The real world has a way of highlighting stupidity....
No, my words say that the military should have requested clarification as Lakin asked them to do for over a year.
The fact that they didn’t has consequences.
If Lakin’s brigade commanders had ordered him to combat operations in Iran should he have gone? Should the chain of command have sent him to prison if he refused? Why or why not? The only difference between Iran and Afghanistan is that we have (supposedly) had a POTUS authorize the use of force in Afghanistan. If that isn’t actually true - if there has been no legally valid authorization for the use of force in Afghanistan - then the orders to Afghanistan are just as unlawful as orders to Iran.
For Judge Lind to say that proper authorization is irrelevant to the lawfulness of orders means that any brigade commander can initiate war without valid legal authorization. Now THAT is dangerous. And everybody in the chain of command was fully cognizant of that fact. They allowed Judge Lind to set a precedent that blows away the entire structure of authority and lawfulness.
It doesn’t get any more serious than this.