My position is objectively supportive of the Army, and the military I served for close to 30 years. And against those who would disparage it.
As to the question of Lakin’s judgment, there is case law to suggest that a commissioned officer has a unique responsibility to use independent judgment in deciding whether to obey presidential orders.
What about the orders of his brigade commander and officers appointed over him? What does case law say about that?
That’s a powerful indicator that the “blind obedience” paradigm being offered up by you and your kindred spirits is neither good law nor good morals nor good discipline.
There are even more powerful indicators to indicate that it is. What you are suggesting is that every order given by every officer and NCO has to be questioned. That reduces the military to a disorganized, ill-disciplined mob. Is that your intent?
NS, as I said to centurion, I respect your position. I merely seek a fair application of the principle of intent. I seriously doubt that an incessant attack on those who seek to apply the criteria for constitutional command authority is objectively supportive of the military. However, assuming for argument’s sake that it is, that is secondary to whether such attacks are objectively supportive of the Republic as a whole and the timeless principles upon which it is based. The Army is but one component, a servant of the Republic, not the primary expression of the Republic. If we can only save the Army by disparaging the Constitution, what a poor solution that is.
As for your question of case law, I understand your point, and to a limited extent I agree with it. You cannot have every soldier questioning any and all orders, especially those orders that are facially valid, i.e., there is nothing inherently illegal in the act being ordered, regardless of command authority. I get that. However, I do see a responsibility for constitutional measurement as something we should expect from our commissioned officers. My fear is that such independent thinking is penalized by the political nature of that environment.
But we have a unique situation on our hands. I have no doubt it was designed to be thus unique, and therefore likely to create the kind of fracturing debate we are having her on FR, precisely because such debate disables and delays a ready response to an immediate threat to our Republic. The more time they have on the field, the more damage they can do.
So let me put you to a poser, if you are willing to take it on. Say there was a political coup by a cadre of Lithuanian anarchists (or whatever). Further speculate that all of the non-Lithuanian members of Congress had mysteriously succumbed to fast-food induced comas (thus preventing election of replacements), and the chief Lithuanian anarchist had engineered sufficient numbers of those who remained in Congress that impeachment was impossible. In short, everything was facially legal, and no illegal aspects were provable, and no act of the Anarchist in Chief was stoppable, even those actions that explicitly attacked the authority of the Constitution, and such acts have in fact taken place.
Now, put yourself in the situation. You are a commissioned officer. You have been trained to uphold the Constitution at all costs to yourself, and you have taken an oath to that effect. You have observed the coup at close hand. You have seen how at every turn it has been so well engineered that no legal way to stop it seems to work (actually, this would not make too bad of a Tom Clancy movie). You hated how the 60’s hippies used “question authority” to undermine a legitimate government, and you are loath to invoke that mantra, but what do you do when a facially valid order comes that has the color of authority from one you believe to be the Fraud in Chief (FinC), whom you are certain is using all of his authority to work against both American interests and the Constitution itself? What do you do?
You have a duty to obey on the one hand, and a duty to uphold the Constitution on the other hand. You are forced to choose one or the other, because if you obey, you are objectively endorsing the ultimate authority of the FinC over the Constitution, and if you uphold the Constitution, you throw the basis for military discipline and effectiveness into disarray.
I understand that these are difficult choices, but this is the reality we are in, right now, and this is the choice we have before us. I would hope that we could discuss these choices without each side discrediting the other with words of disrespect. We have a common enemy, and it is that enemy who has deliberately engineered this difficult dilemma, not you, not me. We shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be working together to defend our country and our Constitution. You can’t have the one without the other.