Trump threats cause dilemma for US officers: disobey orders or commit war crimes.
Legal experts say attacking Iran’s infrastructure would constitute a war crime – but would military officers be held responsible?
Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes.
It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. In an expletive-laden threat, Trump set a Tuesday 8pm Washington time deadline for the Iranian government to open the strait of Hormuz or face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one”.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
Three days earlier, the president had made clear what he meant by “Power Day”.
“We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously,” he said in prepared remarks that were amplified by the state department’s social media accounts.
There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.
“Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday.
“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”
They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages”, and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel had been “trained to follow their entire careers”.
I really feel for our flag officers especially. They have to obey orders or get booted. If they get booted now they won't be available when push comes to shove. I believe a lot of them are thinking about what might eventually have to be done. I hope they hang in there.
There's no doubt in my mind that the Army Chief of Staff Gen Randall George who was fired last week told them he couldn't go along with this any more. Or at least he indicated as much. Of course they trashed a good man on his way out.
@MoveAlong I feel even worse for the enlisted men. Flag officers are at points in their careers where they can retire and walk away. Most enlisted men are not. Further more, they are much more embedded into the brotherhood of their unit, and day-to-day culture of obeying orders from their unit's officer(s). And at least one article I have read, said training on what constitutes an illegal order and access to chaplain and other in-house counseling on what constitutes war crimes has been essentially eliminated by Hegseth and they need to go outside the military to get assistance on those issues.
