Donald Trump and War Crimes

Vincent J. Curtis

4 March 2016

This talk about how Trump would order the US military to commit war crimes is all crazy.  These alleged lawyers hold too high an opinion of their profession, and they suffer from a short memory.

By the standards of these lawyer experts, John McCain is a war criminal.  By their reckoning, the US committed war crimes against North Vietnam because the US and its pilots bombed that country; undoubtedly some civilians died, and there was no formal state of war between North Vietnam and the US.  They sound like Hanoi Jane.  They take the same position as the North Vietnamese.

The US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki where hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, and this too would have to be classed as a war crime, by their reckoning, because innocents were killed.

Terrorist are not protected by the laws of war.  If they get killed by the US military, that’s just their bad luck!  They are not lawful combatants.  As for their families, well these terrorists not only threaten US military personnel in their homes, they have threated the families of these personnel.  Well, if you want to play that game, the US can play it too.

I don’t see under what law US military personnel can be accused of war crimes if they attack terrorist organizations root and branch.  We have Omar Khadr, who as a 15 year old, was just accompanying his father in Afghanistan.  Then, he threw a grenade that killed Sgt Christopher J. Speer, a medic who was trying to help him.  Too late for Speer to recognize Khadr as a terrorist "combatant." (which, by the standards of the Geneva Convention neither young Khadr nor his father lawfully were.)

Their “families” are, in terms of the Geneva Convention, being used as hostages or human shields.  The death of these folks lies on the conscience of the terrorists, for they are the ones who lay down the rules of the conflict.  ISIS calls for Muslims in the US to kill military personnel, their families, and other innocent people.  Too bad if the US can play their game better than they can.

War is ugly.  And cheeseparing by lawyers, inflated with the importance of their profession, doesn’t make it any more civilized.

What Trump is saying is that if you fight the US, be prepared for a brass-knuckles brawler.  The lawyers who say they care about the security of America would do well to just shut the hell up.

-30-