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Navy Reserve COVID Vaccinations by October
- Thread starter snake020
- Start date
If you don’t mind, I’d like to add to your scenario. Is this before or after the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has called his Chinese counterpart on the land line?
Thanks for sticking with me through this week, gang. It has been a busy few days, but I appreciate your interest… and persistence.
I did consider typing out an elaborate boilerplate response to your questions, which would have ultimately proven unsatisfying to you… no doubt, prompting Slick to remind us, once again, that that is why JOs are leaving in droves.
I posted the link to Dr. Kaurin’s book as an opportunity for you to explore some of the themes in this thread in an introspective, intellectual manner. I really do hope that you take the opportunity to read it. To be blunt, some of your postings in this thread, and others, have been disturbing to me, and it has become increasingly clear that you may not have a complete understanding of the relationship between your duty to obey a lawful order and the decision to resign in protest.
One’s experience in the military is not, as you have previously implied, a series of decision points where you evaluate your willingness to comply with orders, or resign in protest. Imagine a wartime scenario where a Marine is ordered to charge an enemy position, and that Marine raises his hand and tells his CO that he has decided to resign and won’t follow orders. It’s so absurd a proposition that we might want to dismiss it, but there are examples in our history of summary executions for failure to follow orders on the battlefield. Resignation in the face of an unpleasant order is simply not an option, and it must be met with the most severe consequence, else a complete breakdown in order and discipline will ensue.
On the other end of this spectrum is the scenario where a (usually) senior individual chooses to resign in protest – nearly always as a result of philosophical or policy differences with Executive Branch civilian leadership. Jim Mattis’ 2018 resignation comes to mind, as does the Revolt of the Admirals in 1949. In contrast, if a senior officer were given a direct and lawful order to perform an action, and that officer had a personal or philosophical objection to following that order, they do not have the option of simply resigning to avoid the consequences of their refusal. They have a duty to obey, or face the consequences of committing a criminal act under the UCMJ. LtCol Scheller is just now coming to grips with that reality, after loudly proclaiming his resignation. Likewise, per the recent NAVADMIN, senior Navy leaders who fail to follow the lawful order to be vaccinated do not get the opportunity to resign in protest to avoid consequences. They get the same bad paper and discharge like everybody else.
I’ll wrap this up with the softball you’ve tee’d up for me… Trump orders a nuclear strike. It’s interesting that you chose that scenario as a rebuttal of your position. There was actually a good discussion of this exact situation recently by Dr. Tom Nichols (also of the USNWC), who is a Sovietologist and nuclear arms policy expert. The conventional wisdom is that the kind of order you’ve suggested - launching an unprovoked, preemptive nuclear attack on China as a means of illegally retaining power after a failed reelection bid, would be an unlawful order, which the National Command Authority would not be obligated to follow. In fact, this is precisely the basis for CJCS Milley’s huddle with his NMCC staff during the events of January 6th.
So, I hope this puts everything into context vis-à-vis the lawful order for military personnel to be vaccinated, and our legal obligations as military members. It's worth noting that I edited this post down from a 1500 word version because nobody wants to read a dissertation on their phone. We’ve obviously just scratched the surface on this topic, and I look forward to the discussion.
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Interesting that you responded with a laugh emoji and Brett actually gave an in-depth and clearly thought out response.
Like, you consider this scenario absurd, yet General Milley was so concerned this would happen that he felt the need to prepare people for this exact situation?
Interesting.
@Brett327, thanks for the shoutout; apparently you don’t think that the reasons I mention are a valid answer to the question of why there’s such a massive retention problem amongst the JOs in naval aviation. Doesn’t impact me, or realistically, you, but it sure has the admirals in a tizzy. But I’m glad you’ll be in a position to change things for the better!
P.S. why didn’t Mattis resign in protest about Iraq during the Obama years?
This discussion isn't about you, Slick. Take a knee.
Then don’t mention me by name, hoss.
Or was that another “Slick” to whom you were referring?
You were just the punchline. I presume you're used to that.
Please do another post hero worshipping people who resigned in protest about a chain of command or Commander in Chief with whom they disagreed or despised...that wouldn’t have been you from January 2017 to January 2021, right?
P.S. I actually think that the state of naval aviation that you and your peers helped create is a bit of a better punchline. #noretentioncrisis
While I appreciate that you addressed a portion of what I asked, you've avoided all the good parts. Seems like your point is that flag officers can resign in protest of philosophical or policy differences, but not the plebs? What if an admiral decided he had a philosophical difference of opinion with the policy that we should mandate the vaccine for our sailors? Could he resign in protest? Or is it only if they have philosophical disagreements with policy when you agree with them? Why does a flag get to make that call but not anyone else? Why should their consequences be an acceptance of their resignation and everyone else gets punished?
Also, you skillfully skirted my question on nuking China by saying it was an unlawful order. That's only true if you can prove somehow that Trump was doing it to stay in power. But that's besides my point and you know it. Let's say you were ordered to do something that you know is lawful but you disagree with so strongly that you can't do it. Can you honestly say that no matter what lawful direct order you are given you would NEVER refuse to follow it? What if you were Gen Milley and ordered to walk with Trump in front of protesters? What if Trump ordered you to inject Clorox in your blood to kill the COVID? Can you really not admit that you have a line you wouldn't cross, and would instead violate the ucmj? If so, the only difference is where the line is drawn, not if it exists.
Oh, and heres one last question, one of my originals:
What would you do if, for some reason in some future time (just bear with me) you were ordered to take some drug that you thought might seriously harm or even kill you in exchange for little benefit?
No, that's not my point. Reread my post.
Sorry, dude. That's the consensus of the brain trust, and that's the explicit scenario you laid up for me, which I answered in good faith.
You can design any number of "tricky" hoops for me to jump through, but the fundamental truth doesn't change. Even if I have every reason to object to an order for personal/moral/ethical reasons, as long as they're lawful, I don't have a leg to stand on, and I'll face the consequences.
This is what you voluntarily signed up for, shipmate. Probably should have thought that one through more thoroughly.
nodropinufaka
Well-Known Member
I’ll give a good realistic example of doing things I disagreed with. You have no Option but to carry out what you’re told. Otherwise you’ll get someone killed or yourself killed. There’s no option but to do. There’s that one poem that said “theirs not too wonder why, theirs but to do or die”
In Iraq we took part in some seriously messed up things.
I carried out what I was told and did what I was asked.
afterwards and coming home and coming to the realization the entire Iraq war was bullshit created by neocons it left me extremely disgusted.
I’m sadly at the point now that I’m ashamed of having deployed and ashamed to wear my uniform and just feel disgusted about being part of that.
But I left quietly and didn’t make a spectacle unlike Ltcol Sheller
In Iraq we took part in some seriously messed up things.
I carried out what I was told and did what I was asked.
afterwards and coming home and coming to the realization the entire Iraq war was bullshit created by neocons it left me extremely disgusted.
I’m sadly at the point now that I’m ashamed of having deployed and ashamed to wear my uniform and just feel disgusted about being part of that.
But I left quietly and didn’t make a spectacle unlike Ltcol Sheller
I’m laughing at the cognitive dissonance that turned thought an imaginary nuclear strike was an appropriate analogy for getting a f-ing shot.
I have to say, I’m impressed that you topped that leap with a non-sequitur into Naval Aviation retention when responding to @Brett327
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Brett, officers sign an oath to the Constitution. Enlisted sign an oath to obey orders. Your arguments consistently blur these lines since you used two examples of an enlisted man refusing to obey orders to accomplish tasking. You further blur the lines between long term policies (e.g. COVID-19) vs. short term crisis (charging a hill in the heat of battle). But since you mentioned battle... our advanced warfare sims put the CO and supporting cast in a position where the CO has to decide to risk loss of ship and crew to communicate to get updated orders, or make an in-situ decision to engage based on indications of hostile intent or hostile acts that may not be clear, thus engaging a particular target may actually be illegal.
Officers are obligated to only obey orders that meet all three of the lawful, ethical, and moral criteria, so I disagree with your contention that an order merely needs to be lawful to be followed. Refusal on one of those grounds might result in short term negative consequences until all the dust settlers; conversely, obeying an order we think meets all 3 criteria but later is determined doesn't can lead to adverse consequences that includes prison. As you said... it's what we signed up for. The gray areas can be a tough decision, and it seems like your argument implies that these gray areas don't exist. LtCol Sheller is facing charges because he went public with his decision and disparaged his military and civilian leadership in the process, not because he refused the vaccine. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed more senior Navy leaders didn't resign in the face of draconian COVID-19 liberty and leave restrictions, albeit the good leaders mostly just looked the other way for local liberty and approved leave / travel to the max extent possible.
For some people, this doesn't meet all three of the lawful, ethical, and moral criteria:
It's best to just let those people walk, and that's what the military is doing.
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Ah. So you’re laughing at him and NOT his argument, then. Got it.
Yeah, huge non-sequitur, since this is what he said in his post: “no doubt, prompting Slick to remind us, once again, that that is why JOs are leaving in droves.” All I did was fulfill his prophecy for him.
And then he told me to stop talking, and then admitted that he was making fun of me, but that’s okay, right?
The argument isn't about whether one will face consequences. I said originally that one can disobey an order but only once in their career (meaning they must accept the consequences). You then went high and right saying that I'm not a real officer and a real officer obeys every order no matter what. That's bullshit and you know it, and you're refusing to answer my questions once again to avoid admitting it. As Spekkio said, our oath is not to obey orders, it is to protect and defend the constitution. There are plenty of lawful orders that would violate that oath, and we have an obligation to disobey them.
I wasn't equating the nuclear strike to the shot. I was defending my point that everyone has a line they won't cross even if ordered to. One of those lines is something like the nuclear scenario for most folks. Another is if they're ordered to take a drug they think has a good chance of killing them and a small benefit for anyone else. The latter is the situation many find themselves in with the vax, whether you agree with their analysis or not.