A U.S. federal judge ruled Thursday that members of the so-called National Guard occupying Washington, D.C., do so only by obeying illegal orders. At Nuremberg, the U.S. and its allies tried and convicted Nazis despite their defense that they had been obeying orders, and despite some of the crimes having been invented after the fact for the prosecution.
On Tuesday, a group of Congress members who had all served in the war machine published a video urging U.S. troops to disobey illegal orders. You'd think that was no more objectionable than telling someone to obey the law. You'd think the tradition for generations now of telling people not to use a Nazi excuse would still hold. Yet Donald Trump on Thursday announced (arguably inciting violence, as he has often done explicitly) that the publishing of the video not the following of illegal orders should be punishable by death.
The idea that you can in fact must disobey illegal orders should not be news to a member of a military. That fundamental fact is supposed to be part of the training.
And here's a super-short cheat sheet for determining whether an order is illegal: they are all illegal. Your oath is to defend against enemies, against other militaries attacking the United States. There are no militaries attacking the United States. There are no military-ish private forces attacking the United States.
The U.S. public is not an enemy against whom you can defend the U.S. public. You are not police. You are not a foreign military. You are not legally permitted to do military actions in the United States. Put down your weapons and join those taking a stand for what you were told you would be taking a stand for.
The people of Venezuela are also not an enemy you can legally attack. This point does not pivot on whether murdering boaters is a war or whether a fictional drug gang is real. The United Nations' Charter makes waging war or even threatening war a crime. Any murder outside of a war is also a crime. No matter how many people Trump orders killed in Venezuela, every single one of those killings can only be conducted by following illegal orders. I suspect we all know why the head of Southern Command quit in October even if he lacks the decency to tell you or the rest of us.
If the world's governments continue taking three steps backwards when asked to occupy Gaza for Donald Trump and Tony Blair, and Trump decides to send U.S. troops to do the job, know that the occupation is an illegal continuation of an illegal genocide facilitating illegal thievery and collective punishment of all varieties. You cannot do it legally.
You cannot do any of these things without risk of later prosecution.
If Trump orders you to work with nuclear weapons, go read the Treaty on Nonproliferation. If Trump orders you to guard his private property or that of the Saudi royalty, go read the U.S. Constitution or ask your robot what an emolument is. If Trump orders you to protect a polling place, go read the Voting Rights Act. If Trump orders you to abuse immigrants, go read the Bill of Rights.
If Trump is ordering you to use force or the threat of force, you can tell whether it's an illegal order simply by checking whether his mouth is moving.
