right. However...that soldier had better make damn good and sure that he can make a convincing argument before a military courtmartial.

Originally Posted by ratbastid

So, NCB and BOR, you're saying that, having joined the military, I relinquish any rights I might ever had about objecting to any particular policy or initiative I might be used to further? That when I join up, I'm signing a blank check to be cashed however the administration and my superiors see fit?

Mmmmmm...to a very large degree...yes. Bear in mind that you're not just hiring on with U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines Inc. You are signing on for a different way of life. Bush is not some CEO, he is the Commander In Chief. In the "real" world, if you have a problem with your boss, you can tell him to suck your dick, walk out the door, and look for work across the street. Do that in the military, and you will be spending some time in Correctional Custody (jail). While you may disagree with a "particular policy or initiative", you are still duty and honor (not to mention legally) bound to follow the orders of your superior officers.
Look...I know that it's hard for a lifetime civilian to understand. It's hard to explain. But when I first got out of the Air Force, after eight years, to reenter civilian life, I had a huge culture clash when one of my subordinates flat told me that because he didn't feel like it, he just wasn't coming into work that day. That was most definately something that I was not accustomed to, and had to adjust to real fast.

Are we coming to a time when soldiers are issued uniforms, boots, weapons, flak vests, helmets...and a full time personal attorney to take with him into combat?

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

"I, MuadDib, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign... "and domestic"; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Then that soldier has that right. However...that soldier had better make damn good and sure that he can make a convincing argument before a military courtmartial.

Since we've already suspended Habius Corpus, can't any soldier refuse an order?

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by willravel

Since we've already suspended Habius Corpus, can't any soldier refuse an order?

What does one have to do with the other?

And...you act like the suspension of habeas corpus is unprescedented. Abraham Lincoln? Oh...wait...another Republican. Never mind.

[ubertuber]

host:

You raise good points, and I'll do my best to show you how my thinking works. First off, I acknowledge the right and responsibility of soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines to not obey an illegal order. However, I hold that in the scope of the oath taken by military members, this war is legal until found unconstitutional - and guess who does that. Not individuals, but courts. Here I am making a distinction between the order to go to war, which on its face is authorized by Congress, and illegal orders issued in a legal (or otherwise) context. In other words, you've got to go to Iraq. But when your superiors tell you to burn down civilian houses every time a soldier dies, you could probably disobey that order and get cleared later. I'm making this distinction, because Congress passed a vote authorizing the President to use force in Iraq. Until this authorization is found by a court to be unconstitutional, it is enough to render the war legal enough to prosecute on. Now your articles suggest that a savvy court challenge to Congress' authorization of force and the President's use of force would be an interesting proceeding to watch, but it just hasn't happened yet.

I also continue to reject the idea that "the military" as a whole (and as distinguished from individual service members) has a right to refuse directives issued by the civilian government. A military that is not under the direct control of our civilian government is a de facto 4th branch of government, and a branch of government that has all of the guns gets to run the show - a la Pakistan.

Ratbastid, I'm gonna side with BOR and say your hypothetical service member has to go to Iraq. The only ways out of it would be to contend that the order was given illegally (which would be hard to prove, since your initial orders are merely to report for duty there, not kill people or whatever), go AWOL (which is obviously not a legal alternative), or file for conscientious objector status. This last is the most plausible, however it requires that you are opposed to any and all war on moral or religious grounds. In other words, no, you don't get to pick and choose which policies you wish to uphold. It's a blanket deal. And filing for conscientious objector status in this case (because of a political opposition) would be a corruption of the purpose of the procedure.

roachboy:

Killer post. I think that "winning" a war wouldn't even absolve you of ex post facto findings of illegality and prosecution. Fantasize with me for a moment about a near future in which we secure Iraq, pacify all insurgents, and witness a stable, democratically elected government which gives us oil for free in perpetuity out of gratitude, and nearby nations salivate for democracy. This would be a successful outcome under any rubric I've heard. However, it would not eliminate a legal proceeding (or impeachment proceeding) alleging that the invasion was undertaken under false pretenses and in violation of Congress and the President's constitutional roles and our various Treaty obligations. Nor would it necessarily absolve military and civilian leaders of responsibility for war crimes committed in the course of a ethical and legal war.

Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if survivors of Yokohama had filed against McNamara and LeMay for the firebombings in Japan. Obviously this didn't happen, but I believe we now live in a world in which such a thing could happen.

[docbungle]

I worry about our troops, which is probably not quite the same as supporting them. I worry for their safety.

As for all the popular methods of "supporting" the troops, I find them somewhat meaningless on anything other than a symbolic level. I don't see throwing money at them as support, and I don't see arguing in their favor as support. Their situation remains the same on the ground, regardless of what you or I do. They are still stuck there indefinitely, and there is still no defined, attainable goal set in place or them to achieve.

Who they need support from is the people who put them there in the first place: the Bush administration. That is the only kind of support that will do them any meaningful good.

[host]

To everyone who cited the US military oath as justification to obey all orders; there is a fair rebuttal to your arguments, early in the second quote box in my last post.

Deltona Couple, I may have used "too wide of a brush to paint you with", and I apologize. We do agree on a number of things, but I think that you should consider that I am not demanding rejection of any order by a soldier as a minimum requirement of my support for their service in Iraq, or for that matter, in Afghanistan. I am only looking for a shift in the sentiments of too many of them...that they behave less like a "battered wife". (as in; thank you for the slap across my cheek, sir....may I have another?). They can do that by showing political support for Mr. Bush in lesser numbers, by reducing to a small minority the number of troops who believe that their "service" in Iraq is "payback" to Saddam for his role in the 9/11 attacks, by refusing to clap and cheer when ordered to assemble en masse to provide an audience for a Bush "media op"....props who appear at one of his speeches, or by questioning policy....by heaven forbid....voting for non-republican candidates in elections...., and by say....1/2 of one percent of them refusing orders to go to Iraq the first time, or the fifth time.....refusing to reenlist, refusing to enlist....

I guess it comes down to my reaction that it would be so much easier to "support the troops", if they didn't "seem", en masse, to "like the mission", so much. I react with revulsion to my perception of their unquestioning and unbridled "enthusiasm", for what they have been ordered to do in Iraq, and to an extent in Afghanistan. Am I the only one, who is familiar with, what I take to be a common expression among our troops....a bastardization of the new version of the Vietnam era mission, of "winning"...."hearts and minds"?

For those of you unfamiliar with what some of our troops say of this "mission"....(does it matter much, if it is said in jest, or in all seriousness ?) <b>"hearts and minds" = "one in the heart and two in the head"</b>.

Ubertuber, I think that you'll have to do better....you initially responded to my postings with very strong words...

.....and roachboy, as usual, you "get it"....this post's for you.....

<b>Was Goering correct in stating, in reaction to death sentence, that it was "only victors' justice", is that the level that some of you relegate our American society to, today?</b>

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot...indicated.html
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Victor's Justice: How Bush “Vindicated” Hermann Goering!

The United States insisted upon war crimes trials at the end of World War II although Winston Churchill favored summary executions. It has been recently learned that Churchill favored electrocution for Hitler, whom Churchill called a “gangster”. The other war criminals, he said, should be summarily shot.

Justice Robert Jackson, a Roosevelt appointee to the Supreme Court, meanwhile nurtured hopes that a war crimes trial at Nuremberg would establish an international legal standard for the due process of international laws. Jackson had noble and idealistic hopes that Nuremberg might prevent another Holocaust and future wars of naked aggression. More recently, however, the GOP and George W. Bush specifically, have seemingly vindicated Hermann Goering, who pooh poohed the very concept of international law. He called it "victor's justice".

The Nazi attitude toward the concept of “war crimes” is precisely the attitude that is lately articulated by the GOP and, in fact, by my own congressman. More specifically, in both letters and in statements made by aides, the position of my congressman is that no international convention binds the United States in any way. It is, I’m told, a violation of U.S. sovereignty. Yet, it was the United States who insisted upon having trials and it was the United States that actively supported what are now known as the Nuremberg Principles. In fact, the U.S. is bound to those principles by treaty. Moreover, U.S. Codes —Section 2441 specifically —bind U.S. citizens (that includes Bush) to the Principles of Nuremberg:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441
§ 2441. War crimesRelease date: 2005-08-03
(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
...

If the GOP position prevails, George Bush will have vindicated Hermann Goring! How fitting for a President who, like Hitler, considers that he is “the” law.

The litmus test is the party attitude toward truth. Like Goering and the other Nazis charged at Nuremberg, the Bush attitude toward truth is simply put: truth is merely whatever works for the good of the party.

Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification and I quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you tell them the truth."

—Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

Karl Rove is comfortable with this philosophy: if the people buy it, it's true. Earlier: a story repeated three times is true.

Advocating the importation of “electric chairs” from the United States, Churchill called Hitler “… the well spring of evil”. But, like Hitler, Bush ordered and carried out the attack and invasion of a sovereign nation upon a pack of lies. Hermann Goering’s position, however, explains why Bush may never be similarly charged: “victor’s justice”!

Therefore, the GOP hopes to merely reframe the debate by adopting Goering's defense; i.e. the Nuremberg Principles are not recognized by Bush and his gang. Similarly, King Charles I did not recognize the right of Parliament. Likewise, Hermann Goering never recognized the authority of Nuremberg.

As a showdown between Congress and the Bush administration on the issue of wiretaps seems imminent, another inexorable conflict will one day have to be resolved. Will we affirm the rule of law –or will we prove Goering right? If Goering is upheld –and Bush is just the man to do it –we might as well resort to the “state of nature” and live in the jungle. We might as well deny Bush’s crimes as if they had never taken place:

It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: Say I slew them not. And the Queen replied, Then say they were not slain. But dead they are... If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

—Robert Jackson, U.S. Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

http://williamkaminsky.wordpress.com...al-if-you-win/

“But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”
August 10th, 2005

[Belated Thoughts on the 60th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]

.....and if–more importantly–you’re now willing to partake in some moderate emotional masochism, then let me commend to you the following excerpt of Errol Morris’s stunning 2003 documentary on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War. Better than anything I’ve ever seen, it conveys the brutal emotional truth behind the cold, hard statistic that in the five months leading up to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US firebombing campaigns on 67 Japanese cities directly killed at least 175,000 civilians and burnt to the ground the homes of at least 8,000,000.

The excerpt is entitled Lesson 5: Proportionality should be a guideline in war. In it, McNamara’s words alone do a good job of conveying the magnitude of the devestation wrought on the civilian population of Japan in the months leading up to the atomic bombings for McNamara conceives of a chilling set of analogies between Japanese and American cities.

McNAMARA: I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: In order to win a war, should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay’s answer would be, clearly, “Yes.”

[Speaking rhetorically] McNamara, do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000—burning to death 100,000—Japanese civilians in that one night we should have burned to death a lesser number or none and then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you’re proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise? Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan?

And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama’s roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which, by the way, was dropped by LeMay’s command.....

.....McNAMARA: Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50 to 90% of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional in the minds of some people to the objectives we were trying to achieve. [Bill’s Note: This 50-90% figure is not to be taken literally. See endnote for context.] I don’t fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history. Kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize, is that the human race prior to that time and today has not really grappled with what I’ll call “the rules of war”. Was there a rule then that said you shouldn’t bomb, shouldn’t kill, shouldn’t burn to death 100,000 civilians in a night? LeMay said, <b>“If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He’d, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?</b>

.......[William Kaminsky responds to a question from a reader of his blog entry:]So, at my first level of analysis, I’d say the situation with the US bombing campaign against Japanese cities is:

1) Systematic killing of noncombatants is a war crime, period.

2) However, systematic killing of noncombatant populations with an aim to prevent further war crimes especially further systematic killing of other noncombatant populations by the government under which the first group of noncombatants unfortunately lives may be judged a justifiable war crime. And given the incredibly bloody record of Imperial Japan in the 30’s and 40’s, I would say area bombing of Japanese cities, in general, was a justifiable war crime.

My second level of analysis, however, would get specific. Was every act of area bombing committed on civilian population centers justifiable? In this case, I really do feel McNamara and Morris analogy between US and Japanese cities is helpful. If, God forbid, I lived in some bizzaro universe where the US went on a massive imperialistic campaign against its neighbors, intentionally killing millions of noncombatants in the process, then I could understand if other nations bombed *major* US cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston in an attempt to bring the US to heel as quickly as possible. But what about “minor” US cities. Wheeling, West Virgina? Lincoln, Nebraska? Kenosha, Wisconsin? Granted the line is fuzzy, but once these other nations started killing women and children in Kenosha, I’d submit that the line’s might well have been crossed.....

....and this is where an "exercise" like this one, ulitmately takes our argument. How is consistancy to be maintained?:

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djc...3p389.htm#B115
III. HISTORY AND SOURCES OF THE LAW...

....A. U.S. National Law....

....Subsequent attempts at American codification were heavily influenced by the writings of Lassa Oppenheim, a British international law scholar, and Great Britain's 1912 handbook on the rules of land warfare.83 Oppenheim wrote the 1912 manual, completely revising the earlier 1903 version, and incorporated his belief that obedience to orders is a complete defense. He once wrote:

If members of the armed forces commit violations by order of their Government, they are not war criminals and cannot be punished by the enemy . . . . In case members of forces commit violations ordered by their commanders, the members cannot be punished, for the commanders are alone responsible.84

In 1914, the United States revised Lieber's General Orders 100 and published the first U.S. manual relating to the law of war. The document was heavily influenced by its British counterpart and Oppenheim.85 While the U.S. courts moved gradually from an absolute liability approach to the moderate approach of accepting the defense so long as the offense was not clearly illegal, the military wholly adopted the complete respondeat superior defense in its early manuals. The Rules of Land Warfare reflected Oppenheim's absolute defense approach and instructed:

Individuals of the Armed Forces will not be punished for these offenses in case they are committed under the orders or sanction of their government or commanders. The commanders ordering the commission of such acts . . . may be punished by the belligerent into whose hands they may fall.86

The U.S. military fought WWI and WWII under this complete defense rubric, despite attempts after WWI to hold German war criminals personally liable for their wartime acts.87 In 1934, the United States published a new edition of the Rules of Land Warfare, [*pg 404] which reaffirmed the original version's respondeat superior approach.88 The version did not require that orders must have been reasonable, legal, or within the scope of the superior's authority, but instead fully exempted soldiers from prosecution if they were following orders.89 In 1940, the military released another version, FM 27-10. This document's paragraph 347 on superior orders replicated the 1914 and 1934 standards.90 As the end of WWII approached, however, the Allies began contemplating punishing Axis leaders including those who might have committed battlefield crimes.

The desire to punish Axis war criminals provided the catalyst for changing the military's respondeat superior approach to the defense of obedience to superior orders. The United States realized that it could not continue to sponsor the absolute defense if it intended to deny it to Axis defendants.91 The military consequently again revised its field manual on November 15, 1944 to revert to a pre-1914 position where obedience to superior orders was no longer an automatic and complete defense.92 The manual now read, "[h]owever, the fact that the acts complained of were done pursuant to order of a superior or government sanction may be taken into consideration in determining culpability, either by way of defense or in mitigation of punishment."93 The end of WWII marked the end of a forty-year experiment by the military with a respondeat superior defense.

Following WWII, Congress enacted the UCMJ which became effective on May 31, 1951.94 While none of its provisions deal with the defense of superior orders as such, the Manual for Courts-Martial (MCM)95 contained a specific provision relating to the defense of superior orders, providing that:

[T]he acts of a subordinate, done in good faith compliance with his supposed duties or orders, are justifiable. This justification does not exist, however, when those acts are manifestly beyond the [*pg 405] scope of authority, or the order is such that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal.96...

B. The defense before the Military Commissions

The current U.S. administration has a real opportunity to shape how the defense of obedience to orders is treated in customary international law. Eventually, the DOD must develop a policy determin-[*pg 414] ing whether to allow the defense before military commissions. Nearly every other judicial institution created to try war crimes has addressed the issue.150 Failing to develop a policy simply leaves the decision to the individual commission members, and it is doubtful the DOD will leave such a decision to the members.151 The DOD is not constrained by international law, which will support a decision either to allow the defense or to impose absolute liability on the defendants. <b>The remainder of this paper will argue that the defense should be permitted exactly as it is for U.S. servicemen: obedience to orders is a defense so long as the order was not itself manifestly illegal. ....</b>

.....The experience following WWII was very similar. As discussed above, <b>the judges at Nuremberg also considered whether defendants acted pursuant to superior orders even though the Charter was explicit in stating that superior orders was not a defense.</b>160 The results of the trials before the ICTY again demonstrate that jurists have a tendency to recognize the defense de-[*pg 416] spite statutes to the contrary.161 Any reasonable commission member would recognize the compelling rationale for accepting the defense as a valid challenge to mental culpability and implicitly allow the defense of superior orders.......

V. CONCLUSION

<b>Determining whether or not to punish a person for a war crime when they claim to have been following orders is both a difficult legal and moral issue.</b> A state may adopt an absolute liability approach and hold each individual responsible for his acts regardless of whether the defendant knew the illegality of his acts or could have realistically altered his conduct. Alternatively, a state may offer an absolute defense of obedience to orders which promotes military discipline while allowing some atrocious crimes to go unpunished. States may wish to strike a balance between the absolute liability approach and the respondeat superior approach and permit a defense of obedience to orders except in circumstances where the underlying order was clearly illegal to a reasonable person. This hybrid approach has emerged several times throughout history, but by no means does international law require a state to adopt such an approach. The United States has adopted the manifest illegality doctrine for prosecuting U.S. servicemen, largely because that approach promotes both discipline and the supremacy of law.

Presently, the United States finds itself in the difficult position of needing to address how the defense of obedience to orders should [*pg 418] apply to defendants tried for terrorism before U.S. military commissions. The United States is not bound by any overriding law, and is not concerned with promoting discipline within the ranks of terrorist organizations. Accordingly, one might believe that the Bush Administration will disallow the pleading of the defense before military commissions. The United States is guided, however, by reason and a desire to promote the supremacy of the law. The United States should recognize the fundamental tenets of criminal law and allow the defense of obedience to orders as a legitimate means of demonstrating a defendant's lack of mental culpability.

The Bush Administration now possesses a valuable opportunity to influence the development of customary international law. <b>The United States should take the lead in annunciating the defense of superior orders under international law by providing it to defendants before military commissions.</b> By according commission defendants the same doctrinal defense that is permitted in U.S. domestic law and under the ICC, the Administration will signal to the world that it is serious about procedural justice as well as fighting terrorism. The reaction to the tragedies of September 11th may cause a desire to reject the defense altogether in favor of an absolute liability approach, but historical evidence suggests that jurists recognize the legitimacy de facto even when it is not recognized de jure. The Bush administration would be wise to allow the defense before military commissions. James B. Insco

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by host

For those of you unfamiliar with what some of our troops say of this "mission"....(does it matter much, if it is said in jest, or in all seriousness ?) <b>"hearts and minds" = "one in the heart and two in the head"</b>.

I have also heard this dispicable rhetoric, and I believe that this attitude is whast's wrong with the modern military in general. A soldier desensitized from violence, one who is without sympathy, empathy or remorese, is a killing machine. A killing machine will kill anyone that they are ordered to kill without a thought. A killing machine will even kill without orders, because they live in a reality where the normal rules of right and wrong are blurred to the point of being nonexistent. When you live in a reality where you may play God and take lives without consequence, murders will occour and often.

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by host

To everyone who cited the US military oath as justification to obey all orders; there is a fair rebuttal to your arguments, early in the second quote box in my last post.

I am assming that this is what you are talking about...

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the "lawful command of his superior officer," 891.ART.91 (2), the "lawful order of a warrant officer", 892.ART.92 (1) the "lawful general order", 892.ART.92 (2) "lawful order". In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.

I suppose that I am more than a little unclear as to your expectations.
Would you have soldiers, that are actively involved in combat conditions, call for a "time out", while they consult with their attorneys over whether or not the orders that they have received are lawful under the Uniform Code of Military Justice?
Or, do you suppose that every soldier, sailor, marine and airman on active duty should have a Juris Doctorate from an accredited law school?

I understand that you have no idea of how the military operates, so let me help a little. When a soldier is given an order, by his Commanding Officer, it is expected to be carried out...immediately. There is no time alloted for debate. There are no calls to the Judge Advocate's office. The order is swiftly carried out.

[mixedmedia]

Fucking whoa, people. Ever hear of prejudicial discrimination? The vast majority of men and women in our military would never kill for fun or any other unjustified reason other than, perhaps, being afraid or overwhelmed. Sure there is bravado and morbid jocularity, but this is the same sort of thing that goes on in hospitals and police stations. It relieves stress. It doesn't mean that every person who says or laughs at these things is foaming at the mouth to kill. Hate this war, HATE IT!, I do, but for crying out loud, get a grip. You can't possibly be thinking this through to any logical conclusion about the ethical standards of our troops as a whole. Fucked up, horrible shit happens...it happens EVERYWHERE. It happens here in my hometown everyday and there's no war going on here. You can't take the actions of a few and use it to summarize the intentions of the whole. It is simple textbook bias.

[Bill O'Rights]

Originally Posted by willravel

I have also heard this dispicable rhetoric, and I believe that this attitude is whast's wrong with the modern military in general. A soldier desensitized from violence, one who is without sympathy, empathy or remorese, is a killing machine. A killing machine will kill anyone that they are ordered to kill without a thought. A killing machine will even kill without orders, because they live in a reality where the normal rules of right and wrong are blurred to the point of being nonexistent. When you live in a reality where you may play God and take lives without consequence, murders will occour and often.

Yes. Because as we all know, war is all about cute little ducks and soft fuzzy kitties.

Talk about rhetoric. Have you never heard of gallows humor? It's what these guys use to keep themselves sane. And as far as killing without sympathy, empathy or remorse goes...I don't know about you, but I want the guy that's watching my back, in a hostile situation, to kill with no sympathy...no empathy...and I hope, no remorse.

This comment disturbs me a bit...

When you live in a reality where you may play God and take lives without consequence, murders will occour and often.

What kind of people do you hang around?

[Willravel]

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

Yes. Because as we all know, war is all about cute little ducks and soft fuzzy kitties.

Talk about rhetoric. Have you never heard of gallows humor? It's what these guys use to keep themselves sane. And as far as killing without sympathy, empathy or remorse goes...I don't know about you, but I want the guy that's watching my back, in a hostile situation, to kill with no sympathy...no empathy...and I hope, no remorse.

It's gallow's humor on the surface, perhaps, but the reality is that soldiers all over the world are now commonly taught to hate without reason those who they are told to hate. What if it's another military in your back yard killing you without even trying to figure out why they are trying to kill you? How many innocent lives would be saved if the guy with the gun gave split second's thought to why he's opening fire on unarmed people?

Soldiers without remorse or morality are not soldiers, but weapons; souless machines that may do what they want whenever they want without being bogged down by conscience. That's wrong. That's the best way for people, be they innocent or guilty, to be murdered. Soldiers should be just and fair and honest and seek to protect the peace. My grandfather was a very proud Army officer, and he exemplified what I'm talking about. He fought bravely across the Pacific in WWII, he fought in Vietnam and Korea, but he was very clear that the US was wrong to be there and that not only would we regret the wars, but he would never be proud of a military that blindly followed orders. The military has the right to say no to the monkey in the oval office if they know that his orders will directly lead to endangering the US or our allies, or the Constitution. They would have been justified in saying "no" to the Iraqi War.

Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights

This comment disturbs me a bit...

What kind of people do you hang around?

People that don't kill other people, for one.

I have no idea when people started thinking it was necessary to remove your soul from the battlefield, but whenever that was, the soldier died and the killing machine was born.

[ubertuber]

Will, you are romanticizing past generations of soldiers. Pinkos, gooks, Nips, ragheads, camel jockeys, Japs, etc... They've dehumanized the enemy for this entire century and likely all the ones preceding it. Hell, look at the portrayals of Japanese civilians in the old Loony Toons cartoons. An enlightened war has yet to take place. I think the gallows humor BOR speaks of is two-fold: it is both a protection of the sanity (through disengagement) of people in inhuman circumstances, and it is a measure of the psychological damage already sustained by those conditions.

host: I am interested that you think I need to "do better", but I don't agree. I didn't disagree that soldiers et al have a responsibility to disobey orders that are unlawful to a reasonable person under the Constitution or UCMJ. However, even this can only be justified at your court martial, and in the face of murky water at the UN combined with Congressional authorization, the standard of unlawful to a reasonable person doesn't apply. Unlawful and unethical are completely different standards.

If you are suggesting that the military has an obligation to disobey the directives of our civilian government (as it seems you may be doing), then I can only repeat that the idea is breathtaking in its shortsightedness. How many nuclear wars would we have started in the Cold War? (It's a trick question - the first would have been the last.) What would have happened at the Cuban Missile Crisis the Joint Chiefs could have over-ridden Presidential authority?

If you think that I am suggesting that civilian authority or military war criminals are above the law (winners or losers) you are misunderstanding me. On the other hand, if you think that military service involves each soldier weighing the moral basis of policy (which is what you are talking about - not the legal basis for a specific order) then you are misunderstanding much more than just me.

Also, I don't think including assessments of Bush and Goering as moral equivalents do your cause any good at all. There's a lot more to Goering's villainy than "a pack of lies".