While troops may have a right or duty to disobey at times, calling for them to do so is wrong…

Note: a female National Guard member has been killed in the line of duty in the president’s program of sending troops into Washington D.C. The following is not directly about that, other than his policies in that regard are questionable. But she was doing her duty and we have to appreciate that and mourn her loss and the grief it has caused her family.

————————————————————-

As much as I don’t care for President Trump’s manner and most of his policies and politics and his questionable use of the military, it seems plain to me that the Democratic Party members who issued the video advising members of the military that they could refuse, and, in fact, are duty-bound to refuse illegal orders, were engaging in dangerous politics. It is clear they were trying to put pressure on Trump and maybe create a resistance within the military to his policies.

While technically a military member is not required to follow illegal orders, and maybe in some limited cases is duty-bound not to follow them, anyone who decides to disobey faces legal peril.

The following paragraph from a Wall Street Journal editorial expresses the situation well:

The law is clear that service members can disobey illegal orders. What often isn’t clear is whether an order is, in fact, illegal. This ambiguity leaves service members in a difficult position because under the Manual for Courts-Martial, all incentives point toward obedience.

I remember a class on the subject of the Uniform Code of Military Justice during my army basic training at Fort Lewis, Wa. In 1968. An officer told us that we are not required to follow illegal orders. But if you decide an order is illegal, a court-martial might decide otherwise, and you would be in trouble. I don’t recall the example he gave, but maybe something such as summary execution of prisoners, something that on its face seems illegal (and maybe always is). Whatever, you better be right, or you are in trouble.

I was fortunate in that I was not sent to the then ongoing war in Vietnam. There was much division in the nation over that war (as much as there is today over other things, as I recall). But it would not have been right then for opposing politicians and public figures to urge members of the military to disobey orders. Instead of putting the onus on individual troops, they would have and would now do better to take the initiative and use their own power to change policy.

Three years in the military was more than enough for me. I’m not meant for that way of life. But the fact is an effective military is necessary for our defense, and an effective military depends upon discipline. You just can’t have individual troops deciding which orders to follow.

Yes, there are exceptions. One that comes to mind is the helicopter pilot I read about that intervened in the infamous Mai Lai massacre of civilians during the Vietnam War – although not before as many as 500 unarmed civilians, including women and children and elderly people, were gunned down under orders from the high command (which they tried to cover up). Indirectly, one could say, the helicopter pilot was violating orders by bringing a stop to the carnage. (Some may question my abbreviated description – okay look it up, it won’t be prettier).

Right now, it is up to congress to assert its power. It is also up to voters to take some responsibility in their decisions at the ballot box.

Just as we were not prepared for Pearl Harbor, we may not be now, and maybe can’t be…

We’ve come a long way since radar operators were ignored, along with other earlier warnings and intelligence, that resulted in the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor that brought us into World War II – or have we?

It took more than a week for the Japanese naval task force to reach the then U.S. territory (now state) of Hawaii to launch its aerial assault by bombers. Today, in 2025, it would take less than half an hour for a missile with a nuclear warhead to travel from Russia or China or North Korea, or someplace unknown, to the mainland United States.

That’s hardly time to effectively react, I’d think.

I mean the Japanese were clever to pick a Sunday morning, with most sailors and other military personnel still in their beds and certainly unprepared since it was a day off for most.

Do you think an enemy would choose to launch a missile in the middle of the day? No, seems like an enemy would choose nighttime. By the time anyone woke up – too late.

Probably too late no matter when. I mean how do you react in say 18 minutes?

I use 18 minutes because that is the amount of time our government and defense establishment has in the Netflix movie “House of Dynamite” to an incoming missile for which the origin or lethality is unknown.

People who have actually worked in government and the defense establishment say the movie is “scarily accurate” as to how things work and the look of everything, such as the White House Situation Room and a defense missile site. Some current defense personnel take issue with the effectiveness of the anti-missile system as suggested in the movie, but who really knows? Even if drills are done, those are simulated, not real world.

I watched the movie the other day and came away with the feeling I have had since I was a pre-teen (I’m 76 now). If the missile is fired, we’re pretty much all goners.

Astonishingly the world has survived the nuclear threat since the Unites States demonstrated what nuclear weapons can do when it dropped two crude nuclear bombs on Japan in August of 1945 (much smaller than we have today) via, would you believe? a propeller-driven bomber. Intercontinental missiles would be the likely vehicle nowadays, although we read of such things as a suitcase bomb that could be devastating.

We were in the depths of the Cold War in my early teens, pre high school. People were building bomb shelters – what good would they do? The radiation from a nuclear attack then and now would likely kill off a large portion of anything living on the planet. The bombs on Japan were bad enough, but since then the lethality has risen manyfold.

By the time I reached high school, I think I just accepted it all and did not concern myself so much.

And that is where we are now as a society, I think.

But if you want to get scared, think about this: for our side, the president of the United States has the sole authority to launch nuclear missiles. Addled Joe Biden had the power, and now the impulsive Donald Trump does. It has been written that in his last days there was fear by those close to Richard Nixon that he might order a nuclear strike to end the war in Vietnam and somehow save his presidency, and in that situation, it was secretly agreed such an order would be ignored.

Of course, we don’t know who might order an attack or under what circumstances among our known adversaries, much less the unknown ones.

House of Dynamite deals with the questions of who fired the missile? Is it really armed? Should we retaliate immediately (or at all), Can we shoot the incoming missile down before it hits? How does one man, the president, decide? There is also the human factor concerning how all those involved in our defense forces and government would react in such a doomsday crisis where all may come to an end in minutes.

I for one think it is high time we rethink leaving the sole power to end the world as we know it to one person (we can’t control the enemy).

With such awesome power to nearly instantly destroy our civilization, cooperation among nations despite their drastic differences seems necessary.

While I certainly believe the Unites States needs to maintain a strong and vigorous and agile defense system, I think we should be content to know we are strong and will and can react when prudent but drop the issuing of bellicose statements and policies.

Things like conducting a trade war instead of working out mutually beneficial trade agreements do not make us safer and probably not economically better off in the long run either.

——————————————————————

A House of Dynamite is a 2025 American apocalyptic political thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim. 

AI will kill us; do what you do, do, well…

I have not posted a blog for some time. Been too busy working at age 76 to pay my rent, sustain myself, and take my yearly trip to Spain. But I shake my head when I see where we seem to be going as a society. We are moving to authoritarianism in our government, I guess because we are too lazy to pay attention, and we just want someone to solve our problems for us and not be bothered.

A computer expert predicts that within five years there will be 99 percent unemployment due to the advances in artificial intelligence or AI. He claims the government will have to issue us all checks.

That will not fly. Does anyone really believe that those with some assets will be willing to fund the rest of us? I don’t.

Why are we moving so fast to put us all out of work? Who will be able to buy anything if there is no work to do?

Why? I ask, why? Why are we in such a hurry to take humanity out of being human?

There is more to life than work, they say, and yet work does define us. Our identity is often tied up in what we do for a living.

It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you do it well. An old country-western song said “do what you do, do well, boy”.

I suppose some think work is just a necessary evil, that if we could eliminate it we would all be free to enjoy life. I don’t know about that. Are we not tied up in our own self value?

Employers I think sometimes feel it would be better for them if we did not think we are of value – all the better to hold pay down or eliminate our position.

At any rate, if we all thought of ourselves as having no value then there would be no incentive to work together, it would be everyone for themselves. It would be chaos.

What gets me is that even if some way via AI we could all but eliminate what we now call work, we in short order, a generation and no more, would become so stupid and weak that our species would just die out.

The original idea of AI was to help us, but as we become dependent upon it, our own strengths will atrophy. I mean I always had trouble with arithmetic in school, and if handheld calculators had been available I would have used them and never learned anything. But what happens when you don’t have access to that calculator or when someone tries to get one over on you, but you don’t know how to figure out percentages on your own? Or even how to count change.

I think that afore-mentioned computer expert said that among jobs that will not as likely be eliminated will be plumbers.  And that makes me think of my father’s advice, which was not original, but good advice nonetheless. No matter what you decide to do for a living, it’s good to have a trade you can fall back on. I did not really heed that advice and have at times in my life suffered for it.

I have spent most of my working life now as a truck driver, yet I did not begin that till rather late, age 46.  Some call it a trade, but it is often listed as unskilled or low-skilled labor (really depends upon what kind of trucking you’re in).

But, I have noticed though the years that skills and work ethic is what is most likely to keep one employed or get a larger paycheck. So far, there has always been a demand for people who know how to do things others do not.

People having pride in what they do or what they have to offer makes society stronger.

For several decades now we have gone the wrong way. We are dumbing down our society. We quit teaching the basics in school. The gifted and motivated do well, but the vast majority suffer by never being challenged and in the end pay for it by winding up in low-skilled jobs where employers hold their lack of opportunities to go elsewhere against them.

I asked a general manager on a small newspaper for a raise. He said: “I don’t think we could ever make you happy”. For a long time I resented what he said. Later I thought what he really meant was: son, you’re in the wrong line of work – get into something where people are willing to pay you.

But even if the government would pay me for doing nothing, would I be happy? I don’t think so. My own feeling of self-worth would be eliminated. I am human.

---

AI I can help us as a society but only if we control it and not cede our humanity to it.