Is "I was only following orders" a valid excuse for one's actions?

...

Yes. moral absolutism and moral realism are fantasies clung to by liberals.

>Yes. moral absolutism and moral realism are fantasies clung to by liberals.

lol no, liberals are the most morally relativistic people around.

stupid frogposter

Of course! And we just following our orders by just executing you or sending into 99 years of prison. Nothing personal, kid.

>follow orders
>get killed

>don't follow orders
>get killed

Lmao Those are some literally Canadian tier insults. Not really something I'd get someone in trouble for but this is Canada we're talking about

Bottom left pic is a soviet fake btw.

Of course.

>Bottom left pic is a soviet fake btw.

As if it matters.

btw any communist or syndicalist who supports the idea that "just following orders" is wrong will be killed as bourgeois when the revolution comes.

Because their logic "it is OK if i contribute to the capitalist system by consuming and working, BECAUSE i have to do it to survive!" is the same exact thing as "just following orders"

>it's ok to lie about the Nazis

Ya know, people like you are the reason why holocaust deniers exists. Dishonesty makes people question everything you say.

youtube.com/watch?v=g_J4rAf2Qjg

The point is that it doesn't matter for the context of this thread you moron.

Stop derailing the thread.

He's right though.

nice try samefag

>gets called out
>s-samefag!

Fucking kek

>So the holocaust was completely fine?
Of course not
However the reason that the Germans were prosecuted is that they lost and were subject to "international law" and a War Crimes Tribunal. Said international law, which is currently administered by The Hague, includes Genocide or other "crimes against humanity." German Law was superseded by this International Law.

Here's the catch in the Modern Day.
We, the United States of America, engage in the Extra Judicial killing of terrorists all the time. The US Senate has not declared war, but has set up laws for the conduct of the so-called "Global War on Terrorism". When a drone strike kills a child, the Chain of Command in insulated from prosecution as long as the strike was executed under the approved "Rules of Engagement" (RoE).

Many would consider the actions of the United States, in certain drone strikes and other activities, to be War Crimes HOWEVER we do not allow ourselves to be subject to The International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. The US Senate has not (and will not) ratify any treaties which allow US Judicial Sovereignty to be Superseded by the ICC. We are "the victors" and are not going to allow ourselves to be subject to the rules everyone else follows. Arrogant Bastards, aren't we?

SO
We kill a child in a drone strike.
Is it right? Of course not.
Are those who committed the killing liable under penalty of law.
No.
The child was collateral damage.

Pretty fucked up
Even more fucked up is that we let the CIA, and not just the DoD, to perform these drone strikes.
Regardless. "Just following orders" in accordance with the current RoE is the valid excuse every time.

>pic MSNBC graphic from April 2015

Stanley Milgram iirc raised a point about the "following orders" defense to war crimes, etc. In the military and a lot of executive/enforcement agencies, command hierarchy is extremely important, and people involved in it develop a strong sense of loyalty. Specifically talking about Adolf Eichmann, he stated that Eichmann was not behaving unethically, but that Eichmann was adhering to an ethic of loyalty, which is prized probably above all else in military and paramilitary groups like the SS. So in other words, it's moral or ethical relativism.

> It was legal by german law at the time...
It wasn't. That is why it was hidden from the public.

Justice system doesn't really operate in the moral relativism context. You can't just kill 10 Christians and say that is okay, because you are wahhabist. You can behave ethically and still be punished for what you are done, basically.

No. It never has been and never will be. The only thing that keeps unjust individuals in power is the people that are willing to do their bidding.

>It never has been

It has been for multiple times. The only reason why ITT so many people disagree with then notion is that they are so vehemently anti-nazi that they won't do anything that even intrinsically could be related to holocaust.

You are essentially supporting the notion that people should inherently value other lives more than their own.

>disagree with then notion is that they are so vehemently anti-nazi

I'm pretty sure the Khmer Rouge members who were put on trial for war crimes didn't get away with the following orders defense either m8, it's not just about Nazism.

You missed my point. The reason why people here dislike the idea so much is that they don't want any connotations to nazi-ism. I'd wager that most people on Veeky Forums are sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge

I didn't say the logic is only applied to nazis.

lol dude, stop with the armchair psychology.

>The reason you're against something must be about Nazism because this is Veeky Forums

Or, you know, the following orders defense is just wrong.

>You are essentially supporting the notion that people should inherently value other lives more than their own.
I strongly believe that anyone who does something that they find morally reprehensible simply because they have been ordered to do it is a coward.

>You missed my point. The reason why people here dislike the idea so much is that they don't want any connotations to nazi-ism.
Sorry, but you're a delusional /pol/tard. I don't really give a shit about the nazis. The biggest thing that comes to mind when people ask the question in the OP is the tactics of modern police. Many cops will enforce laws that they do not believe in when they are fully capable of quitting and finding a new job. Instead, they choose to send people to prison so they can earn a paycheck.

Radbruch formula can be applied here too desu, so no.

It never should be considered as a legitimate reason, but we must remember most the men tried in the Nuremberg Trials were apart of the SS or some other form of Military/GvT. The concept of free choice is almost completely gassed (Puns). Now was what did they did horrible? Yes, very. But did they have much of a choice to do it? No not really. Now I do understand that the people tried were the *fearless* (I use that word lightly) zealots of the Nazi Party, but if it had been a common footman put on the stand then he would have no choice but to use that defense.
Tl;dr the rest of the debate.

>But did they have much of a choice to do it?

You always have a choice.

You're right you always have a choice, but do you have control over the outcome of your choice, I would say for the most part you don't? Especially in the military. Now I do understand in several counties there are protocols in place that bar soldiers from following unlawful orders, but that's only as good as the pen which wrote it. Most of the time when unlawful orders are handed out, it is out of the eye of any judicial figure.

Its valid if you win the war. Its invalid if you lose it.

I've never used /pol/. But ok.

>I strongly believe that anyone who does something that they find morally reprehensible simply because they have been ordered to do it is a coward.

So, yes? You think that you should value others lives more than your own.

>Many cops will enforce laws that they do not believe in

source

>are fully capable of quitting and finding a new job

probably not

>Instead, they choose to send people to prison so they can earn a paycheck.

This applies to all jobs and consumerism. If you work for a company that is in any way related to something that you don't agree with, you should quit. Hence my point about communism Looking out for yourself is not wrong.

>B-b-but the children!
>muh feelings

>No. It never has been and never will be
/this and (me)
It happens all the time and will continue to happen. The initial question from >Is "I was only following orders" a valid excuse for one's actions?
doesn't just refer just to the Holocaust and Nazis, even though a Nuremberg photo was used in the OP.

The question is Judicial and Law Enforcement Supremacy. While may be right about Saudi Arabia
>You can't just kill 10 Christians and say that is okay, because you are wahhabist.
There is no reason that an ISIS member would have to worry about accountability for the same until such time as they are subject to laws other than their own.

The US does what it wants and calls a child's death merely 'collateral damge" because they are not subject to any higher Law Enforcement or Judicial authority.

Have a blessed day.

In this thread I have learned its okay when we follow orders but not when the other does it.

Stay worthless humanity.

Sure, whether the war crime council will see it as one is a different story.

We all follow societal "orders" all the time without really thinking about it, they're just far less articulated and more nuanced.

The law does not necessarily correspond to morality/ethics.

Absolutely agree, a relativistic legal/justice system would really just be anarchy. Laws require a system of normative justice and normative ethics by which all must abide, and those laws really only matter if someone is capable of enforcing them, as said:

>The US does what it wants and calls a child's death merely 'collateral damge" because they are not subject to any higher Law Enforcement or Judicial authority.

My point wasn't about what the law is, or even what it should be, but that under a different moral system, obeying orders would be looked at as a paramount virtue.

Ethically, yes. Legally no because of the practical implications it would have on social order. Necessity is not a defence to murder.

this is retarded answer. Go fuck yourself. Ethics are varied! There are many ethical systems.

/r/im14andthisisdeep

>Necessity is not a defence to murder
joking right?

b-but what if it became a universal m-maxim not to follow orders?

Aah yes the eichmann "trials"; because boxing the accused into a soundproof and bulletproof glass containment cabin so that no one on the outside can discern and verify his actual statements into the microphone totally isn't suspicious at all

What are you even talking about? Show me the piece of legislation from the Reich government stating something along the lines of "the holocaust is fine". There wasn't a single one, because they were labour camps and not places of extermination. You're full of shit, kys.

Let me answer like some Chinese Kung fu master:

"When taking a knife, you expect it to be sharp.
When using a knife, you expect it to cut.
That is the only purpose a knife has.

A blunt knife cannot cut, cannot meet any expectaions and is therefore bad at being a knife.

If a knife could stand trial, to what mindset would it adhere?
To cut! To cut!
That has always been on its mind.
Nothing more, nothing less."

Asking a knife why it cuts, is like asking your lungs why they make you breath.

Respect for authority is a human universal, and one of the foundations of our moral reasoning. That said, so is disgust, but we don't accept disgust as an excuse for crime (I bashed that faggot because homosex is an abomination!) so it's reasonable to infer that respect for authority alone isn't justification, either.

A soldier is trained to follow orders. They've spent years being broken down and getting rebuilt as order-executing robots. Nowadays soldiers are trained to not follow unlawful orders, but in the past they were not trained to do so. I would predict that in extreme times this training would be removed entirely. So to answer your question, it depends on the circumstances.

Absolutely. Society wouldnt work if this fundamental truth was disproven

>ITT we go full moral absolutism and confuse obeying law with moral justification

Not entirely true. Once the war was basically lost, from Spring 1945 on, literally thousands of German soldiers (or their allies) were summarily executed or sent to 'punishment battalions' where they could be machine-gun fodder agains the Soviets.

Much like the commies, the Nazis had SS political police whose job was specifically to root out and punish 'defeatism'.

People would cite milgram's experiment to say it's valid, but it's a lot more complicated than that in a real world situation.

>Respect for authority is a human universal
Speak for yourself, cocksucker.

I don't know aout the US, but in my country, if you think you were given an unlawful order by a superior, first you have to follow the order, and then you can complain to a superior officer (this in the Army, of course).

They mean unlawful orders as in not legal in the state of which you are a soldier. but the orders the nazis got were legal according to nazi germany.

this

If you refuse to follow orders, you're a traitor.
And being a traitor in war means you're dead.

You both seem to be confusing people's opinions and instinct s about morality with true morality

>muh edge

This is great.

Of course it's fucking not. And in this particular case, if people like Eichmann decided that blindly following orders was part of their morality, they shouldn't even have bothered themselves to find excuses.

Didn't they decide at Neurenberg that or wasn't?
And isn't that totally bullshit since you can't convict someone for a past crime on the basis of a law you created after the crime was committed? You couldn't illegalize bestiality now and say that people who did such a thing 10 years ago should be locked up can you? Am I missing something?

No, as is evidenced by the countless people throughout history who were punished for "just following orders" after they lost or were captured.

>civilian casualties in limited engagement is the same as the systematic elimination of a large group of civilians

youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gwUJHNPMUyU

start from 12:45

>muh eager lubed-up anus, ready for penetration!

"civilian casualties in limited engagement" is the military equivalent of "he was reaching for his waist-band".

bottom left is actually a neo nazi fake

This is only true in some cases. Stop taking it as a given universal truth