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Wow. Great thread and great comments.
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To me, it’s not so much Who won? as What have we learned?
Is there democracy in Iraq now?
–Yeah, kind of. But at what cost was it gained? Surely there are better ways to change a regime than an invasion followed by a long and costly occupation.
Did President Bush let his emotions and personal interests influence his judgment about Iraq? Did Congress do its job of fact-checking WMD claims and generally counter-balancing the power of the Presidency? Having started the war, was the President enough of a leader to “win the peace”?
—Yes. No. And NO!
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War should always be the last resort, never the first. If we’ve learned nothing more than that, then perhaps all the blood and treasure will have been worth it after all.
And if not, all I can say is it’s too bad.
Way too bad.
–David Preston
Interesting point, k, but you may be missing a nuance here.
The fact that we have an all-volunteer force has nothing to do with the question of whether an individual soldier can/should decide not to obey an order. There are provisions in international law, US law, and God’s Law dictating that certain kinds of orders should never be obeyed. This would include any order a soldier reasonably believes to be illegal. (Example: an order to shoot unarmed civilians.)
However, there are nuances and there are nuances. Is a simple order to report for duty in a war that one believes to be an illegal war ipso facto an illegal order? Some civilian legal authorities would say yes. However, a military court would almost certainly say no.
Think this is an artificial dilemma?
Not to Lt. Ehren Watada it wasn’t . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada
Remember Lt. Watada? He signed up for Afghanistan, but when they sent him to Iraq instead, he said, “Hell no. I won’t go.”
And he didn’t.
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