No wonder Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a TV talk show bully, is threatening to attempt to punish the Congresscritters [gift] who have reminded our military that its members have an obligation to refuse unlawful orders. Hegseth is reported to have ordered Seal Team 6 to ensure that any survivors in his boat sinking binge in the Caribbean were assuredly dead [gift link]. He offers no proof that the US government had any intelligence which justified any strike at all, much less a killer hit to ensure no victims remained alive.
The secession of the Trump regime and the United States generally from any attempt to uphold the idea that there are such things as "war crimes" marks a terrifying breach with the last 80 years of the development of the international law of armed conflict. We aren't recognizing any limits any longer. This way portends unimaginable carnage.
Phillips P. O'Brien, professor of Strategic Studies at St. Andrews University and an acute observer of the Russian war on Ukraine, saw this development coming. In the world being launched into being under the axis of Trump, Putin, and Xi, what had been defined as criminal acts are returning as the definition of a successful means of waging war.
... what we are seeing now around the globe is the disappearance of any restraint, what we might call the normalizing of war crimes. Yes, I know war crimes have always been committed. However it was notable that during the period of the International Rules Based Order (now arguably over) states at least wanted to act like they were not committing war crimes. Now that pretense is over—and that means that the reality will be worse.
As ranged weapons become more numerous, accurate and effective, and as restraints on what can be attacked lessen or even disappear, this will mean the great incentive will be to try and achieve strategic effect through devastating attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Fighting on the battlefield will be seen as a slow, bloody slog through death zones—while ranged war crimes will be seen as faster and more effective. So when we add up what we are seeing, its terrifying and ethically bankrupt, but also strategically rational. It may very well represent the future of war.Russia in Ukraine, with United States encouragement, is now executing a law-free pattern of unbounded murder. All to satisfy the greedy desires of fanciful oligarchs.
O'Brien today still points out something we should remember. Faced with invasion and internal corruption, nonetheless...
... Ukrainian democracy has proven itself now to be more resilient than American democracy...
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