just obeying orders

Hmmm, now where have we heard that phrase before: just following orders?  Today, the Trump admin murderers blew yet another boat out of the water in the Caribbean, killing three more people. No due process. No evidence, video or otherwise. This is criminal behavior. I picked this one up off the internet. No link given.

“No One Gets to Pull That Trigger”

by Robert Hawks

Let’s get something straight right out of the gate: executing civilians is not warfare, it’s murder in uniform.

Dress it up with flags, medals, or press releases all you want, it doesn’t change the body count or the law.

The Nuremberg judges spelled it out in black ink and human blood eighty years ago: orders are no excuse for atrocity.

You don’t get to say “the President told me to” and walk away clean.

That defense was hanged at dawn in 1946.

Every American in a chain of command, from the sailor on a weapons console to the general in the Pentagon had better remember that.

Because the law doesn’t stop at the White House door, and history has a long memory.

You fire that missile into an unarmed boat full of civilians, you’re not a hero, you’re an accomplice.

You’re the man who pushed the button on a war crime.

And don’t think for a second that “it was a drug boat” or “we thought they were smugglers” will save your ass.

The Geneva Conventions don’t make exceptions for rumor or political convenience.

Civilians are civilians until proven otherwise, and you don’t get to “prove” it with a missile strike.

You give them due process or you get the dock, the one at The Hague, not the naval kind.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice already covers this. Article 92: obey lawful orders. Article 118: murder.

If you’re ordered to kill unarmed people, that order is illegal. Period.

The moment you obey, the stain transfers to you.

Every lawyer in a war crimes tribunal knows it; every drill instructor teaches it.

You pull the trigger on civilians, you own that shot for the rest of your life, in your nightmares if you’re lucky, in a courtroom if you’re not.

And don’t think time will wash it off.

Future administrations will prosecute if they want to keep the country’s seat at the grown-ups’ table.

When The Hague comes calling, and they will, the politicians will cut deals, the admirals will “retire for personal reasons,” and you, the grunt who fired, will be standing there alone, holding the smoking gun of international law.

That’s how it goes. Always has.

So if some president, Trump or any other swaggering populist, orders you to blow a civilian vessel out of the water and calls it patriotism, remember: he won’t be in the targeting room when you’re staring at an unarmed silhouette on a radar screen.

You will. And when the subpoenas start flying and the cameras roll in the World Court, they won’t be asking him who pulled the trigger.

They’ll be asking you.

The chain of command isn’t a chain of absolution.

It’s a chain of responsibility, and every goddamn link burns when it’s wrapped around a crime.

The law of armed conflict doesn’t care about your politics, your uniform, or your rank.

It cares about the difference between combat and slaughter.

So think before you follow that order. Think hard.

Because the next time someone says “fire,” you might be hearing the echo in The Hague ten years later.

This isn’t ideology. It’s precedent.

This isn’t warning for tomorrow.

It’s the ghost of Nuremberg whispering from the past: No one gets to pull that trigger and walk away clean.