Heard today on the news that some officer is refusing to follow orders. Those orders are that he’s to be deployed to Iraq. His problem? It’s “immoral”.
Riiiiiight. No disrespect intended, but don’t you sacrifice a chunk of your personal reservations when you sign up for military service? Aren’t you expected to follow orders, even if you don’t agree with them? Aside from things that can be punished as a war crime – i.e. shooting civilians for playtime target practice – how do personal politics fit into it? I mean if you could never ever shoot another human in a combat situation, would you join the army and then refuse to fight? Go work in a slaughterhouse if you might consider yourself slightly Hindu?
Of course now that the media is involved, they’ll have a new poster boy to rally around, when the truth is that this dude should be swinging from a rope… imagine if half of our armed forces woke up tomorrow and said “Hey, today’s Wednesday – I don’t feel like being a solder today”?
Ridiculous.
I do agree with the war in Iraq being immoral. But you can’t sign up to be a soilder and not expect to be Uncle Sams bitch. You sign up to be a solider to take orders and kill anyone the U.S. government doesn’t like, regardless of their guilt. 42,646 civilians have died died in Iraq. Immoral, without a doubt, but as a soilder you don’t have a choice. Dumbass should have signed up to be a garderner or something if he was so worried about his morals.
EXACTLY my point. Exactly.
So, are you saying that soliders should never question orders?
Sure they should question orders that are obviously illegal or even possibly illegal.
This guy’s issue is about a deployment to a war that he *believes* to be immoral. It’s not illegal – at least not proven to be so, yet! – and what’s worse is that his stance is based on his own *personal* beliefs. Not law.