With regard to the "Seal Team Six scenario"...
“If the secretary of defense does it, and whether it’s successful or not, everyone involved in that crime could be prosecuted save for one person — the person who ordered it,” Becker said.
That is his opinion. It won't be resolved until a court weighs the facts of the case. The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Military. The armed forces of the United States are a part of the executive branch of government. The members of the military are sworn to obey the "lawful orders" of the president and the officers appointed over them.
The Supreme Court has said that the law does not apply to the president in the conduct of his official duties, and that is supposedly somehow enshrined in the Constitution, which the members of the military swear an oath to uphold.
The president himself cannot perform the missions and tasks of the military, that's why he has a military. He orders them to carry out those missions and tasks. Posse Commitatus Act? Literally no longer applies to the only person with the power to violate it.
Add to this that this president, or any future president, can fire defense secretaries and combatant commanders until he finds one who will obey his orders. And he won't have to go far to do so
Add to this the legal jeopardy officers and enlisted members of the military place themselves in when refusing to obey an order, the "lawfulness" of which is now utterly in question.
This is a disastrous decision in every dimension. Utterly incomprehensible. A power manufactured out of whole cloth to facilitate creating an autocracy in the United States of America, by unelected, unaccountable demagogues.
This should keep everyone up at night.
It did me.
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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:38 Tuesday, 2 July 2024