At the time, I found it unconscionable that legal scholars would be complicit in underwriting our government’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions. But with the benefit of hindsight, though I still find the torture memo appalling, I can at least acknowledge that the Bush administration cared enough about the law to offer the pretense of legality.

The current administration is not even trying. President Donald Trump openly flouts laws at home, while threatening to destroy cultural sites abroad (a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions). The faint echo of My Lai grows louder every time the president celebrates a U.S. war criminal. For example, Lieutenant Clint Lorance was convicted by a military jury of ordering his soldiers to murder unarmed civilians, after nine members of his unit testified against him. Lorance was not only pardoned by President Trump, but welcomed as a guest of honor at a political fundraiser.

When it comes to defending Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, the best excuse his enablers can muster is that he does not mean what he says. Although his statements may condone illegal actions, such as the murder of noncombatants, the public is told that they do not reflect the government’s actual policy. When it comes to the president’s authority as commander in chief, this defense makes no sense. An order from the president of the United States, issued to a military commander, is de facto U.S. policy.

That does not mean policies cannot be challenged. Indeed, anyone charged with defending the Constitution is morally and legally bound to disobey an illegal order. Given the president’s record of abandoning constitutional norms and of placing his own interests above those of the nation, service members are approaching the point where the chief executive can no longer be afforded the benefit of the doubt when it comes to orders of dubious legality.

Should that point arrive, those charged with carrying out such orders will bear an enormous burden. From my time in the Navy, and from conversations with those still in uniform, I fear that the American military is not prepared. It has failed, at every turn, to provide those charged with defending the Constitution even the most basic understanding of what it means.

The country can, however, begin to correct this. All those who swear an oath to the Constitution should be issued a copy, preferably a pocket version to be carried as a reminder of where their loyalty properly lies. They should receive a basic overview of its structure that includes the relationships among the three branches, and further instruction that treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, ratified by the Senate, are U.S. law. Finally, before swearing their oath, they should have to pass a basic comprehension test.

Read: Top military officers unload on Trump