Soldiers, When Do You Say NO?

military personnel of reddit when do you say no i ran the communication system that featured a satellite dish our left hand ordered us to cover the dish with camouflage netting which happens to be radio wave reflecting we tried to explain that the netting would block the radio waves going to and from the satellite but he persisted so we did it we promptly ended it when the colonel came out wondering why his internet had stopped working i guess i was lucky most of the stuff i wanted to refuse was just dumb stuff that we ended up not having to do or keep doing when they realized how dumb it was my brother fell off a communications tower 40 ft because some butthole officer wanted the same thing former nuclear reactor operator on a u.s submarine here this happens all the time and it is built into our system we call it watch team backup and it is an integral part of how we do business in the nuclear navy the normal way operations happen in the engine room is an enlisted watch standard will tell the watch officer we need to do something we will tell him the procedure we are using to show why and how he'll make sure it's legit he will give the order then we'll go do it alternately the officer can figure out we need to do something give us the order and if we do it without looking at the procedure and knowing it's legit we are in as much trouble as he is there is no such thing as just following orders i should mention that this is not a slight against submarine joes in any way they are almost to a man and soon woman too i'm sure extremely high caliber individuals who i respect the dynamic of operating the reactor in the submarine as a whole demand this kind of relationship between senior and subordinate i can think of hundreds of times when i've gotten an order said no showed him why and the result was a whoops thanks man i forgot about that procedure i can't really think of a time i gotta do it because i said so and if i did that guy would be removed from watch anyways if it is illegal it is not only your right but your absolute duty to say no and if there are no others willing to stand by you so be it but now immoral that's tricky i've stolen parts to make sure my vehicle was repaired in time to move out and did not view that as wrong there's only one thief in the army everyone else is just trying to get their crap back for those civilians reading this if you haven't watch generation kill there's a guy depicted captain america that will tell you all you need to know about crappy orders and how they are handled by the soldiers marines and their leadership and to be fair the actual captain america i don't remember his name refutes how he was depicted in that series did only once free on board ice can iraq first few months we were there the local bad guys decided to shoot some rockets at us which is weird because our free on board housed an iraqi power plant so shooting rockets that has had the possible consequence of knocking out their electricity such is their tax i suppose anyway they shoot rockets at us around three i believe everyone makes it into the bunkers we had unscathed and there was no follow-up attack i'm in the bunker with my section leader and we start radioing around making sure all of our guys are accounted for takes maybe five minutes but i soon learned that most of my guys were near the chow hall catching dinner and are perfectly safe i have a few in the bunker with me all good section leader looks over at me and says all right grab what guys you have here and we are going to make a push over to those bunkers by the chow hall this is before the battalion gave the all clear on the attack being a veteran of afghanistan we learned that the bad guys would often wait for this and then fire another volley as we came out of the bunkers so i look over at my section leader and ask why because i freaking said so we haven't gotten the all clear i don't give a crap after maybe a moment's hesitation i say number i'm not moving my guys i know everyone is safe everyone here is safe moving to that location isn't safe and serves no purpose oh is that freaking right you're telling me number yeah i am there's no reason to move and we haven't gotten the all clear this carries on for a moment or two longer with him screaming threats and what have you i continue to resist he doesn't stop until i mention it being an unlawful order needlessly endangering my men for no tactical strategic reason he comes to a dead stop later the platoon sergeant spoke with me and gave me the most minor of talking twos amounting to a very wink and nod don't do it again i had been threatened with a general courts martial by the section leader and when my platoon sergeant asked if i was willing to go to court to defend myself i said yes i'd even take six months break time if wrong just to prove my measure i still have not forgotten the look in my soldiers eyes when they came up to me after we got the all clear the few that were in there with me with my section leader came to me wide-eyed and shaken saying thank you thank you for standing up for us sergeant they weren't vets and were scared but this memory is one i count among my favorites tl dr i told my section leader no when told to move around our free on board before being given the all clear during an indirect rocket attack got threatened with a general quartz marshall took it in stride bacon reminds me of stories the world war ii russian commissars guys who had no clue about the reality of conducting warfare but ended up in positions of authority sadly similar stories are replete throughout history in almost every culture we're required to disobey unlawful orders i was just following orders isn't a valid defense if you're doing something illegal as a retired marine who still works for the marine corps as a civilian i'm still surprised at how many people believe military members are brainwashed order obeying robots my advice has always been if you know it is a bull crap order then it is a bull crap order yes going against the grain is a big taboo but doing the right thing doing the moral thing doing the ethical thing trumps all orders it all boils down to the situation does the situation deserve the full might of what you can deliver for example shoot move and kill or can less force handle the situation we want marines to think we want marines to recognize the situation and respond accordingly case in point after the fall of baghdad post-initial iraq war a marine platoon on patrol in the streets was confronted by an angry crowd the marine in charge of the patrol saw that the crowd was preceding a funeral procession instead of ordering weapons at the ready and prepare a hasty defense he ordered his marines into formation and executed the command of present arms a form of military salute the funeral procession went by and the anger in the crowd defused if he had followed his original orders act like a robot there may have been men a civilian injured or killed if we wanted robots we would recruit them if we wanted bodybuilders we would recruit them we really want joe average who can think not everything in the movies is accurate in fact most of it is not accurate i cannot stand to watch modern military movies because most of the time it is so far out of whack and true it isn't even funny as a rex navy guy watching battleship was hilarious i was on the uss enterprise and during the overhaul my chief told myself and four other guys to tear up some flooring that has been there since the early 70s so there was a good chance it had asbestos a tile had been pulled and sent for testing and would be back within a week but my chief was an impatient individual and told us to get in there and start breaking up the tunnel anyway without proper ventilation or hazmat safety where i refused to be a part of this endeavor and he became angry and began threatening me with captain's master being booted from the military i told him to do what he wanted but it wasn't worth my life he dropped it and nothing more came of it except his deeper resentment of me two of the other guys agreed with me and the other two started working about a week later the test results came back positive for asbestos i feel for my two shipmates having succumbed to the ignorance and impatience of a superior it's a dang shame and one of the greater reasons i only did four years if they reported the exposure they'd likely get benefits for life whenever an order is not lawful or is liable to get someone hurt or injured contrary to what you might imagine unlawful orders are usually minor things not ordering the mass murder of civilians or inhumane treatment of powers the most common one i've heard of is telling people to take a government vehicle somewhere when they don't have a government license or the proper certification for that vehicle or the area they are going to be driving in an anecdotal example that i've seen is a staff sergeant told an airman to go take a truck somewhere on an airfield although the airmen didn't have a flightline competency card basically a license saying you know the rules of driving on an active airfield and he also didn't have the proper endorsements for that type of truck he got lost and didn't know the speed limit and got pulled over and apprehended the military version of being put under arrest and after all the information came out the guy who ordered him to do it got in deep crap the airman got in minor trouble because he should have known better but was still pretty new another would be keeping people working on airplanes after being at work for 12 hours it's been proven keeping people working that long is more of a liability than anything but it still happens all the time like every day even though the regulations specifically say not to do it if you do something illegal you will get in trouble for it even if you were ordered to do it the person who ordered you to do it will probably get in more trouble but the following orders excuse doesn't fly you just respectfully but firmly tell the person no and if they keep pressing the issue you keep go to the next level in the chain of command with the issue and if they don't support you you keep going until you find someone who does which won't take long or you report it to channels outside of the chain of command if all else fails sorry it isn't as exciting as you thought but it's the truth i loved being a new airman i just didn't know any better crap rolls downhill unless you're first-term airman most officers know that any sentence that begins with with all due respect so that the very next part is going to start with the word frick whenever i say with all due respect in my head i think to myself and i say that as a joke former us navy sailor here even if you are in a non-combatant role you can say no for example my job was aircraft mechanic sometimes my superiors would try to have me cut corners or do things in a way that was faster but definitely not safe for anyone involved i would pretty much tell them respectfully to frick off i ain't doing that crap you just have to have some common sense and say no when something really does not feel right good plane captain is good during world war ii the irish government refused to fight against the nazis so 5000 irish soldiers deserted and went to fight alongside the british they faced prosecution had their army pensions stripped and were unable to work government jobs when they returned 70 years too late but this week they were finally pardoned and received an apology two deployments and seven years in the army usually if something outrageous or cruel is happening it didn't stop his orders it started as a private saying hey guys check this out hold my beer watch this just like mix quinty said we have to disobey unlawful orders i was in this situation in october of last year my section chief who was a master sergeant would try to order people in my work center to do things like spray the young airmen down with fire extinguishers make them go sexually harass females turn off critical navigation systems that aircraft need in order to land in inclement weather stealing a government vehicle sexual harassment also he removed his door from his office and threw it at another individual's desk and broke most of the crap on there these are just a few of the things some of it may not seem big to other people but when you have a senior enlisted member doing these things it sets up so many bad examples for the younger airmen who are brand new to the air force he also ordered a fellow staff sergeant to drill a glory hole in his office door the staff sergeant got in trouble down the road myself and another individual got sick of the crap and finally went up our chain of command the guy was caught martialed demoted and forced to retire tl dr master sergeant court martial demoted for sexual harassment and other things what you do is bring it up with either someone above him or another leader and co or officer there are also a lot of resources you can contact like jag judge advocate general ig inspector general etc i remember sitting through many classes on the geneva and hague posse committetus laws ucmj uniform code of military justice and briefings on the nuremberg trials i knew without a doubt that only i am accountable for my actions we all follow the same laws and if a superior broke these laws or tried to compromise a subordinate's integrity you contact any one of a number of legal help options or uses her commander's open door policy all respectable leaders i've met had one i think it's important to talk about these things the civilian population especially here really think with something to the effect of wind up death toys incapable of individual thought if an unlawful order is given it is our duty to disobey it oath keepers stopped the confiscation of weapons during katrina in iraq raccoons from third brigade stopped order from coal steel to kill all military age males still within the town they were clearing the reality is this most soldiers are honorable good people just like our civilian population we want our service to honor you our families and our communities we're segregated from you for better or worse but at the end of the day we are just like you we have kids bills friends wives etc obviously the stuff about not following unlawful orders has been covered here so we'll just share a personal story about a time i said frick no it's the summer of 2010 in one of the most dangerous areas in afghanistan during the bloodiest month of the entire war while on a patrol a few hundred meters outside of our outpost our squad leader stepped on an ied and lost his right leg below the knee we didn't have a medic on this patrol because he was resting from a previous patrol but we had two emts myself and one of my good friends after treating stabilizing and eventually medivacing the wounded soldier in the middle of a ferocious firefight we finally managed to force the taliban who were shooting at us to break contact and this is where crap gets stupid after the taliban broke contact with us and everything was calming down and everyone was reconciled a thing our platoon leader came up to us and told us to get ready to move out and continue the patrol at this point most of us were very low on ammunition and water and i was running low on medical supplies and completely out of water when the pl told me to get ready to go i stood up still covered in blood looked him in the eye and said frick no sir we aren't going any further we are going back now mind you i was a private first class saying this to her first lieutenant we argued for a few minutes about our present situation and how we needed to continue the mission the patrol was a movement to contact and we had clearly already found a fight he finally agreed with me and we headed back home well at least you called him sir didn't a whole bunch of the people involved in the mili massacre get off charges because it was what they were ordered to do i don't study a lot of war history outside of the crusade so i don't know huge details but i thought that if you were ordered to do something you were pretty much void of responsibility for it perhaps it has changed since then [Music] oh please please let this get upvoted i have taken so much training and watched soo many power points on this topic before i became an officer i had to take a full semester's long class on various military ethics one we take another support and defend the constitution not a person party etc i know that in the marines specifically there are many who take this concept extremely seriously and would have no problem taking extreme measures if something extreme were to happen two chipping in off of the first point we have something called the constitutional paradigm this is basically a formula for how to disobey an order if you disagree with it the constitutional paradigm one priority of loyalties or what you should provide your loyalty to a constitution b mission c service d ship or command e shipmate fellow marine f self 2 resolve conflict then act this implies working with those around you or with the situation as a whole in order to resolve the issue assuming you are able to rectify it carry about your duties three remove self from situation or resign pretty self-explanatory remove yourself or resign four disobey a fundamental violation of justice that is not trivial this issue must be big not just some minor stuff b try to have order law changed by normal procedures see above points see disobedience done in public don't be trying to subvert commands or be sneaky unless it is something so heinous such as an order to obliterate x people d willing to accept consequences think mlk in his letter from birmingham city jail depending on the issue and the consequent response this can be anything from getting njp to death just saying that you were following orders does not fly lt cali tried this in his defense of the milan massacre you are responsible for your actions and not only that if you are an officer you are accountable for the actions of your troops precedent set by the trial and execution of general yamashita post-world war ii personally i will not do anything illegal i will not violate any articles of the ucmj or international conventions i will not taint jose bello justice in war well that last part is comforting i guess hitler made the entire army take an oath to him specifically i'm glad we trained soldiers to look higher than political leadership it's not a guaranteed defense but it's a good one against authoritarianism i had a situation on my fourth deployment to afghanistan where a young green officer on his first deployment told us to do something different which could have very easily resulted in civilian casualties my immediate boss a salty 20-plus year-eight i was an e5 told me immediately after the mission briefing hey don't do that talk to me more about it when we're in the air once we took off on our mission my boss the e8 told me that's against the rules of engagement set forth by general petraeus but i want you to spend any downtime you have on today's flight researching a way to accomplish what the captain wants in a way that won't kill civilians and won't break the row and i want you to present your findings to me before we land so i can talk to him in the debrief i spent all my downtime over that 12-hour mission digging through pdfs of technical manuals and regulations going through the hexadecimal code of the software and so forth and at the end of the flight i have my boss a comprehensive rundown we can't do it because uh we're not allowed b the computer system isn't even capable of doing it even if we were see here's how we could accomplish the same result without breaking the rules with the capabilities we do have we went to the debrief captain greenhorn was there along with the lt colonel who was the squadron commander captain greenhorn asked us whether we did what he told us to do and how successful it was my boss the e8 deferred the question until after the main crew debrief and then afterward the four of us got together and had a talk captain greenhorn was very angry that we didn't do what he told us to but his boss the lt cole was there too and my boss the e8 presented the three major findings of mine to both of them but the lieutenant keanel definitely talked down captain greenhorn told him to go study his materials more thanked my e8 boss for not following those orders and thanked me for my research that's a real life story of how to handle an officer giving you orders that are a terrible freaking idea and could get civilians killed i am an i.t in the navy for about five years i was stationed on a ddg out of san diego while on deployment one of our antennas up on the mast was crapping out and our cso came down and told me that either myself or one of my guys needed to go up and take a look while we were still underway i assumed he was joking and laughed at him with a very straight face he gave me the order again thankfully my chief stepped in before i could plainly tell him to go frick himself i said no once i was asked to drive a truck where the load was not secured to specifications if there had been an accident with me behind the wheel it would have been my head that rolled if the sergeant asking me had tried to accuse me of disobedience with the higher ups it would have been his head easy choice the sergeant accepted my refusal without question not exactly what you are looking for but this made me think of something my recruiter told me when i was joining the marines right before i went to meps and had to get interviewed about any potential criminal activity drug use etc he gave me the following advice answering no equals numerous opportunities answering yes equals your enlistment stops in the navy 2002 to 2008 only one no story comes to mind i still got on a huge fitness kick one day and ordered around 100 leg exercising machines that would fit under the electronic consoles i guess the idea was that we would sit there on watch and do leg exercises i don't know anyway fast forward a couple of months and in service coming up the order comes in from higher ups that all of them be rounded up around the ship and stored somewhere that somewhere became our division's top side fan room thanks chief these bloody things stay there for about a year never once touched sierra takes its toll they are all starting to rust and generally look like crap i'm a second class wcs at this point and i'm getting sick of them in my space rather than go through typical bs i just tell one of my three rds to grab someone and dump them once we pull into port we pull into port and she and an sn get to work on that about an hour later she calls me upset it turns out a first class on a power trip caught the two of them doing this right as they were finishing up he demanded to know who gave them that order and who authorized them to do it they threw my name to him he promptly lost his mind and ordered them to go jump in the dumpster and go retrieve them that was when i got the call i run up there and get into a yelling match with this first telling him to frick off with that my guys were not about to go dumpster diving he tries playing count the seven with me and i was having none of it i told him that if he wanted to take this up the chain of command i was happy to do so and that he was going to lose finally he tells me to jump into the dumpster myself to retrieve them and if i didn't he was going to go to my chief to write me up i was p at this point and told him that the only way i was going in that dumpster is if he threw me in there and then it wouldn't be me standing in front of the old man he storms off in a huff saying we'll see what your chief says about all this i have no idea what happened past that point nobody ever said anything to me about it and i sure as heck wasn't going to go pursue it tl dr an e6 tries to get us to go dumpster diving and i told him to frick off i operated nuclear power plants for the navy we were trained to put power plant safety above following orders if an officer ordered you to do something with the plant you knew to be unsafe you questioned the order this was called forceful backup if the officer persisted you ask to be relieved of duty they'd need to find someone else to carry out the order they just hold a meeting later called a critique to figure out whether you did the right thing or not by refusing then whoever was in the wrong would get additional training in making better decisions i've been a private in the army anco and snco and the uzaf and now an officer still use af i've always lived by principle purpose people in that order regarding decisions in the military principle does the order decision violate my other us's principles as i believe them to be if so forget it purpose does this contribute to our purpose whatever that may be at the time for example i saw in this thread somebody was asked to forge a counseling statement not only does this violate my principles in the militaries but it does not contribute to the purpose of providing quality feedback to subordinates people does the order negatively impact my people this is not to be confused with putting people in dangerous situations but more of is it necessary are there other ways without placing undue hardship on my people while i can't define everything i do by those three ideas keeping them in my back pocket makes a surprising difference in determining the right thing to do and when to fall on my sword and say no if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: On Tap Studios

Views: 71,470

Rating: 4.9601212 out of 5

Keywords: soldiers, army, military lieutenant arrested, military, military fails, military training, saying no, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, comment awards, dankify, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap, reddit stories 2021

Id: ivulMpMv-FE

Length: 27min 8sec (1628 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021