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Is ordering a soldier to take a vaccine a lawful or unlawful order?
Especially a vaccine that increasingly appears to offer little to no benefit with regards to the current strains.
Especially a vaccine which has a non-zero chance of serious health complications which exceed the risks of young, fit troops catching the actual disease.
I think there's going to be some lawyers with the ability to book a trip with Space-X when this is done.
Don't know about military law, but it's plain immoral. But that requires moral leaders to shut down immoral orders.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, it's only an illegal order if the illegal orderers are found to be illegally ordering. This isn't really something that the ordinary enlisted would really have much info about, would he/she/it? Let's see, don't follow the illegal order and end up in jail or discharged, follow the illegal order and then possibly get punished later for following said illegal order. Because we all know that the rat-basterds that set the conditions for the illegal order will never be punished, nor the top brass illegal orderers.
Unless, of course, the world falls apart. And even then, we have too many wishy-washy people like Greek Philosopher Boy who says to wear masks, get jabbed, and, oh, by the way, Ima not get jabbed and you're evil if you force me to be jabbed to keep my job taking care of all the idiots who refuse to wear masks or get jabbed because I'm special.
Oy veh!
The presumption in the US military is that all orders are lawful orders. In peacetime during non-emergencies the individual that refuses to obey such an order is subject to court-martial, with the court determining if the order was lawful, with appeals to higher authority as allowed by regulations. In wartime during heat of battle, or during an emergency that endangers large numbers of men, orders can and are enforced at the point of a gun. Ever see the movie The Big Red One with Lee Marvin? During the D-Day invasion one of the soldiers, ordered forward to assemble a bangalore torpedo to facilitate destruction of barbwire that was blocking egress from the beach, has a brief period of cowardice during which he falls to the sand and huddles there, afraid to continue. The squad sergeant played by Marvin begins firing at him, bringing the bullets closer and closer until the soldier is more afraid of his sergeant than of nameless enemies not actually aiming at him. He gets up and resumes obeying the orders he has received, and completes construction of the torpedo, which does its job, allowing the men to advance beyond the beach. Great film.
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