[lit-ideas] Re: Warrior world.
- From: "Veronica Caley" <molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 22:13:25 -0400
Thanks for explaining these things to me. Never having been in the army, I see
that sometimes "just doing my job" is sensible. My though my comments referred
to what they said not to each other, but to reporters, families etc., sometimes
in these situations, but not usually. Nevertheless, your comments are very
valid and informative and thank you for them.
Veronica Caley
Milford, MI
----- Original Message -----
From: John Wager
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 1:17 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Warrior world.
Veronica Caley wrote:
. . . . I have heard soldiers say numerous times, on TV, in magazine
articles, that they do what they do because that is their job. Not in context
of reprehensible behavior, but in general.
There is probably more "dis-obedience" than most people would expect in the
military, some of which comes under the heading of "just doing my job." From
the outside, it looks like the Army (with which I was more familiar) is a very
strict hierarchy, with superiors issuing orders that enlisted men carried out.
From the inside, there is a lot of ambiguity and independent judgment.
Here are some possible examples:
1. A lieutenant orders a patrol to go out at night. The leader of the patrol
goes out 50 yards and then just waits there until the morning, comes back in,
and reports that they didn't see anything. The leader of the patrol considers
it his "job" to keep his men safe, despite what he is ordered to do.
2. A colonel orders a captain to send his company into a position that the
captain finds is indefensible. He makes a change of a hundred meters to form a
more defensible position, and then calls back into HQ the actual new location.
Nobody every says anything to the captain.
3. A brand-new officer orders a sergeant to lead a routine patrol into a
particularly violent sector without enough troops to deal with the probable
engagement. The sergeant replies that radio static is making the officer's
transmission inaudible, and no matter how much the officer tries to get
through, the sergeant keeps on saying that he doesn't understand. The patrol
never happens, and afterward, the officer is replaced by a more seasoned
officer. The sergeant says, when questioned, "I was just doing my job."
4. The President orders the invasion of a neutral country. A sergeant refuses
to participate in the invasion, and in a special court-martial receives a
six-month suspended sentence as well as reduction in rank from E-6 to E-1 for
the last month of the sergeant's enlistment (or, realistically speaking, no
real punishment).
5. A divisional commander is ordered to move his division to a new area of
operations. The divisional commander knows that this area has extensive enemy
prepared positions, and that the current location of the division is
successfully protecting local populations against enemy action as well as
currently controlling the ground through narrow raids into the new area of
operations. Moving the entire division into this area will, in the divisional
commander's best judgment, result in a huge number of American casualties,
relatively few enemy casualties, and a much less effective job of defending the
local population. The divisional commander tells his superior that the division
will try its best to fulfill the mission, but that if the order goes through as
proposed, the divisional commander would like to be relieved of his command and
his commission, serving as an enlisted soldier for such a move. The superior
commander re-thinks his position and agrees that the division should not move.
The divisional commander is "just doing his job."
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