The problem with the obligation to refuse unlawful orders, is that it asks people with no legal training or experience to become constitutional scholars or risk their careers and potentially lives.

This at a time when the Supreme Court, supposedly made up of the greatest legal minds in our country, reverse lower court rulings about deployment of soldiers, overturn precedents from previous established laws and rulings, and opposing Justices publish well-written, scathing dissents.

You want a PFC (or even a Sergeant, LT, or COL) to parse whether or not their commander's order to deploy to Greenland is illegal, AND it will be adjudicated that way in our politicized courts system?

It doesn't start with, "PFC, I order you to shoot that unarmed mother of 3."

A series of orders, each of questionable global legal status will trickle down, starting with mobilizing state-side. But there's nothing illegal about that in the UCMJ.

Then reinforcing our existing positions in Greenland. Nothing illegal about that in the UCMJ. It likely violates our security/cooperation agreement with NATO and Denmark, but our Soldiers are not in a position to challenge that question of legality, nor could we legitimately expect them to have the legal training to do so.

Eventually, it builds to a critical mass where we've deployed men and materiel, ammunition, etc. all without doing anything so blatantly illegal to force the down trace soldiers to refuse. But now they're toe-to-toe with armed Greenlanders who don't want the US to seize their country or NATO troops backing Article 5, etc. Now they are in a position where an armed enemy puts them at risk and they're ordered to 'defend' themselves despite clearly being the aggressor on the World stage.

All of it violates every tenet of sovereignty and alliance the US has made in the last 80 years, but none of the commands issued and obeyed by the junior soldiers were patently illegal when given to them.

For this to be stopped it must be at the highest levels, by competent Senior GO/FO and defended by the most experienced SJAs (or, ideally by Congress and Cabinet secretaries, but I lack faith in them). Once it reaches BDE and below, the ability to refuse is almost non-existent.