The Authorization for the Use of Force did not mention Bush by name, IIRC. It used a different term for the person - which indicated Congress specifically made the LEGAL authority to decide where and when we would use combat dependent on the POSITION. A position that GW Bush was not holding when Lakin received his orders.
What position was that?
The OFFICE of the President?
You Do realize, do you not, that Congress & the Supreme Court, along with all 50 states, every foreign country and every government entity consider Obama to be the President of the US?
And you DO realize that CONGRESS has authorized combat operations in Afghanistan, as the Constitution allows, and the President only administers what they have authorized?
While the order to go to his CO’s office had NOTHING to do with Obama, the order to deploy was fully legal - authorized and funded by Congress, under the Constitution. The slot existed. The ARMY filled it with a body. And the ARMY had the right to fill that slot.
Anyone who refuses to obey an order does so at his own risk. If the order is obviously illegal - a crime - then he will be found innocent. But there was NOTHING illegal about an order to deploy. Even if Congress found Obama ineligible and threw him out of office in special session this afternoon, all the military deployment orders of the last 4+ years would still have been valid and legal. And that is in part because CONGRESS authorized the action! The President cannot start a war unilaterally. He can only administer what Congress allows. The war in Afghanistan is a function of the US Government, not Obama.
As Jim Robinson has pointed out to you before, it isn’t the job of the military to decide who sits in the Oval Office. As many others, including me, have pointed out: The civilians control the military, not the other way around. And frankly, the Founders would have been appalled that any American would have argued otherwise.
Lakin’s duty wasn’t to Obama. It was to the USA. The enlisted I knew who tried to refuse to deploy because GWB was “selected, not elected”, faced a similar choice: deploy or go to jail. They didn’t have the right to decide President Bush wasn’t a valid President. And it is shameful that you think they had that right...
The thing I can’t understand, butterdezillion, is what you think the alternative could be. What system would permit Col. Lakin, or your nephews, to refuse to obey a command from their superior officers when Obama or Stalin is the president that would not also permit the same thing when Bush or Reagan is president? How could the military function if every member had the option of refusing an order until they were satisfied of the legitimacy of everyone up the chain of command? And could this refusal happen at any point—at the moment they were ordered into combat, for instance?