On November 13, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial turns 25.
According Memorial Fund President Jan Scruggs, the black wall has “helped
people separate the warrior from the war, and it has helped a nation to heal.”
How “healed” this nation might be is certainly open to
debate. What should be patently evident is that separating “the warrior from
the war” results in No Gun Ri, My Lai, Haditha, etc. Such disconnection also
makes it taboo to criticize or question “our heroes.” (There even are many
“antiwar” folks who vigorously defend the troops.) Even when faced with
documented evidence of criminality, Americans will not equate the warrior with
the war. The excuse making typically touches on these two concepts: 1) They
were just following orders and 2) Those who enlist do so for economic reasons.
The first line of defense ignores Principle I of the
Nuremberg Tribunal, which states: “Any person who commits an act which
constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable
to punishment.” Principle IV adds: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to
order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from
responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact
possible to him.”
As for excuse #2, a November 2006 New York Times op-ed put that myth to rest. Authors Tim Kane and
Mackenzie Eaglen “analyzed demographic data on every single enlistee (in 2005)
. . . and found that in terms of education . . . recruits were just as
qualified as those of any recent year, and maybe the best ever. Overall,
wartime recruits since 1999 are in many respects comparable to the youth
population on the whole, except that they are on average a bit wealthier, much
more likely to have graduated from high school and more rural than their
civilian peers.” They also found that youths “from wealthy American ZIP codes
are volunteering in ever higher numbers” while “enlistees from the poorest
fifth of American neighborhoods fell nearly a full percentage point over the
last two years, to 13.7 percent. In 1999, that number was exactly 18 percent.”
Are some of the American soldiers in Iraq there primarily
for economic reasons? Sure. Did others sign up for a chance to shoot towel
heads? Probably. After factoring
out these two relatively small groups and rejecting the immoral “only following
orders” defense, the reality remains: The Warrior is the War.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at www.mickeyz.net.
