“The U.S. military would have committed a crime if it killed the survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat,” the Associated Press reports.
“It doesn’t matter whether the U.S. is in ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels as the Trump administration asserts. Such a fatal second strike would have violated peacetime laws and those governing armed conflict.”
Todd Huntley: “Basically, this is the one strike that we know about where even if you accept the Administration’s position that the United States is in an armed conflict with these drug cartels, this would still be unlawful under the laws of armed conflict, because the individuals were out of the fight and shipwrecked, and thus owed protection.”
Mark Nevitt: “The United States, which has military forces deployed around the globe, cannot build a safer world for its own service members by discarding basic laws of war. History shows that when America blatantly abandons humane norms and the law of war, it ultimately endangers its own people.”
Jack Goldsmith: “Surely the warrior ethos, whatever else it means, doesn’t require killing helpless men clinging to the burning wreckage of a blown-up boat.”
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