On Thu, 13 May 2004 20:00:53 GMT, Doug...
wrote:

I *know* that anyone who graduates from an American service academy has
been well-trained in what constitutes an illegal order, and how to
respond if you are given an illegal order by your superiors. I also
know that recruits and draftees *used to* get a lecture on the subject
as part of their classroom studies (at least they did 30 years ago). Is
there anyone out there reading this ng who has gone through basic
training recently and can tell us if they still train the grunts on what
an illegal order is and what you should do if you receive one?

....Funny you should bring this up. One of the managers at one of the
GC's I do websites for is in the ANG, and he pointed out that the
"Illegal Order Lecture" is now basically a 20-minute lecture on what
happens when you think an illegal order has been given, and what to do
about it if you feel it shouldn't be followed. Most grunts apparently
are told something along the lines of 'so long as you're not murdering
anyone in cold blood, or you're not running some fissionable
contraband past customs, or doing something that's outright treason,
use your best judgement as what you think might be illegal may either
be "legal" or "not illegal enough to worry about", and there goes your
balls and your career.

....This is *FAR* different from what we were taught in NROTC 20 years
ago. You do NOT follow an illegal order given by a superior officer,
and you do anything shy of mutiny to prevent from having to carry out
that order. On the other hand, trying to stop that order from being
prevented by anything more than passive resistance was something the
NOIs and MOIs discouraged *unless* it was obvious as hell that
carrying out the illegal order was going to get everyone killed for
the wrong reasons and/or was going to result in our side losing a
battle or even the war. The key in all this was the fact that there
are things going on in the upper levels of command that aren't
filtered down to the lower ranks - the old "need to know basis"
excuse. Most times that system works without a hitch, but when it's
used to manipulate troops and events for the wrong reasons, that's
when things fall apart and people get killed or worse.

....And I'm cuing Derek in on this one for his comments: The "Kobiashi
Maru" scenario they used to give was this: you're stationed on a sub.
Your captain has somehow gotten confirmation that the Soviets are
going to launch a sneak attack on the US within the hour. For [fill in
the blank with any reason you want(*)] you can't contact CINCUSNAVEUR,
the Pentagon, the White House, or even Domino's Pizza for delivery of
warning. The captain has decided to launch his own deterrent attack on
Moscow in hopes of stopping their launching and/or disrupting their
lines of communications long enough to allow the US to either launch
their own preemptive strike or at least attempt to give the Soviets
the chance to change their minds before the worst really does happen..
The question here is this: Since the captain hasn't gotten release of
his weapons, and is therefore committing an illegal act of war, do
you:

A) Follow his orders, turn the keys, and make sure everyone has their
stories straight for the UCMJ hearing;

B) Stand down and relieve yourself of duty on the fact that the
captain's lacking official weapons release from either the President
or from another officially authorized decision maker within the chain
of command;

C) Mutiny and/or otherwise take direct action to keep the missiles
from being launched until/unless official release is received

....The NOI who taught that course wouldn't reveal which answer got the
most responses, but everyone pretty much guessed at the time that A)
was pretty much it. Some guys admitted that B) was what they'd chosen,
but that it also depended on who the enemy was and how the captain had
gotten the information. One guy got honorable mention for ignoring C)
and using a coin toss to choose A) or B), because he figured that
honestly was the only way that God/Yahweh/Roddenberry was going to
have any say in which way he should go that was tangible and
believable.

....Beady, your son's ANG, right? Can you call him and see what he's
got to say from his experience?

(*) And we got extra credit for coming up with really good reasons,
too. Mine was that the sub was being chased and had disguised itself
by moving into the middle of a pack of whales singing mating songs.
The problem was that if they attempted to raise the antenna buoy
they'd get detected, and those "secret extreme LF radios" that worked
underwater were being disrupted by harmonics from the whales' pickup
lines, so there simply wasn't any way to contact Washington.

....That one worked fine until I went on about how the Flying Sub was
in the shop getting overhauled, and the 2nd Lt NOI took off an EC
point because he *hated* "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" with a
passion. For his going away cake the next semester, we found an old
Aurora "Seaview" kit and had it imbedded on top of the cake, which had
been decorated like a beach by the ocean, with the sub upside down
like a beached whale. Despite his lack of taste, he was one hell of an
instructor!

OM

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