The writer is wrong when he says, “Officers of the United States Military take an oath to obey only lawful and constitutional orders and refuse all others. The servicemen and servicewomen who are currently fighting over Libya took that oath. It is their professional obligation and ethical duty to disobey their orders until constitutional and legal requirements are either changed or met.”

The oath requires that the officer obey the lawful orders of those appointed over him. The oath imposes no obligation to obey unlawful orders, but it also does not require that the officer make a determination of the legality of orders. In effect there is a presumption that orders are legal. Only if the orders are in fact illegal is the officer released from his obligation to obey and that ultimate determination does not rest with the officer.

Fouled Anchor, Sorry, I remembered incorrectly. Thanks.

When officers wonder things like this midshipman has it is often less “illegal orders” and far more “I have different political beliefs from those held by President _______”

The “illegal orders” discussion, as Tom Ricks pointed out at his blog when he first published this commentary, is about war crimes – intentional targetting of civlians, killing of prisoners, rape, torture and so on. The average officer is not, and should not, be thinking like a judicial constitutional scholar when it comes to matters of policy.

But, I do find it almost comical that we now have the War Powers Act being debated as canonical constitutional while two decades ago it was being denounced as an encroachment upon executive power and blatantly unconstitutional.

As always, where you stand is determined by where you sit. One more reason not to play the partisan game while serving.

Skippy: El Dorado Canyon occurred fully within the limits imposed by the War Powers Act. Operation Desert Storm operated under a congressional AUMF, fulfilling the conditions required by the War Powers Act. So did OEF and OIF.

So, what’s your point, again?