"My respect for military personnel is almost always in inverse proportion to their rank."

An excellent rule. I was once at a military cemetary from ww2 in eurpose and I went looking among the thousands of tombstones, looking at all of the one at a time, as a kind of act of respect: and I began to notice something strange. I could find no one above the rank of captain on the tombstones. And I became almost obsessed, looking at tombstone after tombstone, looking and looking. Never found any. I know there are some good folks at higher ranks, because I have met them: but they are the exceptions that validate your rule. I started out as a private and then went to sergeant before I became a Lt., and then went to cpt. I never had a desire to go higher: it looked too strange up there with the brass, to dangerous to one's soul.

you wrote: "However, how does one not become guilty of the war crimes we commit if one joins? I mean this both legally and morally.I have no problem with a man who joins in to fight off an invader to his homeland, but how does one justify serving in the army of the invader?"

Military for me is always for defensive purposes, or to stop things like the Holocaust, I suppose. I was young when I initially joined and did not see us as an invader (I was lucky in being in after vietnam and before iraq). I was almost caught up in desert storm--if I had not gone inactive reserve to pursue a ph.d. i think I would have commanded a unit that would have been deployed. At that time I thought seriously about what I would do, because it became clear to me that it was all about the oil, and I thought if ordered to go I might just have to go to jail.

So my position evolved. I was young and had not thought it through when I joined. And you grow to value the people you are with in your units, who I still think of as some of the best people I have ever known. Its all mixed up and complicated in that way. I would probably have ended up in jail if I had stayed in, I suppose: but I will defend the folks I served with as some of the best I have ever known.

Hope that answers your question a little bit. It was an honest question, and I was not offended at all.

Your point about principles and when to resign and how we cannot get inside the situation of the person to see how they are negotiating the problem seems dead on to me. There comes a time when you have worked your way up in a system and began to realize things about it you simply didn't see before: and then you have to ask yourself what to do now, because you are in a place no one else with your new insights could possible be in (because having those insights from the outset would have precluded you ending up there). So you try to balance it out: how much good can I do, how much can I ameliorate this situation, etc. etc. And at the end of the day from the purist point of view they will always say: why were you in there? Why didn't you leave sooner. A nice quote from Peter Berger seems apropos:

"Fanatics have a big advantage in politics: They have nothing else to do. This is what Oscar Wilde had in mind when he quipped, "The trouble with socialism is that it takes all of your free evenings." The rest of us do not have this advantage. Our free evenings are taken up with family, hobbies, vices. Even if we bring ourselves to act politically, we do so without the comfort of absolute certainty enjoyed by fanatics. We are rarely truly sure. We cannot suppress all doubts. We weigh the pros and cons of possible actions."

You hang in there hoping to have good effect and always not quite sure and doubting yourself and hoping you do some good. And then someone says to you: well, you resigned, didn't you? I could respect you if you did that. And they have no idea what you were able to do or tried to do.

on his superfriends blog:

"Also in attendance was criminal genius Glenn Greenwald, appearing via video transmission from his exile in the tropics. His head was almost completely encased with a network of cybernetic wires, lights, and circuit boards, to further augment his already supernatural cerebrum."

I've always thought his forehead looked a little large in the picture . . .

I always loved this precept (one of the 14 of the order of interbeing):

"Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness."

I love the point "including children" and the qualifier "even education."

Non-violence. I wonder what a comment thread guided by Teacher would be like? How about this precept, the ninth:

"9. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of Personal interest or to impress people. Do not utter words that cause division and hatred. Do not spread news that you do not know to be certain. Do not criticize or condemn things of which you are not sure. Always speak truthfully and constructively. Have the courage to speak out about situations of injustice, even when doing so may threaten your own safety."

Been thinking about the precepts a lot lately. How I love the mighty Thich.

"phallic eye", it is a now well known trope (the "phallic gaze") in various studies of power relations arising out of Freud, Lacan, and others. It seems very apt in reference to folks like Friedman. It also gives one an amusing, though slightly fantastical, image to contemplate.