Just to clarify:
Cook is a reservist (Watada was active duty). He volunteered for mobilization for the sole purpose of filing this case in federal court. There are a couple of problems here:
First, it is unclear if a federal court would have jurisdiction over this matter, since the orders were cut by HRC-STL (the reserve depot that cuts orders) under the authority of the UCMJ. It would be an un-precedented move for a civilian court to trump a mobilization order and would lay the precedent for other soldiers to challenge their orders "outside of the chain of command". This is further complicated by the fact that the Army has procedures in place to seek a delay and/or exemption to mobilization orders within the UCMJ that Cook has not utilized.
The few times federal courts have trumped the UCMJ have been to deem soldiers "conscientious objectors" when they have been denied that status by the UCMJ. With this in mind, Cook is also trying to be declared a "CO". He's got a few problems here too. First, he (again) did not go through the proper military channels to seek CO status. Second, CO status is awarded (by reg) for moral and religious reasons. It is specifically stated that it will not be awareded for political reasons. Finally, and most importantly, CO status is a dinosaur from the conscript days. It is rarely, if ever, used in an all volunteer Army. Cook is going to have a hard time reconciling his new-found desire to be a CO, 20 years after he opted out of CO states in his initiatl paperwork. On top of that Cook is an officer in a combat arms branch (engineer).
I agree he's tubed his career. He deserves it. He is missusing his rank to try and prompt a constitutional crisis. That's a big no-no. I don't know if he will be sanctioned under the UCMJ, but his evaluation reports will reflect this stupidity.
I predict this will get summarily tossed for jurisdictional reasons and Cook will deploy to Afghanistan.
Backfire.
