US soldier refuses deployment to Iraq on grounds that the war is illegal

[Keba]

Legality is a ridiculous argument for a war. Legality of a war is decided by the more powerful. Currently that means this war is legal ...

Legality is also decided by the bystanders. These are no longer the days when you could march to war whenever you felt like doing it, and expect everyone to be unable to say anything.

The war may be legal as far as the internal laws are concerned (though dubiosuly legal, it is legal nontheless), but consider that the internal legal system is no longer the only one that matters.

Thus, when a large number of other countries (big, important countries) denounced the war as illegal (from an international perspective), it became illegal, not from the point of view of the state, but from the point of view of the world.

... slandered the name of his commander in chief.

There actually is a way for the guy to be slandered? More than he is already? Huh, you learn something new every day.

Give him the choice of Iraq or Death, I think then he'll recall his previous commitments.

Maybe he would, but then again, maybe he would not. You make an assumption, and a wrong one at that. If he chooses Death, as you put it, there are two victories in it for him. One, he becomes a martyr, in the unlikely event that it is carried through, and we all know what a martyr can do.

Second, well, offering him the death penalty would be a bluff of the highest order. To sentence him for that would immediately cause a reaction among the wider population, one that would neither be favourable to the miltary and politicians nor one that could easily be fixed. Such a decision would be suicide, as the public outcry would be quite large.

As it stands, I do believe the officer in question has already won, in a way.