Fears grow inside military over illegal orders after Hegseth authorized follow-up boat strike

I don’t understand why it isn’t illegal from the beginning to strike against unarmed boats just because you claim that they smuggle drugs. Okay and let’s pretend that they do indeed. Why don’t you arrest the traffickers when they reach the american coast. Where the hell does the international law permit striking without provocation?

>“I think most people knew they did their jobs faithfully and didn’t do things that are beyond the pale, like executing civilians, that they would be OK and wouldn’t be prosecuted. So now to have this immunity as part of the discussion really tends to chill people and make them ask, ‘What the heck’s going on? What is it that I might be asked to do?’” he added.

This is the unspoken social contract service members have with their leaders. They understand that they don’t have the scope and expertise that their leaders might have and ultimately must place trust in them to do the right thing at higher levels and ensure batshit orders do not filter down to the people actually carrying out operations. You operate in good faith, you do what you can with the time and resources you have to ensure what you’re doing is legal, and you trust that there are a lot of really smart, experienced, oathbound people above you that are setting you up for success.

People can judge all day from the sidelines and there are cases where the illegality of an order should be obvious, but the reality is that when the 22-year-old button presser is told to press the button via an order that has literally passed through the hands of at least a couple dozen legal experts there’s only so much they can be expected to do in order to ensure those orders are on the level.

In return, leaders are supposed to accept responsibility for anything that makes it past them. If someone’s going to go after a junior service member for this I expect to see the entire chain of command go down at the same time, along with all of the lawyers that are responsible for advising all of those commanders.

There was a video made about illegal orders and they still upheld the orders.

The best thing the administration can do here is punish the Admiral and anyone else involved. That will dispel the illusion that the administration will protect you for just following orders.

Someone should go to prison for life. Even of it’s not the Chucklefuck of War himself. They say severe sentences are a deterrent to others not to commit crimes.

That said, the someone is WhiskeyLeaks who should do life behind bars for war criming.

Fears of what? Losing your career for refusing to follow unlawful orders? How about integrity and honor? Demonstrating moral courage should be as much at the center of the military ethos as showing physical courage. 

Any servicemen that followed them are liable.

Haven’t I been reading for the last few weeks that Republicans are absolutely flabbergasted that Democrats are telling US military personnel they can refuse illegal orders?

Don’t worry folks only those on the front lines will be thrown under the bus. Everyone else will be surprisingly unaware of what happened.

Our government is an embarrassment and the pentagon is disgraceful. These people all need to pay for their behavior and betrayal of the oaths they took.

Pete managed to commit the one war crime that’s literally used as THE EXAMPLE of a war crime

DoD Law of War Manual:

18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations. The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.

(This isn’t mine but I forgot to save what redditor did. Credit should be theirs)

It’s pretty incredible how they are now trying to scapegoat everything onto an admiral. Perhaps he never read Jocko Wilick’s “Extreme Ownership.”