Blowing Up Boats Using Disguised Aircraft?
The NYT reports about likely war crimes by US forces.
The NYT reports: U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane.
The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.
The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.
But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”
This is far more James Joyner’s balliwick than mine, but I wanted to note it before it got lost in the ongoing onslaught of news about this administration.
Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general for the United States Air Force, said that if the aircraft had been painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it — tricking them into failing to realize they should take evasive action or surrender to survive — that was a war crime under armed-conflict standards.
“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” he said. “If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”
I have been opposed to these attacks from the start, as I see them as unjustified summary executions, if not simply murder on the high seas. Using disguised aircraft just makes it all worse and is, I would note, now the second distinct allegation of war crimes being committed in this operation. The first was the credible allegation that helpless survivors from one of the attacks were blown out of the water as they clung to wreckage.
All of this matters for a variety of reasons.
First, I must confess that I do not want our military to commit war crimes.
Second, despite a number of absurd claims to the contrary, these strikes are not going to have any real effect on the drug trade.
Third, this is all just part of the overall authoritarian enterprise that is the Trump administration. It is faux displays of supposed strength and power to try and convince the willing and the gullible that the Mighty Trump is using his military to slay threats to the US. It is all the childish, simplistic displays of might that authoritarians use to paint a picture of strength, and a lot of people fall for it.
All of this does bring concern raised about illegal orders by Senator Kelly and comrades into increasingly clearer focus, does it not?
U.S. military manuals about the law of war discuss perfidy at length, saying it includes when a combatant feigns civilian status so the adversary “neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary.” A U.S. Navy handbook says lawful combatants at sea use offensive force “within the bounds of military honor, particularly without resort to perfidy,” and stresses that commanders have a “duty” to “distinguish their own forces from the civilian population.”
BTW:
The U.S. military has killed at least 123 people in 35 attacks on boats, including the Sept. 2 strike.
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I think it is important to note that attacking these boats is a crime regardless of how it’s done. There is, properly speaking, no war or other armed conflict going on. What means that this is murder regardless. Like a rogue cop executing criminal suspects in the streets. In such a case, it doesn’t make much difference whether said cop is wearing a uniform or not.
What is very important though, is that even relatively junior military personnel are apparently being asked to disregard their training regarding the laws of war. And, moreover, that they are actually doing so.
Which means that criminal culpability isn’t limited to civilian policy makers, but rather that it goes all the way down to the people pulling the triggers.
This is a program of extrajudicial killing. It isn’t a one-off. It isn’t a “oops this went too far”. This had to be planned. This is the primary offense of Maduro, not the charges he is facing. This was the primary issue that we typically see with dictators.
This is what happened to Renee Good. What we are finding out is that Ross was following a program that ICE got in trouble for two decades ago a “kill box” tactic. Again, not a case of “things went too far” but rather a strategic decision to create a situation where killing is enabled.
This is a problem. A big, big problem. Every single Republican who doesn’t vote for impeachment and removal is condoning these extrajudicial killings.