Suppose the new POTUS issued an executive order, for instance, limiting the amount of carbon emissions for any given region. Suppose in December, he pulled the plug on the Northern Plains, shut down Natural Gas, no electricity, and forbid the use of other carbon based fuels (wood, coal, grain). Needless to say, there would be a problem. If people comply, they die. Any attempt to enforce the EO, and people would riot, at least those who did not freeze to death.
If so ordered, would you enforce the EO?
What I want you to think about is this: that whether the food was taken as taxes and people starved, whether civillians were marched without food or rest until they dropped, whether they were hunted down, or herded into 'fourty and eights' and sent to a camp, these historical examples of genocide were perpetrated by governments on their own people, using either the regular armed forces or special units within their military.
Forces who followed what would be considered in virtually any other context to be illegal orders.
The Ukranian Pogrom, Armenian Genocide, the Killing Fields, and Concentration camps/Gulags were perpetrated under government orders.
Note, please I am not inferring anything about our military forces nor those who serve in them in general, nor you in particular, and I am definitely not trying to draw a parallel between our service people-past or present--and the personnel of other countries' military forces who perpetrated those atrocities.
What I am saying, though, is that the only thing which could keep that from happening here is you, you and others like you, the honorable and just personnel of our armed forces.
I do not trust politicians much, not by any standard.
Eternal vigillance, is, after all, the price of liberty.
There are only a few things which have traditionally stood between the powerful and abuse of that power.
One, the credibly armed populace, (Credibly, because muzzle-loading shotguns will not win many battles, whereas semiautomatic rifles can, under the right circumstances.)
Two, the honorable service rendered to our Constitution and Constitutionally authorized Government by our Armed Forces.
Three, the media, which heretofore would be outraged if any word should leak of such actions, and whose exposure would cause a popular demand that they be stopped.
But, frankly, I no longer place any stock in the Media. If persons whom they deemed to be politically incorrect were to be rounded up and shot or imprisoned, the media would be cheerleaders rather than critics.
Look at the MSM's coverage of the assault on the Branch Davidians at Waco for an example.
There are currently dissenting voices, but for how long?
Even Fox news has slid past the middle, and in less time than we believe, all media assets could form a national echo chamber for anti-conservative, anti-Judeo/Christian, and traditionally anti-American viewpoints.
With a few exceptions, they already do against gunowners, Christians, and we who find homosexuality deviant and disgusting. The assault on President Bush, an eight year long media siege, is an example of the lengths to which the media will go to edit out the good and portray the smallest mistake as world shaking evil.
Media treatment of Sarah Palin comes to mind as well. In the absence of mistakes or wrongdoing, the agenda driven will invent them (TANG Memos).
Now, imagine what they will (continue to) do with the new guy, only he will be able to do no wrong.
After all, that would mean the media would have to admit their error in helping fabricate the entire cult of Obama.
So, if in the name of 'saving the planet' he (literally) froze a couple of million (mostly Christian, conservative) people out in flyover country by Executive Order, it might be lauded as a good start, rather than criticized as genocide or mass murder.
Dissent might never be aired, and after enough "antigovernment" web sites and ISPs were shut down after filtering for content of e-mails, the 'domestic terrorists' who had the temerity to demand heat could be rounded up and reeducated if not summarily eliminated.
Far fetched?
No, at a lower technology level and in another place it has been done, it would be easier than ever, now.
All that took was a large enough group of people to just follow orders.
At what point should the Turkish soldier have refused to march Armenians back and forth to their death? When should the soldier of the Reich have quit stuffing Jews, dissenters, Gypsies, etc. into the freight cars? When did a rebuilding Germany, with its strengthening and renewed economy and national prestige stop being another success story and start festering with such internal evil that it is the standard of evil and totalitarianism by which many are compared today?
It was not the politicians, nor the officers who merely passed the orders on, but the rank and file who carried them out, the people who tolerated it, and the media which made that the popular cause.
I hope no one in our armed forces has to confront such issues. I pray our Constitutional Republic continues and regains its political sanity, but now more than ever, each and every one of us needs to decide.
/soapbox
Skipjack? Same hull?
Man, unless that is a new one, it must be ancient. I remember building a model of it about the same time I built one of the Nautilus, iirc, before the Thresher went down.
Most of the dead were because they didn't agree with those in power.