“AS long as no military person was ordered to do an overtly illegal action the order would be “lawful” - if you accept the arguments set forth by the military legal “experts”.
So a military person guarding a store, for instance, would not be unlawful on its face - even if it was to hoard food supplies for thugs and keep civilians from being able to buy food. A soldier could follow particular “rules of engagement” for that assignment so that if a civilian rushed them to get into the blocked store, the soldier could fire on them. Maybe. I really don’t know, but this is the kind of scenario that I could see being played out, based on the kinds of arguments I hear made in the Lakin case.
I hear them saying that soldiers can’t try to evaluate the lawfulness of the big scheme, the overarching goal (such as “progress”). They can only go by whether their particular action is illegal on its face. Every bigger action or goal is the sum of many small actions - none of which has to be illegal on its face in order to implement the bigger, unlawful scheme. That is how people like Podesta can “nickel and dime” a noble corp into watching silently while he rapes the Constitution and the nation.
How are our guys being prepared to fight against such a scenario?”
You pretty much nailed it on the head. No, most of the military would not obey orders to indiscriminately kill or round up mass numbers of Americans, or any other overly dramatic scenario like this. BUT, such scenarios are not realistic to expect. If the military was used to keep the population in line, it would be a scenario in which there’s some large disaster or terrorist attack, widespread rioting or unrest, or an overplayed “threat” of such possibilities, which could have the military called out to conduct armed patrols through cities, post soldiers and Marines on street corners, having armored vehicles driving around, just being there to keep the peace. It would be a show of force mission, and yes if someone fired on them first then they would obviously fire back in self-defense. If there was more going on behind the scenes, arrests and such, the police would handle that while the military acted as a visual deterrence. Few service members would risk court martial to refuse orders for such a mission. It doesn’t seem that bad on its face, we’re just there to maintain order and assist an overwhelmed police force. Everybody get it now?
The scenario to look at would be New Orleans after Katrina. The military will indeed shoot civilians because they have been convinced that it’s for the overall protection.