Finn dAbuzz wrote: ...
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Whether Bush, the cop who kills or any other actor, Americans have agreed that the ultimate arbiter of consequence is The Law and it's imperfect institutions.
Political consequence is important to politicians.
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That is a summary of what I tried to explain to cyclops.
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What is the responsibility of a politician who drives the US to withdraw from Iraq? If, when we leave, the country descends into a murderous chaos, will those who engineered our withdrawal be held accountable?
By Cyclo?
Fat chance.
As always, the sword cuts both ways.
Good point.
And to repeat, a policeman is placed into situations by society, at the behest of society, to protect society, so the policeman does what he does in large part due to what the handbook tells him to do, or what the Police Department guidelines tell him to do. Therefore, his personal responsility and liability is in fact canceled out insomuch as he uses good judgement in carrying out his official duties according to the way he is mandated to do them. His personal responsibility lies in the arena of how well he followed the guidelines of his job, and if he makes mistakes, those mistakes must always be fairly judged by the fact that the policeman was placed into the situation by society, not by himself, and therefore he does not bear total responsibility for the mistakes in the same manner if he was acting upon his own decisions as a private citizen.
The above is what troubles me about the government sending young men into battle as soldiers, and when under the duress of war, they may make mistakes that they would not otherwise make as citizens in a non-military situation. Therefore, I think the bar of criminality should be raised accordingly for soldiers. Blatantly wrong and premeditated acts that go against the instructions and mission given them still require soldiers to be held accountable, but I think the burden of proof and the severity of those actions need to be more significant than they would be for a private citizen doing his own thing. Also, it is the responsibility of the superiors to monitor and control the actions of their subordinates, within reason, and so the accountability needs to be spread around a bit more than the case would be in civilian life.
What I am trying to say here is that personal responsibility does exist, however if you are making judgements in the course of carrying out the official duties given you by government, there should be allowances made for those errors of judgement. It is appropriate to point out here that individuals that feel they have been wronged by a business, they generally sue the business, not the individual, since the individual represents the business and conducted the policy that may have caused harm because of the job given that individual by the business that hired him to do it. If a man is driving a truck and has fault in an accident driving that truck, it is the business first that is liable, not the individual.
In contrast, any politician or soldier, or bureaucrat, or company employee for that matter, is still just as personally responsible for any crime commited that he or she commits as a result of their actions, that are not part of the official duties given him or her by the entity that they work for.