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When Orders Cross the Line: Why US Troops Must Refuse an Illegal War in Venezuela
A soldier’s oath is to the Constitution, not to unlawful commands. If the United States launches a ground invasion of Venezuela without congressional authorization or international sanction, service members have a duty to say, “No.”
Dec 11, 2025
Every man and woman who enlists in the United States Armed Forces raises their right hand and swears a solemn oath. It is a ritual of profound transformation, marking the passage from private citizen to guardian of the Republic. Yet buried within the cadence of those familiar words lies a paradox that has haunted battlefields from the Ardennes to the Euphrates. We swear to obey the orders of officers appointed over us, yes—but first, we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
That order of precedence is not accidental. In the American military tradition, loyalty to principles supersedes loyalty to any person, rank, or administration. This hierarchy of allegiance creates the most difficult, perilous, and essential duty a service member holds: the duty to refuse an unlawful order.
Today, that duty is no longer theoretical. When political leaders announce intentions to “soon” strike Venezuela on land, they are not merely rattling sabers—they are proposing an act that would be illegal under both US law and international law. The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the authority to declare war. Absent congressional authorization, a unilateral ground invasion would be unconstitutional. Under the United Nations Charter, such aggression would also violate international prohibitions against war absent self-defense or Security Council approval. To obey such a command would not be discipline; it would be complicity in a crime.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is explicit. Article 90 requires obedience only to lawful orders. This distinction is the firewall between a professional military and a Praetorian Guard or armed mob. A lawful order relates to military duty and promotes the well-being of the unit. An unlawful order—one that directs a crime, violates the laws of war, or targets civilians—is not an order at all. It is a solicitation of conspiracy. To obey such a command is not fidelity to the oath; it is betrayal of it.
A military that follows orders without question is a weapon that can be turned against the very people it was built to protect.
The ghost of Nuremberg hangs over every discussion of this duty. Following World War II, the United States led the world in establishing that “I was just following orders” is no defense for atrocities. We hanged men who claimed they were merely cogs in a machine of state violence. We cannot, morally or legally, hold our enemies to a standard we refuse to apply to ourselves. If we demand recognition of human rights, our own bayonets must be clean.
We have our own examples of this precipice. In 1968, amid the horror of My Lai, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. saw American troops slaughtering unarmed Vietnamese civilians. He did not follow the flow of the operation. He landed his helicopter between villagers and advancing Americans, ordering his gunners to fire on his countrymen if they continued the massacre. Thompson was treated as a pariah for years, but today he is recognized as a paragon of military ethics. He understood his oath was not to the madness of the moment, but to the enduring values of the nation he served.
We must acknowledge the terrible weight this places on the individual soldier, marine, sailor, or airman. In the fog of war, where adrenaline spikes and intelligence is imperfect, distinguishing lawful from unlawful orders is agonizing. A soldier is trained to react instantly; hesitation is often synonymous with death. Asking a 19-year-old lance corporal to act as a constitutional jurist in the heat of battle is an immense demand.
Yet it is a necessary one. The complexities of modern conflict—counterinsurgency, urban warfare, domestic support operations—blur the lines between combatant and civilian. In these gray zones, the moral compass of the individual service member is often the only safeguard against atrocity.
Furthermore, domestic political turmoil raises the stakes. Should the military ever be called upon to act on American soil in ways that violate constitutional rights, the “duty to refuse” moves from theory to the final safeguard of democracy. The Founding Fathers feared a standing army for this reason; they mitigated that fear by tethering loyalty to law, not leaders.
We must train for disobedience as rigorously as we train for obedience. Troops must understand that refusal to violate the law is not mutiny, but fidelity. A military that follows orders without question is a weapon that can be turned against the very people it was built to protect. A military that thinks, judges, and holds the law above rank is the shield of a free republic.
The uniform does not silence conscience. When the order comes to cross the line—to torture, to target the innocent, to invade a sovereign nation without lawful authority—the American soldier has a duty to stand firm, look their commander in the eye, and say, “No.” In that moment, they are not breaking ranks. They are keeping the faith.
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The Supreme Court Is 1 Small Step From Infamy
If defending democracy and the constitutional separation of power is not enough to motivate them to push back against Trump’s authoritarian actions, perhaps their certain condemnation by history will be.
Dec 06, 2025
The losers in political battles often insist that history will prove them right and their opponents wrong. As comforting a thought as this may be for people licking their political wounds, it is rarely true. History forgets far more than it remembers. Apart from a few major players, even people who gain a degree of prominence in the politics of their time will eventually disappear into the black hole of advancing years. Their victories, defeats, glories, and disgraces—all blown away by the wind of time like dust on their gravestones.
If there is any group today who deserve the censure of history, it is the Republican members of Congress. Faced with the existential threat that President Donald Trump poses to our democracy, their nearly unanimous response has been to worshipfully give him whatever he wants—reducing their role to little more than handmaidens to a would-be tyrant. These people have been given the honor of serving as representatives in the United States Congress. And all the Constitution asks of them in return is to take and honor an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
One by one these Republicans raise their right hands and take the oath of office. Then one by one they quickly throw that oath away.
But as deserving as these Republican politicians are of history’s censure, most will likely escape it. There are just too many of them—535 total senators and representatives with approximately 272 of them currently Republican. Donald Trump will, of course, be remembered and judged severely. The same goes for a few prominent congressional leaders. But as for the rest, within a relatively brief time as measured by the long view of history, they will be forgotten, their sins forever interred with them in their graves.
This court isn’t about judicial philosophy and legal principles. It is about the raw application of power for political ends.
But for justices of the United States Supreme Court, it is a different story. Unlike the Congress, the Supreme Court is made up of only nine justices. And of those 9 current justices, only 6 have consistently supported Trump’s authoritarian actions. When it comes to the judgment of history, these few justices will have no place to hide and no crowd to be lost in. If they continue to support Trump’s ever-growing list of power grabs, their treachery, and yes it would be treachery, will never be forgotten and certainly never be forgiven.
The origin story of the current far-right Supreme Court majority begins 43 years ago in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president and car radios blasted out songs like “Eye of the Tiger” and “I Love Rock and Roll.” That was also the year the Federalist Society was born. Best described as a breeding ground for right-wing judges, it has led a decades-long quest by wealthy conservatives to produce a dependably right-wing Supreme Court.
They knew doing this would take time, and they were prepared to play the long game. The Federalist Society’s core strategy is to embrace and groom conservative law students. With easy access to almost limitless funding from their wealthy conservative patrons, the society has had no need to pinch pennies.
They have helped to establish Federalist Society chapters in law schools across the country, financed scholarships to Federalist Society seminars, arranged social opportunities for student members to meet and converse with prominent judicial conservatives, and much more. Later, after law school, the group works to connect prized prospects with leading right-wing judges for prestigious clerkships, putting them on the path to future judicial appointments of their own.
All six of the current far-right justices have strong connections with the group. They grew up as lawyers in an environment that strongly encourages use of the law as a weapon to remake America into a far-right paradise. These six far-right justices are called conservatives, but this is true only in the political sense of the word. They are anything but conservative in the judicial sense. Traditional judicial conservatism is based upon things like respect for precedent and a commitment to judicial restraint, neither of which in any way describes the actions of these six justices. Not only have they repeatedly overruled well-established precedents; they have shown no consistent judicial philosophy in doing so. And even when they do purport to follow a particular judicial philosophy, such as originalism, it is often little more than a smokescreen.
One “good” example from an earlier time is District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, in which the Supreme Court, for the first time, held that the Second Amendment creates a private right to gun possession. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed to follow an originalist view of the Constitution and that history supported this view. The audaciousness of this claim led to a number of conservative as well as liberal constitutional scholars rejecting the court’s rationale.
Even then, it was the political result that mattered, not the jurisprudence. This court isn’t about judicial philosophy and legal principles. It is about the raw application of power for political ends—political ends that are largely contrary to the preferences of a majority of the American public.
But then, why would it be otherwise? Does anyone believe that the small collection of massively wealthy families who funded this conservative judicial revolution did so out of concern for judicial philosophy? Of course not. These wealthy families spent their hard-earned money—or perhaps more accurately in many cases their hard-inherited money—for concrete political ends. They wanted to increase their wealth and power even further by reducing government regulation, destroying labor unions, cutting worker protections, ending government protection of the environment, force feeding right-wing religious dogma, and the rest of the fat catalog of the daydreams of the greed-is-good crowd.
And if these ends can best be achieved by flushing functioning democracy down the toilet, they will shed few tears. And if one is to judge by their actions since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the current right-wing justices seem ready to drive the train.
But there is a tenuous basis for hope. One characteristic shared by almost all Supreme Court justices is a profound concern over their historical legacy. These are smart people. Even living within the isolating fog of the far-right, at least a few of these justices must recognize they are dancing with a legacy of infamy. If defending democracy and the constitutional separation of power is not enough to motivate them to push back against Trump’s authoritarian actions, perhaps their certain condemnation by history will be.
The Dred Scott opinion was handed down almost 170 years ago, but the shame of the decision hasn’t lessened with time. The primarily legacy Chief Justice Roger B. Taney left behind was a full-throated defense of the evil of slavery and racism. And that is how history remembers and damns him.
Few things are guaranteed in this world, but one thing seems certain. If the Supreme Court majority continues down the road of aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s quest for dictatorial power, they are inviting an infamy far worse than Taney’s.
This is something the six justices should remember, because history will never forget.
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When Obedience Becomes Complicity: From Mỹ Lai to Today’s Military Conscience
The bravest act is sometimes the one that defies orders, safeguards the innocent, and enforces the law.
Dec 02, 2025
Courage is rarely convenient. Sometimes it is condemned. Ask Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr.
On March 16, 1968, Thompson, a young Army helicopter pilot in the 123rd Aviation Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Division, flew over the South Vietnamese village of Sơn Mỹ and witnessed something unimaginable. American soldiers were systematically killing unarmed civilians—women, children, and the elderly. There were no enemy combatants. This was not war. This was a massacre.
Most soldiers either did not see or refused to confront the truth. Thompson did. He acted decisively: He hovered his helicopter between the troops and the villagers; ordered his crew, Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn, to fire on American soldiers if the killing continued; and personally escorted terrified civilians to safety. He radioed repeated warnings to Task Force Barker headquarters. Eventually, his actions forced command to halt the massacre.
For Thompson, the cost of moral courage was immense. He endured ostracism, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, and personal strife for years. In 1970, he testified in a closed congressional hearing about what he had seen, facing hostility from some quarters of government and military leadership. Congressman Mendel Rivers (D-SC) even declared that Thompson was the only soldier at Mỹ Lai who should be punished, attempting to have him court-martialed for turning his weapons on fellow troops. As the US government tried to cover up the massacre, Thompson was vilified and received death threats. Recognition came decades later when the Army awarded him the Soldier’s Medal, a belated acknowledgment of moral courage under fire.
When the chain of command conflicts with the Constitution or the law, the obligation to act ethically supersedes the obligation to obey.
Decades later, Thompson’s example has returned to the national conversation. Recently, a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), and Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), released a video urging active-duty military and intelligence personnel to refuse illegal orders. “You can refuse illegal orders…you must refuse illegal orders,” the lawmakers said. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” They framed their guidance as a duty to uphold the oath to the Constitution, not to any individual leader.
The reaction was swift and incendiary. President Donald Trump called the statement “seditious behavior at the highest level,” while Pentagon officials warned it could undermine “good order and discipline.” Some lawmakers were reportedly notified of an FBI inquiry. Social media amplified threats, escalating beyond rhetoric into menace. On Truth Social, a user openly called for the lawmakers to be hanged—a post the president reposted. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denounced the act, stating from the Senate floor that Trump was “calling for the execution of elected officials” and emphasizing, “This is an outright threat, and it’s deadly serious.” When questioned in an interview, Trump insisted he was “not threatening” the lawmakers, but added, “I think they’re in serious trouble. In the old days, they would have [been] dead.”
Yet legal experts insist the lawmakers’ message was not only lawful—it was accurate. “They did not encourage unlawful action,” explained Brenner Fissell, professor of law at Villanova University and vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “They were not encouraging the disobedience of lawful orders; they were encouraging the disobedience of unlawful orders. And that is a correct statement of the law.” Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), service members must obey lawful orders, but there is a strong presumption that orders are lawful. At the same time, service members may refuse patently illegal commands, including those that constitute war crimes, and can even face prosecution for carrying them out.
The stakes of following orders have never been abstract. Recent reporting has raised alarms that American military officials may have been ordered to commit grave violations of the laws of war. A Washington Post report described a September strike in the Caribbean in which boats suspected of smuggling drugs were attacked, and survivors were allegedly targeted in a follow-up strike. According to the report, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a verbal order to “kill everyone aboard” the boats, prompting a military commander to carry out a second strike on those who initially survived.
Lawmakers across the aisle responded with alarm. Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican and former Intelligence Committee chair, called the act “very serious” and “an illegal act.” Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said the report—if accurate—“rises to the level of a war crime.” And Sen. Mark Kelly echoed the concern, stating plainly on CNN: “It seems to.”
The ethical unease is not just theoretical, it is coming from inside the chain of command. The Orders Project, founded five years ago to provide independent legal guidance to US service members, has seen a noticeable uptick in calls over the past three months. Staff officers involved in planning the Caribbean strikes have reached out seeking guidance, as have National Guard members concerned about potential domestic deployments. Some callers even express fear of legal complicity in what they describe as potential atrocities abroad, including US weapons being used in Gaza.
“These are people who are performing some sort of role in between,” explained retired Lieutenant Colonel Frank Rosenblatt, an Army lawyer and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, which runs The Orders Project. “They’re not the ones on the operations themselves, but they are concerned that the guidance they’re being asked to provide has been very disfavored. They’re feeling pressure from their higher-ups to convert a ‘nonconcur’ into a ‘concur.’”
From Sơn Mỹ to Capitol Hill, and now to the Caribbean, the principle is clear: Silence in the face of wrongdoing is complicity; conscience in the face of authority is courage. As historian Howard Zinn once observed, “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Thompson drew a line between duty and obedience, risking his career, reputation, and personal safety to protect the innocent. Today, lawmakers and service members alike are grappling with the same lesson: Patriotism is not measured by conformity—it is measured by integrity.
This is more than a legal debate; it is a moral one. History offers no ambiguity. When the chain of command conflicts with the Constitution or the law, the obligation to act ethically supersedes the obligation to obey. Thompson’s helicopter hovering over the bodies in Sơn Mỹ, the lawmakers’ warning to military personnel, the threats that followed, reports of potential unlawful strikes in the Caribbean, and internal military concerns about legal complicity are chapters of the same story: one of conscience, courage, and accountability.
In a time when authority can intimidate, mislead, or threaten the nation’s foundational laws, the lesson of Hugh Thompson Jr. endures. True service is not blind obedience. It is the willingness to say no, to defend the innocent, and to honor the Constitution, even when doing so invites condemnation, career jeopardy, or worse. Democracy is not measured by the strength of its institutions alone, but by the moral courage of those entrusted to uphold them.
The challenge is timeless: The bravest act is sometimes the one that defies orders, safeguards the innocent, and enforces the law. From the rice paddies of Sơn Mỹ to the halls of Capitol Hill, and across oceans to the Caribbean, the measure of our nation, and its soldiers, is in the courage to act rightly, even when it costs everything. As General Omar N. Bradley once reminded the world, “Leadership is intangible, and no weapon ever designed can replace it.”Keep ReadingShow Less
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