Dangerous war games: Telling servicemembers to resist Trump invites pure chaos

It is dramatic, ominous, and delivered with an air of solemn responsibility. But it fails the most basic test of leadership and legality: It doesn't cite a single illegal order - past, present, or anticipated. Not one.

Their core message is stark: "If something is illegal, you can refuse it. You must refuse it." The implication is unmistakable: The commander in chief is poised to issue unlawful orders, and U.S. troops should prepare to resist him. Yet, when pressed publicly, none of the lawmakers has produced a single example of an unlawful order or cited any statute that the president has allegedly violated.

This is political theater masquerading as military ethics - and it's dangerously irresponsible.

I say this as someone who has spent his life inside the military profession. I served as an Airborne Ranger infantry officer in four U.S. Army divisions on three continents. I later spent more than 20 years as a contractor on the Army Staff, working on operations and global security cooperation. While in uniform, I also served as an inspector general at the Pentagon, investigating allegations of serious ethical misconduct across our Army. 

From that perspective, the message in this video is not a public service - it's a political provocation. It seeks to frame routine chain-of-command obedience as inherently suspect and to condition soldiers to assume that orders from this president are presumptively unlawful. That's not ethics. It's partisanship.

Let's be clear about the real standard. Every U.S. service member has an absolute duty to refuse a clearly illegal order. This principle is deeply rooted in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Law of Armed Conflict, and the Nuremberg precedent. Orders to commit war crimes - such as deliberately targeting civilians - must be refused. This is not controversial; it's taught in basic training, ROTC, West Point, OCS, and every professional military education course across the force.

That's the real danger of this video: It introduces doubt into the minds of junior service members where clarity is required. It encourages troops to interpret political rhetoric as legal reality. It bypasses the established processes - Judge Advocate General counsel, inspector general channels, command legal advisers - that already exist to address any questionable orders. The video doesn't mention those institutions because its purpose isn't to strengthen legal integrity but to undermine confidence in a particular commander in chief - President Donald Trump.

If these lawmakers truly believe a specific policy or directive is unconstitutional - be it border operations, counter-cartel actions or foreign deployments - they have the tools of Congress at their disposal. They can write legislation, hold hearings, restrict funding, subpoena witnesses or challenge executive actions in court. What they cannot ethically do is lobby the troops directly to resist the commander in chief based on hypothetical misconduct.

America's military remains the most trusted institution in the nation precisely because it stays out of partisan politics. That self-discipline isn't automatic; it requires elected leaders to refrain from dragging the military into presidential disputes. Undermining that principle for political advantage is reckless.