• When discussing or debating the reasons for a deployment, obviously operational security must always be respected.

• It may be worth distinguishing between personal feelings and professional duties.

• Most members of the military do not know all of the relevant facts behind the government’s decision to go to war, and therefore cannot always make an accurate judgement about the justness of the war.

• If they are uncertain, they should be able to trust that their chain of command are leading them into a just war.

• They should, however, consider whether orders given to them when deployed are legal or just.

‘…most soldiers are simply not in a position to know all the relevant facts about a government’s decision to go to war and so are not able to reach an informed judgement on the justice or injustice of the war. While in some contexts, the position taken by one’s state might be clear enough, in others it might be horrendously complex and the ability to find out the truth about what is really going on may be compromised in many ways. In such circumstances, surely, they cannot be to blame for fighting in the war, only held accountable for their actions actually within the war if those actions violate the dictates of conscience directly, such as targeting non-combatants. If they have doubts about the justice of the actual war, they should exercise humility and accept that they should not follow the inner voice of their consciences but defer to those who are in a better position to judge. This might of course require a good deal of faith in one’s chain of command - soldiers must have a genuine belief that the right questions have been asked by the right people at the top of that chain and that only once those senior officers have been satisfied with the answers will orders be issued to everyone else in the chain of command.’

See 3 of Diamonds

Andrea Ellner, Paul Robinson, and David Whetham, ‘Introduction: “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come”’ in Andrea Ellner, Paul Robinson, and David Whetham (eds.), When Soldiers Say No: Selective Conscientious Objection in the Modern Military, (Ashgate, Farnham, 2014), p5.