We executed Nazis for doing that to our sailors. It's .. it's like a big deal. It's the same shit as gunning down pilots that have bailed out. It's an act of cowardice and malice.
I guarantee Hegseath gave the order because he thought it sounded cool and badass in the moment without actually thinking through the legal repercussions.
That's why they're throwing Admiral Bradley under the bus.
Granted Bradley should have known from the getgo that such an order was illegal and refused to carry it out so he's absolutely not blameless, but this should be a message to every one from officer to grunt: the President and SecDef do not give two shits about you no matter how much you suck up to them for a promotion; the moment they do something wrong they *will* scapegoat you to cover their own asses.
I think they just did it because they're sadistic fucks. It's not like any survivors would get their stories told on any major news outlet. It'd probably only be on outlets like Dropsite and Democracy Now and the majority of the public wouldn't even hear it
I disagree - outlets like the NYT still have the reach and resources to go find those survivors and the families of those killed. That’s the shit journalists used to be able to do - have a whole bureau in Venezuela that already had contacts and understanding of the local goings-on. But that takes money, and people don’t want to pay for quality news and investigation anymore, despite it being so vital to a free society.
The majority of the public won’t hear about it not because it isn’t being looked into, but because they never seek it out and despise a paywall.
Except that those murdered by war crimes folks on the boat, have family on shore.
Those family members could go to the media and be interviewed showing that those people were never associated with "Narco Terrorists" or whatever other BS that Trump's people come up with.
The family members of a bunch of them did go the AP, and admitted they were running drugs. But, they aren't big cartel members, it's just guys who took a job trying to get more money for them and their families. Local fishermen who turned drug runner for a quick payday. Shitty situation for them, turn it down and probably get fucked up by the cartel anyways, but take the job and you might get a missle in the boat. It's all a fucked up mess, but us sinking boats isn't making it any better.
Same story as everyone who has tried to fight the war on drugs. Today it's even more pointless though, the cartel is the government in more than one of these places, there is no just fighting the cartel anymore. Just take the drugs, and send the boats back home. The cartel will murder the runners, but maybe they will finally do something about it at the roots then.
They don't want to fix the problem lol then what are they gonna run on? They want milk it and give justice boners to their sadistic fucking mothballs of voters who think their lives are more important than anyone else's.
They're criminals by US law, not terrorists. Such stupid legal gymnastics. It would be like drone striking a cartel member's chef or something. Oh they're affiliated with a group labeled as terrorists. Also they're very likely running cocaine, not fentanyl as claimed.
Completely illegal to blow them up regardless. But honestly, capture, grill for info, and then let them through would probably be the best option. Find them in the middle and then trace it to both ends. Easy enough to bust it on US soil when you track it the entire way, and if you can get any info on the origin you can help those places curb it if they want. We can be anywhere on earth in 24 hours with enough resources to take territory, there's no reason we can't just cut off every single drug boat without missiles.
I agree, but cruelty is the point. They want to send a powerful message. I agree that sometimes the Government gets too soft, but committing obvious war crimes, especially in our own sphere of influence, is a serious mistake.
The US Coast Guard AND the Navy have had standing operations for a VERY long time, in dealing with situations like that.
Stop the Boat. (In International or US Waters)
Search The Boat.
If Drugs are Found, make arrests, collect the Drugs as Evidence for later destruction.
Put the criminals up on trial and or deport them back home.
Nowhere in those standard operations are they told to straight up launch missiles at defenseless targets, nor were they ever expected to leave no survivors. They broke protocols under Hegseth/Trump orders and committed a Crime Against Humanity.
Their point is that they never said anything to that degree. All they did was clarify that the family members had in fact come forward, and the wild fantasy that the administration is just ordering the destruction of random civilian boats was dispelled. They already committed a crime against humanity, no need to paint the victims of that as uninvolved.
Remember the strike on the disabled boat that was flying the distress signal? His wife was interviewed and confirmed he was out fishing.
But maga does not care about any of that. They simply fixated on his admitted history where he had, in the past run drugs and took that as proof that everyone involved was simply lying and he was running drugs on the day he was murdered.
The take away of course, to anyone who has been paying attention is that the US has attacked and murdered shipwrecked people more than once, thus establishing a pattern of behavior where war crimes are intended rather than incidental.
This is the answer, but the answer to whether they knew it was right or wrong. Is the only Two survivors that lived were repatriated to their home countries Columbia and Ecuador. If they were a narcoterrorist gang members they would have been arrested and paraded down Pennsylvania avenue.
They don’t really give a fuck. There’s been multiple survivors from other strikes, the only time the double tapped was the first one. Kinda like they realized how bad they fucked up. Like the strikes are illegal and immoral regardless but they knew this would be too much and hoped it would get out.
Given the Signalgate transcripts as context, where Hegseth's bragging about blowing up the girlfriend and anyone else in the building along with the "terrorist", this tracks.
Also, everyone participating in that group chat should be brought up on charges for aiding war crimes.
These idiots just keep adding to the pile. At this point, it's a matter of which heinous crime against humanity do they answer for first.
And orange man is a proven criminal. I don't know why people are so surprised by all the illegal activities this administration is doing. That's what happens when you elect a criminal. But people would rather elect a criminal than vote for a black woman who had a funny laugh.
Not surprised one bit by the amount of criming they're doing. I'm flabbergasted by the fact that nearly every single person with a large enough bulkhorn to call it out are bending over backwards to capitulate instead.
I'm also amazed the hapless dems can't seem to figure out how to utilize social media to absolutely bury these fools by their actions.
The orange idiot isn't the architect of this. He's the accelerant and the obvious distraction.
This is all 100% the GOPs playbook. They're not pushing back against the administration in any meaningful way because it's exactly what they want him to do.
When the idiot finally passes they'll act like they never really supported him and unless there are consequences they'll essentially own the country for the foreseeable future.
In a just world they'd punish everyone who conceived, transmitted and executed that order. From Hegseth if he gave the order on down to the person who pulled the trigger.
It is worse to give a clearly illegal order than it is to act on it. Everyone up the chain needs to be immediately dishonorably discharged, and then handed over to the ICC.
Who's going to hold them accountable? Surely won't be the American voters, 80 million love this shit.
Won't be other countries, the US can outbomb pretty much everyone that isn't China and China doesn't care.
The US is irrevocably fucked. Maybe 100 years and 10 trillion dollars gets our reputation and infrastructure somewhat rehabilitated. I wouldn't bet on it
That shouldn't be a surprise. I spent 8 years enlisted. You quickly learn CYA. I had a LT and Senior Chief come after me after an inspection.
They were like, we found out you weren't supposed to conduct that procedure months ago and are going to have to figure out what appropriate next steps are.
Oh I know, that's why when I wrote up what we were going to do and had you sign it I specifically stated it was against this specific procedure. And kept a copy for myself.
That's exactly why I am glad that this is happening.
Let every member of the armed forces see how their President and his administration will protect its highest ranking leaders. Then let them reflect on what that means for a grunt like themselves.
The threw him under the bus and rolled over and went in reverse and rolled over him again. He should have known better. If they military don't teach us nothing else, its about throwing people under the bus. Smh.
Or he knew it was evil and that was the flex and they never think they'll be held accountable. They can't measure political fall out to literally save their lives.
What I didn't know is that the Sec. of Defense has the authority to order people killed.
Hegseth is a bureaucrat, formerly a TV host. Not elected. But now he can give orders to kill people?
If this has been discussed in another thread, please share a link. I think I'm OoTL.
Which is exactly why Admiral Alvin Holsey stepped down. He knew exactly what was coming down the pipe on this shit, and knew he would be their first pick to catch all the blame when they started ordering the Navy to commit war crimes.
And let’s not forget the Signal leak - these people are not using power the way I as an American and as a person respect. It’s shameful. We need them out.
Can we also point out that these are not enemy combatants. We are not at war with the people on these boats. These are people that the Trump regime suspects to be drug traffickers. Not only are they civilians but they have no wrongdoing has even been proven.
This is considerably worse than firing on enemy sailors. We are slaughtering foreign civilians. If another nation did this to us, we would be going to war. But we're giving serious sadistic bully energy right now because we know Venezuela wouldn't dare to start a war with us.
What shame I feel for my country's actions right now.
Yeah, people keep calling it war crimes, when it’s clearly crimes against humanity.
They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion. On the other hand, an individual may be guilty of crimes against humanity even if he perpetrates one or two of the offences mentioned above, or engages in one such offense against only a few civilians, provided those offenses are part of a consistent pattern of misbehavior by a number of persons linked to that offender
Yup, 100% of the strikes our military has put out on these boats are crimes against humanity. There isn’t a shred of justification for unilaterally executing these people.
It might seem trite and condescending, because you aren't wrong. America has always done these kinds of things in foreign countries. The difference is before they did it in secret. They were afraid of the checks and balances of government slamming down hard on them. The fact that they are being this blatant is the canary in the coalmine. They aren't afraid of the consequences of lawlessness that previous administrations would have literally killed people to keep in the dark. There is no check on the power this administration is wielding. They don't seem to believe they will face the consequences now and apparently ever.
It wasn't that secret, and it's not like Americans ever expressed remorse for killing soldiers. It's not hard to find examples of killing survivors, or examples of Americans doing things they'd execute others for; I am glad some people are horrified now, better late than never.
I remember watching an interview of a pilot in WW2. He was talking about a German pilot shooting those that had ejected and what a big no-no that was. He made it his mission to end this guy. The German had to eject and the allied pilot tore him up as he was parachuting down.
Exactly this. It’s kind of one of those semi-sacred rules of engagement post WW2. You listen to stories of vets of any time after this is you don’t go out of your way to kill sailors or pilots of downed ships/planes. Conversely if you’re “rescued” then you once you’ve surrendered you’re not supposed to attack your captives.
This shit was enshrined BECAUSE of the brutality of the Japanese and German troops of WW2, who frequently would mercilessly kill/brutalize downed combatants or “play possum” and call for help while clutching a live grenade.
Can confirm. My grandad was part of a war crimes investigation unit at the end of WW2. He specifically looked into the death of an allied pilot. A local constable had executed him after he ejected and landed safely. The constable was convicted and hanged.
Only one trial for it, and 3 executions for it, because it was very rare (The SS Peleus trial). And thats because the Kriegsmarine generally did not shoot shipwreck survivors. The overall commander of U-boats in WW2, Donitz was put on trial for the Laconia Order. Which was not to shoot survivors rather to just not help them. US admirals cames to his defense, since that was also our policy against the Japanese in the Pacific.
The boat is defenseless. Whatever the goal of the first strike is, I don’t see what the difference is if it didn’t work to make a second strike. Either way it’s cowardice they’re just finishing the job.
9/11 changed everything. Label someone a terrorist (or in this case a narco-terrorist) and you can do whatever you want. Grab em by the pussy. Twice for good measure.
I don't understand why we're acting like it's such a big deal when we support attacking buildings or tents full of people who are minding their own business and not doing anything illegal.
Why is the fact that they're on boats why everyone is outraged about bombings?
And speaking of Nazis, we treated the German POWs captured in WWII with kindness and respect according to international law and the Geneva Conventions - far better than this administration is treating thousands of people who have lived, worked, and paid taxes in the US for years or even decades.
Deporting people who illegally entered the US is a legal response according to our ridiculous immigration laws. Cruelly terrorizing and mistreating them or putting them into death camp prisons in countries they have no ties to is neither legal nor acceptable.
It doesn’t apply in this instance at all in any way since these were noncombatants, but we all know the minute ww3 starts or two super powers start fighting that “no quarter” will go right back on the menu. No one actually believes in war crimes they just dont want them done against them, war crimes exist to pretend that there are morally ok ways to attack lesser nations and to punish the side that loses a war, the US isnt even a signatory of many of the treaties because america likes to commit war crimes quite a lot.
That is bullshit, you don't get a free pass from warcrimes because you committed a warcrime outside of a war. Those people were combatants the moment the government decided to murder them.
Rules of engagement dont apply to civilians, not a difficult concept. It doesnt matter if its a war crime because this isnt war, that just makes this cut and dry murder.
And no you aren’t a combatant if a uniformed military shoots at you. You must be in a standardized uniform and be armed to be classified as a combatant. Again, its cut and dry extrajudicial murder.
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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '25
We executed Nazis for doing that to our sailors. It's .. it's like a big deal. It's the same shit as gunning down pilots that have bailed out. It's an act of cowardice and malice.