Imagine that, for whatever reason, the POTUS, acting as Commander-in-Chief, orders the armed forces to open fire on American citizens - say, to put down riots, to break up a blockade surrounding a city, or for whatever reason. Do you believe that, in such a situation,
a) the top commanders will obey the order and command their troops to carry it out?
b) the troops themselves would obey the order and wage war against other Americans, some of whom could be their own family members?
Further, let’s says that some number of top commanders obey the POTUS’ orders and command their troops to carry them out, while another number disobeys the orders and commands their troops to belay those orders. Do we then have a situation where American soldiers are firing at each other?
Or is the culture of the military such that firing on American citizens, and/or other American soldiers, is such anathema that it would never ever ever happen in a zillion years?
I’d guess that the reason would matter, but in the end is it a lawful order? If so, then it will be carried out.
Is it a lawful order? Then the top commander would either obey or resign. As for the troops, I’d guess most would carry it out if it was a lawful order. I’m sure some would refuse, depending on what the circumstances are.
Well, if we are talking about a civil war then you’d almost certainly have a split in the military, with some following orders, some siding with the rebels and some sitting on the fence.
Civil war. Yeah, you could get a situation where US troops were firing on other US troops in such a situation. The military isn’t some faceless mass in lockstep…they are citizen soldiers who aren’t a separate caste or class but are comprised from ordinary citizens.
All of this is hypothetical though. You’d have to push things to the extremes to get this sort of split reaction, and there would have to be some sort of massive split at our society level going on as well.
Depends on the situation. I could see US troops firing on American citizens in some circumstances, and in others I could see it causing a massive split in the reaction.
There are three reasons to deviate from orders according to US Army doctrine. Nothing in the OP is clear enough to determine my answer for a specific situation. From ADP 6-0 Change 2, 12 March 2014 “Mission Command”(my bolding)
Both the oath of enlistment and the oath of office include (my bold):
Domestic enemies are right there in the short oath every member of the US Military takes.
It’s useful to consider that POTUS doesn’t have a lot of legal authority to use federal forces inside the US unless the Insurrection Act of 1807 is triggered. The Commander in Chief for civil disturbance/riot or early stages of insurrection before that standard is met is the relevant Governor(s). Federal troops, before that standard is met, can be provided in support to the Governor but are still bound by Posse Comitatus unlike the Guard. (If you really want to make your brain hurt* look up DSCA (Defense Support to Civil Authorities) to go deep into the weeds on how the military can be utilized to support both state and non-DOD federal authorities.) If the President had come up to me with orders during a riot while I was in Company Command in the Guard, and on state active duty, I could have rightfully told him to pound sand until I got orders from my Commander in Chief, the Governor. (Okay, I probably would have been much more polite about it. )
It also doesn’t necessarily take orders from echelons above reality. There would generally be rules of engagement put in place. The rules of engagement may provide for use of force decisions that can be made at the tactical level. ROE should also not constrain the legal right to self-defense enjoyed by all citizens. That includes the use of deadly force to protect others from the reasonable threat of deadly force. There’s a tweak from the civilian where Commanders can authorize deadly force for “self” defense of their units under the same standards of reasonable threat. ISTR attempting arson was specifically mentioned in ROE as justification for deadly force in our annual civil disturbance training exercise. I believe it was also in the ROE for a real-world OPLAN (Operations Plan) that I got briefed on in preparation for a potential riot that, thankfully, didn’t happen. The arson piece was generally seen as being legal self-defense but they explicitly specified it because of the challenge of confirming if a building was occupied or not. We generally had very few firearms for a riot situation anyway but the option was there.
US citizens on US soil not actively engaging in a fire fight or other act of lethal violence? I will not discharge my weapon at anyone or anything. Not gonna do it no matter how lawful the order might technically be. I will not be a party to something like, say, the Kent State Massacre. I’ll live in jail or take a punitive bullet first.
If the union is so broken that we have this brigade loyal to the POTUS, and that brigade loyal to someone else, maybe a governor, then I will have already chosen a side. Still not going to intentionally kill any noncombatants.
In either event I can’t think of a situation where I’d be firing at another American unless they were actively trying to kill me/mine.
There are a million little ways the goalposts can get moved in a situation like this, but in general if I don’t have to kill anyone, American or otherwise, I won’t.
Shhh, we don’t need our neighbors to the South end of the Ambassador Bridge getting ideas. I watch South Park and know not to trust those beady eyed Canadians.
South Park is a documentary right?
There’s a precedence for it - Kent State, 1970. Not to mention the plenty of example of police firing on and killing unarmed fellow Americans. It’s not a huge leap, unfortunately. Americans are already prone to killing each other.
If I may stick in my oar as a non-military person (hope the OP doesn’t mind): Is the OP referring to killing American citizens on American soil, or foreign soil?
If on foreign soil, I imagine the Johnny Walker Taliban situation would reapply and I doubt US forces would have any qualms about firing on them; ditto for American citizens who have gone to the Middle East to join ISIS in recent years.
American soil. Specifically, I’m referring to the thought experiment proposed by Robert Reich in this Salon article.
"Imagine that an impeachment resolution against Trump passes the House. Trump claims it’s the work of the “deep state.” Fox News’s Sean Hannity demands every honest patriot take to the streets. Rightwing social media call for war. As insurrection spreads, Trump commands the armed forces to side with the “patriots.”
Or it’s November 2020 and Trump has lost the election. He charges voter fraud, claiming that the “deep state” organized tens of millions of illegal immigrants to vote against him, and says he has an obligation not to step down. Demonstrations and riots ensue. Trump commands the armed forces to put them down."
Although you can see how I wanted to keep the political angle out of the discussion since this is IMHO and not GD.
It’s interesting that “shoot to kill” orders seemed usually to come from the commander at the scene, rather than the mayor, governor or other higher-up.
It’s the 1990s and Occupy Malheur all over again, then, but maybe with a few more nutballs trying to rouse the Silent Majority they’re sure is on their side.
Hint: They aren’t. The vast majority does not want the kinds of people who stockpile guns and bomb Federal buildings in charge.
So the “uprisings” remain small and local, easily quashed from a military standpoint but provoking much hand-wringing and some amount of outrage among people who have no intention of doing anything about it, especially from the people who sell outrage to the outrage addicts.
And I’m sure it won’t be as big as it was in the 1990s, even, for a few reasons, mostly to do with demographic shifts since then and concomitant cultural shifts, plus the fact the left has media outlets now which cater to leftists, as opposed to only the right having such things.
I washed out of the military in training, so I don’t have too much experience, but I do remember our oath, and it’s not to the President. It’s to the Constitution. Then we go on to pledge that we’ll follow the orders of the President and officers, consistent with the UCMJ.
Tell you what though, although it’s not explicit in our system the way it is in some Latin American republics, I would hope that if a President tried to seize power that the military would play it’s role as the ultimate defender of the Constitution and get him out of there.
First, the reason I avoided military service in the first place was because I did not want to be in a position where somebody else would decide who I would kill. Or that I must kill anyone, which I can’t imagine myself ever doing for reasons of my own.
Second, the American police kill Americans all the time, without asking their country of citizenship.
Actually the 1992 Los Angeles riots saw both the US Army and US Marines deployed into the city to restore order, in addition to California National Guard units.
I was Navy and an Electrician, no guns for me. So I can honestly say I would not fire on US Citizens. However, no shortage of soldiers would follow these orders unless is was very clearly unlawful. Even then some would open fire.
During rioting and looting, and especially once the rioters start throwing rocks at the soldiers, it won’t even take an order for most to start shooting into the crowd.
That would be a blatantly unlawful order to overthrow the elected legislature before it can use it’s explicitly granted Constitutional powers. There’s a word for that scenario. It’s called a coup. There’s also a strong argument that a charge thrown around loosely and inaccurately, treason, would actually apply in this case.
Sure anything can happen. I wouldn’t expect a coup to get much support. Following unlawful orders to overthrow the Constitution is pretty much the antithesis of the military oath and culture. I especially have a hard time seeing it happen if Mattis isn’t dead or detained in a black site away from all the media before the order goes out.
Providing military support to deal with demonstrations and riots could be lawful. As phrased the scenario runs into potential issues with whether Federal troops would be legally allowed or not. Trump couldn’t order the National Guard to do what federal troops can’t. As soon as he mobilizes them into federal service they become federal troops with all the same legal limitations. He could offer monetary support to the states to activate the Guard under Title 32 but the Governors would get to individually choose whether to do it and they would still retain full control. If we were in a situation where riot was ongoing or the police needed help with crowd control because of the size of the demonstrations, I’d expect most Governors would activate their Guard. That’s regardless of their political affiliation or level of personal support for the demonstrations.
Of course, as described, we could also be looking at unlawful orders. Lawful demonstrations being treated as an insurrection to enable federal troop usage directly on Trump’s orders is, unsurprisingly, likely unlawful. The National Guard shouldn’t be actively suppressing lawful demonstrations either; involvement in crowd control to augment law enforcement is not the same thing. It’s not an unlawful demonstration for state troops to disperse until the relevant state civilian authorities declare it as one within state law and federal constitutional protections on free assembly. That’s when force gets used to clear the entire crowd.
All of that is separate than addressing Trump trying to occupy the White House. That’s on the civilian authorities. It’s possible to both provide military support to deal with riots and unlawful demonstrations and have those other authorities remove Trump from the White House.
Reich, whether from pure ignorance or intentionally, ignores the legal controls in the system that reduce the plausibility of his scary scenarios.
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The fact we’re all practicing our "Murican accents is totally coincidence, Y’all.