US troops asked if they would shoot US citizens

[Tomcat088]

Don't they take oaths to defend this country against enemies "foreign and domestic"? I suppose that would mean it would depend on how seriously they take that oath. If they truly follow orders, all the government has to do is decide that you're a "domestic threat" and they have their orders. I understand their position, and I'm sure it's a hard thing to choose to disobey orders. Quite interesting. I probably would have ended up shot if I was in that NO thing, bad bad times.

[J8300]

The military is not a group of mindless robots

I disagree. I was in the USMC and most of them are sheep who just do what theyre told by those over them. Just like 90% of the world population.

Besides that who rounded up the Japanese-Americans in WW2? What about the Germans of that era? I'm sure they would have said the same thing as American soldiers. They shot plenty of fellow Germans and worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment


The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]

This experiment was replicated worldwide shortly after Milgram, and even in modern times, the results are always the same.

Bahhhhhhhhhh sheepies.

[sluggie24]

Combine that information with the finding about abuse that even nice people can dish out without request when put in possitions of power as found in the Stanford Prison Experiment.

[TonyF]

Originally Posted by J8300

I disagree. I was in the USMC and most of them are sheep who just do what theyre told by those over them. Just like 90% of the world population.

That's why it would depend to a large extent on the disposition of the Commissioned Officers of our Armed Forces.

In Europe in WW2, allot of Wermarcht infantry grunts refused to participate in atrocities and were never brought up on insubordination charges because there would have been records in the German counterpart of our UMCJ which would have left a paper trail directly back to the Officer issuing such an order.

[LittleRedToyota]

Originally Posted by TonyF

That's why it would depend to a large extent on the disposition of the Commissioned Officers of our Armed Forces.

i agree.

one of the benefits of the decentralized nature of our military command structure (which is intended to make individual units able to operate independently when communications are cut off) is that one could forsee at least some officers refusing to issue such orders and having their troops back them up.

hopefully, enough of them would refuse such that the whole program would fall flat.