There is an increasing apprehension among service members that they may be asked to carry out an illegal order, amid reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered troops to “kill everybody” in a boat strike in September.
The concerns, reflected in an uptick in calls to the Orders Project — which provides free legal advice to military personnel — come from the likes of staff officers involved in planning the strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats and those in charge of designating those on the vessels as a threat in order to carry out such attacks.
Even as a reported Justice Department classified memo from this summer preemptively argued that U.S. troops involved in the strikes would not be in legal jeopardy, service members appear far more concerned than usual that the U.S. military may be opening them up to legal harm, according to Frank Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, which runs the Orders Project.
I hope they all noticed Pete Hegseth is a coward who immediately tried to blame it on the guy he ordered. If an order is at all questionable, you will be hung out to dry. Blame only goes downhill
How about if everybody just collectively ignores Trump’s authority
Don’t fucking fear it. Pay attention and deny them when they skulk around
Throw the book at everyone in the entire chain that planned and executed this.
Not that Hegseth, Trump, or those who love them give one little shit about things like this, but I’ll point out the part of the War Manual where DOUBLE TAPPING SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS IS THE LITERAL EXAMPLE OF AN ILLEGAL ORDER
here’s a really good writeup that leaves no question in my mind about the unlawful nature of this, even though we are not in a state of war (so it’s not a war crime, just a crime crime): https://www.justsecurity.org/125948/illegal-orders-shipwrecked-boat-strike-survivors/
And the people committing these illegal acts … they’re breaking global human rights laws for a soulless drunkard who would throw them all under the bus before he took any responsibility for himself. The consequences after this all won’t be pleasant (for the soldiers at least. This guy will probably get off the hook)
Imagine throwing away your life for that … absolutely pathetic.
Just don’t do the bad thing. There ya go, soldiers, fixed that connumdrum for ya.
This isn’t medieval fantasy where not listening will get the evil wizard king to kill you with arcane spells beyond your comprehension. The US is still barely clinging onto the last, thin shred of civility required which makes it so that you will not need to fear for your life if you tell someone to take their warcrime and go fuck themselves with it. Hegseth is a drunkard who can’t even do a pull-up, you’ll be fine.
This was all foreseeable long in advance:
We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.
Pete Hegseth [Source]
It is, after all, a criminal regime. Anyone who supports it is complicit and should bear in mind that it will not be those at the top who bear the consequences.
warfighters
lol
Yea, if this second-rate talk show host really wanted to hunt down the enemies of the country, he and his glorified “warfighters” would have to go after himself and all that criminal MAGA scum.
But he certainly won’t do that. Instead, he’d rather continue murdering people in violation of international law and perhaps terrorize the US population a little more.
Even as a reported Justice Department classified memo from this summer preemptively argued that U.S. troops involved in the strikes would not be in legal jeopardy, service members appear far more concerned than usual that the U.S. military may be opening them up to legal harm
As they should be. “Just following orders” is no defense to war crimes.
Pete Hegseth <-- claims he didn’t authorize illegal strike
Pete Hegseth <-- authorized illegal strike
But there was also a whole chain of people that had to carry out those illegal orders. A whole chain of people who have the responsibility to deny carrying out illegal orders.
They should all be arrested
Yep
Yep, and I’m certain some of them knew exactly what an obvious illegal order this was. You don’t do follow-up strikes on enemies who are disabled and out of the fight. That is basic, basic shit. It’s cruel, unnecessary, and dishonorable. That’s gang and terrorist shit and we’re supposed to be better than our enemies about this stuff or what’s the point.
That’s gang and terrorist shit and we’re supposed to be better than our enemies about this stuff or what’s the point.
Uh… on this particular war crime I have about twenty years of US history for you and you are not going to like it. To respond to your rhetorical question, the point is cheap and profitable oil contracts to increase shareholder value.
Oh for sure I’m not saying we haven’t been doing the same thing in the Middle East for literal decades at this point. Mosques, weddings, kids, civilians. I guess a double tap on some anonymous drowning civilians, from a nation were aren’t engaged in combat with, who might have had drugs in their boat, and who were disabled and in the water and posed no possible threat, just hits even harder than a lot of the other ridiculous terrible shit we’ve done.
Why would innocent civilians be on a drug boat?
omg so true, changed my mind, blow up anyone anywhere on Earth of whom that question could be asked please.
There is a distinction between what Hegseth did and what Obama did. Not a good one, but maybe it would result in action against Hegseth.
The purpose of Obama’s drone strikes was murder. So if they didn’t get the murder they were looking for, a second strike was necessary. I imagine they announced a terrorist was killed and everybody was happy.
The purpose of Hegseth’s murder was to destroy a drug boat. Once the boat was destroyed, any additional strike goes against the purpose of the mission.
Anyway, I have no confidence anything will come of this, but I am happy it is making waves. Maybe it will enter mainstream news and will force them to quit the strikes.
As someone else pointed out… Its actually the example they use of an illegal order in the DOD manual.
Page 1117 18.3.2.1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23892053-dod-law-of-war-manual-june-2015-updated-july-2023/
OMG RTFM Hegseth!
Also, I say Hegseth and we all know Trump is right there, but he’s already thrown him under the bus by saying he never approved of a second strike.
I honestly don’t know how much Trump actually cares about the details. He just wants Maduro out of there and an agreement that his cronies get a big helping of their oil profits.
Oh, for sure, try them all, but especially Pete Hegseth.
Hmm. I wonder if this video was posted in preparation for them looking into this?
“Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional and has my 100 percent support,” Hegseth wrote on social media. “I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.”
it wasn’t me<<
Jesus Christ, they’re all illegal war crimes. This includes Trump and Biden and Obama and Bush and Clinton.
Fair, but these aren’t even war crimes, as we aren’t in combat operations against some group that these guys belonged to. It’s just a boat with some dudes on it, belonging to a gang (maybe) carrying we don’t really know what headed to we don’t really know where. But they seemed enough like drug runners that we we blew them up then came back around to murder the survivors. So this would be bad enough if it were a war crime, and we had known for sure who these guys were and what they were carrying. But it was wasn’t a war crime, it was just a crime crime, carried out with almost zero information against anonymous non-combatants who were disabled and likely drowning anyway. Our drone strikes in general are terrible crimes, most of them, but this one does have reasons it stands out.
When a military kills civilians, it is absolutely a war crime.
I’m only phrasing it that way because people who I assume know much better than me what this is all about made the following conclusion (emphasis mine):
The Sept. 2 strikes on the purported drug boat neither violated the law of armed conflict nor amounted to war crimes, because they did not occur during an armed conflict. However, if the facts are as reported, there is little question that the order by Secretary Hegseth and the ensuing order by Admiral Bradley to conduct the second strike were unlawful, because the killing of the two survivors was a serious violation of international human rights law.
Moreover, both orders were clearly unlawful. Under well-established law, those who complied with the orders cannot escape individual criminal responsibility for the killing of the two survivors in the event they are brought to trial in a U.S. military court-martial, a federal trial, or a domestic criminal proceeding in another State that has jurisdiction, for instance, based on the nationality of the victims. If actually issued, these orders irresponsibly and unlawfully placed all those involved in the attack in serious legal jeopardy. If the reporting is accurate, those orders should, as a matter of law, have been refused.
personally, I don’t disagree that this feels like a war crime, it was ordered by the SecDef, after all, with a whole chain of command and everything. But according to these experts, who’s analysis I trust to be way better than mine, this doesn’t officially fall under the category war crime. Crime? Yes. Crime against humanity? You betcha. Massive international human rights violation? All day baby. But technically not a war crime, by the strict definition. But if you prefer the colloquial definition of “if a soldier is ordered to do it, it’s a war crime” I can’t say I really disagree with you.
Edit: yeah ok dang dudes I’m not like, in charge of what is what, I’m just quoting information I thought was well-sourced and well-reasoned from some extremely qualified experts. If you want to send your corrections in to this institute and argue with them if you think your knowledge is superior to theirs , then please do so with my blessing. He’s a Professor of International Law at the University of Reading, Affiliate at Harvard Law School’s Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, and Visiting Research Professor at the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, so best of luck. For myself I’m literally saying I can’t disagree that this sounds like a war crime so be chill.
Stop spreading misinformation. The ICC and ICJ don’t give a shit if the country considers itself at war. These are war crimes because it was a military that executed it.
If it were police doing extra judicial killing, then it would be called Crimes Against Humanity.
hey man, you’re welcome to take it up with the people who came to that conclusion:
Michael Schmitt is Professor of International Law at the University of Reading, Affiliate at Harvard Law School’s Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, and Visiting Research Professor at the International Institute of Humanitarian Law. He formerly served as the G. Norman Lieber Distinguished Scholar at West Point, Chair of the Stockton Center for International Law at the US Naval War College, where he is Professor Emeritus, Dean of the George C. Marshall Center European Center for Security Studies, and Professor of Law at the University of Exeter, Durham University, and the United States Air Force Academy. Professor Schmitt is a retired U.S. Air Force judge advocate, having specialized in international and operational law. He is the General Editor of the Lieber Studies series (OUP) and sits on many international law advisory and editorial boards.
Ryan Goodman is founding co-editor-in-chief of Just Security. He is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. He served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2015-16). Ryan is also a Professor of Politics and Professor of Sociology at NYU. He was the inaugural Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Harvard Law School. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.D. from Yale University, and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Tess Bridgeman is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security. She served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President, Associate Counsel to the President, and Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) during the Obama administration. She also served at the State Department in the Office of the Legal Adviser as Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser and, prior to that role, as an Attorney Adviser in the Office of Political-Military Affairs. Bridgeman is a Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at NYU Law School’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, where she created the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project. She is an affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), lectures at Berkeley Law, and is a former chair of the American Society of International Law (ASIL)’s Strategic Initiatives Committee. Bridgeman has a D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar; a JD from NYU Law School, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, which she attended as a Root-Tilden-Kern and Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar; and a BA from Stanford University.
Go accuse them of spreading disinfo if you feel like it they wrote it jeez.
They’re talking about domestic law. I’m talking about international law
Again, it doesn’t fucking matter what the US says. What matters is what the ICC and ICJ says.
Please stop spreading misinformation. Then narrative that US laws matter might even be spreading disinformation
Are they though?
Under the Nuremberg Principles, war crimes are different from crimes against peace. Crimes against peace include planning, preparing, initiating, or waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. Because the definition of a state of “war” may be debated, the term “war crime” itself has seen different usage under different systems of international and military law. It has some degree of application outside of what some may consider being a state of “war”, but in areas where conflicts persist enough to constitute social instability.
…
War crimes also include such acts as mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilians
…
War crimes also included deliberate attacks on citizens and property of neutral states, such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As the attack on Pearl Harbor happened while the U.S. and Japan were at peace and without a just cause for self-defense, the attack was declared by the Tokyo Trials to go beyond justification of military necessity and therefore constituted a war crime.
And human rights watch called the single taps all war crimes.
It’s not just the double taps that should cause these people to be dragged to the Hague.
Are the soldiers obligated to rescue shipwrecked survivors? I ask because, if not, this seems bizarrely stupid (or right in line for this admin). They could just leave them in the water and it would probably accomplish the same thing (I don’t approve of it, to be clear, but it seems less shortsighted). Even if they are, they could pretend not to notice them.
#GOOD
Good
