Countercolumn's Jason Van Steenwyk is irritated. His mother called with some free legal advice she got from a friend. The advice was that he could get out of being deployed to Iraq by resigning his commission. Jason did not appreciate the advice:
It's concievable that I would resign my commission someday over a point of honor, or because I could no longer ethically abide an immoral policy being carried out under my orders. I could resign my commission in a protest, or to avoid having to carry out an illegal order. But to resign my commission in order to avoid a hazardous duty assignment? F**k that. The very notion that such a course of action is even thinkable to him makes me want to spit in this guy's pathetic face.
On one hand, I can see an advantage to letting people who are willing to do so use this dodge to get out of service. When I was on jury duty, there was a juror who copped such a bad attitude that both lawyers stipulated that she could be excused from the jury pool, and no one loses a peremptory challenge over her. When one of the other jurors commented that maybe she shouldn't have been rewarded by getting out of jury duty, I asked if he really wanted to have someone with that kind of attitude in the jury room during deliberations.
Would I want to work with the sort of person who would use that kind of tactic to get out of military service? Especially in a situation where I need to be able to trust everyone I'm working with?
I'm glad Jason is the sort who would never use that tactic, and I hope he never has to rely, in Iraq, on the type who would.
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