Should this soldier face a Court Martial ?

[BertiWooster]

Surely as a soldier you cant pick and choose your duties .
How can the army operate on this basis ?
No one forced him to join .

You know as a soldier that when you join , you may well be required to be involved in operations that you might not personally beleive in - if you dont accept that, then dont join in the first place

What's your opinion ?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Briti sh-Soldier-Lance-Corporal-Joe-Glenton-Faces-Co urt-Martial-Refuses-To-Return-To-Afghanistan/A rticle/200908115352523

[Prescott]

DKnewsES - you are pathetic and I regret to say part of the reason that the UK is in such a mess at the moment.

There is nothing wrong with discipline, unless you don't have any !!

Fortunately, the Armed Forces depend on it or they couldn't survive.

[DKnewsES]

Could all that discipline be the cause of so many lives being lost?

[tamborine]

DK....it's not my personal opinion of the soldier and I sympathise with him. Had he been my son I would move mountains to buy him out.

If he had broken his arm he could have had compassionate leave - there are lots of dodges.

[anotheoldgit]

DKnewsES

I admire you in one way, and that is that you are prepared to be the one voice in the wilderness. It is your opinion and you are prepaired to stick to it.


But I am afraid in this instance you are wrong. Take for instance that your house was on fire, and you called the fire service out, but they couldn't come out to rescue you because some members of the crew said that they refused to come out because they could be burnt or at the worse killed.

What then?

[Gromit]

anotheoldgit

Not the best analogy AOG.

He is not saying he is scared of being killed, he is saying the mission is wrong. It is like the fireman being called out to a fire on the fifth floor with a fire engine that has no ladder or water and his orders are to save the stuff in the freezer.

[Sqad]

Gromit...maybe he isn't saying that he is scared of being killed, but it does make you wonder if he is implying that he is scared of being killed.

It would take a very brave sqaddy to say that he wasn't going back to the theatre of war, because he is scared of being killed.

I would guess that ALL Military personnel are scared of being killed.

[Gromit]

Sqad

Perhaps he is scared of being killed pointlessly. A futile death is a wasted life. As I said earlier, he should have pursued a legal way of extracting himself from the army when he first had doubts about the mission.

[Sqad]

Gromit....who decides if it is pointless?......Him?

[jojojojoanne]

perhaps as he has experienced the realtity of the situation both seeing and performing duties in contrast to simply being aware of or forewarned of it, there is a difference, he may not see why he should accept the systematic futility of the/his personal situation, that doesnt mean he is a turncoat it may just mean that he has seen two sides to the argument and is standing firm for the one he believes in and that justifiably could perhaps ultimately prove to be right for him also why has it been brought to court and made into a legal issue? why isn't it a 'insider' issue? do the army state when you join that you could be tried in court for not wanting to be involved in certain operations?and then have the army got less powers than the law?

[LazyGun]

Some interesting opinion.
We have a professional, volunteer military, and this guy would know that he was likely to face action in theatres of war. He signed up to an organisation that functions with heirarchy and discipline, and his training would have reinforced that. Colleagues relied on him.
He claims to be disallusioned with the objectives of the war in Afghanistan - If he felt that strongly about it, why did he not register as a Conscientious Objector, rather than going AWOL?
At the Nuremburg War Crime Trials,One of the main defences expressed by German soldiers and officers quizzed about the various atrocities they committed was that " they were only following orders".
I dont want a bunch of unthinking robots in the army, blindly and unquestioningly following any order - but neither can the army be just a social club, whose membership you can abandon the moment you feel like it.
Of course he should face a Courts Martial for desertion - there can be no realistic question of that. What punishment he receives should be proportionate to the that crime. I would have had much more respect for him had he expressed his views whilst remaining in service, rather than just running away.

[Lonnie]

First thing any prospective soldier should know, is that respective of any given reason, you join for one thing only, to kill or be killed for your country.

Hard, but true.

This man went AWOL for two years, to avoid Active Service.

Pure and simple, Desertion.

[mosesg]

it is simple you join the army to fight for your country, it is not a holiday. You never know when some other country is goignt o declare war against us so you can't say you were cheated into believing it was a peace keeping job as you never know what is going to happen.

I think he should be court marshalled!!!