Grossadmiral Karl Donitz, commander of the German Navy, was among the defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials. He was spared the noose but sent to Spandau Prison for 10 years.
Donitz was found guilty of violating rules of war, his crime being an order that U-boat commanders not rescue survivors from ships they had torpedoed. Unlike those left at sea, and 30,000 U-boat crewmen, Dönitz lived to 89 and died in his bed.
Seventy-nine years post-Nuremberg, the United States faces an eerily similar situation. Was it a war crime to order a second air strike to “take out” two survivors from 11 persons aboard a suspected drug smugglers’ boat bombed in the Caribbean?
Who was responsible? Secretary of Defense — oops, Secretary of War — Pete Hegseth or Admiral Frank Bradley? The second strike belies a wider question. Is the Trump Administration violating rules of war with interdictions that have (so far) hit 22 boats and killed 87 persons? No evidence has been put forward that any of these individuals were traffickers.
The U.S. Navy handbook provides for the rescue of enemy combatants, but says they “qualify as shipwrecked persons only if they have ceased all active combat activity.” The Pentagon justification? One survivor, clinging to drugboat wreckage, had placed an outbound call — for rescue or perhaps to rescue some very wet cocaine.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, saw film of the second strike at a classified briefing on Thursday. He reported seeing “two shirtless guys clinging to wreckage.”
David French, the New York Times columnist, found this passage from the DOD’s Law of War Manual: “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 the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would clearly be illegal.”
Of course, President Trump has neither legal knowledge nor any moral compass. And Hegseth is about fabricating “facts” to justify his actions. He is a guy who could strut sitting down. But the country is worried. Have we committed war crimes — in the Caribbean or by supporting Israel with arms that have killed 60,000 Palestinians And who bears responsibility?
The “obeying orders” defense was destroyed at Nuremberg. But it has been exumed under Trump, as air strike justification and bragging rights. In Trump fashion, POTUS covers himself with praise while ducking responsibility.
He declared war on drug cartels — including one in Venezuela that doesn’t exist — and ordered the air strike. However, he’s claimed not to have known about or ordered the second strike — only to flip once more and say he approved of it.
We’re supposed to do things differently, as a moral model to the world. But Trump Administration is headed in the opposite direction. The president is ordering our military to summarily kill people, targeting small fry in boats while pardoning an ex-president of Honduras who turned his country into a way station for U.S.-bound drugs.
“Obeying orders,” as defined by Nuremberg defendants, required obedience of Hitler’s every command. We had no choice, they argued. Not so, if you obey the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, the Navy’s rules, and Department of Defense manual.
Once, covering the New Hampshire primary, I sat down with a Great Generation retiree, a Battle of Anzio veteran volunteering in the John McCain campaign. His company liberated a squad of U.S. commandos who’d been behind enemy lines for some weeks.
The German corps commander in the region, Gen. Anton Dostler, obeying Hitler’s “Commando Order,” had ordered the execution of 15 captured commandos — all in full uniform. The U.S. Army caught up with Dostler, put him on trial, and sent him before a firing squad.
Different commander, different front, different choice. Two British commandos, captured in France, were astonished when Field Marshal Erwin Rommel paid them a visit. The Desert Fox was angling for intelligence information. He got none but left off a loaf of French bread, a bottle of red wine and assurance the Brits would be sent to POW camp.
War is hell. Lawlessness makes it even more hellish. Killing gets out of control, witness the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers at My Lai. The slaughter of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers was so savage that even Germany sought to intervene.
Killing alleged smugglers in boats is a macho exercise for a president denied Vietnam-era military service due to the malady of bone spurs. Setting legal considerations aside, where does it get us? You can’t move intelligence-gathering up the chain of command if you kill their soldiers.
But that doesn’t matter to folks running our government. Consider this social media post from a score-keeping Pete Hegseth: “Everyone we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
Did he take identification and run the names through a membership list? Of course not. Nor does Hegseth hesitate to deploy lethal force to political ends, writing: “Biden coddled terrorists. We kill them.” What has this country come to? Fox News morality? Or government by the sort of people who excused and even lionized My Lai platoon commander Lt. William Calley?
We defined and enforced laws of war and humanity at Nuremberg and the court martial of Gen. Dostler. Obedience is not a defense nor justification for targeting two guys clinging to the burning wreckage of an already-bombed boat.
Enough with hollow rationales. It is time to face an unpleasant fact. The chain of command does not stop with the president, the defense secretary or the admiral. The American people bear ultimate responsibility for actions of their government. Silence gives consent.
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
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