this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
210 points (99.1% liked)
news
807 readers
515 users here now
A lightweight news hub to help decentralize the fediverse load: mirror and discuss headlines here so the giant instance communities aren’t a single choke-point.
Rules:
- Recent news articles only (past 30 days)
- Title must match the headline or neutrally describe the content
- Avoid duplicates & spam (search before posting; batch minor updates).
- Be civil; no hate or personal attacks.
- No link shorteners
- No entire article in the post body
founded 7 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
These remaining service members have been filtered and downselected. A person would have had to stick with it through all the controversy at this point to be in the position to consider whether the next order is illegal. I tend to think such a person might have left by now to avoid being asked to commit crimes against their own people, for example.
You're forgetting that many are bound by contracts and have no legal way out, short of committing offenses which can have serious repercussions even after separation.
In russia there a specific law for that, allowing to ignore other military laws and restrains provided by contract and not "committing crime due to superior command". That clause also basically means, that whole russian military, that attacked Ukraine - criminals. Funnily enough, it's not the only one russian law that ignored in that war, but that beyond topic above.
I'm not strong in American law system, but isn't there something similar for situations like that?
The American Law of War also specifies that military members have an obligation to disobey illegal orders.
My comment above though was referring to the fact that many military members sign contracts that define a period of service, and typically the easiest way out is by serving the required period of service.