The list of things I never thought I'd see keeps growing. For example, I never expected the National Park Service would be selling Creationist accounts of the Earth's origin at the Grand Canyon National Park bookstore. I also never expected that the state of US national security policy would sink so low that we'd be discussing whether it's a good idea for the military to refuse orders from the commander-in-chief.
Unfortunately, that's where we are. Fred Kaplan at Slate has a lot of important things to say about this topic. In the face of a possible military strike on Iran, American officers are pondering the question, When should we not follow orders?, like never before.
Well, not exactly never. During the early years of the Cold War, there was some concern that the generals and admirals might be hesitant about firing nuclear weapons in anger. The combination of unspeakably destructive weapons and a frightening balance of terror between the two superpowers was unprecedented, so it was natural to wonder what mere mortals, in or out of uniform, might do in the face of an apocalypse.
Today, this debate is occurring because, obviously, the Bush Administration bungled the war in Iraq, overstretched US armed forces, and, in spite of it all, now is making noises about attacking Iran. The Cold War uncertainties about whether we would actually launch a nuclear strike were unavoidable. Today's concerns about whether to execute orders to attack Iran, and what to do if you can't in good conscience do so, were eminently avoidable.
While Kaplan has some important things to say, I think he overlooks an important point: there already is an ethic of refusing or ignoring orders in the military. Not surprisingly, the circumstances have to be extreme and unusual. For example, commanders may issue orders that assume battlefield conditions that no longer exist. Their subordinates, in these cases, have to exercise their own judgment, since slavish adherence to orders can get people killed and lose the battle. At other times, subordinates have to sort through conflicting or vague orders. And, of course, as the US Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly states, a soldier must never follow unlawful orders. (Yet another reason to be absolutely clear about what the rules really condone, and why.)
However, the scenarios normally describe people lower in the chain of command. It's highly unusual for the top brass to face a situation in which they may not be able, in good conscience, to execute the President's orders. Luckily, that's the sort of Constitutional crisis that the United States has largely avoided, even when the existence of the country was at stake. George Washington felt obliged to follow the Constitutional Congress' directives, even when he felt they were militarily unwise, and the Congress had failed to adequately support the army in the field.
The exceptions--Nelson's famous "blind eye" at the Battle of Copenhagen, or MacArthur's clash with Truman over Korea--define the rule. In large part, that's because civilian leaders have learned the value of weighing decisions carefully, to avoid the possibility of a military rebellion. In return, civil-military relations have worked very well over the last several decades, to the benefit of the nation as a whole. Even when military opposition might have been justified, such as the "revolt of the admirals" over support for naval aviation during the late 1940s, the historical verdict has gone against the rebellious commanders.
Therefore, the President should not be putting the top military leadership into the position of contemplating how best to resist orders to attack Iran. It's not a question of taking a military gamble, in which the generals and admirals might be wrong. Any attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air or sea has no chance of success, and the United States certainly lacks the ground forces (or allies, for that matter) to expand the theater of operations from Iraq into Iran.
A lot more is at stake than the lives lost, or the political consequences of a failed military strike against Iran. Civil-military relations, something the founders of this country worried about from the first days of the American War of Independence, may also be a casualty.
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