“Now a question for you: in the context of Iraq, do you agree with Stein that our troops are acting immorally — and knowingly so?”

I think that some of them are and others aren’t; the issue is complicated by the fact that soldiers are not free to stop participating in the war and thus some of them are acting under duress. Those that are willingly doing it are, I think, willingly participating in evil, and I see no reason to celebrate them for that or sanctimoniously declare my “support” for them on that account (even if they do things that require a lot of physical or intellectual skill, and even if they do things that are very daring).

If that makes me an anti-American scumbag, so be it; my main concern here, though, is that the argument over that should be played from where it lies. Your real complaint here isn’t that Stein, Rockwell, Snider et al. don’t “support the troops.” It’s that they don’t support the war in Iraq. Fine; that’s an argument to be had. But fuming about the fact that people who already consider the war to be an unjustifiable campaign of State murder afortiori consider those foot soldiers who willingly carry it out to be murderers, really seemsto me to be a bit much. The debate is better served by arguing over the premises, not shouting back and forth over the conclusion.

Bidinotto: “Let me spell it out for you: You are assuming (1) that the American soldiers are acting immorally, and (2) that they know their activities to be immoral, but are ignoring that fact.”

No, I’m not. I’m asking you whether or not it is true that individual soldiers bear at least partial moral responsibility for the actions they carry out, even when they are acting on orders. And further whether large-scale surrender of individual conscience under military orders (whenever it happens) is “horrifying.” Neither I nor the passage I asked you about says anything at all about whether in fact the conduct of soldiers in the Iraq War specifically is immoral.

(And yes, I realize that the rest of the article does make that point. So what? The question is about the passage that you singled out for excoriation, not the rest of the article.)

Bidinotto: “Neither is the case. So — no, the last statement is not applicable.”

I didn’t ask whether it was “applicable” to the Iraq War or not. I asked whether it is true or false.

So, is it true?

Here’s the comment of Joel Stein’s that Bindinotto singles out for special outrage: “The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they’re following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.”

Isn’t this true?