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First of all, I find the idea of our government taking over it's own population absurd. The government is employed by the people. Political leaders tend to make decisions that are popular (by majority) because they have the same values that the population has. Also making drastic changes in policy would cause negative public opinion and bad publicity.
Originally posted by ElohimJD
If your commanding officer had a gun to your head and told you to obey your orders or be found guilty of treason and killed on the spot...
Would you stand up for civil rights then, or die.
THAT IS THE CIRCUMSTANCE MILITARY PERSONNEL WILL FACE
You will find human nature wins over morals in all but a fraction cases when self preservation is at stake, when faced with the decision to kill or be killed on the spot, do you value your life over your morals?
Originally posted by CosmicCitizen
reply to post by ElohimJD
At the point where soldiers are killed on the spot for failure to obey an illegal order; especially, one an order to kill innocent civilians (even though they may try to classify them as terrorists) is when some commanding officers will get killed ("fragaged") by their own troops. The same applies for the very top (as in Operation Valkyrie in WWII).
I had heard of a story in WWII where a squad of Nazi soldiers were commanded to shoot a line of innocent civilians in a town in Norway and one conscientious German soldier could not do it and knowing the consequences laid down his rifle and stood with the civilians to be shot with them. Has anyone else heard this story? Better to lose your life than your soul methinks.
Originally posted by ElohimJD
If your commanding officer had a gun to your head and told you to obey your orders or be found guilty of treason and killed on the spot...
Would you stand up for civil rights then, or die.
THAT IS THE CIRCUMSTANCE MILITARY PERSONNEL WILL FACE
You will find human nature wins over morals in all but a fraction cases when self preservation is at stake, when faced with the decision to kill or be killed on the spot, do you value your life over your morals?
Originally posted by DaveWx3
reply to post by jude11
I have been out of the USMC for 5months, I can assure you that the majority of men I served with would not follow orders to police citizens who are not doing anything wrong.
I do believe there would be some though. I did not trust everyone, and I believe they would be pressured into it with intimidation from the higher ranks.
Originally posted by jt327gir
Originally posted by antonia
No most of them don't, and you need to remember the training is meant to keep people in line and not questioning orders. If you question every order things don't get done therefore that sort of behavior is discouraged....
I don't know what they taught your husband, Antonia. When I went through Navy basic training in 1985, we attended a class in which we were taught that if you are given an order you know to be unlawful, and you go ahead and carry out that order, you can be court-martialed for it. Obeying an unlawful order that contradicts the Constitution is a violation of the oath of enlistment/commission in the armed forces of the U.S. A couple examples of this are:
1) An order to fire on unarmed civilians (not against the Constitution, but against the laws of war),
2) An order to participate in the disarming of the American people (that's against the oath of enlistment and a violation of the Constitution),
3) An order to search the homes of the American people for weapons, food, etc., without due process of law (a violation of the Constitution).
I have been out of the military since 1998, but I do know if I were still in, and I was given such an order, I would not carry it out. I would somehow go AWOL and then help in the fight against the tyrannical government that issued such unlawful orders.