The other morning,  about 100 colonels and a handful of civilians assembled for our annual Army  War College staff and faculty photo. As the photographer gave final positioning instructions to the crowd, the loud notes of a bugle call suddenly  pierced the air. This was odd because it was not even eight o’clock in the  morning. The automated bugle call system had been acting erratically the  previous week, so this appeared to be another malfunction.  

At this point, something interesting  happened. Someone near the foot of the steps called the group to attention.  After a pause, the command, “Present arms!” followed. With that, 100 senior officers raised their arms in a crisp salute. Never mind that the flag at the  Army War College is never lowered, or that it was not the end of the day, or  even that the automated bugle call system had not been functioning properly  for over a week. Instead, we all stood there in an awkward, uncomfortable  silence. Admittedly, a few officers did not salute, but not a soul (us included) thought to point out that we were heading down the wrong path.  Halfway into the bugle call, the strains of To the Colors stopped in mid-note.  There was a collective embarrassed chuckle, arms raised in salute were  dropped, and we resumed with the photo session.

While many of us would rather forget  the entire incident, the episode raises some interesting questions about  military culture. Why would so many senior officers silently salute when so  many indicators were signaling a flawed decision? Why didn’t anyone speak up  to challenge the decision or at least inform the group of the relevant facts  involved in the situation which may have led to a different  judgment? (The whole piece is well worth your time.)

This reminds me of the conversation that I have with my history classes when I teach the Crimean War. I always start it off with a dramatic reading of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade", the retelling of the heroic, undaunted, and utterly futile and unnecessary sacrifice at the Battle of Balaclava. Then I ask my cadets (future officers all) if it is truly "theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die." In other words, when can they disobey orders? I always get a quick response: we can disobey orders if those orders are illegal or immoral -- in fact, it is required we do so. I then congratulate them on successfully parroting back that part of their ethics training, and then follow it up with this question:

"What about stupid orders?"

The room usually goes silent at this point. I teach freshmen ("plebes" in Academy parlance) who have just spent the last six months getting it drilled into them that they are followers and the low men and women on the totem pole. Therefore, the idea that orders from a superior can be "stupid" forces something of a cognitive dissonance on them, which is, of course, the point of this little exercise. Then the pushback starts -- who defines stupid? What if it's stupid from your perspective, but higher headquarters has better information? How can you trust that? The exercise culminates after a few minutes with a thoroughly frustrated group of cadets who really just want to get past all this navel-gazing and figure what's going to be on the upcoming exam.

Recent talk of military strikes on Iran and changes in strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan has me revisiting this question -- when do legal orders become untenable because they simply make no sense? The sad truth is, after three years of thinking about it, I still don't have a clear answer. Unfortunately, it's far from an academic exercise -- I suspect the coming months may provide our soldiers all too many opportunities to decide what constitutes a stupid order.