Look up Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. You will find that Congress, not the President, has the following powers:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Congress has those powers because the Founders understood perfectly well that giving one Commander-in-Chief total control over the armed forces is irreconcilable with the survival of freedom and a representative democracy.
Consistent with its Constitutional authorities, Congress has enacted Article 10 of the United States Code. Article 10 provides the legal basis for the roles, missions and organization of each of the services as well as the United States Department of Defense. Article 10 establishes the and defines the authorities of the Secretary of Defense and the Service Secretaries, all of whom are approved by Congress. The Service Secretaries are authorized by Congress to establish Service Regulations that provide the authority for military officers to issue orders. Any order issued by the Secretary of Defense or a Service Secretary, and amplified as necessary at lower levels to carry out, is legal and binding all the way down.
So, in effect, the basic military structure is owned and maintained by Congress. It is a tool Congress defines and creates. The President is constitutionally authorized to use that tool, within limits that are debated all the time. But when Congress authorizes use of force, the President decides how that force is to be applied at the strategic and high tactical levels. The Secretary of Defense then issues the appropriate top level orders. Officers below him issue the required subsidiary orders. All those orders have statutory authority via Congress. By design, the military can legally function all the way down no matter what its level of decapitation. That's an important point for operational forces, which can be isolated from contact with command authority while simultaneously experiencing loss of command personnel.
That is why Judge Lind correctly concludes:
Any suggestion by the defense that the authority of military officers to issue any lawful orders ceases to exist if a serving President is found to be unqualified by the Constitution to hold office is an erroneous view of the law. Similarly, any suggestion by the defense that if a President is found to be unqualified by the Constitution to hold office, service-members have no duty to follow any orders issued by their military superiors is equally erroneous.
It's pretty simple. And then there's the de facto officer doctrine that dictates even if Obama is found ineligible, actions taken under color of office are valid. This country and its government were not designed by total morons, and it does not fall to pieces at the drop of the hat. If you choose to read the Congressional authorization of force like a child, insist the President is your magic prince, and hold your breath until you turn blue, that is your right. But it is a silly, erroneous, and juvenile act that will not be acknowledged or respected by reality. I'm sorry if that cause you more distress, but it is you who has chosen to remove yourself from the realm of rational discourse.
Look at the verbs used in the Constitution: raise, support, provide, maintain, make rules, provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining. Congress has set up a system to do those things. It’s structural, functional stuff. It is NOT authorization to use force.
Where did Congress ever give a military officer authorization to use force in Afghanistan independent of “the President”? What you gave me has nothing to do with who gets to use force on foreign entities. The Authorization to Use Force does, and it gives the authority specifically to “the President”.
So where did Congress authorize military officers to “use appropriate force”? And does that mean that if Lakin’s brigade commanders had ordered him to deploy for combat operations in Iran that would be lawful since Congress has laready said that military officers don’t need no stinkin’ POTUS before they can go invade a foreign country?
Sounds a lot like 9th Circuit reasoning where gun control laws are left on the books as "reasonable restrictions" despite the clear language of "shall not be infringed".
All military authority rests on the Chain of Command. If the CiC isn't eligible to BE in command, then any orders given under that authority are equally invalid.
It's easy calculus.