Photo by Wesley Tingey, Unsplash
Photo by Wesley Tingey, Unsplash
Six members of Congress gave us an example of the way to stand up to a tyrant on Tuesday. Each of them is under special guard by Capitol Police because of threats to their lives by MAGA followers of Donald Trump.
Republished with permission from Lucian K. Truscott IV
What you have to understand about the military is that it functions as a nearly absolute autocracy within the democracy that governs the rest of the country. There are many rights that you simply don’t have if you are in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard. You don’t have the right to go to bed when you please. If your commander says “lights out” at 11 p.m., that means lights in the barracks are turned off. If your commander says no personal electronic devices like cell phones while on duty, then you can’t look at or even carry a cell phone while you’re working.
Most famously, if a commander says reveille is at 5 a.m., that’s when the bugle blows and your feet must hit the floor. You don’t get to sleep in if you had a long night and you’re tired. Orders are orders. Get up and get moving, soldier!
In war, the window of a soldier’s rights narrows considerably. If you are ordered by a platoon leader to dig a hole and get in it and defend the perimeter of the unit’s position, you must get your entrenching tool—a small shovel—dig your hole, use it for cover, and engage the enemy if your platoon’s position is attacked. If you’re ordered to charge a position held by the enemy and shoot to kill, you are obligated under the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to follow an order that may cause you to take the life of another human being.
The UCMJ is a code of laws that governs the behavior of members of the military while they are on active duty, defining behavior that is allowable and what is not permitted and outlining punishments for violating military regulations and the laws of the UCMJ itself.
The UCMJ cuts both ways, however. Included in the military code of justice is the law that says members of the military have a duty to obey all lawful orders, but they also have a duty not to obey orders that are illegal, unconstitutional, or otherwise criminal in nature. A common example of an illegal order that soldiers have a duty not to follow is being ordered to mistreat or kill a prisoner of war. Being ordered to mistreat or hurt or haze or kill another soldier would be similarly illegal, and service members would be obligated not to follow such an order.
The reason this issue has arisen is because six members of Congress who are either military veterans or served in national security positions such as the CIA released a video on Tuesday urging service members on active duty, in the reserve, or the National Guard not to follow illegal orders. The members of Congress did not specify which illegal orders that military members must refuse to obey. Instead, they made the point that the Trump administration is pitting the military against the American public on the streets of this country with its military deployments to cities, in violation of the Constitution, according to some recent court decisions.
Click here to read the rest of this article.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
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