Following Orders

 I have been thinking about the sailors and pilots carrying out the orders of Operation Southern Spear.

I was a staff sergeant in the Air Force. I know something about military discipline and I know how difficult it is to refuse an order from a superior. The whole institution is built around obedience, trust and the chain of command. Refusing an order is not without consequences and it is not something service members take lightly or their superiors for that matter.

But there is another principle that is just as important: service members are required to obey lawful orders, not illegal ones. In fact, military law requires them to refuse a manifestly unlawful order.

That principle is not new. After World War II, Nuremberg established that “I was only following orders” is not, by itself, a defense for criminal conduct. That principle has been incorporated into modern military law.

In my opinion, Operation Southern Spear is illegal.

If these killings are determined to have been unlawful extrajudicial killings, responsibility does not stop with the people who gave the orders. But neither does it mean that every young pilot or sailor who carried it out is equally guilty.

Responsibility follows the chain of command.

The President and Secretary of Defense who establish the policy bear the greatest responsibility. So do the senior generals and admirals who carry it out. I believe their decisions should be investigated and if criminal conduct is established, prosecuted and adjudicated in an appropriate court.

There is another thing that troubles me. Trump and Hegseth are putting our own sailors, pilots and officers in a terrible moral position. They are asking people who have sworn to uphold the law to carry out orders that may themselves be unlawful. They are compromising the very people who have entrusted their lives to the military and asking them to choose between obedience to their commanders and obedience to their oath.

That is a disservice to the military and to the patriotism of the people who serve. I am sure there are people in uniform thinking seriously about this. What a terrible burden to place on them.

Below the senior commanders are the officers and enlisted personnel who actually carry out the orders. I have sympathy for them. I have worn the uniform. I know how powerful the obligation to obey can be. Refusing a superior in a military organization is a test of courage and character that I can’t say I would have had the courage to pass.    

But sympathy does not mean that nothing happened.

If these were unlawful orders, the military should acknowledge that those who carried them out failed in their responsibility to refuse them. Their participation should be recorded in their service records and considered in evaluating them for promotion, particularly to positions of command and responsibility.

We do not need a purge of the military; we need a reckoning.

After a serious safety crisis, the military stops, investigates and determines how to keep it from happening again. Operation Southern Spear deserves that same kind of examination: the oath, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the law of armed conflict and the responsibility of every service member to refuse a manifestly unlawful order.

I know that would be a hard thing to do.  

That is precisely why the lesson has to be unmistakable.

Following orders is not a defense.

The people at the top who create an unlawful policy must be held responsible. But the principle has to reach all the way down the chain of command.

Otherwise the next unlawful order will be that much easier to give.

Will it happen again?  It has happened once.