Cont: The Trump Presidency: Part 26

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The third count of Georgia's Presidential election has been completed.

All 159 Georgia's counties have tabulated the votes for President for the third time in the last few minutes.

Trump won by 532 votes.

Only kidding. No real difference.
 
I see we have a number of "Progressives" here who really have not idea about how the US Military operates.
 
dudalb said:
I see we have a number of "Progressives" here who really have not idea about how the US Military operates.
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I know how it's supposed to work. But I wonder what checks and balances prevent military officers from siding with POTUS say if he were to declare martial law. We have this system where Congress and SCOTUS are usually checks and balances. What would happen if they joined together with Trump to say the election wasn't valid?

I don't see this as very realistic but I have thought about it.
 
rdaneel said:
Not quite. What I've been reading says the House has passed their version and are currently hammering out differences with the Senate version.
When that's done, which I've read is going to be soon, it appears both houses will have enough votes to override a veto.
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OK. The article I read may have been incomplete. I do understand that the bill has two things that Trump said would cause him to veto it. One, the omission of nothing on Section 230 and the bill allows for the renaming of bases.
 
dudalb said:
I see we have a number of "Progressives" here who really have not idea about how the US Military operates.
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Would you have any problem with calling what Flynn's calling for sedition, regardless of whether it could legally be done or not?
 
It’s the same oath that Trump took to protect the same piece of paper Trump swore to protect. Maybe he took that oath on a bible even?
 
acbytesla said:
OK. The article I read may have been incomplete. I do understand that the bill has two things that Trump said would cause him to veto it. One, the omission of nothing on Section 230 and the bill allows for the renaming of bases.
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He probably thinks this will make him look good to his base, even though Congress will override him anyway.
Though I wouldn't be to surprised if he does think he can get his way by trying to bully Congress.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Germany as a Democratic Republic had a military that overall ended up siding with a dictator. Any ideas what separates our soldiers from theirs?
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Germany had a many centuries old history of autocratic rule supported by a military that answered directly to that autocrat. They knew virtually nothing else. We do not.
 
Stacyhs said:
Germany had a many centuries old history of autocratic rule supported by a military that answered directly to that autocrat. They knew virtually nothing else. We do not.
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Good answer. Let’s hope our Generals and our troops would stand up and do the right thing.

Then again, Flynn was a General, so let’s not be too idealistic about their idealism!
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Germany as a Democratic Republic had a military that overall ended up siding with a dictator. Any ideas what separates our soldiers from theirs?
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That's my point. I know historically and the ideals our soldiers specifically our officer corp are taught. But we really don't know until it's tested.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Germany as a Democratic Republic had a military that overall ended up siding with a dictator. Any ideas what separates our soldiers from theirs?
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To delve a bit further into the subject, either way, here's a link.

Have Presidents ever given the military illegal orders? Yes; the surprising list…and more about the law of military orders

To poke at part of that, because it's some of the more relevant bits from it -

Though she doesn’t reference the Presidential history I’ve discussed, Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks, a military spouse and former Pentagon official, recently observed in an op-ed:

The U.S. military has a strong rule-of-law culture, but it also has a strong commitment to civilian control of the armed forces. Generally speaking, that’s good, but it also means that officers rarely respond with a flat-out “No” when senior civilian officials start playing fast and loose with the law. The armed forces have a duty to disobey manifestly unlawful orders, but when top civilian lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department overrule the military’s interpretation of the law, few service members persist in their opposition.
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But are unlawful orders always readily discernible? Like so many other things about the law that have come up during this election cycle, that which relates to military orders can be more complicated than people are wont to think. Let’s start by looking at what the U.S.’s Manual for Courts-Martial (an executive order authorized by 10 U.S.C. §836) says about obedience to orders in ¶14 b(2)(a)(i):

An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.
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As to what may or may not be “patently Illegal”, Rod Powers points out that:

In United States v. Keenan, the accused (Keenan) was found guilty of murder after he obeyed in order to shoot and kill an elderly Vietnamese citizen. The Court of Military Appeals held that “the justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal.”
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Accordingly, an order – for example – to target persons known to be civilians (and who are not directly participating in hostilities) would probably be viewed as a patently illegal one in almost every instance (but see my discussion of the implications of the virtually never-employed but still extant law of reprisal laid out in my Conversation piece, as well as the discussion below about an “information gap” that could exist).
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Very slightly altered to remove notes about italics in quotes because I didn't include the italics. I acknowledge that this is not directly relevant to the Germany question, though, so much as the conversation that led to it.
 
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That’s a good article. In a theoretical scenario, how far down the chain of command does anyone expect soldiers to disobey ambiguously lawful orders isssued by their commanders?
 
dirtywick said:
That’s a good article. In a theoretical scenario, how far down the chain of command does anyone expect soldiers to disobey ambiguously lawful orders issued by their commanders?
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Well, I think that's the key.

Orders to kill someone in a foreign war zone can probably be "ambiguous" in a lot of different ways. You're in a war zone, with a different culture, and possibly combatants who may or may not be following the laws of war as western nations generally understand them. I have some sympathy for people making mistakes under such circumstances.

But this? An order to overrule a US election, held on US soil, by US citizens, certified as legitimate by multiple US State Governments from both parties, certified as legitimate by Federal Officials tasked with overseeing election security, certified as legitimate by rulings by several courts at both State and Federal levels, and now, the US Attorney General saying unambiguously that there's no evidence of fraud? There's no way an order like this is in any way ambiguous. Anyone who follows it follows it because they want to overturn American democracy.

If there's enough members of the US armed forces who want that to make this scenario even remotely possible, the US has already lost.
 
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