Just Following Orders

Large-scale evil requires surrender of autonomy, coercion by a central authority and a willingness to follow orders.

There is evil, and then there's organized evil. This is a memorial outside the village where my brother lives in the south of France. It is a typical village, quite small, perhaps a few hundred residents. The memorial commemorates three young French civilians who were taken out and shot by Nazi soldiers, either for "crimes" of resistance or perhaps as a "lesson" to the restive civilian populace.

The German soldiers who pulled the triggers were of course "just following orders."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-26/memorial-day-2014-just-following-orders

Nazis accused of war crimes said it at Nuremberg — “I was only following orders.”  Soldiers like Lt. William Calley accused of atrocities at My Lai in Vietnam tried it, too.

And now, lawyers for some of the Army reservists charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq say they’re innocent for the same reason.  According to Gary Myers, “He did attempt to find out if what he was doing was correct, and he was told that it was.”

Myers represents Staff Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick, who is accused of mistreating and assaulting Iraqi prisoners.

In fact, military law has long recognized that following orders is a legitimate defense — but not if an order was illegal or if “a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known it was illegal.”

So what should a soldier do when in doubt?  Military courts have said they should assume orders are legal and follow them.

And defense lawyers say that’s what the accused soldiers did at Abu Ghraib prison.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4909251/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/abuse-defense-following-orders/

And our sons and daughters continue to "just follow orders" at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Airfield, and all the black sites at which they are "honor bound to defend freedom" with vicious enthusiasm.

I am starting to believe that an American soldier "of ordinary sense and understanding" no longer knows what's legal and what isn't. Clearly his Commander-in-Chief, allegedly a graduate of Harvard Law School, doesn't know the difference ... so how can GI Joe be expected to know?

I don't say this to excuse any of their behavior; I state it because it is a fact with which we should be dealing but are not.