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Marine faces dismissal for anti-Obama Facebook posts

The thing is that he is not the final arbiter of what orders are lawful or not. So he should not be putting out that he would refuse to obey specific orders, particularly those that he put out because he feels they are not lawful. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people who would disagree with him on an order to arrest others, even if his belief is that it is for burning Qurans, is going to be unlawful.

A comment like that exonerates Nazi concentration camp gaurds/commanders and Japanese war criminals. I mean, by your logic they were not the final arbiters of what orders were lawful, or not. In reality, by the laws of their respective countries, what they were doing wasn't illegal and culturally, it wasn't immoral.
 
Right, if it's an order that a person knows will have lasting damage if he doesn't disobey (arresting civilians (not combatants), raping, killing, something to that affect). No soldier, sailor, marine, or airman would ever get in trouble for following an order to arrest another servicemember because it is very likely that those who decide that such an order was unlawful are going to be much higher up and perfectly capable of ensuring the person arrested is not punished.

Last I checked, unless they are on military property, servicemembers cannot arrest or otherwise do anything official to civilians. But those who burned the Qurans were not civilians. They were our servicemembers. There is no civil rights violation in arresting them. The worst that it could be is a wrongful arrest. And the order that the Marine mentioned that he wouldn't follow was that order because he believes that it would be unlawful to do so. Well I can believe that it is unlawful for the President to order me to hold his coat if he happened to visit whereever I may be stationed, but that doesn't make me right. Someone else is likely to make that decision, not me.

I'm not even commenting on whether or not arresting a servicemember for burning a Quran is lawful or not because frankly I wouldn't know. I could easily see though how it could either. I do know quite a bit about being able to refuse unlawful orders though, after all, my job in the Navy demanded that I be able to protect people and equipment from harm that might occur if I followed an order that was going to harm the reactor.

From the article posted by the OP

Stein said his statement was part of an online debate about NATO allowing U.S. troops to be tried for the Quran burnings in Afghanistan.

In that context, he said, he was stating that he would not follow orders from the president if those orders included detaining U.S. citizens, disarming them or doing anything else that he believes would violate their constitutional rights.

To clear the confusion, read that part of the article I quoted. While the topic was "NATO allowing U.S troops to be tried for the Quran burnings in Afghanistan", his comment was about US military being ordered to arrest civilians. I can see where that might cause a little confusion, but, lets face it, some people here post a bit off topic in some forums also. It would be a bit clearer for all of us if the press had printed or if someone actually had a copy of just exactly what he did post. I didn't see the actual post, only what is in this article and the one posted on Foxnews.com, which was pretty much the same.

Also, when active duty military refer to citizens, they are usually refering to civilians, not themselves or other military memebers. They are of course Citizens (at least any after their first enlistment), but it is very rare for them to include themselves in any general statement of "citizen". He would not be ordered to arrest anyone on active duty unless he was military police or shore patrol, or assigned to provide that duty.

I am niether a TEA Partier or on active duty anymore, so I have never seen that forum. Personally, I prefer a nice open forum where all sides give input vs one that has a particular focus and is more like everyone posting to prove thier view right when they almost always agreed from the start.
 
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