Pentagon Admits that War is Illegal

But what if we were to take the radical step of obeying the law as written? What, then, should be done? Well, according to this same manual,

"Each member of the armed services has a duty to: (1) comply with the law of war in good faith; and (2) refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war."

The manual quickly muddies up that legal clarity with this:

"[T]he obligation of individual service members to comply with the law of war in good faith is met when service members: (1) perform their duties as they have been trained and directed; and (2) apply the training on the law of war that they have received."

In other words, you can refuse to comply with unlawful orders by complying with whatever you are ordered. But the clarity of the actual law, once stated, can't really be undone. Nor can this, also from the new manual:

"State responsibility for violations of the law of war results in obligations to compensate other States for violations. . . . A State that is responsible for an internationally wrongful act is under an obligation to make full reparation for the injury caused by that act."

Compensating Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc., will not be cheap, but it is required by law and it will cost less than continuing the crime of war-making and preparations for more of the same.

Reading further in the manual, we find that, in fact, the Pentagon believes people like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and all of their subordinates, can be prosecuted for the wars they've launched under U.S. domestic law:

"The War Crimes Act authorizes the prosecution of individuals for certain war crimes if the victim or the perpetrator is either a U.S. national or a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, whether inside or outside the United States. Under this statute, an individual may be prosecuted for conduct: . . . prohibited by Article . . . 25 . . . of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907 . . . "

Here's Article 25:

"The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited."

How many of the houses that U.S. missiles and bombs (from drones and otherwise) have been hitting have been defended? Not all, certainly. Not most, I suspect.

But this is a silly way to go after a part of the overarching crime of war, even if it is the largest part of that crime. When the U.S. prosecuted Nazis at the end of World War II, it did so on the basis of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and an understanding that each smaller component action was criminal because the whole of the war (on the losing side) was criminal. Robert Jackson and others expressed the hypocritical sentiment at the time that the U.S. should fall under the same standard in future years.

What more prevalent tradition is there in the United States than striving to live up to past hypocritical but eloquent statements on justice and equality? Perhaps we should try that in the case of the greatest evil there is.