The dishonorable strikes against Venezuelan boats

THE Messages The story of a deliberate attack on survivors takes the situation to a new level of moral depravity and legal recklessness. On Friday, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, wrote that the administration could present a “conceivable” argument in defense of the boat strikes. But, Goldsmith continued, “there can be no conceivable legal justification” for attacking survivors. A group of about 40 high-ranking former military lawyers created in February after Hegseth fired the judge advocate generals of the Army, Air Force and Navy (he called them “roadblocks to orders given by a commander in chief”) went further. “The Former JAG Task Force unanimously considers that the giving and execution of these orders, if true, constitute war crimes, murder, or both,” they wrote. The group’s list is not public, in part because of fears of retaliation, but one member, Steven Lepper, a retired Air Force major general and former Air Force judge advocate, told me he thinks Hegseth should be prosecuted for murder. “Kill them all. This is not an order that can be followed,” Lepper said.

If the Job The story is correct, Hegseth’s initial order and the subsequent attack on the two survivors violate two fundamental and intersecting principles of the law of war. One of them is the prohibition of orders to “give no quarter,” that is, to refuse offers of surrender or to summarily execute detainees. The Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which provides what it describes as authoritative legal advice on military conduct, states categorically: “It is unlawful to declare that no quarter will be given.” » The second concerns the protections granted to those who are considered hors de combat. Again, from the Law of War Manual: “Combatants placed hors de combat must not be the object of attack. » According to the JobAdmiral Bradley implausibly claimed that survivors of the ship strike “were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call on other traffickers to collect them and their cargo.” The manual, however, rejects such justifications: “Persons who have been incapacitated by injury, disease, or shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack.” » Even the usually hawkish Trump seemed uncomfortable with the killings, telling reporters he was convinced Hegseth had not given the order to eliminate the survivors, and adding: “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike.” (On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took a different approach, saying that “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, leading the engagement to ensure the destruction of the boat and the elimination of the threat to the United States of America.”)

In this case, the Job The report was released the week after six Democratic members of Congress, all from military or intelligence backgrounds, released a video reminding members of the military of their duty to disobey illegal orders. “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” said Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain. The Trump administration has taken a whole-of-government stance on retaliation. Trump called the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” The Pentagon quickly announced it was investigating Kelly for “serious allegations of misconduct” — a move that could theoretically lead to Kelly being recalled to active duty and subject to court-martial. (The other lawmakers are outside the Pentagon’s jurisdiction, either because they did not serve long enough to retire or, in the case of Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, because they worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.) The lawmakers later reported that the FBI was seeking to schedule interviews with them.

It is possible that the horror of the strike on survivors, combined with the administration’s scant legal explanations for boat strikes in general, evokes a most elusive event: a bipartisan backlash. The day after Job According to this story, Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee promised “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.” The chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee then promised to “provide a full account of the operation in question.” Speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and previously chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said of the Job “Obviously, if that happened, it would be very serious, and I agree that it would be an illegal act.” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said on ABC’s “This Week” that he was “very suspicious” that Hegseth “would be stupid enough” to have issued such an order. But, he continued, “if it were as the article says, it would be a violation of the laws of war. When people want to surrender, you don’t kill them, and they must pose an imminent threat. It’s hard to believe that two people on a raft, trying to survive, would pose an imminent threat.”

Anyone who has witnessed the behavior of this Republican-controlled Congress over the past ten months should not be sure that these are the beginnings of newly asserted legislative power. But what will happen if and when video of the incident — it exists, because the administration released a redacted version — becomes available, showing the survivors and their killing? This could be a moment – ​​like My Lai, like Abu Ghraib – when the country would be shocked and remember its aspirations. “We’re supposed to be the good guys,” Lepper told me. “We have always prided ourselves on being an honorable army. We have crossed the line of obvious illegality and dishonor here.” ♦