A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders

[IrishBubbaLiberal]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/27/a-duty-to-disobey-all-unlawful-orders/


FEBRUARY 27, 2003

A Duty to Disobey All Unlawful Orders

LAWRENCE MOSQUEDA

DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

As the United States government under George Bush gets closer to attacking the people of Iraq, there are several things that the men and women of the U.S. armed forces need to know and bear in mind as they are given orders from the Bush administration. This information is provided for the use of the members of the armed forces, their families, friends and supporters, and all who are concerned about the current direction of U.S. policy toward Iraq.

The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:


“I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”


The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.
During the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran and hero, told Lt. Col. Oliver North that North was breaking his oath when he blindly followed the commands of Ronald Reagan. As Inouye stated, “The uniform code makes it abundantly clear that it must be the Lawful orders of a superior officer. In fact it says, ‘Members of the military have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders.’ This principle was considered so important that we-we, the government of the United States, proposed that it be internationally applied in the Nuremberg trials.” (Bill Moyers, “The Secret Government”, Seven Locks Press; also in the PBS 1987 documentary, “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis”)

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https://www.vietnamfulldisclosure.org/a-forgotten-hero-stopped-the-my-lai-massacre/

A Forgotten Hero Stopped the My Lai Massacre


Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson speaks with reporters at the Pentagon on Dec. 4, 1969, after testifying about the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam., credit: Associated Press // Los Angeles Times

Portside Date: August 30, 2018
By Jon Wiener


Everybody’s heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that’s the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn’t — because of what Thompson did.
I met Thompson in 2000 and interviewed him for my radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles. He told the story of what happened that day, when he and his two-man crew flew over My Lai, in support of troops who were looking for Viet Cong fighters.

“We started noticing these large numbers of bodies everywhere,” he told me, “people on the road dead, wounded. And just sitting there saying, ‘God, how’d this happen? What’s going on?’ And we started thinking what might have happened, but you didn’t want to accept that thought — because if you accepted it, that means your own fellow Americans, people you were there to protect, were doing something very evil.”

Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed?

“They were not combatants. They were old women, old men, children, kids, babies.”

Then Thompson and his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, and his gunner, Lawrence Colburn, “saw some civilians hiding in a bunker, cowering, looking out the door. Saw some advancing Americans coming that way. I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. Landed the aircraft in between the Americans and the Vietnamese, told my crew chief and gunner to cover me, got out of the aircraft, went over to the American side.”

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https://www.dutyandvalor.com/the-courage-of-major-hugh-thompson-jr-during-the-my-lai-massacre/

. The Courage of Major Hugh Thompson Jr. during the My Lai Massacre

On March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr. witnessed something unthinkable — American soldiers slaughtering unarmed civilians in the village of My Lai. What he did next would go do...