[smoothmoniker]

In his work "On Civil Disobedience" Thoreau carefully and meticulously extends the morality of the individual to include the morality of the state in which that individual participates. Where the state is engaged in an immoral activity [in Thoreau's case, slavery], any individual who does not actively disengage himself from the activities of that state, though he suffer the full wrath of the state for such disengagment, is accountable for the moral actions taken up by the state.

By extension, the ethic may be stated thus. Where a regime perpetrates morally evil acts, an individual who does not stand in opposition to that state is culpable for the acts perpetrated. This principle, though not clearly articulated, has been one of the driving motivations behind the "Not in my name" anti-war protests.

My question is this: how might this principle be extended to the Iraqi regime? It is unquestionably a reprehensible, morally evil regime which perpetrates unspeakable acts of horror upon it's own people. Are those individuals within the regime who do not stand in opposition to it morally culpable for the actions undertaken by the state they participate in?

If not, why not?
If so, how might this ammend the notion of "innnocent Iraqi civilians"?

-sm