Is that so? I thought one main staple of military ranks was that if the soldier rejects an order because of judicial concerns but the superior tells them to do it anyways the judicial blame is on that superior
Indeed this is not correct. Practically speaking, the soldier should keep refusing the order and will be relieved of duty and thrown in the brig. They will then have to hope that by the time the court martial date rolls around their name has been cleared and the officer who gave the order has been or will be court martialed in their place.
Theoretically the officer should go through every underling and find nobody willing to execute illegal orders, but practically they’d only need to go through three or four at most before they had a volunteer.
Is that so? I thought one main staple of military ranks was that if the soldier rejects an order because of judicial concerns but the superior tells them to do it anyways the judicial blame is on that superior
Indeed this is not correct. Practically speaking, the soldier should keep refusing the order and will be relieved of duty and thrown in the brig. They will then have to hope that by the time the court martial date rolls around their name has been cleared and the officer who gave the order has been or will be court martialed in their place.
Theoretically the officer should go through every underling and find nobody willing to execute illegal orders, but practically they’d only need to go through three or four at most before they had a volunteer.
Nope, I was just following orders is no valid defence.
It depends, if the soldier should obviously have known better courts are a lot less sympathetic to “but I was ordered to!”
Being ordered to assassinate a political enemy of the president is definitely one of those “you should know better!” examples.