Military personnel are required to obey any “lawful” order. How is that defined, particularly in the field of battle, with lives at risk?
What would be an example (historical or hypothetical) of an “unlawful order” by a commanding officer, and how would a lower rank establish whether or not an order from a commanding officer is lawful?
Unlawful order: An order which, if carried out, will be contrary to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and likely result in disciplinary action. An example in combat would be someone ordering the execution of civilians or the theft of private property.
Military personnel are required to not only obey lawful orders, but also have an obligation to question orders that they feel are unlawful. It’s dangerous ground, because if you’re wrong you can be punished for disobeying. In combat, a soldier is more likely to question the order (with witnesses present) and then to go ahead and carry it out, unless it is clearly egregious (as in the case mentioned above). If he believes the order to be unlawful, he can report it to superiors. The fallout for not obeying an order given in combat can be severe.
Unfortunately history has many examples of solders who do whatever they are told. For example Hitler’s troops did everything they were ordered to do.
A fact in answer to your question: So far as Trump is concerned, I’ve noticed many of his supporters in my area believe any false news they hear. And are ex-military gun loving types. So these particular people would not know a particular order was not legal as they do not have the “intelligence” to seek out the facts.
So a further question would be… If the military solders are being fed inaccurate news/information, would they know an order was in fact illegal? THAT is the problem we face for now. Other countries are making false news a criminal thing though…
“in Germany, anyway. Late last week, Thomas Oppermann — chairman of the German Social Democratic Party — proposed a stringent law meant to hold companies like Facebook responsible when fake news makes the rounds”…
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No one asked anything about Trump. Keep political commentary like this out of GQ.
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Colibri
General Questions Moderator
For those interested, there is already a GD thread on this subject.
Given that there is already a GD thread on this, and this is likely to head in that direction, I’m going to close this and refer you to the other thread.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator