The Air Force officer who called for Trump’s removal has forced a crucial debate
over military obedience, constitutional duty, war crimes, and the limits of presidential power.

Major Jason Watson, Trump, and
the Military’s Duty to Defy Illegal Orders
Chuck Yates / LA Progressive

(September 26, 2026) — One day last July, Air Force Major Jason Watson said “no more” to Donald Trump. The president violates the Constitution when he “orders military action against foreign countries absent an emergency scenario where American interests are under imminent, dire threat,” Major Watson charged. “For this,” he added, “the president and vice president must be impeached, convicted, and removed.”

And then he stood on the steps of the US Capitol in full dress uniform, holding a sign that read, “Impeach. Convict. Remove.” He deliberately violated a prohibition against partisan political activity and placed his seventeen-year military career and his personal future in serious jeopardy, sacrificing himself in order to make a point about the illegal behavior of his commander in chief. Traditionally, when a soldier called out his superior for acting wrongfully, he would fall on his own sword to prove his loyalty.

Major Watson will pay a heavy price for defying the president. At best he can expect a dishonorable discharge and the loss of all of his benefits as a veteran. He may spend the rest of his life in prison. He’s broken the most fundamental rule of military effectiveness: troops follow orders, without question or hesitation. When their commander in chief orders them to act, they don’t accuse him of wrongdoing, or call for his removal. They obey. However, some of Trump’s recent remarks may have put the question of obedience in a starkly different light.

Last April, unhappy with the progress of his war, Trump said, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” In June, discussing a plan to end the war, Trump said he hoped it would work. “If it doesn’t,” he said, “we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!” And speaking before the United Nations just a few days ago, Trump speculated that he might have no choice but to “annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly….drive them into hell with no chance of survival….”

Such flamboyant hyperbole is routine for Trump, but some observers have understood these remarks as threats to use nuclear weapons. If Trump were to do that, most likely he’d want to target the leadership in Tehran, a city with a population of a little under nine million. Eighty years ago another US president demonstrated what a nuclear attack does to cities and to people when he ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Around 120,000 people died instantly in those two cities, and by the end of the year the total had doubled. Those who died in the blasts were fortunate compared to the rest, who died slowly from burns and radiation poisoning. Nearly all of them were civilians. Given the power of today’s weapons next to those of 1945, if Trump ordered a nuclear attack on Iran, its people could face a dramatically darker fate, and every American in uniform would have an impossible choice.

Military personnel swear to “support and defend the Constitution,” and also to “obey the orders of the President.” There are no guidelines about what to do when the president issues orders in flagrant violation of the Constitution, putting those two sworn duties in direct opposition to each other. But I think Major Watson has shown us the right choice—the patriotic choice, with its focus on supporting and defending the Constitution and the rule of law, rather than on obeying the lawless orders of the president.

And Trump hasn’t just violated the Constitution. He has implicated our military in war crimes. Last fall, speaking of US attacks on so-called Venezuelan “drug boats,” a UN official said that “The U.S. has now murdered 57 civilians in attacks on 14 civilian boats….a crime against humanity under international law” And last week UN investigators reported that they had found “reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians….”

To obey the president in these circumstances is to make a mockery of the high ideals of our founding documents, if not also to make fools of the founders themselves. To defy him, as Major Watson has done, is the ultimate demonstration of loyalty—not to the president, but to the country and what it professes to stand for. We cannot claim to be the land of the free and the home of the brave when our leaders send our own brave troops to deprive innocent others of their freedom, of their unalienable rights life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

We need more patriots like Major Jason Watson, willing to serve their country by defying their superiors and falling on their swords to prove their sincerity. Or we could spare them the sacrifice and just do what the Constitution stipulates for those who commit high crimes and misdemeanors—impeach, convict, and remove.

Chuck Yates served in Vietnam in ’68, ’69, and ’70 with the Navy, holds a PhD from Princeton, and taught Asian history to college students from ’87 to ’25.