No, it didn’t, nor should it. I hope you didn’t mean to compare park rangers blocking access to parks to the crimes prosecuted at Nuremburg. This isn’t a matter of illegal orders. Distasteful orders, I hope to most. But not much more.
“I hope you didn’t mean to compare park rangers blocking access to parks to the crimes prosecuted at Nuremburg.”
Of course not. My point is that reflexively running to the excuse of Just Following Orders is not defensible.
That is a very important distinction.
There is a reason why we have civilian control of the military, as well as the non-military uniformed forces such as the police and fire departments.
Illegal orders are not what's going on — at least not yet.
I'm not defending some of the obnoxious things that have been reported being done by National Park Service personnel over the last few days. I don't know details but I'm quite willing to believe that some really bad things have happened.
However, when push comes to shove — as it did at the World War II Memorial — reports posted here on Free Republic seem to indicate that the Park Service personnel started going out of their way to find “creative” ways to obey the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law to close the World War II memorial.
That is de facto but not de jure disobedience by those in uniform — doing exactly what the order says but effectively contradicting what the order was meant to accomplish.
I think SJackson might know quite a bit about the real crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg in which people claimed to be “just following orders,” and they aren't anywhere in the same ball park as what the National Park Service are doing here.
Before people say small things turn into big things, that's true — but not the way it may be meant.
If local German police had de facto resisted Hitler's early orders in ways comparable to what the National Park Service is doing at the World War II Memorial, it would have sent a clear but quiet signal that the German bureaucracy would not follow the leadership of jackbooted thugs and wannabees who, in the early days of the Nazis, often put on Nazi Party uniforms in part because they couldn't meet the strict standards of the Prussian-dominated German civil service and its post-WW1 severely reduced military.
It's no secret that the professional German military and much of the educated civil service hated Hitler and regarded him as a fool. They did nothing in the early days, and often actively cooperated once he gained power.
We are seeing something very different from the National Park Service, at least so far.
And when it comes to the military, this scandal of dead servicemembers’ families not getting their death benefits is not going down well among anyone on active duty who I know. People who usually avoid politics are blazing mad — and you can tell it by the wives and retirees who get on Facebook and blast the President with the obvious quiet support of their active-duty husbands and active-duty sons and daughters.
I do not think President Obama is smart enough to pull off an armed takeover of our government, even if he wanted to do so — and one example of that is this abuse of our dead soldiers’ families. That is not something that will be forgotten quickly by those wearing the uniform. When people's lives are on the line, they need to know their families will be taken care of if they die. If they aren't sure of those things, they start pulling back, holding fire, and avoiding risks and dangers. Hesitation and fear about what will happen back home are “rust” which degrade military morale, and Obama is not exactly giving soldiers the confidence they need to follow his orders if things get really bad.