The Army: A Profession of Arms

[Bob Underwood]

For moving this discussion quickly beyond a theological exposition of Huntington et al. I don't want to suggest that there's nothing useful there, but we need to get a sense of what our problem is before we go looking for answers.

But, your answers seem curious to me for a couple reasons:
First, you say that:

Once someone volunteers for that professional force and signs the contract without coercion, they lose all right to object to being told to do what they voluntarily took on. I think that means if you sign on, you're stuck. Don't want to be stuck -- seek other employment. Because it's a job, it's a trade, not a profession. Did I mention that entrance is not mandatory? Since it's not, the old saw 'be careful what you want, you may get it' applies.

There might be a few problems here. For one, no one has a right to volunteer for or be obligated to do something that is morally wrong in the first place. On the other side of this, no one has a right to contract another person to do something morally wrong as well. Basically, this means that a contract for murder, rape, robbing, beating kids etc. has no obligatory force on either party. If we are going to take on the problem of selective contentious objection(SCO) as a profession, we need something better than this. The SCO's objection will be a moral claim so we need to be able to tell them why the action is moral - otherwise, we should not be surprised that the contract fails to motivate them.

Your second observation seems better to me.

If given a mission they do not believe is lawful or that is consistent with their values they may resign if possible or take the punishment prescribed for failure to follow orders or violation of their contract. Hopefully without whining about it in either case.

One always has choices.

However, I don't see the choices as quite so freeing. What do we think should be the prescribed punishments for someone doing what they think is, ex hypothesi, moral? According to the case at hand, they are choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. Also, the problem above still looms. How can I be in violation of a contract that has no moral or legal grounds?

Regards,
Bob