| Maybe you will experience some "karmic retribution" for rationalizing an innocent man's wrongful imprisonment and equating Ray with a "serial killer." Ray enlisted in the Army National Guard in the 90s when he was 17. Do you think that was morally reprehensible? If not, when did he lose your respect and sympathy? He followed orders to deploy to Iraq once the United States had already invaded the country and deposed its government. The missions he carried out were intended to find bombmakers who were indiscriminately slaughtering civilians and soldiers with IEDs. He never took the life of a single Iraqi. His main priority was ensuring that the young men under his command came back alive to their families in the United States. Was that not a task that justified his presence and his best efforts? Individual soldiers are not in a position to judge the merits of foreign military interventions. They do not have access to the intelligence that political leaders rely on in order to make those decisions. A military can only function when soldiers fulfill their responsibility to carry out all lawful orders. The responsibility for holding our political leaders accountable for improper military interventions falls on the PEOPLE of the United States, not the soldiers who have taken an oath to serve their commander in chief. Equating an average American soldier serving in Iraq with a Nazi war criminal is not only disgusting but counterproductive. It erases the moral culpability of the latter for willfully carrying out genocide. The Iraq war was a horrifying mistake. But our leaders' misjudgment doesn't entitle you to slander the names of the men and women who risked (and gave) their lives in that conflict. |