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From: bjohnson@e40-008-7.MIT.EDU (Brett W Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Helicopter resupply mission
Message-ID: <1990Nov27.044842.3601@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 27 Nov 90 04:48:42 GMT
References: <1990Nov19.001338.8426@cbnews.att.com> <1990Nov21.223913.22989@cbnews.att.com>
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From: bjohnson@e40-008-7.MIT.EDU (Brett W Johnson)
In article <1990Nov21.223913.22989@cbnews.att.com> olorin@wam.umd.edu writes:
>
>Xerxes does bring up a question I've wondered about for a while.  Under
>military law, are there any grounds on which an order can be refused because
>of its suicidal (or stupid) nature?  Is there any point at which a 
>soldier can say, "I'm not going to get myself and my men killed for 
>no reason?"  Clearly, an officer can order you to do suicidally 
>dangerous things ("you are going to cross that nice open field of fire
>and take out that machine gun") but can he, for example, order you
>on a kamikaze mission?  Or do you just refuse orders and hope you can
>convince the court-martial that you were acting reasonably?

Well, I'm not a military lawyer (but I play one on TV :), but you can
be ordered to do damn near *anything* in a combat situation.  There
are some 'illegalities' that can be refused (like shooting prisoners).

In general, if it comes down to a judgement call the officer wins.  And
can shoot you for disobeying his legal (stupid maybe, but legal) order.

Volunteers are traditionally asked for suicide missions...  And remember
that the men are "armed and dangerous" and not above shooting there own
idiot officers, if said stupidity becomes too blatant.  In fact, when
I was in the Army, some friends of mine had a bet that a certain officer
was likely to die from *friendly* fire...  "Yes sir, it was an accident.
I emptied a 30 round magazine into him.  On semi-auto, no less.  Really,
it was an accident..." 


--
-Brett                                   These opinions are my own and 
bjohnson@athena.mit.edu                  do not neccessarily reflect
bjohnson@micro.ll.mit.edu                those of my employer or MIT.