From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Apr 14 2002 - 12:19:01 MDT
On 4/14/02 4:02 AM, "Samantha Atkins" <samantha@objectent.com> wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
>>
>> I don't have a problem with this either. What I was objecting to was
>> the idea that a soldier should have to justify every pull of the trigger
>> in a firefight to ordinary civilian standards after the fact. In
>
> No, but he does have to justify them by international military
> standards. War is not regular civilian life. But it also
> should not be an utter free-for-all slaugther devoid of any
> honor or humanity whatsoever.
I'm all for making war as clean and surgical as possible, and holding
soldiers responsible for their actions. My only reason for bringing this up
at all is my fear that in this day and age the soldiers could very well find
themselves facing unreasonable standards of conduct that run counter to the
reality of combat or even to their own survival on the battlefield. I
certainly don't want politicians deciding the standards of conduct, as
history has shown that to be immensely bad on a number of levels and the
individual soldiers end up being the losers in the end. It would be far
more useful to hold the politicians responsible for the actions of their
soldiers since they ultimately have massive direct and indirect influence on
the actions of the military, though they rarely take responsibility for it.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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