Unlawful Military Orders

 

Six U.S. senators and representatives, all veterans of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or CIA, recently released a video with each veteran taking a turn to remind serving military members of their duty to disobey unlawful orders. The video was intended to draw attention to the “No Troops in our Streets Act” introduced by Michigan Senator Slotkin and to a War Powers Continuing Resolution introduced by Colorado Representative Crowe intended to limit Mr. Trump’s ability either to deploy troops at home or to do so abroad without congressional approval.

Trump’s reaction was to call the congresspersons “traitors” and suggest they be “hanged.” He had avoided military service and clearly has no idea what the oaths taken by officers and enlisted troops mean. Enlisted members swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over [them]” according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Article 90 of the UCMJ states that service members are obligated to obey only lawful orders, so even the lowest ranks are expected to use good moral judgment. Officers swear to support and defend the Constitution and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of [their] office.” There is no mention of the president or higher officers, which helps prevent any one person or service gaining too much power.

Defense Secretary Hegseth has threatened to recall to duty Arizona Senator Mark Kelly (pictured), a retired Navy Captain and Astronaut and one of the six in the video, and possibly court-martial him for interfering “with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.” (Retired officers are subject to recall as needed.)

What Kelly and the other five congresspersons said in the video was strictly factual and based on the rules and regulations that govern our services. Trump may not understand military oaths and the UCMJ, but Hegseth was an Army National Guard officer for several years and certainly should. Perhaps Hegseth should not let himself be bullied into making unjustified threats and should advise his president that what the congresspersons said was correct.  

Before becoming an Air Force officer decades ago, I recall an ROTC class devoted to the issue of lawful and unlawful orders and citing the 1945-46 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials where some Nazi military and civilian officials had tried to justify their parts in the Holocaust and/or other atrocities by claiming they were just following orders. The court denied that defense. In international law, states had previously been responsible for war crimes, but Nuremberg shifted the responsibility to individuals.

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and his crew observed U.S. Army soldiers in My Lai and nearby villages murdering hundreds of noncombatants, including women and children, during what became known as the My Lai Massacre. Thompson landed and confronted the Lieutenant in command who said it was none of Thompson’s business and ordered him to leave. Thomson threatened to shoot any soldier who shot a noncombatant, escorted a dozen or so villagers to safety, and immediately reported the massacre to his commander by radio. 

Eventually, 26 soldiers and officers were court-martialed; some were cleared but others punished. The Lieutenant who unlawfully ordered the murders was sentenced to 20 years which was later commuted after three-and-a-half years. 

Thomson was not punished for disobeying orders. Instead, he and his crew were awarded the Soldier’s Medal, the highest Army award for heroism while not in contact with the enemy. 

Service members are regularly retrained about the provisions of their oath, the UCMJ, and the Geneva Conventions, which further justify disobedience to unlawful orders. A clear, concise explanation of lawful and unlawful orders is online at quantico.marines.mil.

 

       How a Teacher 

  Changed My Life

He changed it with nine words. The year was 1963, and I was a sophomore music major at Akron University hoping to craft a career with my trumpet playing jazz and classical music. Having twice won the top ratings in the Ohio high school competitions, I imagined one day taking Doc Severinsen’s place as leader of NBC’s Tonight Show orchestra. 

That same year, three friends and I occasionally spent an evening with our former high school history teacher Ron Snider, a studious young man with a quick sense of humor who was also a university adjunct. Snider was a vibrant teacher quick to laugh and just as quick to gently point out the errors of our mental ways. Evenings at his apartment were classic college bull sessions with a knowledgeable mentor. One evening, talk drifted to the Western Civilization course we were all taking and to why I was the only one among my friends who enjoyed it.

Western Civ was a required two-semester course taught by Dr. Henry Vyverberg, a master teacher who, in a packed lecture hall,  introduced us to the glories of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature then strolled with us through the European Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and on to modern times. He paced to and fro in front of projected images of temples, cathedrals, and paintings while telling a story with wit and wonder, weaving social, intellectual, and artistic threads into a meaningful tapestry of history. 

It was a revelation. Vyverberg spoke of ideas and how people responded to them to shape the evolution of civilization. We learned that history is not a record of what happened; it’s a record of what informed historians think happened based on evidence and its meaning in the long run. Big difference. Interpreting history made it more interesting, more challenging, and the work of historians more important. 

Back at Snider’s apartment, our discussion is now lost to me, but as we were leaving, he stopped me at the door and asked if I ever thought about changing my major from music to history. Then he said the nine words that changed my life: “Do you really think the world needs more entertainers?” The question stopped me in my tracks. It was the early Sixties, the world was troubled, and the answer, clearly, was “No.” 

I reconsidered my future. A musical career could be insecure. Teaching history, while it didn’t pay well, offered security and the opportunity to do something so important it was required of all students. It seemed a way to help make the world better. I changed my major to history education.

Two years later, I graduated with a teaching certificate in history and, thanks to ROTC, became a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Air Force with orders to report for four years of service. After nearly a year at an Air Force base in West Germany, I was assigned to the base in Topeka, a half-hour drive from KU where I began night and weekend classes toward a master’s degree paid for by the GI Bill. 

Finishing the degree and Air Force service in 1969, I moved to the Kansas City area to stay close to KU and taught history in a 3,000-student high school for four years, including night and summer schools, while earning a doctorate in history education (specializing in Medieval Europe) and school administration using the remainder of my GI Bill benefits. Next came jobs as high school assistant principal, junior high principal (for nearly 20 years), and district administrator. Missing teaching, I had begun working nights as an adjunct professor for several local universities. When one offered me a job as director of a master’s degree program for teachers, I retired from the public schools and began a university career. A dozen years later, I retired again with a total of nearly fifty satisfying years as an educator. 

Henry Adams, historian, novelist, and grandson and great-grandson of presidents, was right when he wrote in 1907, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Nine words from my old teacher influence me still. 

            Stormy Weather

As I write this, Hurricane Melissa is pounding Jamaica with sustained 180 mph winds with gusts to 220. Melissa is the most violent Atlantic Basin storm in recorded history and was fueled partly by record warm water in the Caribbean Sea—2.5 degrees F warmer than usual (86 degrees F at 200 feet below the surface). More heat equals more energy as well as increasing the storm’s ability to hold moisture, resulting in more than 40 inches of rain in western Jamaica in two days. 

Hurricane Melissa’s death toll is at least 25 so far; damages in Jamaica are at least $52 billion, and Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas will be tens of billions more—high prices to pay for the increasingly violent weather that is just one result of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The consequence is global climate change, and the only solution is to shift to sustainable energy sources.

On the other side of our planet, China, the world’s largest emitter, is making dramatic progress toward sustainable energy. Fifteen solar parks—huge areas covered with solar panels—are producing electricity with more under construction. Talatan Solar Park, the largest, covers 162 square miles of the Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet where the sun is brighter and the air cooler, important for nearby AI data centers because their thousands of computers require little air conditioning. Talatan has a capacity of 15,000 megawatts, enough to power a large city. The U.S. has 16 solar parks, mostly in the Southwest. The largest, in Nevada, has a capacity of 966 megawatts.

At a September UN climate summit, China’s President Xi Jinping, a trained chemical engineer, pledged to increase China’s clean energy output by 600 percent in the next few years using solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear sources. China already produces more clean energy than any other country, and the goal is to wean the country off coal, oil, and natural gas as soon as possible. China dominates the world’s solar, wind, battery, and electric vehicle (EV) production, and has built, or is building, 31 nuclear power plants, nearly as many as the rest of the world combined. 

Solar power is attractive because it’s about 41 percent cheaper than fossil fuels, partly because solar, like wind, hydro, and nuclear, needs no costly transportation. No coal trains, no pipelines, no huge tankers sailing the seas. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said recently that last year renewables more than doubled the investment in fossil fuels and generated a third of all the world’s electricity. “We have passed the point of no return…just follow the money,” he said, adding that countries who fail to create a clean-energy economy are “missing the greatest economic opportunity of the 21^st century.”

Ten years ago, 195 nations signed the Paris Accords agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to keep our atmosphere’s temperature increase since preindustrial times to no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Last year was the first year the average global temperature exceeded this rise.

To reach the Paris Accords goal, emissions need to be cut 50 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, at which point warming will slowly reverse. The U.S., the second-largest emitter after China, withdrew from the Accords in 2020, rejoined in 2021, and withdrew again in 2025. The Trump Administration, alone in the world, still acts as if climate change is a hoax. 

Violent storms set record after record, glaciers and ice caps are rapidly melting, sea levels are rising while corals and other sea life are dying, and record droughts threaten food supplies, driving millions to seek more habitable lands. Fossil fuels are the past. Clean energy is the future. China knows that.