Chameleon Magazine

 🪖📜🤯Imagine being 19, shipped to a desert warzone, carrying a rifle and the weight of your country’s decisions. You don’t get to vote on the mission, question the legality, or say “no thanks, this one’s ethically murky.” You follow orders. Then, years later—surprise!—you’re investigated like a war criminal. Meanwhile, the politicians who gave the green light to the war? Off writing memoirs and cashing speaking fees. That’s not justice. That’s abandonment.

⚖️ “We Gave the Orders”—But You Pay the Price

Let’s get this straight: young soldiers don’t choose where they’re sent. They’re deployed based on decisions made in Parliament rooms, not barracks. So why, years later, are they being dragged through legal hell for carrying out missions they were ordered into?

Where’s the government’s accountability?

It’s madness that there’s no formal “Responsibility Contract”—a document where the state agrees: if you serve us, we won’t hang you out to dry. If you follow lawful orders under military command, then we own the consequences, not you.

Instead, we’ve created a perverse setup where:

• Governments declare war for “justice” or “freedom”
• Soldiers fight, bleed, and die
• Then lawyers and politicians treat them like political liabilities once public sentiment shifts

Let’s not pretend this is just about “bad apples”. No one’s defending genuine abuse. But decades-later prosecutions based on paper-thin accusations? That’s political cowardice disguised as justice.

If the chain of command is real, then liability should chain upward too.

🧨 Challenges 🧨

Shouldn’t soldiers be protected from post-war political whiplash? Should the government legally commit to backing those it sends into war zones? What would a real “Responsibility Contract” look like—and why isn’t one already in place?