This is an important point, the answer to this may well have prevented every one of the major massacres in the last century!
If, given a situation wherein a soldier's commanding officer ordered him/her to shoot and kill a certain target, would the said soldier be allowed to have any opinion whatsoever in the matter?
The target could be any one of the following:
A stone-throwing protester, peaceful protestor, person(s) belonging to a certain ethnic group, all male members of fighting age (meaning 15 & up) in a certain group of arrested people, a kid who's trying to hit you because you just killed his family .. the list goes on.
Every one of the above cases has received a bullet in the head at some or the other point in the last century. In every case, dissension by the soldiers could have saved lives.
Has any country yet held up the right of the soldier to say "NO" to his officer, without threat? Because the people who did these executions probably didn't really want to.
2006-12-16
04:08:29
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35 answers
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