this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
595 points (99.5% liked)

News

30220 readers
4103 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 231 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Imagine joining the Marines and ending up doing this for Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 140 points 1 day ago (6 children)

The oath clearly states you'll follow legal orders of the officers above you. I would like to think when I was in the military I would refuse to follow these illegal orders. In reality I have no idea what I would do. It would be a long legal battle and potentially life ruining event to do the right thing.

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

In my country there’s a thing called court martial. I guess it’s the same in the US. So if a soldier disobeys it’ll probably be that.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 1 points 26 minutes ago

Yep, exactly the same. The military has its own set of laws called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You can be court martialed for breaking the UCMJ.

[–] terabytes@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There does exist a hotline to call if you're being given illegal orders, at least.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What good is it when they're doing it live on television?

[–] terabytes@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The hotline is for service members if they are directly given an illegal order, not for civilians to report service members.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 hours ago

Right. And again, they're already carrying out those orders in front of the entire world.

Who does the complaint go to that isn't already well aware?

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I would have definitely called it. However, far too many people are too proud to reach out for help.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 82 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Soldiers aren't lawyers either. So you'd have to be super confident in your knowledge of the law to risk discharge or imprisonment.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

If they are acting illegally, they could in theory face state charges for assault and battery. In theory. Because they have no arrest powers. Maybe. Right? That's the tricky point.

So they would have to be super confident to not find out the scope of their authority.

[–] Guidy@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago

The USMC has a chain of command whose job it is to know this shit. They let those Marines down and have stained the honor of the Corps.

The writing has been on the wall since at least last February or whenever it was trump replaced so much of the DoD top brass. This was always what - in his first term he tried to send troops to Oregon and the DoD correctly told him “no”. Those people are replaced with scum who don’t mind violating the Posse Comitatus Act.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 60 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yeah, for most things. But when it comes to fighting your own citizens, it feels pretty cut and dry. But again, this is easy for me to say now that I'm not wearing the uniform anymore.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago

I appreciate your honesty. People make it sound so easy to do the right thing but when you're in a group like the military where conformity is pretty much a matter of life and death, it's like a very hard decision to make.

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thank you for being honest about it. A different thread over the same topic people were saying it’s very simple and military should be able to easily disobey these illegal orders. Reality is much different. I know it’s very scary to potentially throw your life away to do the right thing and no one can truly say what they would do in this type of situation without actually living it.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, you're talking about potentially getting a dishonorable discharge making it super hard to get another good job and potentially going to military prison. It's an insanely hard situation to be in. The guilt you'll live with for following orders or having life long economic ruin. I'm just so glad I'm not in the military anymore.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

Right, and on the other hand they are risking state prison.

[–] capt_wolf@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

"Be a good little crayon eater, maggot, and do as you're told unless you want to end up in there with them." -Commanding officer, probably

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago

I mean the oath is to defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic and then gets into obeying orders.

[–] cornmonger@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

yeah, aside from all of the other bs (which is a lot) it's just treating the marines like a personal toy