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When will American soldiers refuse
Herb Ruhs, MD
I'm not talking about fragging, which was very common in the American War In Viet Nam (and seldom punished, by the way). That phenomenon is more consistent with an army that has had a total collapse of morale than one that is about to mutiny. There is a long history of mutiny of entire military units that, in turn, sparks entire armies to rebel against harmful rule. As a practical matter, mutiny is refusal to follow orders to take the fight to the designated enemy. It can be explicit and organized, or tacit. In either case the officer corps finds that it is dealing with an "unreliable" force that is willing to fight only in self-defense including fighting against "loyal" units. Most commonly, in the propagandized U.S. mindspace, mutiny is in service of authoritarian rule, such as occurred in Chile. But actually, rebellion of armed forces against the rulers and in favor of the populace (the families of the soldiers, after all) are equally common in the record. I suspect positive mutinies are much more common than the historical record suggests due to suppression by authority of the mere idea that authority can be countered summarily by the very people that they depend on to enforce their rule. Given enough outrage on the part of the troops (the Russian front in WWI for instance) such transformations, when they snowball into an irresistible mass, can actually be relatively bloodless and result in sudden, if usually only transient, liberation from unjust rule. We are all both angelic and demonic in potential. We can be led to war, and we can walk away from it as well. The power that holds the demonic dominant in war is obedience to authority. We can decide to stop obeying, and turn to our angelic selves. Technically, in the case of rebellion by armed forces against illegitimate rule, that is mutiny. The potential for this to happen now is, I think, actually much more likely than people realize, because of the influence of the internet and the growing sense, in the modern world, of the power of personal responsibility. The soldiers in the field in this war are much better informed about the reality of their situation than any previous army confronting such circumstances. If families started sending e-mails that suggested that they would like their soldier sons, fathers, daughters and mothers to come home, come home NOW, it could happen. The military command always tries to censor these messages, but the internet makes censorship a much more difficult proposition than when they only had to deal with pieces of paper. Push could come to shove pretty quickly, when people used to using deadly force on a daily (and used to hearing from home frequently) basis find themselves being cut off from their families. The "shoot the officers" option need not be carried out in fact, but does need to be in the minds of the officer corps as a possibility. The possibility of violent reaction against the officer corps actually makes peaceful withdrawal much more likely. Command structures can also, although seemingly rarely, decide to ignore their corrupt political bosses, especially if they sense they are looking down the barrel of a gun held by the enlisted ranks. Officers tend to be wimps who are more adept at paper-pushing and ass-kissing than fighting. I also suspect that the large contingent of mercenary troops (Blackwater, et al) present in Iraq has something to do with the fear on the part of our illegitimate leadership, fear of just what I suggest. For some odd reason mercenaries are usually considered more immune from mutiny, and are favored in situations where regular troops might become unreliable, such as the use of the Hessians in the American Revolutionary war or the Gurkas in England's countless wars of conquest and repression. I have certainly lost any faith I may have previously had, in the debating society that we call our Left having any influence in ending these wars of conquest. Certainly electing representatives on anti-war platforms has been a bust. Herb Ruhs, MD
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