Many Americans, perhaps most Americans, would say yes, of course, U.S. soldiers should refuse any order to fight refugees at our borders. Trump’s first threatening to send soldiers to the border was a political stunt—a trick he pulled out of his hat hoping  to garner a few votes before the mid-term elections. Who knows, maybe he did. Or maybe it cost him.

But now that he’s actually sent soldiers down to Tijuana, and disrupted the busiest land crossing in the world, the issue is more immediate.

According to the U.S. Government’s own statistics, illegal border crossings have been drastically declining  for the last eighteen years. To suggest that illegal border crossing is the biggest problem America faces, and now requires the presence of the U.S. Army, is a politically motivated bald-faced lie, not based on any facts, not based on any truth whatsoever.

Rather than illegal border crossings, the biggest problems we face in this country include:

• The 17 year war in Afghanistan costing $120 million a day
• Our failing healthcare system, making America dead last in healthcare outcomes among 11 top countries.
• Our crumbling infrastructure, bad roads and bridges, water treatment facilities, outdated transportation systems
• Our “fly over country” which has not yet found its place in the world economy.
• The seemingly unbridgeable gap between the conservatives and liberals (or, more accurately, the nationalists and the globalists.)
• The Russian hacks into our social media and democratic institutions, which swayed both the Presidential and midterm elections.

Again, the need for U.S. soldiers to confront immigrants and refugees at the borders is an outright lie told by Trump to gain personal political advantage. It’s a lie he tells again and again, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. He repeats the lie so many times in order to make it seem more real. People would ask: If it wasn’t true, why would he repeat it so often?

He’s would like to make the “refugee crisis” a fact.  But it’s not.

So when President Pinocchio decides to order U.S. soldiers to the border in order to bolster his own personal lie, and in doing so he creates conditions of mistrust and potential violence, it can be argued that it is a soldier’s right, even duty,  to refuse such orders—orders that are based on a lie that will lead to human suffering and violence.

The words on the Statue of Liberty summarize the ideals for which American soldiers have been willing to die for over two hundred years:  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

For Trump to send soldiers to bar the golden door not because of any danger but only for his own political gain reveals a low, mean-spirited man who brings disgrace on all America stands for. Thus, most American would agree that such orders would fall under the Nuremberg Principle which allows—no requires, insists—that soldiers refuse immoral, inhumane, life-threatening orders.

So yes, many, perhaps the majority of Americans would support any soldier who refused an order to go to the border to meet the “caravan people” with a potentially violent military presence. The caravan people are refugees from war torn countries—men, women and children who are fleeing soldiers in their own home country who are following immoral orders to take their lands, take their right to vote, take their history and dignity. For many reasons, to send soldiers to meet them could be considered by the World Court as a crime against humanity. A soldier would have a right—even a duty—to refuse such orders.

Other Americans, of course, are under the old millennium belief that an “order is an order” and that a soldier has no right to refuse it, regardless of his or her own personal moral qualms. But again, the trials of the NAZI officers and administrators—and even rank and file soldiers–at Nuremburg, established an international standard that leads the planet into a more workable relationship between soldiers and citizens.

In Russia, during a 1991 coup against Michael Gorbachev by old school hardliners, a Russian garrison was ordered to arrest Gorbachev. “Under whose orders?”, the general of the garrison asked.

“The Supreme Soviet,” was the answer.

“I don’t recognize the validity of that order without Gorbachev himself,” the general replied.  The general who refused the order quite possibly saved millions of lives by averting a Russian civil war in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The “band of migrants” who are on their way to the border are seeking asylum.  The reason they are doing it as a group is because kidnapping, rape and high ransom of individuals and families seeking asylum has been a constant threat for such migrants. “Safety in numbers” is their reason d’etre.

A soldier who refused his or her orders would, of course, under articles 90, 91, and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice,  be liable to severe prosecution, both within and without the armed services. But here again we are reminded of Henry David Thoreau who refused to pay a local poll tax—which he saw as an early version of “voter suppression,” depriving the poor of their right to vote.

The local authorities put Thoreau in jail for refusing to pay the unjust tax, which poor people could not pay, and thus would not be able to vote.  His good friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him in jail. “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Emerson asked.

“Ralph, what are you doing out there?” was Henry’s reply.

To openly encourage a U.S. soldier to refuse his or her orders could be viewed, under the Espionage Act of 1917,  which is still on the books, as a felony, punishable by up to  a 20 years in jail.  But to simply ask the question, whether a soldier should refuse his orders, and debate the issue, is a matter of free speech, protected by the Bill of Rights.

So, should U.S. soldiers refuse any order to go to the border from this Pinocchio President? It’s a question worth asking, again and again and again, until true compassion and common wisdom once again prevail in our land.