When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality: The Slippery Slope to Total War on Iran
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” posted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday. In case one thought that was an impulsive utterance, it’s notable that the president in apparently prepared remarks a few days earlier said, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.”
Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place servicemembers in a profoundly challenging situation. As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the presidents’ words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.
Iranian power plants and other critical civilian infrastructure are protected from attacks by the law of war the United States helped craft after World War II. Such an object can lose its protection only if it is used for military purposes by the enemy and its destruction “offers a definite military advantage.” Even then, such an object can be attacked only if, after a case-by-case rigorous analysis, the “concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” outweighs the civilian suffering that is expected to result. (Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I art. 52, art. 57; DOD Law of War Manual, § 5.6, § 5.12).
Despite those well-settled legal parameters, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to obliterate such infrastructure without regard to the law’s high demands. His comments are blatant expressions that he is willing to turn the United States into a rogue State like Iran and Russia, one that rejects the fundamental legal restraints that protect innocent non-combatants like children, and the Iranian civilian population itself.
Former JAGs warn that threats to strike Iran’s power plants would violate the law of war and endanger U.S. service members’ legal and moral obligations.
www.justsecurity.org
He's a soldier for a country that has committed and recently threatened to commit war crimes. A country that bombed a school house (I believe accidentally) after a pronouncement by its Sec. of War that the rules of engagement have taken a secondary role to maximum lethality. A message that is easy to interpret as giving purpose to the deaths of those young schoolgirls.
Which is not to paint our enemies as innocent victims. Iran has committed atrocities of its own. Even against its own people.
But if you are a prisoner of war you are entitled to humane treatment. And you don't want your country to have given those holding you a pretense to mistreat you. John McCain understood that. As do the families of those who have served. Perhaps that's why our CIC has shown so little regard for the "losers" in uniform.
I hope the men and women in uniform heed the words of Mark Kelly and those who joined him to remind military personnel they can ignore illegal orders. Despite the regime's attempts to silence them.
iranhumanrights.org
humanrightsintl.com
www.ncr-iran.org
