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Exactly. Armies exist to win wars. That is their purpose. Nobody has time to theorize it out from first principles about what is “right” or “wrong”, they raise them because a war has been (edit: planned or) declared and needs to be won.
Then they just keep them around to look spiffy and intimidating.
They will always serve whoever is in charge of them, though, it’s just more pragmatic than trying to serve an ambiguous moral principle. This is why we make ours swear an oath to defend a piece of paper from all enemies, to try to help resolve that challenge.
Disclaimer: I did not read the article, so my response is to your comment only.
My two cents: you just described what an NCO might say. Commissioned Officers have the responsibility to manage the violence applied by the NCOs in such a way that civilians/non-combatants (of all nations, even/especially the enemy nation(s) civilians) are not armed whenever that is possible.
That’s the whole “professional” thing. Just like a doctor (a professional) can’t pick and choose who they help, or a lawyer (a professional) can’t decide he doesn’t like his client, so he’ll sabotage his defense, etc. An officier is a professional because he makes sure the violence applied by the members of the military that are under his command do not commit immoral acts (plundering, rape, murder, etc).
Most modern military forces extend that responsibility to NCOs though, so that every members have the responsibility to not follow illegal/immoral orders. But that’s another point…
I agree. My only counterpoint would be that any view that fails to include the armies of dictators as well is fundamentally incomplete.
My view manages to apply to every army in history. This should simply be acknowledged, that’s all. We have an important responsibility to be better than that, but we do not always succeed. We are only human.
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Well said. The complexity of the modern battlefield, frankly, completely necessitates the professionalism the other commenter was mentioning, to even be able to deliver competent results.
This is one lesson that could be taken from the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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Man what the fuck are we even doing. Are the war-criminals at least going to be investigated as well? I can’t believe this country, really wish things were different.
Sadly, It’s like that in a lot of places. This guy had a huge amount of integrity and did something about a crime and he’s getting punished over it
Jesus
They want to send the message that whistleblowers will be punished. They want to silence people from speaking out.
Free speech, but only if it doesn’t harm the government.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A whistleblower who helped expose allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan has pleaded guilty to leaking classified information.
David McBride was due to face trial next week, but changed his plea after a legal ruling scuppered his defence.
McBride admits he gave troves of documents to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), because he was concerned about what he then thought was the “over-investigation” of troops, the court heard.
The information he provided underpinned a series of reports in 2017 called The Afghan Files, which gave unprecedented insight into the operations of Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, and contained allegations of war crimes.
Months after McBride’s arrest in 2019, the ABC was raided by federal police, who were also building a case against the journalist, Dan Oakes, who wrote the reports.
McBride - who initially faced five charges - had intended to argue his disclosure was protected by whistleblower safeguards in Australia.
The original article contains 439 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
