Following Orders

 

“In a video posted on X Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, Rep. Chris Deluzio and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said the ‘threats to our Constitution’ are coming ‘from right here at home,’ and repeatedly urged the military and intelligence community to ‘refuse illegal orders.” https://www.wral.com/story/democratic-lawmakers-urge-troops-to-disobey-illegal-orders/22253445/ 

We respectfully urge their constituents to begin recall proceedings or vote them out of office. 

Let's be clear about one thing. What these elected officials did is wrong. That is our unambiguous and irrevocable response.  Anything that follows, should be understood in the context of that statement. 

If elected officials object to the actions of the President, they have the option to challenge those actions in court.  It is flagrantly irresponsible for them to publicly, and by visual media, urge military personnel who are engaged in combat to refuse orders.  Make no mistake, those Democrats’ remarks were directed at our service people who are obeying orders to use lethal force to stop narco-terrorists from smuggling illegal drugs into the United States. 

Those who have read some of our previous posts know that I'm a veteran. I served during the Vietnam war, but I did not serve in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the issue of obeying orders, legal or illegal, was ingrained in my memory and value system.  Please understand, you must live it in order to understand it fully.

On March 16, 1968, American soldiers led by Lt. William Calley killed a large number (300-500) of South Vietnamese civilians at a village named My Lai. During his court martial, Lt. Calley claimed that he was acting on the orders of his company commander, Captain Edwin Medina.  The court martial found that to be no excuse for his actions. https://armyhistory.org/my-lai/  

Subsequently, in ROTC, and later during my Infantry Officers Basic Course (IOBC) at Ft. Benning, I received training about refusing to obey illegal orders.  At Benning, an entire block of instruction was devoted to “The Law of Land Warfare.”  While I was at Ft. Benning, Lt. Calley was under house arrest there, during the due process of his case.  It got our attention. 

Our military servicepeople do not need partisan politicians, whose motive appears to be their hatred of President Trump, telling them about their “duty to refuse illegal orders.”  They are trained about that.  However, it may create a subtle misgiving in the soldier’s mind that our military men and women might be prosecuted in the future.  If they obey what liberals regard as “illegal orders,” what might happen when the Democrats get back in power?  Do you see the double-bind that puts them in? 

Furthermore, the resulting confusion might cause them to hesitate at a crucial moment.  In armed conflict hesitation can get you killed.  It can get your buddies killed.  It can cause the mission to fail. 

Military personnel do not have the luxury of evaluating whether each and every order they get is legal or illegal.  If it is obviously illegal*, they have the ability to refuse the illegal order, although it may be reviewed by military authorities and result in the legality of the order being determined by a court martial.  To put it plainly, if a service person refuses to obey an order that they think is illegal, they may be court martialed, and the court will then decide whether it was legal or not. Military personnel do not have the right to become armchair lawyers and to refuse any order they don’t like. 

If military people are allowed to arbitrarily refuse orders, the result would be chaos.  Unit cohesion would be disrupted.  There would be divisions among the rank and file of our operational units – ‘to obey or not to obey, that is the question.’  It’s madness to let that happen.  Our ability to defend the American people would get flushed down the toilet. 

 

* In Ukraine, the Russians are doing things that are obviously illegal.  Their war crimes include: purposely killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, committing rape, kidnapping children, and mistreating prisoners of war.