Training Knights Lesson 9 Soldiers’ Duty

     By Stephen Cheney

 
Soldiers’ Duty
 
A reminder is needed for a broader consideration when seeking to resolve obedience or disobedience to an order from a higher authority in an organization, especially a military one.
 This article applies to all military personnel whether their commanders be good or bad.
 Who or What are we?
 We each determine our essence and value by the choices that we make each day, each moment.
 
 NATIONS
A nation is a cluster of somewhat similar cultures, or cultures that are willing to live near to and tolerate each other. When peoples seek to be a nation, borders are established to define the area of existence in which their authority rules. Foreign armies are not to violate the wishes of a people by crossing borders and seeking to destroy or subjugate them. Crossing borders with soldiers may be met with a fight to the death. Not prominently considered is the drive and nourishment given to a culture by the women who rear the children who are a culture’s future. The killing of women and children is to kill a culture, and, in history that has sometimes occurred. Many cultures, like many species, no longer exist.
 
If we don’t survive, we don’t do anything else.   — John Sinclair
 
 COLLATERAL DAMAGE
It is unfortunate in warfare that there is collateral damage where innocents who are not soldiers or who are unarmed get killed. Weapons such as explosives from planes or artillery are not fully controllable, nor even seen by the sender so easing a conscience. Valid targets must be defined by the gunner as no weapon has a moral mind.
  
WHAT IS A SOLDIER’S DUTY?
A soldier is authorised by a nation to attack/ defend against any invading armies intruding across the border. Soldiers are allowed to kill to protect their nation and an invasion is an unmistakable sign of a need to engage in combat.
 
By international agreement, or understanding, soldiers are allowed to kill enemy soldiers. Men/women choose or agree to become soldiers to protect their country and cultures. That takes courage, to put their lives on the line for a moral standard.
 
Invaders may seek to remove or replace another’s culture with their own. Or replace the political system, usually with a dictatorship against an unwilling populace. Cultures that are based on sociability need a degree of freedom to prosper. All dictatorships impose restrictions on freedoms.
 

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men,
undergo the fatigue of supporting it.                     — Thomas Paine
 

RIGHTFUL ORDERS
To follow orders and kill or incapacitate invading soldiers, so protecting the innocent, is a noble calling, honourable and deserving respect.
  
WRONGFUL ORDERS
However, to be deliberately ordered to shell, shoot, or otherwise kill unarmed persons (even unarmed soldiers) is not noble killing: it is MURDER. Denying people the means to obtain food so that they starve to death is also MURDER.
 A person may ask/order you to jump off a cliff.
Do you do so? NO.
A person may order you to shoot your child.
Do you do so? NO.
A person may order you to shoot someone else’s child or you will be court marshalled and shot.
Do you do so? No ( unless that child has a grenade or suicide bomb vest).
You must THINK to make a decision: due to serious personal consequences.
If you decide “No” then you risk your own military group killing you (if they find out). You may have to form or join a revolutionary body to try to change who is the top authority who can give acceptable, honourable orders.
 
 

It is easier to contend with evil at the beginning than at the end.  You can have no greater or lesser domaine than that which reflects the control that you have over yourself.  — Leonardo da Vinci

 
OBLIGATION
An honourable soldier has a moral obligation to NOT follow murderous orders. Such orders can only come from corruption from the top.
  
PENALTIES
When a war is over, all prisoners and soldiers can return home with no penalty for their killings. However, those who have done murderous atrocities are not forgiven and international courts can have them charged and tried for murder. With a hanging or jail penalty.
 
On the other hand, as every soldier knows, disobeying an order can lead to a military court martial and death sentence.
  
SO HOW IS A SOLDIER TO DECIDE WHAT TO DO?
A soldier, man or woman, is trained to obey orders immediately, without querying or thinking, as thinking always delays action and delayed actions lead to defeat on the battlefield. Soldiers deliver up any thinking that criticizes orders, giving that prerogative to their immediate superiors or higher commanders. This involves a necessary TRUST in the integrity and ability of their superiors. Thus, often a military unit is also a personality cult where the soldiers will readily obey their known superior rather than some higher unknown figure. Top brass are no longer just military men: their rank and employment being dependent on pleasing their political master, who may be a tyrant. Trust and the ability to gain trust are a necessity in any military organization, otherwise morale and coordination break down.
 
IF a soldier receives an order that would result in the killing of the unarmed (which is Murder), then he or she is duty bound to disobey such an order. To disobey any order is a serious decision by a soldier as then may come court martial and death. To prevent misunderstandings a soldier needs to refer to immediate superiors for a brief clarification.
 
One might choose to superficially follow an order that would result in murder, yet not do the deed, not letting superiors know. To shell a residential area yet only aim for known vacant buildings. To be willing to move a tank into war but be obstructed by broken parts needing replacement.
 
A soldier should acknowledge already undertaking to die for his/her country, to already accept dying for a greater good. Also, humans only live, say, one hundred years and then die anyway. So dying itself, is not preventable, but murdering the innocent is preventable by an adamant decision to abstain.
 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.

                                                             — Mark Twain
  
WHO IS THE ENEMY?
Those who invade across a border are obvious. An enemy can also be behind you, can be above you in your organization. Can be the ruler of your land. That is obviously so when a soldier receives an order to kill the innocent. Then there is no doubt as to who is the enemy. When a situation is bad enough then people will gather together to organize a change in leadership, risking their lives but seeking to desperately save their own lives from the wrongful decisions of a despot.
 
Unfortunately, as all who rule, rule using power, and power corrupts, it is not uncommon for one tyrant to be replaced by another in the turmoil of revolution. Knowing the moral fibre of a leader or leader-candidate is crucial to a successful outcome in political change. Even in democracies, the public who vote can know little about whom they vote for. The ancient Greeks, designing and testing political systems, were of the opinion that a democracy over 10,000 citizens was unworkable: as, due to the demographics of space, too many people would not live in close proximity to their politicians and therefore could not fully know their leader candidates which is needed to make an informed decision.
 

Gold grasps only for gold, each day;
to give love you should never delay.
Lead children away from the rape of the earth,
leave them our forest and the right of their birth.  — Yggdrasil Skuld
 

 TYRANTS
A tyrant normally does not personally kill/ murder numerous people. He orders others to kill for him. He does not have the physical power to personally kill many. It is the soldier who has the power to kill or not to kill/ murder. So, soldier, are you but the claw of a tyrant; or are you a warrior commanding your own mind? A soldier’s duty is ultimately to his/her country, not to its leader. Leaders come and go but the nation, the people remain. The people need their soldiers to be honourable.
 

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. — Jules Winnfield.

 
WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS?
A soldier’s function is to kill under military regulations. However, only a murderer would order a soldier to murder. Such an order qualifies as evil. It is others who give the order, but it is you the soldier or military personnel who aims and pulls the trigger. You thus have the final decision to kill or not to kill.
 
When under orders to kill the unarmed you are in a crisis and have a dilemma. Under penalty of life and dead you must make a decision, and quickly.
 
So, what are your options?
 
A)        Obey the criminal order and kill women and children. You have then saved your body but have condemned your soul. You are no longer an honourable soldier. You are a criminal, a murderer. The power to order killing can corrupt those commanders who have criminal tendencies.
 
B)        Disobey the criminal order and meekly submit to a court martial (if you get one first) and being shot. You then have not saved your body, but you have glorified your soul.
 
C)        CUNNING:
Disobey the criminal order but apply strategy from your trained soldier’s mind. The following are suggestions going from mild to dangerous:
 

•      If shelling a residential area, try shelling only empty buildings if they are known to be empty.
•      Make yourself really sick to go to hospital.
•      Sabotage your heavy equipment so it looks like natural damage and won’t work. Then complain that it cannot be used until spare parts arrive and repairs are made (a temporary delay).
•      Go AWOL.
•      Conspire with trusted colleagues (risking betrayal and death) to decide what to do as a group.
•      Leave your criminal military and join some other military that you KNOW is not corrupt. But you can never go back to your country/ family.
•      Leave your military and become a mercenary elsewhere in the world.
•      Leave your military and become a partisan fighting against it.
•      Eliminate, if you can, those higher commander/s who gave the criminal orders, accepting the danger of attempting such an elimination.
•      Any other option that you can think of.

 
 
MAKE YOURSELF TO YOUR DREAM
A moral soldier is brave, death defying, noble, defender of the weak, worthy of praise and respect; a warrior. There are many hard choices to be made on the battlefield of life. But the signs of a true enemy are unmistakable. You determine what and who you are, your value and whether or not the innocent survive.
  
For this planet in this Universe, for the Earth, it is you who are the mind, eyes, ears and hands of the planet. You decide what it is and what it will be. When you are gone, your effects will linger.
 As is said “They can kill my body, but they cannot kill my soul!”

                      Fallen blossoms leave their perfume behind.     — Japanese
  
IN SUMMARY
For anywhere in the world, any soldier’s or military personnel’s true enemy is
A)   🎆  An enemy whose armed force is invading across your nation’s border. Your Duty is to stop them, and also to prevent them killing any of your own unarmed citizens, women and children.
B) 🎆  An enemy is Any commander who initiates orders to you to kill unarmed persons, whether by bullet, explosive, starvation or by other means. As such an order, if obeyed, is obviously not killing but murder. Your Duty is to protect ALL unarmed, women and children of ANY nation. So you Defend and you Protect, and by that you are honourable.

 

 (Image: Chess King black and white Sourced from: https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/duality.html)

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