The way it works is that we get increasingly detailed orders from the civilian leadership. Then the senior officers pass those on to us to implement. It would be really nice if we could vote on whether to go to a particular war, or on a particular mission. There were definitely a couple of times when it would have been great to be able to go back to the Regimental Commander and say " Sir, the men and myself took a little informal poll, and we voted that rather than go on today’s mission, we prefer to go back to the LSA and see what is playing at the base theatre". That would be interesting to try.
That being said, There is an oath we take to obey the orders of POTUS and the officers appointed above us, in accordance with the UCMJ. The UCMJ gets more specific. For one thing, the penalty for willful disobedience of a lawful order can be death. So then you get into the concept of a “lawful order”. Which is where it gets really uncomfortable. If you are ordered to massacre some civilians, it is probably not a legal order. But if you believe that you have been given an order that is not legal, you had better be right before you refuse to obey it. In practice, what I would do is to have the Officer issuing the order be very specific, and respectfully mention any reservations I had about the order. In almost all cases, he would be very thankful that I had brought up issues that he had not noticed or known about. From my personal experience, a bunch of things had to go wrong for that hospital to get hit. I really want to see the video. I have no doubt at all that the people involved have seen it over and over, and had to explain every word they said, and every action they took.
