>And as for soldiers' obligation to weigh the soundness of the campaign,
>Nuremberg and later such courts established very clearly that it *is*
>the soldiers' obligation to weigh the *legality* of their orders.
>--
> Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
If events such as the `Judgement at Nuremberg' established anything, it
is that regardless of the *legality* of orders from a superior
one is obliged to consider and accept responsibility for the *morality*
of ones actions. The impied corollary is the following bottom line:
ya gotta do the right thing, cause the moral `buck' stops with you.
--
Name: Richard Snell
Mail: Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1
UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!snell
Also, for the record, midshipmen get hours of leadership training
that includes all the above stuff, so it's not just the enlisted
personnel who are the focus of "the moral buck stops with the
individual."
Rob Mitchell
{allegra,ihnp4}!mtuxo!jrrt
Quite true. What they don't tell you, however, is that this can get you
hanged for war crimes if you take it too literally. The training is based
on the -- reasonable, sensible -- view that the superior probably knows
the situation better than you do, and delay can be disastrous. There
remains, however, a class of orders for which obedience is a violation of
both national and international law. (Note that treaties, e.g. the Geneva
Convention, which are ratified by the Senate have the force of law in the
United States.)
If I was a soldier given an illegal order in the middle of a war, a war
crimes trial would seem pretty abstract when compared to the alternate
scenario:
a) receive illegal order from my officer.
b) I state that the order is illegal, and will not be obeyed.
c) The rest of the squad hesitates, knowing that it really is illegal.
d) Officer pulls out pistol, and shoots me.
e) the rest of the squad obeys his orders.
Sure, the officer may be hanged twice, once for the war crime, and once
for shooting me, but it doesn't help me all that much!
j.borynec james@alberta
And if your country isn't a party to a treaty that prohibits the war
crimes in question, that's no problem, right? I really wish we could
all get off this obsession with "legality" and start to worry about
whether the actions are *moral* or not.