Justin Griffith just re-enlisted in the military, something that gives me palpitations — I have a son in the army, I don’t know if I want to make that kind of behavior sound positive. Griffith also had one of those chaplain creatures give him the oath, another thing I’d like to discourage. It is, however, nice that he was allowed to leave god out of the oath.
Wait. Now I’m disturbed that we can find such a trivial omission at all significant. What’s god doing in there in the first place?
Promising to obey orders without thinking them through? Bad idea.
Well, the military have sent so many souls in God’s direction for arbitration. You know, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”
He took the oath from a chaplain? Weird. My oaths were by officers from the chain of command.
@Marcus. No, we do not obey orders without question. The very first thing a soldier is taught is the concept of legal and illegal orders. You cannot be legally ordered to violate the law, civilian or military, or to violate the laws and land warfare. I received several illegal orders during my career, reported them to the appropriate authorities, and did just fine. As an infantryman, I knew full well that someday I might be ordered to hold a position to buy time at the cost of my own life. I volunteered for the job, I accepted the risks.
‘Cause Hes’s Everywhere You Want To Be.
(And if I catch that bastard hanging around my bathroom again….)
–
We? Speak for yourself.
I’ve worked six sworn positions in government over 25 years and I’ve never had an oath with God in it.
@gridlore – I was in the military (1983-89) and I understand the notion of “lawful order” versus unlawful. The problem is deeper than that; the soldier is promising to follow ALL orders except explicitly unlawful ones. See the problem there? If you truly were concerned with following only morally justified orders you’d swear an oath to “listen to what my commanding officers and NCOs ask me to do, then make a rational decision.”
Same as everywhere, nothing at all.
Glen Davidson
@Marcus: But that’s not what you said. You specified without question.
I served in the same time frame as you did, so you remember that we all expected to eventually be going toe-to-toe with the Warsaw Pact in Fulda Gap. The job of the US military is to kill people and break things at its most basic. That requires discipline, and the understanding that orders, even if immoral, must be obeyed if legal.
Is it moral to kill a man who poses no threat to you? Of course not. I was a sniper. In my career I killed 17 people who had no idea I was there. Not moral, but under the laws of war, legal.
If anyone is seeking great moral truths, stay out of the military.
“The very first thing a soldier is taught is the concept of legal and illegal orders”
In actual practice this is nonsense. Disobeying small scale illegal orders, like the ones involved in hazing, is not going to end well, and big illegal orders, like the invasion of Iraq(yes, it was actually illegal, it violated both Federal and international laws, it isn’t just some crap liberals say because they don’t like it) is likely to simply aggravate the situation. I can think of many examples of illegal shit being done under orders during my stint in the Cream Corn. Everything from being ordered to assault fellow recruits, to being forced to drink several gallons of water in a few minutes, to shit like falsifying maintenance records(this is so common and so accepted that it is absurd to think of it as anything but an unwritten official policy) and being ordered to steal shit(also commonly accepted). The only illegal orders that you are likely to successfully challenge are the ones that are unambiguously immoral and particularly egregious ones that are also immediate in consequence and personal, i.e., rape and murder type stuff.
@wat: Actually, I saw several officers lose their careers for issuing illegal orders while still in Infantry OSUT. Our company had been detailed to provide scorers for Building 4 staff officers who were re-qualifying on the M-16. All our 11-C and 11-H guys did that while us 11-Bullet Stoppers learned the wonders of the M-60 GPMG.
The officers tried to get the trainees to falsify scores by bribery, threats, and issuing direct orders to count clear misses as hits. The recruits reported this to the Range Officer and the Drills, an investigation happened, and at least nine officers were told to resign their commissions immediately, and several others decided that was the best course of action.
I spent 12 years in the Army, and never saw the wide-spread abuses you claim. When did you serve?
Since we’re talking about oaths, I just wanted to share my mini victory.
I just got sworn in as an attorney. (Yay, I passed the bar exam!) Normally the oath contains “so help me God.” Of course, it’s my constitutional right not to say those words and in theory there shouldn’t be any problem with not saying them. But I live in a small southern town and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was the first time the judge ever saw an attorney who had a problem with swearing to God.
In that climate, it felt a bit awkward to say that I preferred to affirm rather than swear, but affirm I did. And god did not help me.
For my brief stint as a grad student I had to be sworn in as I was an employee of the state of Bavaria. I had to sign a ton of forms (no, I was never a member of the NSDAP, RAF* or SED, etc.) and the clerk that did everything asked if I wanted the religious or the non-religious version of the oath.
*Rote Armee Fraktion
I’m a Notary Public in Alaska. I included ‘so help me God’ in oaths when I first started 35 years ago, but noticed in transcribing court and administrative hearings that began being phased out probably 10 to 15 years ago. Some religious traditions will ‘affirm’ but not ‘swear’, others reject the inclusion of ‘God’ because James 5:12 and Matthew 5:33-37 specifically forbid such oaths, and some reject the idea of a God. It was easier to simplify it rather than deal with all that. The oath is commonly administered now as “Do you solemnly swear or affirm that in this proceeding here today you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, although some of us also add “under penalty of perjury”.
I remember when and where I say the oath on October 15, 1968, but I can’t remember if we had to say the phrase “so help me God” which is apparently part of the oath but (supposedly) optional.
I do remember getting a clipping from my mother that there was a peace protest (hey, it was the Vietnam era) outside while I was being inducted into the Navy inside the building.
While you might have been a model soldier, we know that the people in the US military have been complicit, and indeed have carried out, torture on the instructions of a former President. We also know that those involved have tried to deny any responsibility by claiming they thought it was legal. Given the US is a signatory to a treaty banning the use of torture, and that under US law such a treaty become part of US law, then that defence is not tenable.
So sorry, some in the US military do follow orders without question, and even more know it happens and do nothing.
Back in 1966 when I joined the US Navy I was given the choice of either swearing (with god helping me) or affirming (without any kind of help) to do various things, some of which would require some thought on my part.
A couple of years ago I was called for jury duty at a Federal court. My oath as juror involved swearing* but deities were not invoked.
*”Jesus fucking Christ, this process takes a shitload of fucking time.
Thanks for serving, Justin!
@gridlore
I was in the Marines 2005-09. Were you an officer? Officers are basically in their own separate world. Funny you should mention falsifying range scores. Never saw a range exercise that didn’t include that. It was an unspoken rule that if you couldn’t find the shot hole you stuck the spotter in the black. The range coaches strongly encouraged this, on the basis that actually scoring properly takes way too much time(they had a point, to be honest).
@wat: I was an NCO. Qualifications were done with popup targets that fell when hit or after a set time, not by counting holes.
Dude, the Marines haven’t done marksmanship training like that since 1965!
What was your MOS and grade again?
@gridlore
Corporal 0614
You’re wrong about the ranges, btw. The Marines uses manually operated pits, and hand made targets, marked with black and white shot spotter disks. Another fun fact, during recruit training, drill instructors routinely beat recruits during ranges.
“What’s god doing in there in the first place?”
I’m not any conspiracy mongerer, but I think its possible that the Great Big Secret that all Abrahamic religions keep tucked safely away from the throngsters is that god actually suffers from a multiple personality disorder that consists of a good guy AND the bad guy. He, after all, created everything, including Himself, presumably, which must include His Aler Ego, the Devil. This knowledge (Divinely Inspired of course) is kept scrupulously secret in order to prevent world-wide panic and chaos.
This is the reason why the phrase “god works in mysteroius ways” is employed: when natural catastrophe befalls a region, it is prudent to attribute it to a mystery of goodness rather to blame the Bad Side of Him, else there would be no condition for the flock to emulate on the merits of thwarting evil, and nobody would know exactly which side of the Split-Almighty to pray at in order to forestall doom.
Whatever. I just hope your boy gets through whatever he’s going through intact in both mind and body.
When I reenlisted for the third time back in 2005 after coming home from my first tour in Iraq. I was already an atheist, and asked my squad leader if I could ‘affirm’ and leave out the ‘So help me God’ in my oath of reenlistment. My squad leader looked at me and said, ‘It’s YOUR reenlistment, and if it meets the legal requirements (which it does), go ahead. My platoon sergeant and platoon leader were also fine with it, and so I went ahead with the (slightly) modified oath.
Thank you to now MSG M (then SSG), 1SG B (then SFC) and CPT T (then 2LT).