A silly city

It made national headlines--and the Daily Show--a few weeks ago: the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution stating that the US Marines and their recruiting center near campus were "uninvited" and "unwelcome" in the city, and even went so far as to grant a parking space in front of the recruitment center to Code Pink, which is an anti-war group that has been haranguing the Marines for months. There has since been a national outcry, persuading the City Counsel to reconsider its actions.

Of course, none of this made any sense to begin with. In the first place, the government should never be in the business of granting special legal privileges to one political faction at the expense of another. Free speech entitles all players in the marketplace of ideas to present their argument to the community without government interference. What the Berkeley City Counsel is doing is selectively curtailing this freedom for those they disagree with (the US Marine Corps) by granting to their political opponents special powers of harassment (a special parking spot for Code Pink right in front of the recruitment center).

The second reason none of this made sense is because the US Marine Corps itself is an unlikely target of derision for anyone who opposes the Iraq War. President Bush and a complacent Congress made the decision to invade Iraq, not the Marines.

And before you accuse me of invoking the Nuremberg defense--i.e., of claiming that the Marines are not responsible for the war because they "are just following orders"--let me just preempt it by saying that, in my view, such a critique is not applicable in this case. This kind of defense of a soldier's actions only fails in extreme cases where the soldier is ordered to carry out atrocities or war crimes. In such cases, the soldier is being ordered to do something that is considered to be so categorically wrong that it cannot possibly be justified. Since there is no question that the order is unjustified, the soldier is obligated to refuse to carry it out. However, most orders require that the soldier do something that may or may not be justified, depending on the circumstances. For example, the soldier may be asked to invade a sovereign nation (unless you are hopelessly pacifist, you will agree that this is sometimes justified). But the principle of civilian control of the military demands that the soldier leave the political question of whether the orders are justified to the civilians in charge. For soldiers to act otherwise would be for them to assume a veto power over the civilian authorities that is inconsistent with the principle of civilian control of the military.

It is undoubtedly possible that the invasion of a sovereign country like Iraq could be completely justified; whether or not it actually is justified is an open political question to be debated and resolved by elected politicians. If soldiers are to defer to the democratic process, then they have no choice but to "just follow orders", regardless of their political opinions. The only time that those soldiers should refuse to follow orders is when those orders could not possibly be justified, as in the case of genocide and other war crimes and atrocities.

The Berkeley City Council and Code Pink seem to think that soldiers bear responsibility--and should shoulder the blame--for any unjustified action they are ordered to do. But this is unfair, because the only way for the soldiers to absolve themselves of this would be for them to sacrifice the principle of military subservience to the civilian government. And I don't think anyone wants them to do that.