The military wouldn’t save us from a President Trump’s illegal orders
Donald Trump promises that if Americans send him to the White House, he’ll bring back waterboarding — and techniques that are “a hell of a lot worse.” Why? Because “torture works,” he claims, and even “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway.” That’s not Trump’s only bright idea for U.S. counterterrorism policy. He’d also “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” and he favors targeting the spouses and children of Islamic State group fighters, too, since “with the terrorists, you have to take out their families.” That kind of rhetoric from the Republican front-runner has rightly alarmed the foreign policy establishment, prompting an open letter last week from an array of Republican advisers opposing Trump.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who also served as a four-star Air Force general and the director of the National Security Agency, sees a remedy: The military would save us from Trump’s excesses if he somehow gets elected. “If any future president wants … to waterboard anybody, he better bring his own bucket,” Hayden has said. The Pentagon would never let him get away with war crimes: “The American armed forces would refuse to act,” he told HBO’s Bill Maher recently. “You are required not to follow an unlawful order.”
Hayden’s right that any presidential order to use torture or deliberately target civilians would be illegal. Under international and U.S. law, both are grave crimes, punishable by imprisonment or, under U.S. law, death. He’s also right that military personnel have no duty to obey unlawful orders, even if they come straight from the top.
But don’t count on the Pentagon to stop President Trump. Trump himself, asked at a Republican debate Thursday night what he would do if the military refused to obey his orders, seemed aware of that: “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse. Believe me. … If I say ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it.”
http://www.stripes.com/opinion/the-military-wouldn-t-save-us-from-a-president-trump-s-illegal-orders-1.397808
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