"When I was an infantryman in the U.S. Army, my leadership drilled a lot of different ideas into my head, from never leaving my post to "keeping my head on a swivel" to never leaving a fallen comrade behind. Pretty high up there in ideas I heard over and over again was that if I ever "double tapped" a wounded combatant (fired on them again after they had already been incapacitated or otherwise neutralized), I would probably go to prison."
"The Trump administration has clearly had some trouble with this idea-or, more likely, utter contempt for it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be an outright enemy of the typical rules of engagement, professing to view them as handcuffs. In his first term, at then-TV-host Hegseth's urging, President Donald Trump pardoned multiple adjudicated or accused war criminals. Now in his second term, Trump has gone from pardoning war criminals to making war crimes official policy."
"Since Sept. 2, Trump has authorized strikes on multiple small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least 83 people. The problem is that the U.S. is not actually at war with any of the people it has killed in these strikes. While Trump has declared Venezuelan drug smugglers to be terrorists and lawful enemy combatants, Congress has neither declared war on Venezuela nor otherwise authorized the use of force against drug smuggler"
A U.S. Army infantryman received repeated rules-of-engagement training emphasizing that unjustified violence is illegal, that firing must be justifiable, and that striking a neutralized combatant ('double tapping') risks prison. Military briefings also stressed the duty to disobey unlawful orders. The Trump administration, influenced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has treated rules of engagement as constraints and pardoned or shielded individuals accused of war crimes. Policy escalations authorized strikes on multiple small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, resulting in at least 83 deaths of people who were not under a formal declaration of war.
Read at Slate Magazine
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