Press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the apparent war crime was legal even as she said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knew nothing about it.
The White House on Monday shifted the blame for killing the survivors of a U.S. military strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and onto the commanding admiral.
Killing survivors of a destroyed vessel is literally an example of a war crime in the U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual. “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual reads.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nevertheless, repeatedly stated that it was legal – even as she further claimed, as Donald Trump did Sunday, that Hegseth was unaware that it had happened.
Depends on the accused, in case of the general it would probably be a court martial. But for the Secretary of Defence I’m not sure, might be a civil court in that case. Either way I was talking about US courts deciding on this violation of international law. There never were international courts the US would obey.
Well, you can sue for anything in civil court… But if they tried to sue the person, and not the gov, it would get tossed immediately. And the courts have established very narrow conditions to allow it if the act happened outside the US.
Oh I didn’t mean civil as opposed to criminal. I meant civil as opposed to martial.
Only if hegseth and trump wanted him to. Which they don’t.
No you are still not following. I think if Hegseth was indicted it wouldn’t be by a court-martial, because the Secretary of Defense is technically a civilian elected to an office and not an enlisted member of the armed services.
He didn’t break any US laws because the manual isn’t law, and the action happened outside the US. So I think all that can happen is he gets impeached by congress.
The manual is just giving an interpretation of the obligations arising from the Geneva convention, to which the US is a signatory and which it has ratified, so it actually is a law (the prohibition on killing helpless survivors, not the the Law of War manual). Also the action happened inside the US, since the action in question when talking about Hegseth is the alleged order to not leave any survivors.
It being law in the US is highly questionable. But again, the op wasn’t talking about the geneva convention, it was talking about the manual. And while the manual is “A” interpretation of international law, it isn’t the only one. So he can’t be tried for going against the manual. If someone wants to claim he violated the parts of the grneva convention that congress agreed to, which is not all. That would be different. But that isn’t what the post was about. And if they could reasonably do so, they probably would have.
What? How so? Do you not know how international law works? The US legislature ratified it, which makes it a law in the US.
What law do you think the “Law of War” manual is referring to? It’s the Geneva Convention.
This is getting a bit silly. The manual is basically all former US administrations since the ratification of the Geneva Convention specifically stating that what the current US administration did is a war crime under it. Since at the time of the incident the Geneva Convention was applicable (as it still is now since the US didn’t withdraw from it) the people involved in the incident could be tried under it, possibly by the next administration.
That is exactly what the post was about. What the hell are you talking about?