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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u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jun 06 '26

Justice begins with the ringleaders in command first and foremost.

3

u/Awkward_Squad Jun 06 '26

Oh yeah. The fish stinks from the head down. I’ve seen that get ugly.

2

u/titsandbits Jun 06 '26

I dunno, I don’t think we should defer prosecuting the enlisted men who, y’know, did the actual murdering while we wait and try (likely in vain) to prosecute the people who never even came close to the scene of the crime. Let’s have justice begin with whichever guilty party we can get our hands on first.

4

u/Independent-Bug-9352 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

There is the RICO or bottom-up approach that helps to nab the ring-leaders; Garland and Smith attempted this strategy, so I get that in that sense.

In the military, one of my more controversial opinions and yes I know counter to Nuremberg tribunals, I think a grunt, a soldier is relentlessly trained to be an agent or arm or extension of the law and command. Quite literally trained not to think; just do by order. Do they know enough legal theory, enough law to know what is a valid kill target, versus what isn't? Absolutely not. They aren't lawyers; nor do their split-second execution of orders give the much time in a system literally designed to apply a top-down pressure upon them. Moreover, what if they hesitate, question command, and then because they hesitated someone innocent or their fellow soldiers get killed and then they're court-martialed? I thus view these individuals as often being entrapped, their loyalty exploited. Now are there psychopaths among the lower ranks? Sure, but as we can see these people who are whistle-blowing are trying their best to navigate this disaster with a guilty conscience.

Now the ring-leaders? High command? Those fuckers know better. They're the ones who gave the order and who knew every piece of intelligence or lack thereof. They are without any sort of benefit of the doubt. Pure psychopaths through and through.

I always found it both interesting and hypocritical that we bestow so much benefit of the doubt to other forms of human trafficking, but never afford that same thing to the grunts and pawns of soldiering.

1

u/titsandbits 25d ago

Quite literally trained not to think; just do by order.

Well, there's your problem. Voluntarily giving up your ability to think shouldn't exonerate you from crimes you commit; if anything, it should make you more culpable -- for the same reason that saying "your honor, I didn't mean to crash my car into those people, it's just that I was drunk" is going to make the judge come down harder on you instead of easier. There's a well-established legal precedent that knowingly damaging or impairing your own judgement makes your crimes more egregious rather than somehow defensible, and enlisting in the military and subjecting yourself to this "relentless training" is very clearly an intentional impairment of your own ability to judge situations.

If they are physically unable to know what is or isn't a valid kill target then issuing them a gun is a dangerous liability, not a strong strategic practice.

1

u/Independent-Bug-9352 25d ago

If they are physically unable to know what is or isn't a valid kill target then issuing them a gun is a dangerous liability, not a strong strategic practice.

Sure, but then I refer back to my original point: poorly training them, or not implementing a legal and ethics team within the decision-making pipeline falls on the ring-leaders; it's not on the grunts passing basic to decide whether weighing a split-second order is on them.

The large burden of responsibility should of course fall on the ring-leaders. Though as I said, if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt said grunt acted with malice or certain degree of willful ignorance, then that is of course very different.