I Was Only Following Orders

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I Was Only Following Orders

Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by Vietnamese citizens against corporations that provided the U.S. military with the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

The civil complaint sought compensation from Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and over a dozen other companies, claiming that they participated in what amounted to a war crime against millions of Vietnamese.

Agent Orange contains dioxin, a highly toxic chemical which, incidentally, was used in last year's assassination attempt against Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko.

The military sprayed 21 million gallons of Agent Orange over Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. The chemical has been blamed for causing cancers and other serious health problems, including severe birth defects.

Agent Orange is one more tragic story in a tragic war that continues to haunt us. But what made the report of this dismissed lawsuit all the more striking was one of the defense arguments – that the companies shouldn't be held responsible for any harm allegedly done by their product because they were simply following the orders of the commander in chief.

Salute Smartly and Charge

Hearing the Nuremberg defense invoked – "I was only following orders" – is always chilling, especially when it is uttered by Americans who were acting in our name.

And in fact, the Nuremberg defense usually fails, as former Abu Ghraib guard Charles Graner found out in January. The Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear that only the lawful orders of superiors must be obeyed.

This caveat in military law always strikes me as the military trying to have it both ways.

Soldiers are trained to carry out orders unquestioningly – Sir, Yes Sir! – to get them to do things in war that violate the basic rules of morality drummed into them by parents, teachers, ministers, and others during their childhood. The good soldier is an automaton and damn proud of it, as articulated below by Oliver North, giving testimony about Iran/Contra before Congress in 1987:

I'm not in the habit of questioning my superiors. If [Admiral Poindexter] deemed it not to be necessary to ask the President, I saluted smartly and charged up the hill. That's what lieutenant colonels are supposed to do. . . . And if the commander in chief tells this lieutenant colonel to go stand in the corner and stand on his head, I will do so.

But when soldiers are conditioned so well that they commit atrocities in the course of executing their duties, the military cuts them loose. They're on their own.

Agonizing Choices

We've all seen the reports of the appalling events in Iraq: The killing of innocent civilians. The torture of prisoners. The random roundup and imprisonment of citizens without formal charges, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The use of napalm and radioactive ordnance. Are these atrocities, or do they simply represent the hard choices that sometimes need to be made in war?

Suppose you're a 26-year-old soldier ordered to Iraq. You too have seen the reports of what happens there, and you do consider them atrocities, no matter how your government and your commanders try to explain or excuse them.

When confronted with the brutal realities of this war, realities made that much worse because the stated justification for the war was untrue, you are uncertain about your rights and obligations as a soldier. But one thing is absolutely clear: Under no circumstances can you live with the deaths of innocent civilians on your conscience – women and children no different than your own wife and two-year-old son.

What do you do?

If you're Jeremy Hinzman, a paratrooper who served in Afghanistan, you file for conscientious objector status. When that is denied, you realize you have just one remaining, terrible option. Desertion.

Hinzman and his family are currently in Canada, where he has applied for asylum with the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board. Hinzman knows he faces both prosecution and persecution if he returns to the U.S.

Escaping a Nightmare

One of the witnesses who appeared before the board on Hinzman's behalf was former Marine staff sergeant Jimmy Massey. Massy, who served in Iraq and was honorably discharged for a war-induced, post-traumatic stress disorder, testified that his unit had killed 30 to 40 civilians at a checkpoint within a 48-hour period. After the shootings, no weapons were found on any of the victims or in their vehicles. These were innocent men, women, and children who possibly did not understand the soldiers' signals to stop.

Massey testified to other horrors: That his unit shot and killed a man who was exiting his car with his hands up, that they shot and killed a small group of unarmed, peaceful protesters after a stray bullet of unknown origin passed near them, that U.S. soldiers were known to "place rounds in the head of someone who is playing possum."

Understandably, Hinzman wanted no part of this nightmare. And he's not alone.

In December, 2004, CBS News reported that 5,500 American soldiers had deserted since the start of the war in Iraq.

According to Jimmy Massey, some American soldiers took more desperate action. In an interview with Il Manifesto, published the day before another Il Manifesto reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, was wounded in Iraq by American soldiers firing at her car, killing one man, Massy said this:

In 2004, 31 marines took their own lives, and 85 made suicide attempts. Most of those who wanted to die rather than keep on killing are less than 25 years old, and 16 percent of them are under 20 years.

Fighting for America

Nobody doubts the courage of the young Americans risking their lives fighting in Iraq. To them, the war is not an abstraction, as it is for most of us, but a too-real life-and-death struggle. No one is more deserving of honor, admiration, respect, and our everlasting gratitude.

But neither should anyone doubt the courage of those who, in good conscience, have refused to fight in this war.

To be sure, many of the soldiers who deserted did so for less-than-honorable reasons. But others have placed their futures at risk for a principle – an idea which, in a society that tolerates extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, and the occupation of a once-sovereign nation, seems as quaint as the Geneva Conventions.

Nobody should doubt the courage of someone who stands up and says, at great personal cost: This war is wrong. I will not participate. These troops are no less deserving of our support – and admiration.

Update 3/24/05: Canada denies asylum to Jeffrey Hinzman.