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.
Hmm. I wonder if this video was posted in preparation for them looking into 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.
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.
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/
Needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read this due to lack of alt text
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
Pure image of text right there.
Edit: 👍
I have provided a link instead so users can verify the veracity of my claim.
- usability
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.
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.
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.
“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<<
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.
They are
That’s a good law. Now if we could only enforce it.
#GOOD
Good
