Walter In Denver

Like any other sort of civil disobedience, one must be ready to live with the consequences of taking personal moral responsibility, rather than simply "following orders." That doesn't mean one shouldn't, but the natural tension between the rule of law and personal judgement makes it a necessary cost to the individual to (hopefully) drive societal change.

Walter, surely you know that personal responsibility is no longer considered anything worth foisting on the people? They'd only screw it up anyhow. Better to let our betters tell us what to do and how to do it, and ignore this foolish call to take responsibility for ourselves. </sarcasm>

We have a problem here. If the soldiers took personal responsibility they would have refused to go to Iraq in the first place. When you join the service you pledge to "uphold the constitution", as Iraq is an unconstitutional war every single soldier who supports this war does it at the expense of breaking their pledge. If they were to uphold their pledge then they would have demanded the congress declare war before they departed, in order to be able to uphold their pledge. So at what point should they start taking personal responsibility? They didn't take responsibility when going there, so it is not surprising when they don't take responsibility once there. (Note: this is not an antiwar position, it is a pro constitution position, even those who support the war should have demanded that the rules for declaring war laid out in the constitution be followed, because without our constitution America is just a piece of land).

Great point severin, even though what you suggest as being constitutional goes against our MO of the past decade and a half. It was so easy this time because we have been systematically doing away with the need for congressional approval.

Another scary thing about the England defense is the seriousness in which she and her atty deliver it, as well as the credibility it is given in mainstream media. I would feel far more comfortable if she and the others owned up to what they did deciding it was wrong, and then helped the courts to go after the higher ups in the food chain.

I know it is so far different from the MO over the last 100 years or so but damnit there is no time like the present to try and change things, imagine if only 1000 troops refused to go to Iraq based on constitutional issues and they got on TV and news radio discussing the situation what that would have on the publics conscience. Sure they would be risking court martial, but if it were me I would rather go to jail then to war anyways especially one like this where the US was not really threatened by Iraq.