Your original formulation was that soldiers should not listen to legal orders. You don't like the government American soldiers are agents of so you reject the idea of agency (but of course you then endorse it by comparing drafted soldiers positively to mercenaries). It's a stupid position. There is no place in a democracy for a military that doesn't follow the legal orders of the elected, civilian command and militaries which break away from democratic governments are always dangerous.
Individual soldiers may protest but they have to do it in a way that makes it clear they understand their obligations. You want soldiers to disobey legal orders because some outside group says something is illegal. For some reason you can't see that that group does not have the same standing in this question as the voters. The voters decide first and the voters elected people who sent our troops to Iraq in a process that was legal under American law and they have followed orders that respect the laws of war MORE than we respected the laws of war in, for example WW2 or Viet Nam. Indiscriminate bombing and especially shelling of cities is what has always killed civilians in war and the US hasn't done that. So it's difficult to say that the orders themselves were illegal.
It's not up to soldiers to decide whether the causus belli is adequate. That is not where the decision is made. They have already made their commitment. I'm sure it never seems adequate to justify doing the awful things they have to do. I hope so. But if they, as individuals, want to be conscientious objectors there is a legal process for that. If they fail to get CO status and they feel they still can't fight, there's the brig. That's what they signed up for and no thinking person wants them to start disobeying orders willy-nilly.
And by the way, the example of Egypt couldn't possibly be worse for your case, given the behavior of the military-backed government in the recent election. We need a "Free Officers" movement in the US like a hole in the head. The very thought of such a cabal is chilling. We just need these guys to do their jobs legally and honorably until we get them out of Iraq (ideally in a very short time).
boddi
On 12/4/05, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
> Sun Dec 4 01:01:16 PST 2005
> > Yes the military is a well-known champion of democracy.
>
> Throughout history, militaries have served all kinds of polity --
> feudalism, absolute autocracy, constitutional monarchy, empire and
> its colonial administration, republican democracy, socialist
> government, etc. -- and they have participated in coups, rebellions,
> and revolutions from the left and the right.
>
> The military in itself has no inherent politics -- it all depends on
> who joins it, what they do in it, what historical context confronts
> them, what social forces predominate in society in general, etc. In
> the case of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Abdel-Hakim Amer, Salah Salem, etc.
> who orgaznied the Free Officers movement in Egypt, they were
> stationed in Palestine during the 1948 war. Naturally they thought
> that they must overthrow the corrupt government of King Farouk that
> oppressed the Egyptian people, served Western rulers, and abandoned
> Palestinians. The military is like any other institution in this
> regard. E.g., in education, there are teachers on the left and
> teachers on the right, principals on the left and principals on the
> right, etc., the rank-and-file tending to be more to the left than
> those in high positions on economic issues. The same goes for the
> military. That's why it is important for leftists to analyze
> empirically the changing demographic compositions and political
> opinions of service members, especially the rank and file (who tend
> to be more to the left than officers).
>
> That said, apart from the question of equitable sharing of the burden
> of military service, one of the tenets of republican democratic
> thought is that a force of citizen soldiers is preferred to a
> military totally made up of mercenaries (i.e., volunteers who make
> the military their profession). That may not be always true -- is
> the Israeli military (compulsory service, with some exemptions) more
> republican and democratic than the US military (a volunteer
> professional force)? -- but the officers in the US military have
> become more Republican than in the days of the draft: "a study by the
> Triangle Institute for Security Studies in North Carolina" shows
> "that between 1976 and 1996 the percentage of military officers who
> saw themselves as nonpartisan or politically independent fell from
> more than 50 percent to less than 20 percent. The main beneficiary of
> this shift has been the Republican Party" (David M. Halbfinger and
> Steven A. Holmes, "Military Mirrors Working-Class America," New York
> Times, 30 March 2003).
>
> Then again, the rank and file may have moved to the left in the 90s,
> and even Republican officers may be more moderate Republicans than
> Republican civilians:
> <blockquote>[F]rom 1976 to 1999, the number of high school seniors
> expecting to enter the military and self-identifying as Republicans
> never exceeded 40 percent and actually declined significantly from
> 1991 to 1999. Despite the end of the draft and the more market-
> inspired and occupational flavor of military service under the all-
> volunteer concept, new recruits "are predominantly not Republican and
> are less Republican than their peers who go to college."17
> Increasingly it seems clear that the young enlisted service members
> who make up a large proportion of the force cannot be characterized
> as predominantly conservative or Republican.
>
> The figures for senior military officers are quite different; about
> two thirds self-identify as Republican. To some extent this reflects
> the attitudes of the socio-economic cohort they are drawn from,
> generally defined as non-minority, college educated, belonging to
> mainstream Christian denominations, and above average in income. On
> the other hand, military elites overwhelmingly shun the "far-right"
> or "extremely conservative" labels, are far less supportive of
> fundamentalist religious views, and are significantly more liberal
> than mainstream society as a whole on social issues.18 It is far more
> accurate to say that senior military leaders occupy the political
> center than to portray them as creatures of the right.
>
>
>
> 17. David R. Segal et al., "Attitudes of Entry-Level Enlisted
> Personnel: Pro-Military and Politically Mainstreamed," in Feaver and
> Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians, pp. 175-94.
>
> 18. James A. Davis, "Attitudes and Opinions Among Senior Military
> Officers," in Feaver and Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians, p. 109.
>
> <http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03winter/hooker.htm></
> blockquote>
>
> These complex changes can only be understood by actually studying
> them empirically.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
>
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