To put in mildly, Dr. Lakin was naive. He refused his orders because he did not think that Obama was legitimately the US president.
That might be so. But no way would such an argument ever be accepted by the Defense Department. That means Dr. Lakin was on a suicide mission. And for what?
I suppose Dr. Larkin can claim a moral victory here. But in reality he only hurt himself, and changed nothing. Sort of like a private complaining about Hitler.
To my knowledge, and as of this day 11/24/25, Barrack Obama is recognized as the 2008 and 2012 election winner.
It is not within the scope or job description of military officers or enlisted to question that determination and act upon the decision to miss an obligation like a deployment because you think differently than the congressional decision.
It was a direct order to deploy and he missed it because he was guessing something was wrong with the determination Obama was not president. He deserved the jail time as if he was going to prove Obama’s serving as wrong, he would have had to do it before the date he was ordered to deploy. Other wise, he is failing within the UCMJ article 86 failure to go and article 92 failure to obey a direct order. And if he did it today, he still would be in failure to follow the UCMJ.
wy69
Perhaps I’m missing the plot.
On the one hand, plenty of people have real doubts about Obama’s birth certificate. But, let’s face it, he lived in the White House for 8 years. That ship has sailed. He’s in the history books as president. Maybe at some point in the future those books will be re-written, but it hasn’t happened yet.
On the other hand, a military officer was issued orders to show up for duty. And he didn’t. That’s bad. It’s always bad.
If his commander had ordered him to rape women and kill children, I’d have a lot more sympathy. But he was told to show up for deployment. And he just didn’t. That’s not OK. I don’t see any way to glorify that action.
In a previous administration a large number of G.I.s were dishonorably discharged without benefits for disobeying illegal orders to change their DNA.
All orders must be presumed to be legal. Your only options are to obey the order or resign your commission. You, as the one receiving the order, can’t question it’s legitimacy until you do one or the other. It’s like having standing to bring a case to Court.
No, these things happened because he failed to be in his appointed place of duty. He deserted. It is not the place for military members to question the results of an election, or the eligibility of an elected official.