https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/politics/democratic-lawmakers-urge-troops-to-disobey-illegal-orders
Three lawmakers, retired or active-duty military officers, have urged troops to disobey illegal orders. There is an enormous grey area when it comes to "illegal orders" - people can be prosecuted for disobeying an order that they personally think is illegal, but the officers sitting on a court martial panel may disagree. The charge of mutiny is a serious one in the military. It's irresponsible to encourage troops to disobey orders without spelling out what orders the lawmakers have in mind in the present context, and who is going to defend the soldiers who face charges of mutiny? Where's the organization to support dissident soldiers? We never heard any illegal-order guidance from US politicians during the 20-year War on Terror: Two-million non-combatants were killed while Dick Cheney and other pols collected tens of millions from US war industries who want to sell goods and services, Zionist Christians and Jews who want reorganize western Asia to Israel's benefit, and the US oil industry got regime change in Iraq. Apart from that, no one can explain why the US killed millions of people since 2001. I think the members of Congress and others who are urging troops to disobey orders today are asking too much and providing too little. Urging individuals to disobey orders is a pacifist tactic that personalizes the struggle. A class-struggle tactic socializes the struggle by supporting troops to organize themselves, which is both legal and difficult. The international-socialist left first grappled with imperialist militarization in WWI when those socialists who did not support the war organized the 1915 Zimmerwald Antiwar Conference. Zimmerwald produced two published positions, the Zimmerwald Center (pacifist) and the Zimmerwald Left (revolutionary defeatest). Trotsky was with the Center and wrote the Center's Conference Manifesto. Lenin developed the "revolutionary defeatist" counter-thesis. Trotsky later wrote that Lenin was correct and that the Center's (i.e. Trotsky's) Manifesto was "pacifist" - capitalist peace was the over-riding goal. No one from the American Socialist Party attended Zimmerwald, but many consider Debs to roughly agree with the Zimmerwald Center in WWI. James P. Cannon, under the influence of Trotsky, adopted the position of the Zimmerwald Left in WWII. Today, I believe the revolutionary-socialist position is to support workers inside the military ro organize against war, imperialism, and the capitalist origins of both. Whereas Debs went to prison during WWI for speaking against the war; in WWII, James P. Cannon and others went to prison for advocating organizing against imperialism both inside the military and out (leaders of the Minneapolis General Strike and the Teamster's Central States union accompanied Cannon to prison). When it comes to organizing inside the military, the Vietnam antiwar experience demonstrated the importance of civilian support, particularly political and legal support. Urging personalized action to disobey orders removes the very people from military units who are needed for effective organizing. The "disobey orders" guidance works for politicians who want to appear as they are doing something but not for working people who pay for their positions. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39394): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39394 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116410536/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
