In the last weekend I watched an old movie, A Few Good Men, which was casted by Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. The story was about two Marines who were charged with murder on their fellow in the naval base camp in Guantanamo Bay. The two Marines assualted the fellow under an extrajudicial punishment in that base camp on soldiers whom made mistakes and they did that under the order by the base commander via the soldiers' superior's instruction in an unofficial manner and off record. The punishement accidentally led to the death of the victim. The two soldiers were trialed in the court-martial and Cruise was their trial lawyer.
As a movie, after twists and turns Cruise finally succeeded to defend the soldiers from the charge of murder because their simply performed an order from the superior whom in turn received instruction from the commander. People must be aware that an order from superior is absolute in places like millitary camp where obidience is everything. To defend the soldiers from their charges Cruise cleverly guided the commander to admit in the trial that it was him whom gave the order. The commander was held responsible and arrested for the death of his soldier due to his instruction of the extrajudicial punishment. The movie is with Hollywood's usual formula that justice will be served and bad guys will be held accountable on their wrong-doings. The title of the movie is self-explanatory and Cruise and his team are these good men. Again as a movie, the ending of the movie is commercially uplifting because it meets people's quest for justice. The innocents were freed and the bad guys tasted his own medicine.
In the movie Cruise was protraited as good man while Nicholson, the commander, a bad guy. In real life world it is not that simple and straight foward though. Cruise was a good man because he helped the innocent soldiers while Nicholson was bad because he managed his camp in stringent millitary dicipline. He gave the order of punishment to the victim because the latter went over the chain of command to peach his fellow to the HQ in exchange of his transfer out from the camp. This move pissed his commander off.
The movie focused on the commander's responsibility of giving the punishment order which indirectly led to the death of the victim, I view the case with another perspective though. Cruise, an hero in the movie, brought a naval base commander to jail. Did he really preserve the justice? Meanwhile did he preserve the country's interests when he brought a commander whom played an important role in protecting the country into jail? As a lawyer in the movie, Cruise did his job successfully to defend his clients, the two Marines and did it beautifully. However, as such the country lost a naval commander despite whom did made mistake in giving the order.
To further expand the scenario, in the movie the incident happened in the peace time so perhaps it did not significantly impact the level of national defence by putting an naval commander behind bars but what if the same commander did the same thing but in the time when the country was in war with rival nation? Will the loss of the nation as a whole outweigh the preservation of justice? What if the country loses in the war because of the absence of the commander? Will the same lawyer that preserves justice still be an hero in such case? If justice can be compromised because the commander is indispensable in war time then is justice something negotiable?
Where do you draw the line?
