In my view, the case cuts to the heart of what kind of institution we want today’s military to be. Every American soldier, from the time he or she laces up that first pair of boots, is taught that discipline is the essence of military effectiveness. But our warriors are also drilled to disregard illegal orders. During the Korean War, my company skipper ordered me to kill four Chinese prisoners our platoon had taken on a patrol near Kumhwa. The CO reasoned it would take eight hours to walk the prisoners back to the battalion; he didn’t want to take my soldiers away from the front for that long. I refused to carry out the order, citing the Geneva Convention. That was the end of it. Rockwood, a fourth-generation soldier with 15 years in the army, wasn’t so lucky.

Rockwood was safeguarding U.S. interests in Haiti last fall. During Operation Uphold Democracy, Rockwood, a counterintelligence specialist, decided to carry out President Clinton’s explicit mandate “to stop brutal atrocities”–the main reason we sent in troops. Rockwood, 36, tried to investigate human-rights abuses in Port-au-Prince’s National Penitentiary, a notorious hellhole where up to 500 undernourished prisoners, standing ankle-deep in excrement, are forced to share a single cell. The captain reported his concerns to at least eight officers on the staff of Maj. Gen. David C. Meade, then commander of the multinational force in Haiti. Rebuffed by everyone from his immediate superior to the division chaplain, Rockwood filed an inspector-general complaint, which was ignored. Concluding that his superiors were guilty of “criminal negligence,” Rockwood grabbed his M-16 and went to inspect the jail on his own. He made it only as far as the infirmary and a few cells before a military attache picked him up and charged him with, among other things, conduct unbecoming an officer.

Facing court-martial, Rockwood could have taken the easy way out. His accusers offered him nonjudicial punishment. He turned it down. They offered to let him resign without punishment. He refused that, too–and now faces up to six years in prison. Rockwood, a practicing Buddhist, said nothing when the verdict came down. He didn’t have to. Days before, former army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson testified about how he abandoned his orders 26 years ago in My Lai, when he told his gunner to shoot U.S. soldiers who resisted his attempt to stop the massacre. “The army,” said Thompson, “doesn’t need a lot of yes men.” Rockwood, too, shouldn’t have to suffer for rightly saying “no.”