Well done, sir. You make some good points. If soldiers are seen
simply as killing machines by the anti war movement then that movement is as guilty of dehumanising them as the army is itself. The issues are complex, and trivialising human life and constructing a false "enemy" is not a constructive or practival reation.

I Was Only Following Orders
March 15, 2003, 07:55 AM



When I was young, I often encountered strange children on the streets of my city. These boys and girls had huge sad eyes, they never laughed, and they were all skin and bones. "Displaced people," said my father, who had seen tens of thousands of kids like these in the war-shattered ruins of Europe.


Displaced from what? From families that perished in concentration camps. From towns that had been blown to pieces. From mass murderers who, when hauled before a court at Nuremberg, showed no remorse, did not apologize for the atrocities they had committed, and even expressed pride in their contribution to exterminating millions of Jews, Gypsies, Socialists, Communists, and Homosexuals. After all, said these men, "We were only following orders."

As the United States of America continues to deploy hundreds of thousands of heavily armed troops in the Persian Gulf, I ask students in my college seminar on violence/nonviolence to write a paper in which they explore the consequences of following, or not following, orders. I show them a documentary about a small Vietnamese village called My Lai. In this documentary, combat veterans of the Vietnam war attempt to explain why they obeyed when their superiors ordered them to kill every man, woman, and child in May Lai.

One of the men interviewed for this film explains that he went on a rampage, killing everything in sight, including a woman who was carrying a baby. "I shot her," says the veteran. "And when I looked the bullet had gone straight through and killed the baby. Why? I was trained to follow orders. They told us to kill everyone that day, and thats exactly what we did." His hands shake, his legs quiver, and his eyes fill with tears. He takes massive amounts of drugs to control his nerves. He has attempted suicide on several occasions.

Some of my students believe that they must follow their governments orders. If ordered to kill and die in some far-off nation, they simply must do so. When I explain that Nazis accused of war crimes argued they were following orders, my students insist that they would never help exterminate innocent human beings. They would never crowd women and children together over a ditch, and then fire into this terrified bundle of humanity until everyone was dead. Nevertheless, as American citizens, they are obligated to fight and die for their country.

We are not just talking, of course, about what happened in towns and cities and concentration camps during World War II. We are discussing more than a major atrocity during the Vietnam War. We are talking about hundreds of thousand of American soldiers hardened by training and anxious to prove themselves in war. When the order to go into battle comes, they will roar across the Kuwaiti border in hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, they will fly over Baghdad in formations of supersonic jets, dropping thousands of missiles and so-called "smart bombs" on civilian neighborhoods, they will parachute from the skies into the streets of Iraqi towns and cities, killing anyone who dares to resist this invasion.

My students and I are talking about fellow Americans who believe that they must follow their governments orders to kill and die in Iraq. Another generation of young men and women conditioned by their educational system to accept the arrogant, deceitful, homicidal rhetoric of those who intend to expand the American empire throughout the Middle East and into other regions of the globe. Like the teenagers who fought and died in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam, these young soldiers believe that their sacrifice, and the death of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, will be for some noble cause. By attacking Iraq, they will be helping to convince people in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere, that the United States of America believes in democracy and practices real justice.

Sadly, these young soldiers do not see that, like the working class whites, African Americans, Indians, and Chicanos who fought in Vietnam, they are throwaway people. The wealthy oligarchy that runs our nation will shed crocodile tears when the first flag-draped coffins return home from the Middle East. They will rail against injustice,[read Muslims], praise God for giving the American empire a great victory, and make promises they will never keep to the wounded and deranged survivors of the empires latest crusade to make the world safe for multinational oil companies.

The most remarkable, and frightening, thing about the Bush administrations plans to destroy Iraq in order to save it, is that young men and women are willing to follow the orders of a man who has never served in the United States military and who knows nothing about war. One might think that there would be mass insurrection in the ranks of the military, but it appears that will not be the case. Instead, hundreds of thousands of soldiers will obey orders from their commander in chief. After the slaughter in Iraq is over, our nation may indulge in victory parades, Mr. Bush and friends may bask beside the sea of blood they created, and the architects of global domination will probably pin the donkeys tale on their next objective.

And if one day the international community manages to try war criminals like Mr. Bush, Dr. Rice, General Powell, Mr. Cheney, et. al. in a court of law, how might they explain their murderous behavior? Will they say, "We were only following orders"?

It is illegal to urge a solider in the United States military to disobey a "lawful" order. Yet according to the Nuremberg principles citizens of a nation whose leaders are planning to commit crimes against humanity have not only a right but an obligation to disobey orders.

The Bush administrations plans to attack Iraq are a violation of international law; therefore, Mr. Bush has no legal right to order American soldiers into battle. Just as some soldiers at My Lai refused to follow orders to kill women and children, one can only hope that some U.S. military personnel will refuse to follow orders to massacre Iraqi civilians.

By refusing to kill innocent Iraqi citizens, American soldiers will be acting out of love for humanity, rather than hatred for a people who have never done anything to harm the United States of America. Let us hope that the world community can prevent the atrocity that George W. Bush and friends insist will bring peace and stability to the Middle East. We might fail to stop Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair, and other so-called world leaders who insist on massacring children for peace, but we can declare our intention to never, ever, follow their homicidal orders.

Professor Fred A Wilcox teaches at Ithica College in New York