The original post assumes this.
What if he is not defending his country, but is defending his state? I would argue that the US is not a country. It is a state. Without the power of washington the US would have broken up over a century ago starting with the war of northern aggression. Neither was the Soviet Union a country. It too was a state held together by an iron fist. Soldiers on both sides would be fighting for a state.
Completely untrue. History is full of examples of men being paid to die.
The question was not if the soldiers are still responsible for their actions.
It was can someone support the soldiers and not the war.
It does not matter. A state is indeed not a country. But just because there exists a state it does not mean there does not exist a country also. Between 1922 and 1991 there was no state called Russia, but the country of Russia never ceased to exist. Country is in people’s minds not on pieces of official papers.
Perhaps the USA is not a country, but that does not mean there exist no country or countries on the North American continent. In the case of an invasion it is this country the people would rush to defend. That the presently existing state could use the situation take shelter behind them and therefore ensure that by the defending the country they were also defending the state is unfortunate, but it does not change the reality that what their loyalty is to in truth is the country and not the state.
Marko, what differences do you see between a “nation” and a “country”? I think what you are referring to is a nation versus a country; the latter implies a state.
No, it was not. It was what do people mean by it.
You can make up your own meaning for “support the troops”. I go by the most common meaning.
Country is a geograhical area.
It’s not an arbitrary geographical area. I guess it could go for either:
/ˈkʌntri/ Show Spelled [kuhn-tree] Show IPA noun,plural-tries, adjective
–noun
a state or nation: What European countries have you visited?
a tract of land considered apart from any geographical or political limits; region; district.
This is the colloquial modern useage.
Yes it was. From the original post.
“obviously it often means support the state or the foreign policy but what does it mean when individuals seperate the two and say they oppose the war but support the troops? is this a contradiction? does supporting the troops mean we hope they survive? or that we hope they suceed? if it means we hope they suceed ,does that not lead to us supporting the war?”
Where did you find this “most common meaning”? Or is it your subjective interpretation of what you think people mean by it?
So where do we draw the line? How far away from my country can i go before I can no longer justly kill a hostile soldier? If I as a Southerner (the South being my country) take up arms and kill to defend Alaska (not my country but the same state), is that justifiable? If I were to become a mercenary in Afganistan would I be a criminal?
Now back in the real world. If a person believes that terrorists in Afganistan attacked his country and he takes up arms because he believes he is defending his country; is he a criminal?
Well I think all these terms are very confused in the English language and there is much overlap of meaning the way they get used. I just try to use the terms as I think an English person would.
I have a hunch there is much more clarity to corresponding terms in other languages - of peoples who were historically subjugated or politically disunited.
Just because there are cases which are ambiguous and where it is hard to determine which party is defending their country and which party is invading and just because you can think of one such an example does not mean there are also cases which on the contrary are very clear and non-ambiguous. For example the British in Africa, the Americans in Iraq or the Soviets in Colorado. All three non-ambiguous examples where one set of combatants is non-criminal and the other set is criminal.
Criminality has to do with actions not with beliefs. What you are asking is, is this person a good person. Probably he is. But that, unlike the question of criminality, is a subjective question. Besides, there are tons of criminals who are good people. Just ask the liberals. If what he is doing in Afghanistan is not defending his country then what he is doing is criminal and if we value justice we should want for him to be held accountable and have to answer for it - for the sake of people he killed who unlike him actually were merely defending their country, and for the sake of people whose country he invaded.
What would you say if I drove around with a bumper sticker that said: “Support the good kids who were raised in poverty and bad families and were failed by the system, who then fell into bad company, got hooked up on drugs, and had to resort to burglary to feed their habit, and who during one such burglary accidentally killed an old lady”?
Would you in keeping with the theme of separating the person and the crime ask where I bought it so that you could get one for yourself as well?
And what would you have to say about a nation where every third car had a bumper sticker like this?
Just to clarify. I am on this line of discussion because of a question made in the original post that read along the lines of: are all soldiers, whether involved in war crimes or killing civilians, criminals?
My thoughts are no. It would seem that we agree.
Sure it does. Beliefs determine which actions are criminal and which are justified. Even in a free society the beliefs of the population will determine what actions are criminal.
Everyone is accountable for their actions. This I do not deny. The problem is determining what actions they should be punished for and which ones are not punishable. Because of this I take issue with those who wish to paint all soldiers as criminals. It is a faulty and simplistic veiw.
That you are a more forgiving soul than I?
I am not separating peole from thier crimes. I am asking how do we determine if their actions are crimes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJESEUYaQg
It’s hard to remember sometimes that most folks don’t view war as murder per se, so you can’t really view a soldier who kills as equivalent to a murderer because chances are he believes he hasn’t committed murder. Support the troops is a vague statement; one would think that removing troops from harm’s way would be supporting the troops, but it often seems as though that’s not what people mean by ‘support the troops’.
Not all soldiers. Just those engaged in an unjust war.
I think you make an effort not to see that there exists a very simple way to determine which soldiers are engaged in criminal activity and which are not, because this would mean you would have to condemn thousands of American soldiers. I think you are engaging in wilful moral relativism. If all were to adopt your stance then it would not be possible to say that anything is wrong with wars of aggression at all. If you claim it is not possible to condemn people for engaging in a crime then you can not condemn the crime. If there is nothing wrong with an American joining the army to be shipped to occupy Iraq then there is nothing wrong about the US army occupying Iraq. Non-crimes do not magically become crimes just because they are done by an army of a state.
Anybody who served in the occupation of Iraq is a wrongdoer who owes restitution to his victims. At the very least what he owes is an apology. If a common soldier has nothing to apology for to Iraqis then neither have Paul Bremer or Tommy Franks. And I don’t believe you really believe Paul Bremer and Tommy Franks have nothing to apologise for.
“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.” -Herbert Spencer
Never-Ending War in the MiddleEast by Doug Casey
