-----Original Message----- From: Kelley Subject: Re: A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders
>
>Face it, the troops are screwed no matter what they do. If they join
>in
>the attack, they are participating in a criminal war, which would
>certainly seem to constitute a war crime. And if they don't attack,
>they'll do life as traitors.
>
>Carl
>they, of course, don't see it that way.
>the point i'm making is that several times yoshie has advocated that they
>bail out. in addition, others have pointed out that the desertion rate was
>very high during Vietnam, something we rarely hear about.
>Kelly
Comparing the Vietnam era Army to today's Wehrmacht is misleading. The army that revolted and fell apart in Vietnam was composed primarily of conscripts (i.e. cannon fodder), and the brass learned two important lessons from that miserable experience. First, colonial wars cannot be fought by a conscript army; only thoroughly indoctrinated and highly motivated professionals (speaking relatively, of course) can be counted upon to consistently murder people in remote lands far from home. Conscripts might join in the fun for a time, but after a while they're just as likely to say fuck it, frag their officers, and get stoned. So no more draftees, as Rumsfeld rather clumsily admitted some time back. Second, casualties must be kept to a minimum, for two reasons: There just aren't that many regular soldiers, so wasting their lives in pointless operations (like search and destroy missions in the jungles of Vietnam) can no longer be part of conventional strategy; and the American people probably will no longer tolerate anything near Vietnam-era casualty rates. A million dead Iraqis will cause us no concern at all, but a thousand dead American soldiers may very well bring our Babylonian expedition to a halt. And we can't have that. Fortunately, we now have the capability to deliver such overwhelming firepower into a theater of operations that our ground forces need never engage the enemy. The modern G.I. Is essentially a battlefield policeman whose primary task is to accept the surrender of those enemy soldiers who survive the shattering aerial bombardment. So, contrary to some predictions, there will likely be no Stalingrad on the Tigris. The recent "MOAB" test was no idle exercise; it was a clear message to the Iraqi armed forces that if they dig in under the ruins of Baghdad they can expect a steady rain of the mother of all conventional bombs, and similar ordinance, until they are all dead and buried. Then the occupation and show trials can begin. God Bless America.