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When do they say 'No, we won't'..... ? [1]
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Date: 2025-06-11
My last years of working with the US military was during the Trump / Biden campaign. Daily emails from the Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, many others emphasized that we took our oath to defend the constitution, not any one individual.
So, military have a requirement to refuse to follow an illegal order. When does that actually happen? Perhaps not often enough, as we learned at My Lai My Lai .
But it has happened, and sometimes even in countries where you would not suspect the military is ever, ever told they should refuse an order.
In 1968, Ferdinand Marcos was on shaky ground. There were over a million Phillipinos in the streets of Manila, with the blessing of the Catholic church. Marcos ordered the military to disperse the demonstration, using deadly force if necessary.
That’s when the military joined the demonstrators. Shortly afterwards, Marcos fled the country, and his wife Immelda lost her cherished shoe collection.
In August 1991, hard liners in the Soviet Union kidnapped Premier Gorbachev, and sent troops into Moscow. In a country that had bypassed the xerox machine as too dangerous, Gorbachev wanted to introduce personal computers to keep up with the rest of the world. In any event, the coup failed as babushkas came out to ask the troops not to shoot their own mothers, grandmothers and children. Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank with a megaphone, and it was over.
But in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese troops did do violence against the demonstrators. Hundreds, if not thousands died. The military units used for this were drawn from the hinterlands of China, and were kept isolated from any truthful source of information about what was happening. The day after the massacre, those same troops driving a column of tanks, were stared down by one single person.
What seems in common to all three incidents is the hesitation, if not downright refusal, to kill your own people. Trump tries to get past this by making the immigrants the ‘others’. But, the US military is about 40% minorities, concentrated as one would expect in the lower ranks. Until recently, an immigrant could enlist in the US military, and after a certain number of years of service, be awarded with citizenship. In the feeling that if they are willing to risk their lives for US…. they are part of our family.
When will that happen? Will that even happen? Perhaps it depends on the actual order.
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