Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The author of that has been at the sharp end and has been a senior commander.

There are two kinds of expected disobedience to orders in the US military. One is disobeying an illegal order, such as one to shoot prisoners. The other is doing what needs to be done to accomplish the mission despite conflicting orders. The second is why military orders have a "Commander's Intent" section. If the situation on the ground is not what was expected when the order was give, officers are expected to adapt to the new situation and overcome problems. Here's Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley writing about that back in 2017.[1] That was not about the moral issue, but the operational issues when command is messed up.

Milley faced the moral issue when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Trump lost the election.

Here's the US officer's oath:

"I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

German military oath, before Hitler:

"I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to ever loyally and sincerely serve my people and fatherland and be prepared as a brave and obedient soldier to risk my life for this oath at any time."

After Hitler:

"I swear by God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath."

[1] https://www.army.mil/article/187293/future_warfare_requires_...

And here's the US Army oath of enlistment https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html

> "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Note that the enlisted soldiers' oath includes "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States" which the officers' oath doesn't.

That is because commissioned officers are especially responsible for upholding the Constitution as opposed to swearing an oath to one person or a group of people.

As it was told to me, the part about swearing the oath to the constitution comes before the President, and it is understood by all service-members that said word order very much matters. In that, if the President gives an unconstitutional order, your honor demands that you follow the constitution.

Also, that '(or affirm)' bit is interesting too. It's there because some religions prohibit swearing, most notably in US history, the Quakers. In fact, a few Quaker presidents have refused to swear during inaugurations and have chosen to affirm instead, I think.

I assume that the paragraph called «after hitler» is more appropriately called «during hitler» or similar.

Do you know what the current path is on Germany? (I don’t, honest question!)

(Edited typo)

„Ich schwöre, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland treu zu dienen und das Recht und die Freiheit des deutschen Volkes tapfer zu verteidigen, so wahr mir Gott helfe.“

I swear to serve the Federal Republic of Germany faithfully and to bravely defend the rights and freedom of the German people, so help me God.”

No mention of 'obey' in the German one.

No, that part is in the law about the armed forces. And I remember distinctly from my compulsory service that we got extensive lectures about the legality of orders and when to disregard them (and report further up the chain of command), with examples.

> I assume that the paragraph called «after hitler» is more appropriately called «during hitler» or similar.

What? Why would they change it? ;D

On a more serious note, swearing allegiance to someone who's not alive isn't really much of an issue; it's basically the same thing as the US oath to "the Constitution".

I shared a book in another comment[0] which contains an entire chapter[1] on the topic of (dis)obedience in the German Bundeswehr, which has a more permissive approach to individual objection than many comparable armies.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43087041

[1]: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97813155... (available on Google Scholar at https://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:H0ZxVD...)

>>Milley faced the moral issue when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Trump lost the election

And sadly he failed the test.

> And sadly he failed the test.

Perhaps less than you think:

https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch...

No, he 100% failed the test.

Well yes, clearly in terms of supporting and defending the Constitution, the military should have shown up to defend the capitol in far more timely manner.

But honestly, as a foreigner I was just glad the military didn't come down on the side of Trump. As I understand it the leaders of the military are appointed by the president, people in the military love guns and gun rights, and veterans are pro-Trump by a wide margin [1] even following Jan 6th.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-...

The leaders of the American military love the constitution, and one relatively small thing on it is gun rights.

Sure - the gun rights stuff is just me saying it makes sense why the military could skew Republican. The linked survey saying veterans are 61% pro-Trump vs 37% pro-Harris sounds plausible.

Loving the constitution is all very well, but Republican voters and senators seem to manage to square that with supporting Trump. Makes no sense to me, but apparently to 50% of the American population it does.

So IMHO the military could plausibly have backed a Trump coup, if the coup had been better planned. And I was glad when they didn't!

> As I understand it the leaders of the military are appointed by the president, people in the military love guns and gun rights, and veterans are pro-Trump by a wide margin [1] even following Jan 6th.

This is a caricature that is as broad-brushed and offensive as claiming gay men all flounce around in assless chaps, and I say that with 20 years active and reserve service. Even in that poll (which I am curious about their methodology), 40% of veterans supported Harris, and my experience is that the military is a cross-section of society. I'm deeply skeptical that the modern military is as skewed towards one party as this poll would indicate. I highly suspect it is being skewed by either bad methodology or else by including a bunch of older veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, who would skew Republican. The military I served in was a diverse cross-section of broadly middle-class American society.

And the leaders of the military are commissioned officers who are formally appointed by the President, but their oath is to the Constitution. And military leaders have served through bipartisan administrations . . . my own service was under W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, and today's senior leaders also would have served under Clinton and possibly H. W. Bush. There is no MAGA cabal in military senior leadership; the opposite if anything.

And just because someone "loves guns and gun rights" doesn't automatically put them in the MAGA column.

>and offensive as claiming gay men all flounce around in assless chaps

I agree they are painting with a broad and inaccurate brush but to compare it to the stereotypes queer people have to endure, especially in the current social/cultural moment playing out in the US, is honestly far more offensive IMO. Those two situations are not on the same playing field. People in the armed forces (who aren't LGBT) do not know what it's like at all to be judged like the queer community.

The point isn't to belittle or minimize discrimination against LGBT people. The point is to try to get someone who presumably supports LGBT rights to understand how it comes across to still make prejudiced remarks against other groups of people by comparing it to another well-worn and offensive stereotype.

It may not have been the point of your comment but it was the result regardless. It’s a really poor comparison that, intentionally or not, minimizes the LGBT experience.

The (yes incorrect) perception that the militarily is overwhelmingly conservative/republican doesn’t have some massively outsized (often negative) impact on your life akin to being queer in the US.

Some other surveys have produced some weird patterns, like [1] which said men in the military were Republican by roughly a 2:1 margin, while women in the military were Democrat by roughly a 2:1 margin - but there are a lot more men than women in the military.

And [2] says, in an analysis of voting precincts that map closely onto military bases, "On average, Mr Trump still won these precincts, though his margin shrank by nearly half. Patrick Air Force Base—located on Florida’s Atlantic coast and since renamed Patrick Space Force Base—supported Mr Trump by a 17-point margin in 2016. By 2020, his lead there shrank to 11 points."

So it may be more even among active duty military than among veterans, but an 11 point margin is still a win. Expecting that in a brawl they'd come out swinging on the Democrat side to me seemed naive, which is why them staying out of it seemed better than nothing.

[1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/10... [2] https://archive.is/v6qOf#selection-1067.0-1069.342

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