Can a commander put an administrative order on a soldier for suicide and label it as a misconduct?

Interesting question. I'm a bit dated as I punched out in '03. A suicide attempt can certainly be "misconduct" in a technical sense. The real issue is does it make sense? Misconduct which affects mission performance, redirects valuable resources, blah, blah, blah, and you can create a logic train that can go somewhere, nowhere, or down the sewer. From a command perspective, a suicide attempt is just like any other problem. You look to isolate it, reduce the blast perimeter, minimize ancillary impacts to the Command, and move on. People tend to confuse the caring aspect with the business decision aspect. In our culture, we tend to find it's better to care about our people and it tends to support a better business outcome. But caring for an individual is pretty short term when bounced up against caring for everyone in the Command overall in a long term sense.

Bottom line, the path of least resistance, i.e. don't create nonuseful administrative burden, is typically what you'll see. There's a lot of stuff out there that the JAG will say, it's not worth it. Nothing like being the test case that the Washington Post puts on the front page.

I remember Article 15s for sunburns which affected duty.....so I could see a suicide attempt being misconduct.

can he flag or bar - for the duration of the person not being fit for duty - I would say yes - remember, until the person is cleared bt the appropriate medical professionals, this person will not be able to carry, handle any fire arms or weapons - this does effect unit readiness. Naturally, the first concern would be getting the soldier the help they need in order to ensure they are no longer a threat to themselves or others. after that, the Commander must concern themselves with unit readiness and how the person will re intergrate with the unit.