Military Orders Essay Example for Free

Military Orders Essay The issue of following military orders from higher ranking military officials that may be unethical has been a disturbing and controversial issue over many years and decades. Many soldiers and service members in general have been put into a situation where they were given in order, knowing well that the situation isn’t right but cannot disobey. The leader giving the order in all likelihood may threaten or set out stiff punishment on to the individual who did not follow the order or hesitates to follow out on the order. It just isn’t fair that these soldiers and service members are put in these situations and get punished for doing the right thing. When this situation may be in question in a court of law because of the severity of the crime, these soldiers may get in trouble for committing the act even though they were just following orders. This is a big problem in the United States military and it’s not fair that these soldiers and service members, who sacrifice their lives for our freedom, are punished and put in this situation. Military members who fail to obey the lawful orders of their superiors risk serious consequences. Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) makes it a crime for a military member to willfully  disobey a superior commissioned officer. Article 91 makes it a crime to willfully   disobey a superior Noncommissioned or Warrant Officer. Article 92 makes it a crime to disobey any lawful order (the disobedience does not have to be â€Å"willful† under this article). In fact, under Article 90, during times of war, a military member who willfully disobeys a superior commissioned officer can be sentenced to death (Powers, N/A). The articles that mentioned above clearly state that a service member cannot disobey a lawful order or they will be punished for the crime, under the article covers their punishment. The excuse of just following orders when they are lawful or not is not an excuse nor will it bold well in a military court. Following through with an unlawful order is bad if not worse than disobeying a lawful order. The individuals committing these crimes will be held accountable and will be punished to the fullest extent. In other cases, some service members have made willful decisions in which they have went AWOL from the orders they received and were supposed to report. An example is when an Army flight surgeon who is risking his career to force President Barack Obama to prove he’s a natural born citizen is under investigation by the Army after failing to report for duty in preparation for an Afghanistan deployment. Lt. Col. Terrance Lakin was ordered to report to Fort Campbell, Ky. on April 12 but instead reported to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his former assignment (Jordan, 2010). In this situation, Lt. Col. Lakin is committing a willful crime that is illegal under the articles of UCMJ and is only doing this because of his beliefs. His beliefs that President Barrack Obama needs to prove he is a natural born citizen of the United States. Just reading this article, it provides me with this question: Is it really worth getting in trouble and potentially giving up on a well decorated, stable career for just not showing up to your assigned place of duty just for some proof. President Obama was put into office for a reason and like any job out there was checked up upon and is very much qualified for the position. I think this is a bad decision by Lt. Col. Lakin. Giving up so much for this purpose is just plain ridiculous to me. There are also times where groups of soldiers disobey orders set out for them only because they feel for their lives. Maybe, they experienced something before they lead them to disobey the order. In 2004, Jeremy Hudson of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. , the reporter who broke the story about a military unit in Iraq refusing to go on a dangerous mission. The U. S. military unit in Iraq reportedly refused an order to join what the soldiers called a suicide mission to deliver fuel from their base near Nasiriyah to another base near Taji further north. The soldiers were reservists in a Quartermaster Company. They were supposed to deliver fuel. And they had had some concerns previously about delivering the fuel because of, as they termed it, ill-equipped vehicles mainly lacking the proper armor, and even maintenance problems with the vehicles. They had expressed this, from what I have been told, to their commanders, and basically it fell on deaf ears. They got together and talked to their commanders, from what Im told was for some time, and basically got nowhere. So they decided together to not go (Hudson, 2004). In an article in the Lancet (The Lancet, 2011), a survey was conducted 7 to months into a 15 month, intensity combat deployment in Iraq, between December 11, 2007 and January 30, 2008. An infantry brigade combat team soldiers were picked randomly based upon their company and last four digits of each of these soldiers social security number. The following is an a piece of the article explaining the methods conducted to produce this survey. These soldiers were then invited to complete an anonymous survey 3 months after completion of the training. Reports of unethical behavior and attitudes in this sample were compared with a randomly selected pre-training sample from the same brigade. The response patterns for ethical behavior and reporting of ethical violations were analyzed with chi-square analyses. We developed two logistic regression models using self-reported unethical behaviors as dependent variables. Factors associated with unethical conduct, including combat experiences and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were assessed with validated scales (The Lancet, 2011). 500 random soldiers were selected to take the survey and 421 agreed to do the anonymous post training survey. 97 soldiers completed the pre-training survey. The following is the results of the surveys that these soldiers took. Training was associated with significantly lower rates of unethical conduct of soldiers and greater willingness to report and address misconduct than in those before training. For example, reports of unnecessary damage or destruction of private property decreased from 13 ·6% (54 of 397) before training to 5 ·0% (21 of 421) after training (percent difference ? 63 ·2%), and willingness to report a unit member for mistreatment of a non-combatant increased from 36 ·0% (143 of 397) to 58 ·9% (248 of 421). Nearly all participants (410 [97%]) reported that training made it clear how to respond towards non-combatants. Combat frequency and intensity was the strongest predictor of unethical behavior; PTSD was not a significant predictor of unethical behavior after controlling for combat experiences (The Lancet, 2011). With the results of this survey I have come to the conclusion that training is the key to educate these soldiers on how to handle combat situations. The percentage increased in every topic discussed and it proves the fact that training is the absolute way to help these soldiers learn and understand the rules and regulations. What is lawful and what is not. Also, the soldier rights to disobey an order that is not lawful. There are other unethical matters that deal with the military and orders that are ordered to take place. The issue of a soldier that is wounded/injured in a warzone or a military environment and is taken to a medical facility receives but the soldier makes the decision to refuse the medical attention. What rights does the soldier if any have? Does this soldier have the right to make this decision? By not receiving the medical attention, he or she can affect their own livelihood and also others around them by refusing to get help. In an article by Janet Kelly, of the University of Hull, UK, she presents a few scenarios on about this topic and what happens when a soldier does deny medical treatment. The following paragraph is in the article and shows one of these scenarios. With the examples I provided, I have learned that the United States military strictly punishes its service member with the crimes they commit by going by their governing document of the UCMJ. Following military orders is a strictly enforced. There isn’t any room for error when an order is given unless it is an unlawful order and can be challenged by the service member towards the superior official.