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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   28441 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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You know, I used deliberate phrasing to make my point:

and refusal should be some form of treason or, bare minimum, dereliction of duty.

and

the ur-example of this would be the military couping the President on flimsy grounds,

Almost like there's a spectrum for the varying levels of disobedience/insubordination.

"Disobeying the President is treason" implies that the President is the United States. This is the very reason why many believe that Trump (and certain would-be Imperial Presidents before him) broke American norms, because the loyalty is supposed to be to the office of the President, not the man.

Yes, if the President ordered generals to launch a nuke against the U.S. civilian population without some obvious need for it to defend the nation, then you're probably right.

But I assume you'd agree that if the President ordered a General to, e.g. withdraw troops from a foreign country with all haste (i.e. Afghanistan) and that General, rather than obey, decided to send troops to surround the White House in order to prevent any further action...

THAT'D BE A LITTLE TREASONOUS, no?

Just as an example of a clearly lawful order and a clearly unjustifiable resistance.

Now of course there's the sticky problem of a subordinate claiming an order from the President was unlawful when the President doesn't think it was. That might only be decidable by the Supreme Court

Sure. But the military chain of command isn't going to wait on a Supreme Court ruling to take some action.

Add on the fact that the Executive tends to have full authority remove officers and appointed officials at will, and what will likely happen is he can simply fire the ones who are causing him trouble until he finds ones that will meet his standards.

But a President can't just order his generals to invade anyone or launch missiles anywhere he likes and expect those orders to be obeyed without question.

Yes but there's a whole massive world of theoretical orders that are supposed to be followed, and there is nobody higher in the chain of command to run them by. So refusal to follow the order will have to, in this case, be based on something outside of the 'authority' of the authority vested in the office.

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-ii/clauses/345#commander-in-chief-clause-ramsey-and-vladeck

In sum, the Commander in Chief Clause gives the President the exclusive power to command the military in operations approved by Congress; it probably gives the President substantial independent power to direct military operations so long has the President does not infringe exclusive powers of Congress or other provisions of the Constitution; and it may (but may not) limit Congress’ power to pass statutes directing or prohibiting particular military activities.

You know, I used deliberate phrasing to make my point:

Yes, but treason isn't even on the spectrum.

But I assume you'd agree that if the President ordered a General to, e.g. withdraw troops from a foreign country with all haste (i.e. Afghanistan) and that General, rather than obey, decided to send troops to surround the White House in order to prevent any further action...

Yes, that would be treason, but disobeying or slow-rolling an order would be the smallest part of that.

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