Individual rights and self-determination are interesting concepts within the mob rule of democracy, especially within the military component of that sovereign democratic entity.
The military is not a democracy. It cannot be because the heart of any army is professionalism and discipline. Soldiers are asked to conduct legalized "murder" in the name of defending their nation. It has always been that way and war is the result of civilized conventions and negotiation having failed and defaulting to the "law of the jungle"..
The manner in which we wage war now, with all of our fancy precision guided weapons and such, does not guarantee that innocent civilians won't be killed. Hell, just look at how many innocent civilians were killed by strategic bombing by the US during WWII.. In Europe we tried pinpoint bombing during the day and lost 100,000 men in the process. The British, on the other hand, used terror bombing of entire cities to destroy civilian morale. (we also did the same thing to the Japanese because winds above Japan made precision bombing unachievable).
We killed 450,000 people in the fire bombings of Japan. We killed a like number in Dresden. We razed Hiroshim and Nagasaki with Atomic fire.. We killed 5,000 French people at Caen... All in the name of freedom and democracy.
That's war.. and innocent people die in War.. It's tragic and from my experience over there, WE DO NOT deliberate target innocent civilians. But some are going to die nonetheless because our enemy is willing to expose enemy civilians to danger, or use them as human shields.
As for the RAF pilot who is facing court-martial? He signed a contract. He volunteered, received millions of dollars worth of training and salary and no one made him sign the bottom line.
What if every servicemen was able to pick and choose where they would, or would not, serve? Our military would be as effective as a bunch of boy scouts... Hell, maybe we could unionize them as well, as some European countries have permitted their soldiers to do...
Btw, the reason the US didn't sign up for the ICC is because we ALREADY have established Status of Forces agreements with each nation where we have troops based. And when there is misconduct, we will punish them under our sovereign laws, as we did with the Abu G perpetrators.
It's ludicrous to place our servicemen under the theoretical sovereignty of an international tribunal that is apt to fall prey to politicization.
If countries don't want our troops on their soil, then stop taking our money and spend their own money defending themselves.
Hawk |
