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Marine colonel who resigned because of Trump says personnel should question ‘illegal orders’
(www.huffpost.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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"The military will refuse illegal orders" is a fantasy and should absolutely not be counted on.
I had an argument with someone on here a while back over this. They claimed that America couldn't ever go full on fascist because our military is taught to question illegal orders.....
Like a private who joined the army to get out of poverty is really going to have the legal understanding to question the constitutional grounds of his orders. People have no idea how the military works, or exactly how much control an officer or NCO has over their enlisted service men.
It's not an illogical position to take it's just naive. In the same way that military service members are supposed to disregard illegal orders, Congress is supposed to impeach a President who breaks the law or established codes of conduct.
It sounds good in theory but both ultimately rely on the integrity of the people in those positions. If they don't rise to the challenge then there isn't anything stopping the bad actors from doing what they want with impunity. We can hope it will be enough but it hasn't changed much so far. It seems like the people who could act know this and are colluding with the executive branch to test how far they can push things before we decide to go looking outside the system for solutions. I see no reason to believe that the military will respond any differently than Congress has.
Yeap, imo they've already done a test crossing of the Rubicon. When the military agreed to utilize active duty service members to transport prisoners from the US, it was a blatant disregard of their prohibition of policing on US soil.
It's all part of the American gun myth where they tell each other they could overthrow their government with their hunting rifles and the military won't just mortar their dreams away before they even saw it coming because they feel like the military will refuse to, for reasons they can't explain.
That way, they can justify their crazy lack of gun control and all the school children who get murdered due to it.
IMO, It's all interlinked.
"Refuse illegal orders" is like the military version of "stop paying taxes and stop going to work" but at least a magnitude worse. It sounds good and virtuous but there are practical life-changing consequences for doing so.
UCMJ will chew you up and throw you to the side very quickly. Prison is almost a certainty. A dishonorable discharge hangs on you like a felony conviction. And that's assuming they won't use illegal force on you or your family.
There are practical life changing consequences to protesting. Ask some of the hippies who marched for Civil Rights (while they are still around...) and how often they have a "just checking in" visit from a sheriff or get pulled out of line at the airport for enhanced screening. Let alone anyone who goes farther than marching and chanting.
Oh noes! The fascists giving unlawful orders won't give you any more unlawful orders!
All of that is happening to people resisting ICE. Even being spotted recording/documenting the brutal assault of "illegals" puts you at risk of that.
But hey. I get it. Resisting tyranny and fighting for The People is scary. Why would I expect the military to ever be brave enough to do that? They only received training in how to oppress a populace. How can they be expected to put on an inflatable frog costume and dance?
Ucmj will screw you up if you do follow illegal orders too. There's a ucmj that everyone has the local obligation to refuse an illegal ordere
I mean that's probably why its best (for the individuals serving at least) to quit, once you quit you don't have to make the decision to obey or disobey orders, so you don't need to deal with court-martials either way.
Unfortunately, this also means that everyone who stays are probably morally corrupt and would not longer adhere to the constitution.
You can’t just quit the military except in some small cases like this colonel and other officers. The entire enlisted side not in retirement availability range are locked in.
But it's the brass we need on side
Sure, I just wanted to speak against the implication anyone staying is happy for the ride they’re on.
Especially if the ones who will refuse to comply keep quitting
We can't expect rank and file grunts to question orders because that's literally been trained and beaten out of them and they can be court martialed and jailed and lose their careers.
However we can and should expect senior military staff to refuse illegal orders, that actually IS their job
Their career is killing people, I'm fine with them losing it and they should be too.
Congrats, this is the dumbest take ever
Depends on who gives the orders.
Its a lot more realistic than a full on revolution, but still not very realistic.
I'm surprised individuals are not looking at the internal demographic data says about this take.
https://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2023-demographics-report.pdf
I'm not as doubtful as yall. Remember when the GOP had hearing about the Woke military and why they were washing out so many "good candidates" (They were referring to those individuals rejected for having strong racial beliefs... Aka racist.) 49% of the military is under the age of 25. The data doesn't separate Hispanics from white people, probably on purpose. But I suspect Hispanic it's close to 20%. With 17% Black and 17% women I'm not sure this is a slam dunk for Trump. Yes the military is and always will be a right, male, and white dominated space, but their not stupid. Let's just say trump pulls the trigger on fully occupies American with our own military. What percentage of the military do you think will just follow orders when you take in to consideration the demographics?
Also, 1 million people are in the active military, about 900k of them are in the US. With another 800k in reserve. The US population is 340 million. Even if every republican joins the occupation I don't think they have the bodies to cover more than 2 states.
In my opinion I'm saying it's a coin toss because the moment he does this there will be major fracturing within the military across so many lines the first shots are going to happen within the military before 1.7 million boots hit our streets.