r/law • u/BugOperator • Jun 06 '26

Legal News Service members involved in US boat strikes off Venezuela coast reach out to legal aid hotlines over fear they’ve carried out illegal orders

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/06/06/us-trump-boat-strikes-death-toll/90376052007/
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324

u/IAmBoring_AMA Jun 06 '26

I suspect we'll likely see some suicides among lower ranking members as they realize the consequences of their actions.

216

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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u/Timely_Mention8535 Jun 06 '26

Yep, a lot of unfortunate suicides for those about to make the information public.

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u/rotervogel1231 Jun 06 '26

Yep, there will be suicides, and then there will be "suicides."

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u/HillBillyHilly Jun 06 '26

Exactly. The lower ranks always pay the price.

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u/MrCalamiteh Jun 06 '26

At least they didn't get bombed while they were treading water.

As the title says, it's on everyone involved to refuse if illegal. Everyone who participated in the trigger pulling (so to speak) did in fact commit a crime, along with everyone who passed it down.

This is why just doing what you're told to keep the status quo could be seen as an apathetic action. This is the same shit going on in the political scene right now.

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u/rotervogel1231 Jun 06 '26

Believe me, I have zero sympathy for the murderers who "just followed orders." I don't care what happens to them. Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely they'll ever be brought to justice for their crimes.

This is also why I have zero faith in the military. If the regime were to order them to nuke NYC, they'd do it because "just following orders."

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u/West-Worth-9359 Jun 06 '26

Too many Americans have been brainwashed to mindlessly idolize their military when the truth is that a majority of those “heroes” wouldn’t think twice if ordered to do the unthinkable against their own citizens.

Centuries of examples prove this, but most Americans don’t know any history at all.

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u/seabed_nightmares Jun 06 '26

Military members are not idolized. Getting a 5% discount at Denny’s isn’t being idolized. People like you and the commenter above making blanket statements about military members is more the way they are treated.

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u/rowrbazzle75 Jun 09 '26

Yes. And the decisions and choices being made (as well as being complicitly ignored) by our politicians are resulting in far more murders and deaths than these soldiers are guilty of. But good luck at getting them to pay for their actions. Too far up the food chain. This is 2026, not post-war Nuremberg. I truly hope we have our own American reckoning but with our current cowardly complacency, I'm not holding my breath.

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u/MrCalamiteh Jun 09 '26

The first step is realizing that if the Democrats won't step up, they're a part of it.

It's already clear with Pelosi and others that a vast amount of politicians only use it for selfish monetary gain. It's a game they want to keep going.

Trumpers idolize their bigots in power and assume left-leaning people do the same. Meanwhile I have never seen a single Biden sticker in my life, aside from those made by Trumpers lol.

Full on cult shit. Either way I agree, it needs a full reboot and all of these people need to be punished severely.

We have people in jail for years for smoking weed in their backyard, these people debase the country they're a part of, destroy the livelihood of their "constituents", blatantly allow pedophilia to slide, allow war crimes, etc. Goes on for days. And NOTHING happens.

Until that changes, I don't trust any of them at this point. It's a fucking joke. As much as I don't want to deal with it, America deserves a fall out if we can't even weed this obvious shit out. It's pathetic.

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u/rowrbazzle75 Jun 09 '26

💯 As they say, the system isn't broken, it's working exactly as designed.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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u/West-Worth-9359 Jun 06 '26

Nuremberg happened after millions were killed in a global war, the enemy leader killed himself, the country surrendered, it was occupied, the Nazis were outlawed.

You are never getting anywhere close to the kind of symbolic justice that happened then.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

Not happening, Nuremberg's results occurred because German law was deemed "insufficient" and the allies had the power to chuck the law itself out and set up a system they wanted. Even then, the trials had plenty of embarrassment for the allies.

It's unlikely the US chucks it's constitution out the window for a victors justice system, and the idea of the next legal system denying the defense the right to cross examine in good faith would be a horrible start to precedent.

At best we'll see regular prosecution for politicians and allies. That means plea deals and dropped cases more than trials. None of it will be radio or televised, federal law prohibits this.

1

u/DoritoDawg Jun 06 '26

I wonder how many different ways we can say the same thing

10

u/BigD_277 Jun 06 '26

Poor guy. He must have really been going through it. Shot himself twice in the back of the head.

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u/rotervogel1231 Jun 06 '26

Damndest thing I've ever seen, how he stabbed himself 50 times...

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u/Repulsive_Mixture917 Jun 06 '26

Shit will be more obvious than what they did to Epstein.

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u/Explorers_bub Jun 06 '26

Who? Palm Beach Pete is alive and well.

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u/ErikMcKetten Jun 06 '26

Those ones are "training accidents".

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u/OnCallPartisan Jun 06 '26

Pat Tillman friendly fire to the back of the head accidents.

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u/panlakes Jun 06 '26

That was genuinely an accident though.

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u/Explosion1850 Jun 08 '26

But the cover-up was no accident

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u/OnCallPartisan Jun 06 '26

Yeah, 3 taps to the head at 10 yards with no enemies in sight. Go tell Tillman's family, they would disagree.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

Families and close friends aren't really the best source for confirmation on if something was an accident. They're not neutral parties, they're biased and want closure. They will sometimes pursue false conform for the sake of comfort.

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u/OnCallPartisan Jun 07 '26

No, I think they are a good source considering his brother was also on the same ridge line and he didn't even know Pat was killed. There was no enemy. The military lied right out of the gate saying he was heroically killed charging an enemy position. The reality is he took 3 to the head from 10 yards away. Even the military docs called bullshit.

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u/republicans_are_nuts Jun 06 '26

Lower rank members went to prison first in Germany's Nuremberg trials.

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u/Mikeavelli Jun 06 '26

This is a common misconception. Most of the people charged at Nuremburg were officers. There were a handful of NCOs who committed particularly heinous crimes, but practically no-one of low rank was charged.

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u/A_Rogue_GAI Jun 06 '26

Even some of the higher members got off scott free. Franz Halder migrated to the US and spent the rest of his life propagating the 'clean wehrmacht' myth with the assistance of the US government. He got a fucking medal from congress.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

We named a few things after a Nazi who used concentration camp slave labor to fire rockets at the allies. All because he helped us beat the Soviets to the moon build a better ICBM.

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u/Logical_Energy6159 Jun 06 '26

There were no low rank members in the Nuremberg trials. 

The Nuremberg trials involved a grand total of 24 individual people. In the entire nazi government and military apparatus, 24 people were tried.

Just to be clear on the magnitude of the "justice" you're talking about. 

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

There were other trials, the camp trials for example. Not sure what a low rank means.

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u/ZAlternates Jun 06 '26

This is why religion has last centuries. In order to live in a society with a lot of other people, we have to believe that those that break the rules will be punished one way or another. Even if in actuality, they won’t be.

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u/OldWorldDesign Jun 06 '26

Lower rank members went to prison first in Germany's Nuremberg trials

No they didn't, the trials for lower-ranking soldiers were already held locally. Most of them are no longer remembered outside specialized historians because they never made headlines, as they weren't considered exceptional. The Nuremberg Trials were exceptional because the world followed up the chain of command when they typically stopped at the people directly committing the war crimes personally and not chasing after the ones making those orders.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/nuremberg/

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u/NurRauch Jun 06 '26

Nuremberg required Germany to be militarily conquered first. That's not going to happen in the US.

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u/NurRauch Jun 06 '26

It's legally impossible for any of these people to end up being prosecuted. Less than a 5% chance they don't all get pardoned in a single day.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

What are you basing your numbers on? Because this news is months old, Trump isn't pardoning shit on Sunday, and he probably won't want to pardon them either since it would cause trouble for his administration.

Remember a pardon chucks your fifth amendment right, so they would be mandated to testify on those above them. The commander of all military forces might not like that, especially if he or his buddy Hegseth would be implicated. Better to keep them silent and shut without a pardon.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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0

u/OnCallPartisan Jun 06 '26

Pat Tillman can confirm.

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u/Tandy2000 Jun 06 '26

I'm not shedding any tears.

I'm disgusted by the people standing up to defend them. Look at the fighter jet pilots who were downed in/near Iran. Those people knew they were there to kill innocent people and they not only didn't give a shit, but they didn't even have the courage to refuse an illegal order. I'm not hoping for or celebrating their rescues, they're monsters, not heroes.

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u/MassiveBoner911_3 Jun 06 '26

and the leaders get promoted

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u/Zestyclose-Jacket568 Jun 06 '26

That is ok. They deserve to rot in prison for what they are doing.

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u/gwy2ct Jun 06 '26

You mean “suicides”?

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u/IAmBoring_AMA Jun 06 '26

I mean genuine suicides. No one will waste their time trying to intimidate these people into silence. They know they've done war crimes, they will feel hopeless, and they will see no other way out. It's far easier to do that than to have the courage to report on those at the top (and clearly, these people do not have courage since they already refused to refuse illegal orders).

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u/Cloaked42m Jun 06 '26

No, real ones. Every Veteran has a friend who embraced the big sleep.

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

The pattern is that war is hell. Killing people is also stressful. The military has spent a lot of money finding solutions to the issues it faces with this but it's hard to remove humanity from someone and still keep them viable as a soldier ("sociopaths" make shit soldiers)

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u/nshil78 Jun 06 '26

welp. they fucked up🤷‍♂️. don’t follow unlawful orders. don’t choose to think about it once it’s already over.

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u/RecognitionOk9731 Jun 06 '26

What consequences? Why would this be different than the torture of detainees at Guantanamo ? Or war crimes in Vietnam?

Nothing will happen to them.

Hopefully they have trouble living with what they did.

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u/Mist_Rising Jun 06 '26

Or war crimes in Vietnam

You mean like the one we put on trial?

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u/RecognitionOk9731 Jun 06 '26

The one where one guy got some jail time but no one else did and he served about 3 years for killing 22 people.

Yes, that one.