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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (132644)	5/11/2004 4:40:24 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

In your world soldiers "know better," they "have duties" and they "should be held responsible." The failure to do those things means they're "wrong and should be punished." There isn't a lot of room for those who say they were pressured Yes.. and much of that was due to our experiences during Vietnam, Korea, and especially World War II.. Do you recall how we treated those Japanese who fell into our hands after having been responsible for brutalizing US soldiers at Bataan and elsewhere? Do you recall that there are over some 8,000 MIAs still unaccounted for from the Korean conflict? Most were assumed to have died during captivity. theforgottenvictory.org So there has been far more training emphasized on the Law of War in recent years... But we all know the law will be thrown out the window when we perceive the enemy has little repect for it themselves. At the human level, this is a fight to the death, their's or ours, and our soldiers at the tip of the spear understand this. The law is there in order to ensure that this human instinct for mutual cruelty and brutality does not overwhelm the objectives of the mission. Hackworth has a different perspective on life. He's seen the breaking points of men. He's not so caught up in idealistic notions of what "soldiers do." He knows that soldiers are just like everyone else; they're scared a lot, they're easily led, they'll try to please their superiors, they're trained to follow the leaders who "know more," and they never, ever, want to fight a military system that's much more powerful than you could imagine in terms of controlling their very right to live. But did he not stand for the law of war at his own personal level? Did he not intervene and prevent those atrocities? Sure he did.. Just as Spc. Darby stood up and reported the atrocities of his fellow soldiers. As for who ordered these methods be used on prisoners, it's pretty apparent that this was an MI ran mission. The prisoners segregated from the general population were in that cell-block and I'd be hard put to believe that the MI folks would have permitted those MPs higher ups to enter that facility without the proper clearances. So they operated in their own little world.. Doing what they wanted while cloaked by the veil of secrecy and limited access to their activities. If you've been in the military, you understand the process of compartmentalization of information. It matters not how high your clearance is.. If you don't have a "need to know", you don't get access. And that applied to the commanders and senior NCOs of those MPs, I'd wager.. They were denied access and knowleged to the activities of their soldiers. So when it comes down to personal responsibility for these abuses, I have a feeling that its going to be rather limited with regard to the MP leadership. But the MI leadership is going to have something to answer for. And even then, most of them are going to say "I didn't care to know how they got the information.. I just wanted it passed on to me when they obtained it".. Oh.. and btw, I generally enjoy Hackworth's columns. He has a real soldier's view of the military that I appreciate.. But that doesn't mean that I always agree with him. Hawk