It's absolutely true that discipline and following orders are essential to the smooth functioning of a military force. However, that does not give soldiers an excuse to leave their conscience with their civilian clothes. The entire point of the Nuremberg trials (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials) was that "I was just following orders" is not a defense, when the orders in question are illegal or immoral. And illegal or immoral orders can be issued by American officers just the same as they were issued by German ones -- just ask the soldiers who served under Lieutenant William Calley in Vietnam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre). No nation's army has a monopoly on morality. So it's the responsibility of every soldier to balance the need for discipline with the need to ask conscientiously and with respect for human life and dignity.
A soldier just can't shoot anyone they see. There are very hard limits on who is considered a "combatant" and who is not. A big part of what gets soldiers and Marines on our side killed is ambiguity about who can be shot when they present a threat and who cannot.
If you do anything outside of the ROE it can be considered a war crime:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383037/Clint-Loranc...
And yes, the USG DOES put its own soldiers in jail. Sometimes for life.
Have a read. How many soldiers ended up in jail for these?
How many commanding officers?
The prosecution urged that Medina knew, or should have known, of the massacre, but, in addition to inciting it, he took no action either to stop it or to subsequently bring to justice those who committed crimes. “Even if he did not personally commit any crimes in My Lai, Medina clearly failed to maintain control over men under his command who were committing scores of them.”42 Despite apparently meeting the von Leeb–List standard – knew or should have known – and, for that matter, the Yamashita standard – must have known – Medina was acquitted.43 One civilian nonlawyer who viewed the trial found the case poorly prosecuted.44 Another calls it “a striking example of the extent to which a domestic . . . tribunal will devise a restricted formulation of the superior responsibility doctrine in order to avoid the prosecution of its own nationals.”45 But that ascribes a sinister motive to the court-martial that did not exist. (p.422)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Law-Armed-Conflict-International/d...
I hope this information is helpful.
One example:
In the movie Lone Survivor, the SEAL team of which Marcus Lutrell was a member of is "soft compromised" by a group of goat-herders in the Afghan mountains. They were discovered when the goat herders LITERALLY tripped over them.
Now they were faced with a difficult problem. It was commonly known that the anti-coalition militia used goat-herders as scouts knowing that they would not be molested by coalition forces. Letting them go would almost certainly result in their presence becoming known to the militia. Killing them was against the ROE.
They really didn't have a choice: they let them go. In less than an hour, they were ambushed and three SEALs died. Marcus Lutrell was saved by a local Pashtun. A quick reaction force with two helicopters full of SEALs was repelled by RPGs and another 16 SEALs and other operators were killed.
SO: three goat herders were freed and nineteen men lost their lives because by the ROE, you couldn't kill the goat-herders because they weren't carrying weapons.
Ask yourself if you truly believe you could live with the fact that you freed the people who called the forces that would ambush you and kill your friends.
Our military is willing to follow the rule of law far more often than not. That's a huge difference given the life and death stakes these people are under.
This isn't a movie and there is no do-over. Making a bad decision might get your friend killed or put you in prison. Let's try and adjust our thinking to fit the circumstances these people find themselves in. It's the LEAST we can do as an informed citizenry.
(BTW: I know one of the guys who went in to those mountains to retrieve the bodies of the killed SEALs and find Lutrell. He has no illusions about the enemy he was facing.)
That's precisely why the relevant articles of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice relating to "disobeying orders" explicitly requires that the orders be lawful for a crime to have been committed.
U.S. servicemembers not only have the right to disobey illegal orders, they have the explicit and positive duty to disobey illegal orders.
The catch is that ambiguous situations/"judgment calls" tend to break the tie in favor of an order being lawful. But beyond that the issue is not at all as complicated as you think.
E.g. with Lt. Calley's company, they were clearly guilty of not only crimes, but war crimes, yet there was a concerted effort in the U.S. and in the military leadership in Vietnam to cover the incident up. The issue there wasn't about "just following orders", the issue there was that the U.S. never attempted to put the criminals on trial in the first place, and that the eventual justice process that was meted out was so watered down. Even worse the Army and U.S. leadership tried to (and did) ruin the careers and lives of the 3 who actually followed their training as soldiers to put a stop to the massacre.
But you'll note that Lt. Calley was eventually court-martialed, and despite consistently claiming that he "just followed orders" was found guilty, sentenced to life, and his sentence upheld on appeal. Of course, U.S. leadership gutted that too, and effectively commuted his sentence, but "just following orders" was very much put on trial in the U.S. system and shot down again.