The fact is that modern soldiers are required to be smart, brave, strong-willed, creative, independent and results-oriented. Someone who is all of those things can’t just follow orders blindly, can they?
Honestly, I think they got the medals reversed. Meyer was in a turret and had a chance to shoot back. The other guy was driving, without a chance to shoot, and was probably even more of a target. Seriously, if you’re trying to stop a vehicle, you aim for the driver. It seems to me Juan Rodriguez-Chavez showed even more courage than Meyer.
The Humveee was armored, with bulletproof windows. The guy in the turret was out in the open.
It wasn’t the military, but I’ve been in situations where following protocol would have led to a disaster - jumping over a step in protocol saved the day. The bosses asked the person who’d made that choice “why didn’t you follow protocol?” “The step I jumped over was to call the Manager on Duty for further instructions. It was [someone who we all knew would not have made the right choice]. :halo: Figured there was no point in waking him up, you know, since we already knew the right thing to do :halo:” “Oh. I see. Now the problem will be explaining it to Corporate…” (Corporate didn’t have a problem, specially in that case where a similar situation in another location had been dealt with following protocol and produced a disaster due to the same bad choice we knew our Manager on Duty would have taken)
Like our bosses in those situations, the bosses of these soldiers reckon that the soldiers did, indeed, the right thing by having a temporary case of deafness with regards to utterances from the Manager on Duty. Soldiers are expected to follow orders, but not blindly.
We used to call this “Medal or PFC” (it rhymes in Hebrew), meaning that if you succeed, you’ll get a medal, but if you fail they’ll knock you down to Private First Class. Most successful generals have a few of those in their past.
As I understand it, Meyer left the armored humvee while under heavy fire to retrieve the four bodies of Marines who had already been killed.
http://www.marines.mil/community/Pages/MedalofHonorSgtDakotaMeyer-Citation.aspx
It seems that the driver positioned the vehicle to help shield Meyer (and others?) while the recovery of the bodies was happening.
http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=34962
He didn’t get the Medal for defying orders, he got it for his actions which happened to be in defiance of orders. No reason they shouldn’t punish him for disobeying orders. Perhaps by wagging a finger at him and calling him a very bad boy.
I think it’s safe to say you don’t get a medal of honor for mindlessly following orders.
Right or wrong, it’s part of our character. The classical post-Strategist* Chinese rule demanded total obedience. Of course, they also tended not to have quality generals and lost a lot of engagements due to stupid orders.
Americans are definitely not like that. Grant ordered his officers; he hoped for (his own words) the cooperation of the soldiers. Professional military discipline has ingrained a high level of obedience, but there’s still a strong element of personal courage and rules-breaking. And perhaps our military would be worse without it.
*Strategism was a specific branch of philosophy which gave rise, among others, to Sun Tzu.
- MP, I want you to put this man under arrest. I want you to hold him under arrest for about 10 seconds.
(think that was in A Bridge Too Far ?)
[QUOTE=Alessan]
The Humveee was armored, with bulletproof windows. The guy in the turret was out in the open.
[/QUOTE]
Were the windows RPG-proof, too ? EFP proof ? 
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Professional military discipline has ingrained a high level of obedience, but there’s still a strong element of personal courage and rules-breaking.
[/QUOTE]
Reminds me of an old joke. Hitler, Stalin and Churchill are gathered, and want to impress each other with the courage of their soldiers. Stalin calls two PFCs and says:
- Soldier, I want you to shoot that man !
- Yes, comrade commissar ! BAM
- You see the obedience of the Russian soldier ?
- That’s nothing, says Hitler.
He calls one of his men and says: - Soldier, I order you to shoot yourself in the head. NOW !
- Jawohl, mein Führer ! BAM
- That’s how courageous *Aryan *men are.
- Is it now ? says Churchill. Let me show you something. (he too calls a soldier) Private ! On my command, you will shoot yourself in the head.
The trooper goes: - Sir, blow it our yer arse, SIR.
And Churchill, satisfied, says “Now that, gentlemen, is courage.”
A point of clarification.
He was refused permission four times (IIRC) and each time he obeyed.
He didn’t ask a fifth time. He just went ahead and did what was necessary.
If I have this correct, is that defying oders? I think not.
Should firefighters who kept helping people in the WTC after the call for evacuation went out be punished as well?
I thought the idea that we were trying to spread around the world was “Don’t blindly follow orders that will lead to the death of 36 people.”
I heard him interviewed on the radio where he was completely humble and obviously not defying orders out of spite for the chain of command or simply to cause trouble, but because he refused to listen to his friends dying over the radio while he did nothing.
I think his medal of honor should come with a check for 5 million dollars.
Kinb of like the old fisherman joke.
Buddy shows up at a friends house and asks the friend to go fishing, friend just jumps in the truck and away they go.
While fishing the buddy asks the friend why he didn’t bother telling his wife.
Friend replies with “I only wanted to have one fight”
Yeah, but it wasn’t a real order, was it? After all, it’s peace time. He wasn’t being asked to secure a hill or advance on a beach head. I mean, surely a Marine of Dawson’s intelligence can be trusted to determine, on his own, which are the really important orders and which orders might, say, be morally questionable? Lieutenant Kendrick? Can he? Can Dawson determine on his own which orders he’s going to follow?
It depends on the specific order given, but I would guess he did disobey. It’s more likely he got an order like, “Stay down and stay here”, than one like, “Don’t go for the next ten minutes” or “Don’t go unless you decide the fire has slacked off enough for you to make it.”
As to an earlier comment about illegal orders, I can’t imagine one like this is illegal. Maybe stupid and wrong, but not illegal.
There has to be a line somewhere, though, if an order is outright crazy. “Stroll out into that machine gun fire and pick up that cigarette butt, soldier! I SAID STROLL, not run.”
Serpentine! Serpentine!
It’s illegal to disobey legal orders, and it is illegal to obey illegal orders.
I propose that only lawyers be allowed to enter combat areas.
This might also have unintended consequences, but hey, you gotta try.
Tris
It does come with modest benefits:
Privileges and courtesies
The Medal of Honor confers special privileges on its recipients. By law, recipients have several benefits:[33][34][35]
Each Medal of Honor recipient may have his or her name entered on the Medal of Honor Roll (38 U.S.C. § 1560). Each person whose name is placed on the Medal of Honor Roll is certified to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs as being entitled to receive a monthly pension above and beyond any military pensions or other benefits for which they may be eligible. The pension is subject to cost-of-living increases; as of 2011, it is $1,194 a month.[36]
Enlisted recipients of the Medal of Honor are entitled to a supplemental uniform allowance.
Recipients receive special entitlements to air transportation under the provisions of DOD Regulation 4515.13-R.
Special identification cards and commissary and exchange privileges are provided for Medal of Honor recipients and their eligible dependents.
Eligibility for interment at Arlington National Cemetery if not otherwise eligible.[37]
Fully qualified children of recipients are eligible for admission to the United States military academies without regard to the nomination and quota requirements.[38]
Recipients receive a 10 percent increase in retired pay under 10 U.S.C. § 3991.
Those awarded the medal after October 23, 2002, receive a Medal of Honor Flag. The law specified that all 103 living prior recipients as of that date would receive a flag. (14 U.S.C. § 505).
Recipients receive an invitation to all future presidential inaugurations and inaugural balls.[39]
As with all medals, retired personnel may wear the Medal of Honor on "appropriate" civilian clothing. Regulations specify that recipients of the Medal of Honor are allowed to wear the uniform "at their pleasure" with standard restrictions on political, commercial, or extremist purposes; other former members of the armed forces may do so only at certain ceremonial occasions.[40][41]
Many states offer distinctive Medal of Honor vehicle license plates to recipients without additional charges or fees.[42][43][44][45][46][47][48]
From wikipedia
I am not a military man, but from what I have read they usually grant a lot I’d leeway to the man on the ground. If he was if the onion something could be done, and dose it, I don’t think anyone would punish him.
I have read (in the book “Life in Nelson’s Navy”, by Dudley Pope) that if a captain played fast and loose with his orders;
“If it suceeded, no explanation was necessary. If it didn’t, no explanation was sufficient.”
Could you express this in the English language, please?