The point that civilians order the military to do the things that it does is well taken. Given that we all know that U.S. civilian commanders have a well-documented track record of ordering the military to do bad things, the question is, why would honorable, moral people be willing to volunteer to join the military and do the politicians dirty work for them?
I'm not as much concerned about the ethics of individual actions that are taken in the heat of battle, e.g., the commander says, "Shoot!," and soldiers end up inadvertently killing noncombatants. In most cases individual members of the military do what they're told to do because that's how they stay alive, which is completely understandable.
My issue is more with the decision making process that people go through when they're deciding whether or not to join the military in the first place. Why choose to put yourself into a position where you may be "forced" to do bad things? It seems like the answer, which has been confirmed by this thread, is that the military compensates its members quite well for their "work:" highly competitive salaries, excellent benefits, free college, medical care for life...
The argument that more good, honorable, moral people joining the military will, in some way, help to make the military better is disingenuous, IMO, and I think members of this board who are posting in this thread must know this from their experience in the military. Over and over again, I have read and heard accounts of individual members of the military who have spoken up about unethical things they observed while in the military, and in 100% of the cases I've heard about, either nothing happened or their "complaints" caused them to get forced out of the military and ended their careers.
In the
article on the U.S. Military's support of pedophiles in Afghanistan that @GuitarStv linked above, a U.S. Army captain was "relieved of his command" for beating up a U.S. backed militia commander who had a young boy chained to his bed so he could use him as a sex slave. An Army sergeant who joined in to help beating up the abusive, pedophile Afghan militia commander is being "forcibly retired" by the Army as retaliation for his participation in the beating of the Afghan pedophile.
Okay, so you can say those guys crossed the line by beating the guy up. Maybe they should've gone through the "chain-of-command," and reported it, right? In the same article linked by @GuitarStv above it describes an Army major who sent an email to officers at another base warning them that a militia commander who had recently been transferred to their district was a pedophile and had been abusing boys for years. That was the right thing to do, right, send an email to alert the chain of command that a known pedophile had just been transferred into their district? WRONG! Here's what the military did instead :
The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler, who had sent the email warning about Mr. Jan, his lawyers said. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.
Maybe current or former members of the military who are posting to this thread can give us some real life examples of people they know or have heard of who have stood up and reported unethical/immoral practices they observed while in the military and were not punished for their reports? Maybe the media only reports the bad stuff about the military, so I'm open to hearing from those of you who have first hand experience in the military. Have you ever or have you ever heard of anyone who has challenged the military and actually gotten them to change in a meaningful, positive way?
