Marine Sgt. Gary Stein
 

I'm honestly surprised that nobody has yet created this thread.

I haven't read on this much and honestly don't know the rules. But isn't he the head of command, and he is saying he refuses to obey and respect his superior.

Right?

You guys do not want to get me started on this piece of crap. He's a disgrace to the Corps and the Armed Forces, end of story.

However, it must be said that the fact that he lasted that long says a good deal about just how scared the upper echelons of the military are of social media. It took them a year to finally boot this guy... way too long imho.

I don't know what the actual percentages are, but I'd say that among military officers, we're about 90% mid-spectrum conservative, with a standard deviation either direction depending on how "Christian" you are. I have zero religious motivations, so I'm more moderate leaning than some of my contemporaries. Military Officers tend to be white, upper-middle class, and have conservative leaning parents... these are just the facts.

On the other hand, enlisted people are much more diverse culturally, with a much higher percentage of minorities and overall come from a much lower socioeconomic background. There are far more liberal enlisted people than officers... these are just the facts.

The UCMJ, and several DOD directives that are part of our yearly mandatory training are very clear about exactly what you can and cannot contribute while wearing a uniform. The directives were intended to preserve in part the long- standing tradition that the military remain an apolitical body whose duty is to obey the orders of its civilian leaders.

Where this guy went wrong was very basic. It's a severe violation of the UCMJ to use your position as a member of the military for political influence. The President is our Commander In Chief, and if we as members of the Armed Forces are given any "control" as to who our military leader is, then we become a Military Dictatorship. Civilian control of the military cannot be a fine line. It has to be absolute. If a single Sergeant can publicly tell his boss to f'off, then so can a General, and the public instantly loses faith in who is in control of our military. It gets very ugly from there on out.

He went wrong and is out of the miltary because he had NOBODY on his side. Not only were his actions illegal, but nobody bought his crap. Conservative and liberal officers were against him, conservative enlisted were against him, and liberal enlisted were really against him. He has a very small following of extremely right-leaning retired senior enlisted and that's all... virtually nobody on active duty wanted to go anywhere near this guy. All of the stink was made by retired dudes "on behalf" of the "masses of disgruntled service folks out there who didn't have a voice"... problem was there aren't any masses.

As a taxpaying citizen, I certainly have some reservations about how the government is currently handling the governing of the country, and I voice my opinion at the voting booth, by donating to certain causes, by staying as informed as I can, and by trying my best to be a good role-model for my kids and neighbors. In fact, I feel that it's part of my civic responsibility to be "politically active"... and I do as much as I can, which could be more, but I'm happy with what I currently contribute.

As a military officer, I adhere to my oath and follow my orders. And to be safe and to keep with my oath and be within the UCMJ, I really can't/shouldn't do more than I currently do.

OK, so people will then say "but your oath says "support and defend the constitution of the US against all enemies foreign and domestic", so doesn't that mean when the government tramples over the Constitution, that you have a responsibility to stop them, IE, USE YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH AND SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT AS A SOLDIER... no.

You don't have that right as a soldier. Your 1st amendment rights are restricted specifically for this reason... yes, your rights are restricted via the UCMJ, which is why it's ILLEGAL to speak out. You operate under a different set of rules when you decide to put on a uniform, and you actually do give up some rights to become a soldier, and speaking out against the civilian leadership of the military is one of them.

This whole thing is not hard to understand, and it's not hard to understand why it has to be this way. When you put on your uniform, shut the hell up and do your job.

can someone link to info or post cliff notes so I don't get trampled by the wall of text?

Oh.... just remembered some people might not know who this guy is...

He is WAS a Marine Corps Sergeant who started the Armed Forces Tea Party... basically a I HATE OBAMA site... douchebag. He wasn't skirting the line with that site, he was over it, but the establishment was being very careful about how they tried to shut him down.

About a month ago, he was feeling a little cocky and this is what happened today:

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...d-take-it-back

Maybe this hasn't been national news for all that long, but down here in San Diego it's been in the press for a while (MCB Pendleton is here.)

Sam pretty well summarized it. To be honest, as many self-proclaimed constitutionalists as we have here, I'd have expected at last someone to jump in and defend a first amendment position on this, and to be honest, I'm kind of proud to see that nobody has taken that line.

To expound on what Sam said, the Tea Party site was not, in my opinion, the worst of it. My favorite quite came from a posting he made on the Marine Corps Meteorology and Oceanography (METOC) Services facebook page:

"As an active Marine I say, 'Screw Obama' and I will not follow orders from him."

Now, depending on how strongly you consider facebook to constitute a soapbox, and the intent of his posting to incite others, this could be interpreted as anything from insubordinate conduct and failure to obey a lawful order all the way to mutiny and sedition, which are punishable by death.

Joe, this was the ultimate reason he's being discharged. The Tea Party stuff was very small-time, and although he was in trouble over it, the Corps was giving him every opportunity to keep serving... but he lost his damned mind with that post.

With that comment, he's lucky he wasn't an officer... we have a thing called Article 88, and talking ---- about senior gov't officials goes way harder on officers than enlisted. Gen Stanley McChrystal came close a few years ago.

Article 88, Contempt Towards Officials
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

It does raise the question of where "the line" is.

If a President and Congress authorized martial law, including opening fire on protesting citizens, would all military be expected to "shut the hell up and do your job?"

but that's not what happened. you join the military you follow orders, the end.

same goes for real world. if i posted the same thing about my boss, i wouldnt expect to maintain my job or paycheck.

Depends on if you're posing the question in moral terms, legal terms, or practical terms.

In moral terms, of course not. Each soldier must answer to himself or his god for his own decision.

In legal terms, still no. As I understand it, the Nuremburg defense is generally not recognized as valid in cases of specific use of military force (ie, firing on civilians), and each soldier would be legally culpable for following those orders.

In practical terms...well, I suppose eventually a disobedient soldier may be publicly vindicated, but at least in the short term he should have every expectation of losing his job and facing possible imprisonment, no?

To be clear, I am not defending the actions of the Sargeant in question, just raising the tangential question of where soldiers would openly disobey direct orders.

The confiscation of legally owned firearms post-Katrina still kind of weirds me out, on top of every regular police department being outfitted as "tactical operators."

i hear you.

Understood. I just wanted to make the distinction between the various kinds of consequences for disobedience.

You have to admit, it's a fairly creative way to circumvent the whole martial law thing -- if you're not allowed to use the military as police, just turn the police into the military.

How soon and how much time did you spend in NOLA after Katrina. Serious question. Also, what records do you have which demonstrates that firearms were confiscated by Feds rather than locals?

I know NOPD did it, but you can't tell me your afraid of the feds because of something the local police did.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192347,00.html
I'd be ultra-pissed if the police took my weapons and then told me I needed the bill of sale and had to endure a criminal background check to get my steel back.

I read this story (first I heard of it), and thought the guy was lucky. Not gonna obey an order? They can shoot you for that.

I thought the DOJ and Obama made it very clear that local police shouldn't enforce fed laws...

code red.

I don't like this one-bit, but I also don't think the locals were totally in the wrong. If NOLA was designated as a "war zone" which it was and should have been, this would make more sense. NOLA looked like downtown Mogadishu, I don't really blame the police for cleaning weapons out of abandoned homes (abandoned is subjective) because street gangs were going to take them if the police didn't. I blame the police for the way weapons were returned to their rightful owners.

The UCMJ is pretty clear in making a distinction about "lawful orders," and also treats separately the (relatively) less serious crimes of insubordination / disrespect / contempt versus the more serious matters of disobeying orders / missing movement / desertion.

You can access the whole section on Punitive Articles here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/te...7/subchapter-X

While there are potentially three separate issues in this situation (insubordination, refusing to follow orders, and potentially inciting mutiny and sedition), the matter of openly disobeying direct orders is pretty simple. A lawful order cannot be disobeyed. An illegal order (eg: "Marine, go execute those civilians") must be disobeyed.

The interesting thing, however, is that I can't think of any time in recent history in which this has actually been tested. It is a testament to the officers and civilian leadership of the US Armed Forces that, for the most part, they tend not to do things like instructing their subordinates to slaughter civilians in gas chambers. Even at Abu Ghraib, it would seem that while the commanding officers failed to properly oversee the actions of the soldiers under their command, I haven't seen any evidence which suggests that they directly ordered the torture of prisoners. (Admittedly, I wasn't there.)

You know, it's funny that you mention this. One thing that really bugs me about A Few Good Men is that, after Lt. Col. Markinson starts whispering conspiracy theories into Kaffee's ear, the whole issue of the illegal fenceline shooting (which is how the whole thing started, mind you) seemed to just dry up and vanish.

i felt the same way when i watched the sitter and nothing came of the cops who stole the diamonds and coke from him.

Everything that's being said here is pretty much accurate. The military legal system tends to go out of it's way to keep "little" things from blowing up into a complete media shitstorm. The military in fact would prefer to keep all of it's legal processes in-house so-to-speak. With modern media methods, you almost never hear of a military legal matter from within the military... it's almost always from the family trying to gain support for their sailor/soldier who has done something really illegal, but think if they can get enough public support, some Senator/Congressman who has never served will raise a big stink and "fight" for them. It's disgusting.

As a former command legal officer, I've been in on some mind-blowingly retarded stuff.

We had a kid go AWOL, and was declared a deserter for about 8 months. While he was gone, he let his buddies use his on-base house as a crash pad and they destroyed it. While he was gone, he got divorced, and then re-married, but was single for about 2 months. So, his buddies caused $15k damage to the house, and he didn't work for 8 months.

When he shows back up, the results of the legal process are as follows.
#1: Receive full backpay.
#2: Not at fault for damage to house.
#3: Full MARRIED housing allowance granted for the entire time he was gone (even though he was single 2 months).
#4: SEA-TIME counter still running (your sea-time is the total time you are "at-sea" on a ship which counts towards bonus pays... it's a big deal)
#5: And given a nice cushy desk job for 6 months to re-acclimatize.

WHY??? Because about 4 months after he left, he texted a buddy and told him where he was, the buddy told his Chief, and the Chief sat on it, hoping the scumbag would stay gone. This was a significant technicality, and when the kid finally showed back up, he said, "What, I called, nobody called me back... I wanted to come in, but nobody seemed to care about me."

So you see, the military legal system is just as f'ed up as civilian courts. We have the same lawyers and same burdens as just about anywhere else... and no matter how bad you f'up, you can always find somebody else to blame. And usually, they just transfer you to a new command, and you go right back to work like it never happened.

Currently, most cases of "refusing to obey a direct order" are people who refuse to deploy with their units, and then claim a "conscientous objector" status. I know of not a single combat related "refusal" in my time in the military... they just don't happen all that often anymore. As an all-volunteer force, it's gonna be a rarity that you're not willing to do something you signed up for. Running away to Canada was all the rage for awhile, and the military does prosecute some of those cases when they return, but it tends to happen quietly and under the radar. Mostly those types are simply dishonorably discharged in-absentia. Currently, pecifically with regard to running away to Canada... it's not going to do you any good to go there if that country supports the war as well. This article is a few years old, but...:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21794024...-not-refugees/

Great responses!

Hustler - I'll educate myself more on the New Orleans firearms confiscation to make sure I am not just regurgitating false information. For example, if it was the NOPD and not the National Guard, that would make a difference in my thought process. Likewise, if the law enforcement (military or civilian) was confiscating "abandoned" firearms, that might make a difference versus taking firearms from their owners' active possession.

Sam and Joe - great insight; thanks for that.

From the above story you linked:
"Police and soldiers removed guns from houses after the storm flooded the city, and they confiscated guns from some evacuees."

"Percy Taplet, 73, said the National Guard and state police confiscated his shotgun when they arrived to tell him to leave his house."

That sounds like the military (and local police) confiscating firearms from the active possession of citizens to me. Am I misunderstanding that?

One thing that I'm not entirely clear on is the exact organizational structure of the "National Guard."

While National Guard units are capable of being federalized, and are considered to be a reserve component of the US Army, my admittedly somewhat limited understanding is that the individual units of the Guard are chartered and organized at the state level, under the Militia Act of 1903. For instance, the decision to mobilize the National Guard to secure the city of NO was made by Lousiana governor Kathleen Blanco, not by the Federal government. Governor Blanco subsequently refused an attempt by DHS to take control of the efforts, claiming that "her National Guard could manage."

As such, having National Guard troops perform police-style duties in NOLA may not be entirely the same as if the regular Army were mobilized in such a capacity. To me, this is much more akin to calling in the state police, which from the above quotes seems to be precisely who they were working alongside. We're all big fans of States Rights here, and from what I can tell, this may well be a Louisiana issue rather than a Federal issue.