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.

  • DandomRude@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    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.

      • DandomRude@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        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.