A soldier who deserted from the US Army in Iraq because he found the war morally objectionable – partly because of the treatment of prisoners – faces the same punishment as those who abused the prisoners at Abu Ghuraib. I turn to those more knowledgeable: Can he plead that he deserted because the orders were illegal?
Related Posts
State of Formation – Every Land is #Ferguson
State of Formation – Every Land is #Ferguson. There is a power in raising our hands for Ferguson. We do not raise our hands like the Illuminati or a Rockefella [sicknowledge]; we do not raise our hands to act out an NWA lyric; we do not even raise our hands in an “Allah Akbar.” Instead, we raise our hands in surrender. Our submission is to the police. The power in raising our hands is with the police. It’s not an act of agency, but a recognition of the value(lessness) of brown and black bodies. This submission to authoritarianism should concern…
Muslim Americans are no different than Jews, Italians and Polish Immigrants
If a Jinn asked me what wish I would like to be granted – I would ask that historical amnesia be erased from all peoples. Alon Levy does a great job reminding us of how other immigrants were viewed by Americans. A couple of grafs to whet your appetite: Islam and Christianity are so similar that they are almost, but not quite, the same religion. They’re both monotheistic, with all the cultural implications this carries. They both have a progressive view of the world, in which good works and proselytization will create an increasingly better world. Their eschatologies are remarkably…
On Immigration
This post really does show how an intelligent policy on immigration can make this country stronger. Immigration has made this country what it is, and is necessary to continue to foster debate lest we fall into intellectual incestuousness.
2 thoughts on “Is it the same?”
Comments are closed.
With the caveat that I’m not familiar with the military code of conduct, I don’t think his claims are a defense to a charge of desertion. If he was given an illegal order,then there probably is a process to object to that order and refuse to carry it out. Deserting isn’t a legitimate option to an unlawful order and can cause serious consequences to military discipline.
The article also indicates that he now claims conscientious objector status against an ‘oil-driven’ war. To my understanding, that claim doesn’t give him conscientious objector status. To gain that status, one must object to war on any basis, and not pick and choose based on one’s view of the the political reasons for the war. In other words, one cannot be a conscientious objector only to this war, and perhaps not others.
Obviously you can’t have soldiers decide which wars they want to fight.
Thank you. That’s what I thought. It seems bad form on the part of the defense attorney to let his client run at the mouth. The story has been buried pretty far on most of the cable news outlets, so I wonder how much we’ll hear about it in the future.