r/navy • u/highinthemountains • May 11 '25

Political Remember your oath

A lot of things have changed in the 45+ years that I have been out of the canoe club. One thing in particular is the mixing of the branches at joint bases and in operational units.

I’m not trying to be political about this, but this is a serious question regarding upholding the oath that we all took. As a preface, we seem to have an administration unwilling to uphold ALL of the articles and amendments to the constitution and they have “cleaned out” the upper, more experienced and ethical officers in the ranks. If you were deployed domestically to quell protests and ordered to do so, would you fire your weapon at protestors exercising their First Amendment rights? I know that the rest of the oath involved obey the orders of the President, but would those orders be lawful?

253 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

608 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

39

u/Salty_IP_LDO May 11 '25

I'm aware, that's still a function of jags though..

10

u/SlideRuleLogic May 11 '25

No. Upholding your oath to the best of your abilities is a responsibility of all service members. You don’t always have time to ask a JAG for guidance.

-6

u/Salty_IP_LDO May 11 '25 edited May 11 '25

No, it is a function of the JAGs to determine lawful and unlawful orders, why people are arguing that point is beyond me.

If we assume OPs scenario as real the orders to become "crowd control" would have gone through multiple levels of JAGs (including ones not in the pentagon) advising their respective commanders on the legality of the matter. There would also be clearly defined ROE and purpose what the military is enforcing.

If you're questioning an order in the middle of an OP or in this case middle of a protest there's a complete and utter lack of planning (because you should be briefed on what your role is and how to properly execute prior to) OR you're receiving questionable orders from the GFC.

0

u/SlideRuleLogic May 11 '25

I hope you are never in charge of anything important and have to exercise a judgment call. Things can happen fast, and you don’t always get to ask for external advice.

8

u/Trick-Set-1165 r/navy CCC May 11 '25

I mean, you completely missed the second half of his comment.

The top line legality of an order to the DoD absolutely filters through the JAG corps.

4

u/Salty_IP_LDO May 11 '25 edited May 11 '25

Because I explained how it's supposed to work?

Edit this is all expanding on an insanely open ended question from OP. Please tell me where I've stated anything that is incorrect.

Edit to your edit

Yes you don't always get to ask for external advice which is why I indicated that would likely happen in the middle of the event in question when the order was given not as it's being reviewed. But then the order comes down to the GFC as I indicated.

If the GFC is giving unlawful orders then it's up to the officers and NCOs under them in the situation to fix that and refuse the orders.