When Duty And Conscience Clash

The U.S. Army went on trial in Fort Drum, N.Y., last week ? even though Capt. Lawrence P. Rockwood was the one sitting in the dock. The verdict should make every American shudder. Finding Rockwood guilty on four counts, the military court unjustly punished a courageous man. The trial juxtaposed two principles ? a man’s obligation to his conscience and blind obedience to military orders. Essentially, Rockwood was convinced of leaving his post ? which he did in order to document subhuman conditions at a Haitian prison. No one put it better than Rockwood, who told the court, “I placed my loyalty to the constitution above my loyalty to the careers of my immediate superiors.”In my view, the case cuts to the heart of what kind of institution we want today’s military to be. Every American solider, from the time he or she laces up that first pair of boots, is taught that discipline is the essence of military effectiveness. But our warriors are also drilled to disregard illegal orders. During the Korean war, my company skipper ordered me to kill four Chinese prisoners our platoon had taken on a patrol near Kumhwa. The CO reasoned it would take eight hours to walk the prisoners back to the battalion; he didn’t want to take my soldiers away from the front for that long. I refused to carry out the order, citing the Geneva Convention. That was the end of it. Rockwood, a fourth-generation soldier with 15 years in the army, wasn’t so lucky.
Rockwood was safeguarding U.S. interests in Haiti last fall. During Operation Uphold Democracy, Rockwood, a counter-intelligence specialist, decided to carry out President Clinton’s explicit mandate “to stop brutal atrocities” ? the main reason we sent in troops. Rockwood, 36, tried to investigate human-rights abuses in Port-au-Prince’s National Penitentiary, a notorious hellhole where up to 500 undernourished prisoners, standing ankle-deep in excrement, were forced to share a single cell. The captain reported his concerns to at least eight officers on the staff of Maj. Gen. David C. Mead, then commander of the multinational force in Haiti. Rebuffed by everyone from his immediate superior to the division chaplain, Rockwood filed an inspector-general complaint, which was ignored. Concluding that his superiors were guilty of “criminal negligence,” Rockwood grabbed his M-16 and went to inspect the jail on his own. He made it only as far as the infirmary and a few cells before a military attache picked him up and charged him with, among other things, conduct unbecoming an officer.