General George Washington smacks down torturers "ruin to themselves and their country"

[kpete]

General George Washington smacks down torturers "ruin to themselves and their country"
by MinistryOfTruth

Sat May 09, 2009 at 10:41:33 AM PDT



First among these may well be the tradition of humane warfare, articulated by George Washington after the Battle of Trenton, December 24, 1776. "Treat them with humanity,"

First among these may well be the tradition of humane warfare, articulated by George Washington after the Battle of Trenton, December 24, 1776. "Treat them with humanity,"

~snip~

"should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injur(e) any (of them)... I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause." Any officer who failed to heed this direction, he said, would bring "shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.


Washington also set the rule that detainees be given the same housing, food and medical treatment as his own soldiers. And he was particularly concerned about freedom of conscience and respect for the religious values of those taken prisoner. "While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable."

Ruin to themselves and their country

Our nation finds itself where it is today because of the actions of the previous administration. This is simple and undeniable. They have brought themselves to ruin, and us along with them.

For all their faults, for all their short-comings and views that we would not agree with today, General George Washington and his men were honorable men. Though there was still injustice in their day our founding fathers knew there was a line which you did not cross.

more at:

[LiberalFighter]

1. Yoo and Bybee will argue that Washington was being tortured when making the statement.

[kestrel91316]

2. Why did George Washington hate America?

[ccharles000]

3. k/r

[glitch]

4. Link? I'd like to read more. K & R nt

[kpete]

6. so sorry - forgot link

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/9/729478/-General-George-Washington-smacks-down-torturers-ruin-to-themselves-and-their-country-

[glitch]

7. Thanks! nt

[Occam Bandage]

5. War was different back then.

It was more a test of mettle, courage, and (above all) maneuver than it was the slaughterhouse it became in the 1800s and which we now equate with the word "war." Men on both sides were largely untrained and fought with extraordinarily inaccurate and slow-firing weapons; battles were resolved not when one side managed to murder the other, but rather when one part of the line of battle lost its nerve in the face of bullets or bayonets and fled. At that point, one army would realize its position was now untenable, and would retreat from battle and back into the months and months of marching and maneuvering around strategic cities and supply lines that characterized pre-Napoleonic warfare. A decisive victory was not one in which many men were killed, but one in which the enemy's retreat was cut off and he was forced to surrender.

Which is not to say men did not die, of course, but rather that infliction of death was not the primary means of neutralizing an opponent. In the Battle of Saratoga, only 90 Americans died, and only 400 Britons died out of 7000, with the entire remaining British army surrendered. In the Battle of Yorktown, which effectively ended the war, 300 Britons were killed out of 9000, with the entire remaining British army surrendered. And as for the Battle of Trenton? 22 Hessians were killed. 900 were captured.

In a war in which the most likely fate for a soldier on the losing side of a battle was surrender, capture, and ransom, it was entirely in the self interest of both the Americans and the British to ensure that prisoners of war were treated well. Surrendered soldiers were not protected out of honor or out of a sense of ideals, but rather out of an early form of mutually-assured destruction.

Torturing captured soldiers for information wasn't particularly necessary, either. Most soldiers fought for pay and not principle, and army life was hard. Defections were common, and a defecting soldier would happily tell anything and everything he knew in exchange for a bit of food, new clothes, and permission to return to their old lives. For that reason, useful information was restricted to a very limited circle, and only disseminated when absolutely necessary.

None of this is to say that Washington's statements ought not apply equally now. In my mind, they do. But when looking at the moral imperatives issued by great figures of history, one should as a rule look at the context in which those imperatives were issued.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. If honor and ideals were not an issue

Washington's choice of words seems a bit odd...being all about honor and ideals:

"While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable."

George saw prisoner treatment as something more than mere pragmatism, his words are clear as a bell and well chosen as Washington's words tended to be.

[Occam Bandage]

10. Because "honor" and "duty" inspire men to act, by weighting

social admiration to right conduct and shame and guilt to wrong conduct. Both are constructs that the military has deliberately tried to cultivate in soldiers and to work within in orders since at least Roman times. Appealing to duty and honor are a necessary shorthand in the military. It's a sound justification for any order; it would hardly be realistic to expect Washington to sit down and explain the reasoning behind his orders every time he gave them. People might well disagree if he did that; some might propose, say, that a brutal war would be more likely to erode British support for the effort than a clean one.

Yet nobody can disagree with a general saying, "it is your honor and your duty to act as I command, and failure to do so would be very shameful."

To be clear, I think he was right; true ethical behavior is ethical across the ages. I simply think it's mistaken to look at people with very real, pressing, and pragmatic reasons to hold the positions they do, and to hold up their high-minded justifications as valid outside of context. The Founding Fathers, after all, said many things that hold up well today, and many things that absolutely do not.

For instance, Jefferson claimed the existence of a standing army in peacetime was tyrannical and was inconsistent with liberty. This was mostly reasonable in the military environment of the 1700s, in which soldiers on the frontier were often quartered by force in people's homes, in which external armed threats were always foreseeable a year or more in advance, in which the volunteer militia was considered a viable military apparatus, in which the army was the most common tool of the state for forcing laws upon unwilling people, and when everyone had very bad memories of the British military occupation that existed from the middle of the French and Indian War to the end of the American Revolution. That statement is not quite as reasonable in a modern state, in which military threats arise quickly and sharply, in which the Army has nothing to do with enforcing laws or putting down demonstrations, in which untrained people with hunting rifles aren't a sufficient battlefield replacement for soldiers, and in which the military for the most part is sequestered off in its own parallel society. In judging the statements of historical figures about what is and what is not acceptable, you always need to look at the environment in which they were operating.

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick: