(I just posted a version of this over at DailyKos and I thought it might be appreciated here.)
This is interesting. I don’t know how much relevance it actually has at this point but I end up researching odd things throughout the day and I found this.
There have been a few instances of soldiers going AWOL and fleeing into Canada instead of fighting in Iraq. At the time this was happening, a lot of people were saying horrible things about these soldiers. That was stupid to say even without knowing what we know now but still, it’s worth talking about.
When these soldiers were tried, they used the defense that it’s an illegal war and violates international law. And still others used the defense that soldiers who would’ve gone to war would’ve been forced to participate in illegal acts.
One of the judges, in a ruling against one of these soldiers, in 2007 said there’s no evidence the US “as a matter of deliberate policy or official indifference, required or allowed its combatants to engage in widespread actions in violation of humanitarian law.”
So, maybe these cases are worth another look? We can argue that a lot of these people were using legal defenses and weren’t actually able to see the future, or whatever. But they were, you know, right.
