Nuremburg trials were and are a joke.

[cornermouse]

Listening to the Lt. Watada/Fidel interviews yesterday on NPR, I finally realized the Nuremburg trials are nothing but a joke to us. Even the Germans, who recently had a case, take it more seriously than we do.

According to Fidel realistically speaking, your choices are to go to the site of a war and refuse to pick up a gun, hoping that your commnanding officer won't send you out there by yourself or without a gun when you tell him how you feel (good luck with that one and thinking about the kidnapped military victims :shrug: ) or hope your own fellow soldiers don't off you themselves. Either way, you're dead thus validating the fact that the Nuremburg trials and everything you were taught about them is nothing but a joke.

[aquart]

1. Funny. I'm not laughing.

[cornermouse]

6. I wasn't laughing either.

Horrified, not laughing.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. Maybe you have no sense of humor.

Then again, I am guessing it has something to do with the fact of dismissing the trials of Nazi attrocities is actually not all that funny.

[Jim Sagle]

9. It's hard to laugh at a worthless piece of nazi filth, isn't it?

[Kagemusha]

2. Basically.

But the root of the problem is much more basic: the US military simply does not accept officers resigning due to stop-loss. In other words, if you're a commissioned officer and you develop doubts about a war and do not feel you can represent the nation because of things like a belief in the war being illegal, the government no longer cares; you will not be permitted to resign. (Edit: I mean... in the past, and in most other countries besides the US, you have a RIGHT to resign, as an officer, because more is expected of you, and if you don't want to fight any more, they don't want you to poison the well. Not giving a damn about such things and forcing officers to serve under penalty of court-marshall reflects the current state of the highly strained volunteer military.)

Oh, and your other option is to find a man willing to sleep with you.

[GreenZoneLT]

3. Heck, how hard is THAT?

From recent new reports, all you need to do is walk into an Atlanta airport restroom with your cell-phone camera. Game, set, match.

[TomClash]

4. From Clausewitz to Counterinsurgency

All strategy and tactics rethought in the 1970s and 80s at Columbia, Rand, the Army and Naval War Colleges and other places has been forgotten. The role of morlae in war is one of those lessons swept away. You can see the result.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. How does this relate to the Nuremburg trials?

People weren't sent there just for taking part in a war; they were sent for specific acts in the war, or for membership of the SS. How does that relate to conscientious objectors?

[cornermouse]

8. Lt. Watada doesn't consider himself a conscientious objector.

He's refusing to go based on his belief that the war in Iraq is illegal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. OK, how does a lieutenant refusing to go to Iraq relate to Nuremburg?

Nuremburg was not a trial for all members of the German military - only those who committed war crimes themselves, or certain members of the SS, which was held to have special responsibility for some war crimes. Whether he'd be in danger from people in the US military if he went to Iraq, and refused to fight, has nothing to do with Nuremburg. If he went, and fought, he wouldn't face any war crimes trial - unless he instigated a war crime himself.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Unfortunately, Watada doesn't have the standing to call...

the war illegal.

He might get away with refusing to follow an illegal order, but there's just no way any military organization is going to let a lieutenant call off a whole war. Just ain't gonna happen.

He can't be a conscientious objector to just this war, either. Not only would the rules for officers be a bit different than the already tough ones for the enlisted, but to be a CO you have to believe that ALL wars are immoral and refuse to ever fight.

It sucks, but Watada is between a rock and a very hard place.

[newyawker99]

12. locking....

flamebait.