GUILTY -- AS HELL
By Cori Dauber - Ranting Profs
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An American soldier is found guilty today of desertion, after he decides he doesn't need to bother to rejoin his unit in Iraq after his leave, seeing as how he's developed a higher moral sensibility and all. As the protesters yelling encouragement as he left his court martial indicate, he's now become a darling of the anti-war left, of course<font size=3>. (See hereThere are pages of this stuff: he's a "War Resister," you see.)
I'm a bit more interested in what soldiers have to say about this man's ability to stand up to a soldier's values. Blackfive was not impressed. Jason van Steenwyk, who remember was, like the SSG, Florida National Guard from ar-Ramadi, did not find his case particularly persuasive at the time either.
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Yet this morning, before the verdict was handed down, a famous New York Times columnist, a doyenne, dare I say, of the liberal elite, turns this man into a poster child for morality and courage.<font size=3> He does so using arguments that reminded me of back before the war, when folks would say, oh, but we've heard the generals oppose it. Or, oh, but the folks with combat experience oppose it. <font size=4>And all I could think reading Bob Herbert's column today was this: at what point, exactly, did the liberal elite start celebrating challenges to the tradition of civilian control of the military?
I understand the reasons why soldiers are angry at this man's behavior: he abandoned his men. I'll tell you why I find his behavior reprehensible. We have a tradition lasting over two hundred years in this country. It's what makes us not just a military power, but a military power that is also a democracy. Civilian control of the military is absolute. Period. End of discussion. Four star generals, much less Staff sargents, do not get to look around one day and decide that they're just not into it anymore. The oath our service people swear is to defend the constitution -- and that means they follow lawful orders from lawful superiors.
Of course, this man is now saying that he witnessed illegal behavior. I'll let Jason comment on those claims as he's able to be far more specific than I.
But here's Herbert:<font size=3>
Sergeant Mejia's legal defense is complex (among other things, he is seeking conscientious objector status), but his essential point is that war is too terrible to be waged willy-nilly, that there must always be an ethically or morally sound reason for opening the spigots to such horror. And he believes that threshold was never met in Iraq.<font size=4>
Well, Herbert has made it quite clear that he agrees with that point of view. But it is not for an individual service member, any service member, to come to that conclusion on their own and then decide to sit one out. Once you make the commitment to join the US military you have made a commitment to obey orders. You think this war is illegitimate? So do a lot of other people. But military members do not get the luxury of choosing which orders to obey and which to ignore; it doesn't work that way. And in this country we have a system where the final decisions are left in the hands of the civilians. Like it or not.
I'm sure that Herbert and his buddies are quite pleased to
find a military member who's pumping their point of view.
But pushing the notion that he is therefore entitled to
choose to ignore lawful orders because they want someone
to promote their views about the war is playing with fire.
Liberal and conservative, party affiliated or independent,
military or civilian, we have to able to agree on this.
This punk broke the cardinal rule. He broke the cardinal
rule that governs the relationship between the military
and civilian world, and he broke the cardinal rule that
governs the relationship between military members --
loyalty.
How is he a model for anyone? The left needs to seriously
rethink the company they're keeping these days.
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