No conscientious objector

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a radio discussion about pacifism. I said, among other things, that conscientious objectors' refusal to serve in the armed forces is a cost that a free society even in wartime needs to bear. I'd go further, and say there may be reasons even in an unequivocally just war such as WWII that we should welcome the witness associated with small but historically resilient religious or ethical pacifist communities such as the Amish.

The Herald, which opposed the Iraq War, rightly notes that the RAF doctor who refused to serve in Iraq, Malcolm Kendall-Smith, is not that type of objector:

[A]s a serving officer, who has pledged to obey orders, it is not up to him to pick and choose where he works or to claim to be an authority on the legal case for war, regardless of his private misgivings. To concede this principle would be to invoke chaos. The RAF is right to resist it.

But the newspaper doesn't quite do justice to the full richness of Dr Kendall-Smith's case. It says: "Dr Kendall-Smith's argument is that combatants are morally autonomous agents who can be held responsible for their actions."

In fact we find today that Dr Kendall-Smith's argument has certain nuances, which I merely draw to your attention:

"As early as 2004 I regarded the United States to be on par with Nazi Germany as regards its activities in the Gulf," Kendall-Smith told the court amid a series of bitter exchanges with prosecutor David Perry.

Perry asked: "Are you saying the U.S. is the moral equivalent of the Third Reich?"

Kendall-Smith replied: "That's correct."