His voice trailed off. “The proper response would be ‘sir, that is an illegal order’ and to protect — not to hurt, to protect — Elsa, with deadly force, if necessary,” I said, firmly. “We read out the regulations to you every week now and you should be able to cite them chapter and verse. An order to abuse prisoners is illegal and must not be obeyed.”
I leaned back in my chair. “And let us pretend, for the moment, that you had followed my order,” I continued. “Who would have been to blame?”
“You both would have been,” Elsa said. She sounded uncomfortable and I didn’t blame her. “You would have been to blame for issuing the order in the first place and he would have been to blame for following the order. There’s no defence that allows him to claim that he was only following orders. He knew full well that the orders were utterly illegal and following them would have made him compliant in your crime.”
“Quite right,” I agreed. I held up a hand before anyone else could speak. “You also know that it is illegal to torture prisoners, yet there are exceptions built in for terrorists and insurgents. Why are those exceptions there? What makes them separate from normal soldiers?”
Jörgen looked down at the ground. “The manual says that insurgents forfeit their protections by operating from within a helpless population,” he said, “but that would mean that… they couldn’t stand up and face us in open battle. We’d wipe them out and go looking for more. What choice do they have?”
“That’s something that people have been arguing for hundreds of years without ever resolving,” I explained. “Let me start by giving you some history.
“Originally, wars were fought between nations on Earth,” I started. “By the time the industrial age began, the nations had evolved various codes of conduct for wars, even the most savage. There were few significant terrorist groups in those days and they lacked the ability to make a real impact. As nationalism evolved, occupying armies discovered that they were harassed from behind their lines by civilians and reacted harshly. The civilian insurgent wore no uniform. He blended into the population and only emerged from his cloak when the fighting began. He was, in short, a nightmare.
“And so it became legal to shoot insurgents on sight,” I continued. “There might have been laws to protect soldiers who were captured — although not all of them were honoured — but insurgents received no legal protection. This actually became more of an issue during the early Space Age, when insurgents who operated on a global scale waged war against the various nations and later the United Nations. The insurgents hid in nations that provided shelter, forcing their enemies to invade or bomb those nations, causing massive civilian casualties. One reason why the laws are so merciless towards insurgents is that their actions always cause innocents to die.
“And yet, as you say, they have little choice,” I said. “So, what is the difference between a resistance fighter on Heinlein, or here, fighting against the UN… and one of the Communists who you just fought?”
“The UN forces were the bad guys?” Elsa asked. “We’re the good guys?”
There were some chuckles. “That’s not a complete answer,” I said. “You’re right — we were the good guys, yet they didn’t agree with that. The Communists thought that we were all out to crush and oppress the working class. What makes their answer any less valid than yours?”
“We won,” Jörgen said.
I smiled. “It’s true that any question of what is legal or not is commonly settled by the victor, who gets to write the history books,” I said. “However, the real answer is more fundamental than yours.”
“They could have voted the government out of power,” one of the Captains said, slowly. “They could have attempted to get elected into power, yet they choose to rise up against the government instead. They didn’t act within the constitution.”
“Bingo,” I said. “They had the ability to get their people elected; hell, Daniel Singh was elected to the last Council. They could have tried to convince people to vote for them, but instead they chose to rise up and overthrow the government by force. There was no choice, but to slap them down as hard as possible.
“On Heinlein, by contrast, the UN had removed the government and was ruling the planet directly,” I added. “It had closed businesses and shops, harassed people in the streets and generally caused vast damage even without the ongoing insurgency. Heinlein couldn’t — wouldn’t — give the UN what it wanted to loot from the planet. There was no choice left, but to resist.
“Answer me another question,” I continued. “Three hundred years ago, the Government of the United States of America faded away and handed over effective power to the United Nations. During the final years of American independence, with tens of thousands fleeing the planet for New Washington, Kennedy and Austin Star — the American-ethnic worlds — some of their army leaders considered a coup to remove a government they regarded as corrupt and treacherous. Later events proved them right, but they didn’t move. Were they right?
“On one hand, there was the fact that they were sworn to uphold the American constitution, yet they were seeing their country falling apart right in front of them. The brain drain was taking all of the Americans who might have rebuilt the country’s infrastructure and moving them to other planets, rioting was spreading through the cities, soldiers and policemen were being attacked in the streets, money was worthless and no one believed in America any longer.
“On the other hand, they were sworn to uphold the Constitution and the government in power had been legally elected according to the rules. There were no legal grounds for removing the government, even though it was treacherous, corrupt and far worse. The only thing they could have done would have been to send troops to the White House and Congress, arrest the Congressmen and assume power for themselves, yet their forces might not obey such blatantly illegal orders. If they tried and succeeded, they’d have to fix the mess; if they failed, they’d disgrace their institutions.
“They did nothing, and America fell. Did they do the right thing?”
I held up a hand before any of them could answer. “I won’t expect you to answer that question now,” I said. “I will expect each of you to think about the issue I raised, read round the subject — after all, you can’t trust what I told you — and then present me with an answer next week, when we next meet. You may want to bear in mind that no one knew for sure what was coming, or why. They lacked the hindsight we have hundreds of years in the future.
“Any questions?”
“Something I was wondering about,” Elsa said. “Why is it permitted to drink, but not to take drugs?”
I smiled. “An interesting change in subject,” I said. “It’s quite simple. If someone renders themselves unfit for duty they also render themselves a stay in the guardhouse. A man can drink some alcohol without affecting his judgement, but hard drugs are something different… and, in a combat situation, even alcohol would be banned.
“I hope to see some interesting answers next week,” I added. “Dismissed!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
There are as many different political points of view as there are fish in the sea. It is therefore obvious that what one political party may believe to be just, or necessary, isn’t what all of the other parties will believe is right. This becomes more pronounced during times of crisis, where the governing party will attempt to solve the crisis in line with its ideology.