I Was Just Following Orders (Laurence Vance)

Laurence Vance on the need for soldiers to understand they have a moral obligation to disobey unjust orders:

George Bush is an arrogant, egotistical, hypocrite. But he is not alone. Every U.S. president, secretary of state, diplomat, congressman, military commander, and other advocate of the highly interventionist American foreign policy of the last fifty years is just as arrogant, just as egotistical, and just as hypocritical.

A few days before he ordered U.S. dupes to invade Iraq back in 2003, Bush the decider delivered an address to the nation from the White House. As usual, the speech was full of lies:

The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat.

In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms.

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

Some observations. First, if it means anything, fifty years of U.S. intervention in the Middle East means that the United States invited any "threat" that we faced from that region of the world. Second, if in a free Iraq there will be no more aggression and torture, then, since the United States has an aggressive foreign policy and is guilty of torture, can we call America a free country? And third, speaking of the most lethal weapons ever devised (which, of course, we know that Iraq never had), the United States not only has more of these weapons than any other country, we are the only country to have used them.

But it gets worse.

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