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Drug Boat Strike

Hotdogs said:
You’re getting into SROE territory here and in which those situations are detailed. No one here probably has that information. Unless some one wants to dig up the litany of annexes in the OPORD and spill it all over the internet. Also provides a solid case for prosecuting said perpetrators if they state otherwise and there’s evidence to support.
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number9 said:
Agree to disagree, I guess.
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Yeah, I understand what you're saying but not my point. My point is that personal target elimination has been a mission set since the onset of GWOT, it just wasn't done at sea (publicly, because that's what SPECWAR does).

So I guess I'll come out and say it...

Say what you will about the administration, I don't personally give a shit.

But the orders were passed down through several echelons of command with advice of their SJAs, and they arrived at the conclusion that the order to eliminate the people was lawful. And this wasn't a snap decision by a 4-star like some 20-something year old Washington Post writer who would rather move to Russia than serve in the military would imply, this was promulgated in mission orders and discussed among commanders as part of the operational planning process.

And somewhere at the end of the spear were several people who executed an order they disagreed with but were told was lawful.

If you think the SECDEF got on the EHF net and gave an order to engage the target in-situ... well, I don't know what to tell you. That didn't happen. You know better.

So when you accuse people of committing a crime, you're accusing our brothers and sisters in arms who are currently deployed doing a mission where our CiC has done a piss-poor job at explaining its importance. You're not accusing the Secretary of Defense.

Calling them war criminals is treating them like we treated our Vietnam veterans. Don't do that.
 
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Spekkio said:
Calling them war criminals is treating them like we treated our Vietnam veterans. Don't do that.
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The facts still need to be adjudicated, so yes such a statement is premature.

However, there were cases of war crimes in Vietnam as well, e.g. My Lai.

If people were in the water, unable to engage in hostilities, and they were directly targeted by U.S. forces for elimination, I can't see how this is anything other than murder.

We're all taught about progressive force and use of deadly force for standing a basic quarterdeck watch. You don't shoot someone in the back absent exigent circumstances like defense of others, theft of top secret data, etc. This seems like the textbook case for not blindly following illegal orders given what we know.
 
Only one person in Mai Lai was convicted - the platoon commander, who was later pardoned, because reality is that he was scapegoated and we shouldn't expect a butter bar on his first mission to override the orders of his company commander. Contrary to popular belief, "I was following orders I thought were lawful" is, in fact, a defense.

The ugly truth is that Mai Lai was another "Tuesday" in our search and destroy strategy that was sanctioned by LBJ. This happened before, and senior leadership knew it. LBJ just threw people under the bus when the media caught wind of it.

No NCO or platoon grade officer was going to get fragged over refusing to conduct the mission.

So stripping away personal opinion - case law says that you should follow orders given to you.

We're all taught about progressive force and use of deadly force for standing a basic quarterdeck watch. You don't shoot someone in the back absent exigent circumstances like defense of others, theft of top secret data, etc. This seems like the textbook case for not blindly following illegal orders given what we know.
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Don't conflate self-defense with deliberate strike.
 
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Spekkio said:
Yeah, I understand what you're saying but not my point. My point is that personal target elimination has been a mission set since the onset of GWOT, it just wasn't done at sea (publicly, because that's what SPECWAR does).

So I guess I'll come out and say it...

Say what you will about the administration, I don't personally give a shit.

But the orders were passed down through several echelons of command with advice of their SJAs, and they arrived at the conclusion that the order to eliminate the people was lawful. And this wasn't a snap decision by a 4-star like some 20-something year old Washington Post writer who would rather move to Russia than serve in the military would imply, this was promulgated in mission orders and discussed among commanders as part of the operational planning process.

And somewhere at the end of the spear were several people who executed an order they disagreed with but were told was lawful.

If you think the SECDEF got on the EHF net and gave an order to engage the target in-situ... well, I don't know what to tell you. That didn't happen. You know better.

So when you accuse people of committing a crime, you're accusing our brothers and sisters in arms who are currently deployed doing a mission where our CiC has done a piss-poor job at explaining its importance. You're not accusing the Secretary of Defense.

Calling them war criminals is treating them like we treated our Vietnam veterans. Don't do that.
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I'm not sure if you're responding specifically to me but: I haven't said anything about the administration, nor have I accused anyone of committing a crime, or of being a war criminal.
 
I agree that there is a lot in this story that is suspect. In my experience while working with SOF in Afghanistan and Iraq, senior commanders always had the same person in the chair to their left…the SJA. In one end of tour interview I conducted the SJA actually sat in. Flag officers like Bradley don’t just say, “Hey, the fellas at the Five Sided War Hut on the Potomac said shoot, so shoot.” This strike got the nod from more than one SJA and probably a few politicians.

I do think that Trump has handled this horribly, but that’s his style. When Obama killed a few Americans outside the accepted boundaries of the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters his response was solid, saying, “As president, ultimately I’m responsible for decisions that are made by the administration," and said an "extensive process" is behind such decisions. I also agree that Congress should do their job and investigate.
 
number9 said:
I quoted the law of war manual in response to your hypothetical. I'm not a JAG but that's not the same thing as calling someone a war criminal...
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Let's cut through middle school reading level / comprehension where we would take everything literally and don't analyze for implications or context.
 
Griz882 said:
I do think that Trump has handled this horribly, but that’s his style. When Obama killed a few Americans outside the accepted boundaries of the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters his response was solid, saying, “As president, ultimately I’m responsible for decisions that are made by the administration," and said an "extensive process" is behind such decisions. I also agree that Congress should do their job and investigate.
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Congress should do its job and take back its Constitutional responsibility to VOTE on hostilities.

That doesn't just go for Venezuela... it goes for ISIS, Libya, Syria, etc, etc.

99% of the belly-aching goes away if the President actually had a AUMF instead of stretching the limits of the 2001 GWOT AUMF.
 
Spekkio said:
Congress should do its job and take back its Constitutional responsibility to VOTE on hostilities.

That doesn't just go for Venezuela... it goes for ISIS, Libya, Syria, etc, etc.

99% of the belly-aching goes away if the President actually had a AUMF instead of stretching the limits of the 2001 GWOT AUMF.
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Spot on…it is a duty they have surrendered.
 
Griz882 said:
I agree that there is a lot in this story that is suspect. In my experience while working with SOF in Afghanistan and Iraq, senior commanders always had the same person in the chair to their left…the SJA. In one end of tour interview I conducted the SJA actually sat in. Flag officers like Bradley don’t just say, “Hey, the fellas at the Five Sided War Hut on the Potomac said shoot, so shoot.” This strike got the nod from more than one SJA and probably a few politicians.
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I have zero insight to any of the actual facts of this situation other than what's being reported in the media...but I actually WAS (one of) ADM Bradley's SJAs for many kinetic operations several years back. I can confidently say he was one of the most thoughtful, moral, deliberate leaders I ever worked for, and I never once saw him make any decision that I believed was legally/morally/ethically questionable. FWIW, which may be nothing...
 
Lionel Hutz said:
I never once saw him make any decision that I believed was legally/morally/ethically questionable.
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Good context, though I think we can all acknowledge that there's a very different dynamic now in place with the current SD. A guy who screams at VCJCS that he's going to polygraph him may not take pushback on legalities the same way as a Lloyd Austin or Mark Esper.
 
Spekkio said:
Let's cut through middle school reading level / comprehension where we would take everything literally and don't analyze for implications or context.
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Let's not accuse people of making derogatory statements about others without them, you know, actually making the statements.
 
Spekkio said:
2001 GWOT AUMF
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9/11 was done by Saudis drug cartels. Any further questions?

For what it’s worth, actions against hors de combat is one the gravest of battlefield sins (my SJA’s legal opinion, not mine, given prior the surfacing of this debacle). There is a premise that we operate at a high moral and ethical character as professional officers of the US military, and that’s what most of us signed on for. That promise, that backing, is seemingly becoming questionable, and we are rapidly putting our operators and tactical aviators in positions we never should be.

There is a massive difference between operating on bad intelligence or assessments in good faith, and operating on questionable intelligence in bad faith.
 
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