Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes.
It is an urgent matter for the US chain of command. In an expletive-laden threat, Trump set a Tuesday 8pm Washington time deadline for the Iranian government to open the strait of Hormuz or face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one”.
There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.
“Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday.
“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”
Is is legal to commit war crimes in the United States? Because if it is, this becomes an ethical argument rather than a legal one.
With this Trump-appointed crooked SCOTUS and the Trump-appointed crooked US Attorney General, combined with the fact we are not signatories to the ICC? I’m going to sadly say yes.
I don’t think it’s just because of this administration… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Certainly not, but seems this Admin is attempting a speed-run for a new record in both quantity and severity.
The US isn’t an ICC signatory, but it has its own military law that defines illegal orders, so some subset of war crimes is also illegal under US law. I’m guessing destroying the water infrastructure of nearly 100 million people would be included, but I’ll leave it to someone else to fact check that.
TL;DR: It’s illegal to commit some war crimes in America, but I don’t know about this particular war crime.