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`Just Following Orders'
Is Not The Jewish Way

The Judaic hero does not snap to
attention and salute any order, not even
that which purportedly comes from the
Divine Commander

HAROLD SCHULWEIS

Special to The Jewish News

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50

FRIDAY, OCT. 16, 1987

A

fter 250 hours of the
Iran-Contra hearings,
one visual image
stands out: Senator Daniel
Inouye giving the oath to
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver
North. Impressively
medallioned, standing erect
in his immaculate Marine
uniform, North raises his
right hand. The Senator
couldn't raise his right hand
because it was shot off in
World War II. Two Americans
with military awards for
heroism, two different kinds
of heroes.
Heroes are flesh and blood
mirrors reflecting our socie-
ty's abstract values. They are
the living embodiment of the
finest and the best, inspiring
adulation and emulation. In
that sense the hearings were
more than probings for the
smoking gun and interpreta-
tions of the Boland amend-
ment. They were explorations
of our national heroic
identity.
Once in the exchange be-
tween Senator Inouye and
North's counsellor an illusion
to the Holocaust surfaced.
Inouye referred to North's
"Nuremberg defense." Mr.
Sullivan, North's attorney, ob-
jected loudly and the matter
was quashed. It may have
been formally irrelevant
under the rules of the pro-
ceedings but the Nuremberg
defense haunted the hear-
ings. After hearing the
testimony of Poindexter,
McFarlane and North, who
could not help thinking of the
"desk-killers," those
bureaucratic good soldiers
who carried out orders, cogs
in the wheel of the Nazi
juggernaut?
The Lieutenant Colonel put
it bluntly. If the President
were to tell him to stand in
the corner and sit on his
head, North would do what he
was told. That is the mark of
the patriotic hero: disciplined,
dependable, loyal to his
superior, a human portrait of
the iron icon.
"They have mouths, but
they speak not:
Eyes have they, but they see
not:
They have ears, but they
hear not

Noses have they, but they
inhale not .. .
Whoever makes them shall
become like them:
Yea, everyone that trusts in
them." (Psalm 115)
Those who worship idols
soon take on the image of
their own creation.
The stoic character of Rear
Admiral Poindexter's heroism
was summed up in his accep-
tance of full responsibility for
giving orders to his subor-
dinates. "The buck stops
here," he declares. With that
brave confession, the exculpa-
tion of all the others follows.
Some political observers
assert that had the President
earlier and unequivocably

The rabbinic
tradition places
responsibility on
the individual and
raises the
individual
conscience above
conformity to the
majority.

declared the buck to stop at
his oval desk, the hearings
would have proven moot. The
commentators miss the crit-
ical point. The biting ques-
tion in all this is precisely the
morality of that defense and
thereby the implied exonera-
tion of the others, not the tar-
diness of the defense.
Before whom does the buck
stop?
Who can assume responsi-
bility for another's acts and
decisions?

Who is the, superior before
whose doorstep blame is laid?
Who bears liability — the
superior who orders or the
subordinte who conforms?
The rabbinic tradition enters
here as critique and correc-
tive of the "buck stops here
ethic." The Talmud informs us
that if one says to an agent,
"Go forth and slay a soul," it
is not the sender who is liable
for punishment, but the hit
man Or again, if A appoints
B to dig a pit in a public thor-
oughfare, and persons or pro-
perty are damaged thereby, it
is B who is liable. Or still
again, if a master orders his
servant to violate the law, it
is the servant who is to pay

