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

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (134988)	5/30/2004 5:24:03 PM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Jacob - After that post I am convinced most military personnel are not defending their country for America haters like you. You are free to say and believe what you like in this country, but clearly you do not like your own country nor the vast majority of the people in it. Perhaps your view would be more acceptable in a country like France.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (134988)	5/30/2004 6:12:09 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 281500

Anyone can do that, but it is not fair to expect that, and it is not fair to judge someone for not standing up to the entire machinery of the state, which often is simply suicide. So, while we can applaud those martyrs who stand up against huge instances of tyranny, it is wrong (imo) to expect it of the average man. Any state that wishes to be viable for long needs a military, and most militaries will be used improperly at some time- to hold the men and women of the military, the little people, if you will, accountable for the actions of leaders (elected by the comfy citizen sitting on his or her butt at home, in the case of the US), when the individual soldiers are enmeshed in a huge system they did not create, governed by rules they did not make, and running on policies they did not implement, is unfair. If war crimes are committed without directives from commanders, then the soldiers committing them are outlaws, no different from common criminals. If, however, soldiers are directed to commit war crimes, then I think it becomes much harder to attack them. They are trained to follow orders, because it would not be efficient to have an army that did not. They are not given a great deal of training in how to disobey orders, again, because it would be insane to have an army where orders were constantly being questioned- it would not be an effective army. The army is not built to honor personal responsibility, it is a collective organization, and probably would only function effectively as a collective organization. You can hold them individually responsible for anything you want to, if it pleases you to do so, but it isn't, imo, logical to approach it that way. Of course, this is why it is so important to use the military for only the very best reasons. Terrible things have happened in every war, and they will happen in all wars to come. So the ultimate responsibility should be on those who send the military in- knowing there will be terrible things to come, and hopefully balancing the terror against what is to be gained by unleashing it.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (134988)	5/30/2004 6:56:06 PM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Respond to of 281500

>> Doesn't anybody, liberal or conservative, militarist or pacifist or anywhere on the continuum, believe in individual responsibility anymore? Yes, they do have control. Anybody, at any time, can make the choice, to stop killing. Jacob, if a large portion of the enlisted personnel were conscripts (and therefore representative of run-of-the-mill society), then you'd see a range of non-compliance. Instead we have a sub-group that is self-selected for desire to follow orders. Why do you expect them to not follow orders ? >> From 1989-1991, the soldiers of all the Warsaw Pact nations, almost unanimously made the choice not to fire on their fellow citizens who were protesting in the streets. I don't think that is how it happened. The collapse of the Soviet Union started when Gorbachov decided to not have the army quell some demonstrations in (I think) Georgia. That was the cue to other holders of power that they would not face a Soviet invasion if they allowed the Prague Spring to happen again. The leaders of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia were not enthusiastic repressors. They were mostly trying to stave off a soviet re-invasion. So when the soviets had decided that totalitarian communism had failed, they were ready to take jump ahead. The masses were ready. but I am convinced the revolution came from the top.