I understand what you're saying here, and I respect your knowledge on the subject, but what gets me is that the soldier pulls the trigger. The soldier drops the bomb. You can blame the politician and the citizens, but it is the soldier who with his free-will decides to exercise his "lawful" right to kill. Furthermore, "lawful" is extremely subjective. Law doesn't make something right. It means a collective has agreed on something.

I think we're digging way deep into the philosophy part of this discussion now - soon we'll be talking about things just as the "Just War" doctrine, human morality, etc.

I do, however, want to point out the dynamic between US servicemembers and their leadership and your question about human free will and military service.

When you take your oath of enlistment (or oath of office for officers), you swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States." What does this mean exactly?

Well defending the Constitution is pretty obvious - but what about support? Well the Constitution says that the President is the Commander in Chief, that Congress legislates the budget that pays for your existence, and the Judicial branch decides legality of laws and the actions of the other branches.

As thus, the President is legally the highest leader in our chain of command - and disobeying lawful orders from our political leadership (lawful per the Constitution as per the courts) would thus be disobeying our oaths to the Constitution and, in a way, disobeying the basis of our country's existence.

After all, it is the Constitution that binds our country together and if servicemembers are free to pick and choose which parts of orders they are to obey, what is there to stop others from doing the same?

I get that is a highly simplified and idealized way of explaining things, but much of modern western society is built upon this "social contract" - the set of civil and social agreements between citizens centered around a country's laws - and if those are ideal are not followed by a country's own service members, then why else would anyone feel obligated to do so?

Using an extreme analogy - we don't blame Hitler for the actions of all of the Nazi soldiers who committed mass genocide. That's because "I was just following orders" is horseshit, and is no excuse. Law or no law.

I'd caution against using the post WW2 war crimes trials as the be-all end-all of international justice - a lot of it was political, especially since the idea of war crimes didn't really exist prior to WW2.

Keep in mind that the Soviet Union (in Europe) and China (in the Pacific) had a big stake in punishing the invaders, and as they were part of the judges, there was a lot to be made out of making an example out of Nazi or Japanese leadership.

Also, keep in mind that we punished a lot of Nazis or Japanese who committed war crimes to quickly de-Nazify and de-Imperialize the respective countries, especially the most ardent supporters - and what quicker way to remove them than to execute or imprison them?

And its important to note that only the most egregious offenders have generally been the ones punished - lots were quickly released a few years later as the Cold War heated up - and almost all of those executed or given lengthy prison sentences were those who knowingly and willingly ordered those war crimes to which the argument that they were "simply following orders" didn't hold up. The average German conscript - hell, the average Wehrmacht SS member even - never faced war crimes trials. Indeed, many sympathize even today with the fact that they were deceived by evil