USA Today
US boat strikes killed over 200 people. Service members have questions (archived)
Legal hotlines get calls from boat strike operators
Two organizations that provide anonymous legal advice for military members grappling with orders they fear are illegal said they had received calls from service members concerned about the legality of the boat strikes, some from people directly involved in them.
Steve Woolford, a resource counselor with Quaker House and the GI Rights Hotline, said he spoke with about four service members involved in the operation who were seeking legal and ethical guidance. One discussed helping plan a strike, and two others were ordered to execute strikes, he said.
“I think this is exactly what was described as a war crime,” Woolford said one caller told him.
Woolford said some of these callers were connected to lawyers, but he wasn’t aware of anyone who had refused an order or taken legal action. Callers are “more scared now that they’d be punished if they did bring something up,” he said.
Brenner Fissell, the vice president of the National Institute for Military Justice, said the Institute’s Orders Project, which also advises service members questioning if their orders are legal, receives a “steady but small number of calls,” including from service members concerned that the boat strikes are illegal, he said.
Some have expressed a “sense of being asked to do things that one is deeply conflicted with the morality of doing,” he said.
“There’s a general perception that no one is ever going to be prosecuted for this because Trump will be able to issue pardons preemptively,” he added.
If a service member refuses to follow an order, the case may be brought before a military judge to determine whether the order was lawful. However, before that call is made, service members could be removed from duty immediately.
Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said the Pentagon could scrap any charges about illegal orders to strike boats if they arose through the military justice system.
Trump could also preemptively pardon service members for acts committed during his term. “The next administration might find its hands tied in terms of prosecuting anybody for obeying such an order, because President Trump may pardon everybody in sight,” Fidell said.
Service members who object to war based on their beliefs can seek conscientious objector status with the military and be released from deployment.
More than 100 people have contacted the Center on Conscience and War, a nonprofit that helps service members apply to file as conscientious objectors, since late February, according to Mike Prysner, the center’s director.
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