> Do you have any data backing up this claim?

The last 24 years of my life and the great many excellent enlisted and officer members of the armed services I have worked alongside.

We study My lai, and Abu Ghraib, the Vincenes, and other failures of leadership. I'd count those as the exceptions that prove the rule. We also study failures of civil and business leadership, but those are so plentiful they occupy every newspaper every day.

I could never understand why Abu Ghraib was a huge story in the west. It seemed such a tiny thing compared to the grand invasion/slaughter of Iraq going on at the time. Uncountable thousands killed. Yet somehow Abu Ghraib was the thing that troubled Americans. (That and how the French wouldn't join the slaughter.) Astounding.

The February protests in western countries¹ against the upcoming invasion were much larger than any reaction against Abu Ghraib; they were some of the largest anti-war rallies in known history.

¹I realize they were worldwide, but we're talking about the west

Sure, I was a part of the huge Sydney protest, carrying a poster listing the names of about a dozen chemical weapons the US had sold to Iraq, under the title "Where did Saddam get his weapons?"

I was talking about size of the story. (e.g. If the US kills 3,000 people in a far-off country, no biggie. However, 9/11 was a huge story.) The Australian media was largely, as usual around those times the US is preparing to invade somewhere or mid-doing it, echoing mainstream US TV opinion. Well, a lot of those US shows are shown here too. There was a lot of soul searching in the US about the extremely troubling Abu Ghraib scandal, which went on for some time, and left some kind of permanent mark. The protests were covered when they happened, but I don't think they produced the same moral....pseudo-crisis at all, and quickly disappeared. They could be ignored.

Abu Ghraib and My Lai were, as the parent said, "failure of leadership" - whether the failure involved troops not being disciplined or simply the troops indiscipline becoming known to the public. The invasive and the Vietnam War were policies. Leadership decided on these and if the death and destruction involved had remained entirely under leadership's control, no further problems would have been perceived.

That the excesses of war, rather than war itself, can considered the problem is a success for policy since it allows a wedge to be driven once the public sours on war. "No more Vietnam Wars", a slogan the vast majority embraced after Vietnam, was a slogan that could morph to "no more unsuccessful wars fought with conscripts who discipline breaks down, next time we'll do it right!".

Ok thanks. Note that the subject has moved from the initial questioning of the claim that military leaders "have thought quite long and hard about their moral positions. It is the nature of the business, when sending people to die, to question everything about yourself." Killjoywashere was asked "Do you have any data backing up this claim?"

And in answer was given these 'failures of leadership', which seem to be PR disasters (the problem was not that they happened but that people found out about them - "simply the troops indiscipline becoming known to the public" - things that couldn't possibly be spun as the greatest country on Earth doing God's work) or people not doing their duty.

The moral dimension has entirely disappeared, which rather supports garyhunt's suspicions. Maybe questioning everything about your country is more important than 'questioning everything about yourself'. More important for the hundreds of thousands that were killed, at least.

> I'd count those as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Could you give a few examples where our military leadership took an action that backs up your claim of exhibiting a strong sense of morality?

You're asking for something that doesn't make news. There's multiple classes of this.

The untold hours NCOs and officers spend sweating details to reduce moral ambiguity in operations.

If you want is to see men take bullets for innocents, there are plenty of them but, unfortunately, there aren't many people around to tell those stories. A few have made it out, and you can find some of them in the Medal of Honor citations (1)

General Dean's delaying action at the outbreak of the Korean war (2).

More subtly, General Shinseki testifying to Congress against administration dogma on the number of troops needed in Iraq, and sticking to that despite intense pressure.

Admiral McRaven's life in general.

(1) https://smile.amazon.com/Americas-congressional-recipients-o...

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Dean

(3) https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/washington/12shinseki.htm...

For a discussion about morality and, arguably, lack of morality at an extreme level (strategic nuclear war plans) - worth considering the discussion between Marine General David Shoup and Air Force General Power:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/3/22/314933/-

"any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."

I don't think that is a reasonable question.

To use an extreme example: I can ask for a examples where someone has committed murder, but it would be unreasonable to ask for examples where someone hasn't committed murder.

There's an asymmetry to showing morality or immorality. Exhibiting a sense of morality is the standard case, and it's hard to show it. Being immoral, however, can be trivially shown by pointing out the mos or law being broken by a specific behavior.

I think the question is very reasonable, your example is flawed because question is not about examples of someone not doing something, he is asking if someone actively worked against or seriously questioned of a murder he/she is ordered to commit. Parent is sceptical because of priori contrary evidence that military actions and morals conflict frequently.

> he is asking if someone actively worked against or seriously questioned of a murder he/she is ordered to commit

How could one reasonably produce publicly available documentation where someone refused to execute an unlawful order? Why would someone issue such an order in the first place?

Think about what could possibly motivate a soldier's action: the consequences of questioning an order are far less severe than the consequences of executing an unlawful order. "I was only following orders" has long been discredited as a legal defense.

> Parent is sceptical because of priori contrary evidence that military actions and morals conflict frequently.

Morals are not universal. To which morals are you referring specifically? Some people are morally opposed to violence in principle, the military obviously is not.

[Edit]

I'm still in disagreement as to the logic of the question, but I am beginning to think that the mere existence of court martials in the interest of upholding military law (ie, codified morals of the military) should be sufficient proof that a military body can exhibit a strong sense of morality.

So the "leadership" seems to fail again and again although they thought really hard about their moral positions.

This "citation needed" is misplaced IMO. And if I'm not mistaken, all of your examples have nothing to do with "people who lead military organizations"?

> if I'm not mistaken, all of your examples have nothing to do with "people who lead military organizations"?

If anything, that doesn't make these examples moot, but the red herring of how military leaders supposedly think long and hard about stuff.