The End Of The Modern Army

Soldiers die in war. It is a fact that volunteers face when they sign on.

Now, when a soldier falls in combat, their family can sue the government that sent the soldier into combat. No more fog of war, no more chance encounter, no more bad luck. It's become a question of negligence.

The Supremes

The European Union has a clause regarding the right to life in its convoluted set of rules, and so the legal minds who sit on England's Supreme Court have declared that death of a soldier in combat violates that rule.

Two families brought suit, one involving a friendly fire incident and the other a death caused by an improvised explosive device and an inadequately armored Land Rover. In one case, it was claimed that the Department of Defense was negligent for allowing British soldiers to be misidentified as enemy combatants, resulting in death. For the other, the government was deemed negligent for sending poorly protected vehicles into a combat zone.

War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, General William Sherman once said. In these modern times, you can ameliorate that cruelty in a court of law.

How can an army function if the commanding officers must consider, not only strategy and intelligence, but legal implications of an operation?

The court has decreed that soldiers have a right to life, even in combat situations, which sounds like a lovely sentiment but it isn't exactly grounded in the realities of the cruelty that is war.

There are those who have long been opposed to foreign wars that do not seem to have a direct impact on daily life at home. That they found a way to use the courts to express their displeasure will be applauded in some circles, while the officers in the armed forces will complain about hands being tied.

They may make mention of unintended consequences at some future time, now that the precedent of a successful lawsuit has been set. Attempts to refine war can lead to unintended consequences down the line, when an officer hesitates because he's thinking of lawsuits instead of flanking maneuvers.

Sounds like a plot for a futuristic fantasy of a novel where the Allied generals are tied up in court while the Axis attacks without concern for legal rulings....where would we be if this had been a decision reached in 1939?

Go write.