The article leans heavily on the word disobedience, but I think it would serve discussion more to emphasize the idea of a 'grey area' to distinguish it better from out-right disobedience. When the author was in tactical command of forces and made decisions to use resources or take actions contrary to stated orders there could have been an argument that the assumptions those orders were given under were found to be wrong and that adapting was crucial to achieving the stated commander's objectives. That would be different than disobeying the order to cover 'USS John S. McCain' when Trump was visiting. No matter how despicable that order was, it was clear that the commander's intent and objectives were being achieved by doing that and that it was a lawful order so to not carry it out would be outright disobedience and not a defensible grey area. Or to put it another way, I highly doubt the author would have lasted more than 1 second after they said 'no' had they been C7F or any of the CO's in the chain that got the order and passed it on when it came out.
Well yea, they teach you in officer’s schools that disobeying an illegal order probably won’t turn out well for you immediately, but it’s your duty. You will get punished sometimes, but if the order goes against the law and your morals, then you have to disobey it. Covering the McCain ship name probably isn’t worth disobeying, but firing on civilians is definitely worth any cost to yourself to disobey.
