Every soldier has the choice whether to follow or disobey an order of dubious legal/moral consequence. If you are asked to kill babies, you sure as shit had better say "no". As a species, there is broad agreement that "just following orders" is not a defense for committing crimes against humanity.
> A lot of people talk about Mỹ Lai, and they say, 'Well, you know, yeah, but you can't follow an illegal order.' Trust me. There is no such thing. Not in the military. If I go into a combat situation and I tell them, 'No, I'm not going. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to follow that order', well, they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.
~ Lawrence La Croix, a squad leader in Charlie Company in Mỹ Lai
Illegal/immoral orders can be silently sabotaged and reported later. Look at RF and Belarus. Russians are happy to kill Ukrainians, while Belarussians are wrecking Russian military trains. They received same orders.
Only if the lower echelons of leadership are on board with sabotaging the orders. If they're not that's when you end up taking the "enemy fire" that back authorizes the use of force for the war crime.
Soldiers claim they arw willing to die as part of job. If one brags he is ok to go on super dangerous missions, he should be OK also to die in order to not commit attrocity
True, but there are plenty of soldiers who are simply trying not to get killed. The calculus of "if I don't commit this war crime, I'll for sure die, but if I do, the US has pledged to literally invade countries that try to investigate us war crimes, and don't have a great track record of internally policing war crimes" is pretty clear.
My point isn't to defend the actions of war criminals, but instead point out that relying on foot soldiers to become conscientious objectors at the spur of the moment against the structural pressures against that is well documented to not be a great strategy for reducing war crimes.
> point out that relying on foot soldiers to become conscientious objectors at the spur of the moment against the structural pressures against that is well documented to not be a great strategy for reducing war crimes
Nor is excusing all those as a result of them all being scared of forced to do them. A lot of those are committed, because soldiers on the ground in fact want to commit them. Sometimes you have no choice and would be shot otherwise. And many times you do have choice and can choose to not rape or not kill that civilian. That is something that former soldiers report on too - if you read their accounts.
> but if I do, the US has pledged to literally invade countries that try to investigate us war crimes, and don't have a great track record of internally policing war crimes" is pretty clear.
For all US faults, US actually has better track record that ISIS or Russia or China. They are not bunch of angels, plenty of sociopaths all around.
But specifically in US army, you are unlikely to die or be tortured of you don't commit war crime.
