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Been listening to the new podcast on Gallagher's war crimes trial, and I need to take issue with the basic conceit: "the series explores just how blurred the line between right and wrong has become in the forever wars."
Wrong. The line isn't blurry. 1/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-line/id1560743789
Wrong. The line isn't blurry. 1/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-line/id1560743789
The series makes a dangerous fundamental misunderstanding of the law. Gallagher was accused of an extradjudical execution and targeting of civilians. That's not blurry or a grey area. That's a war crime. Under both IHL and the UCMJ. No ambiguity.
I keep waiting for an IHL lawyer to be interviewed on the podcast and explain this but it's episode 5 and none have appeared yet and I don't think one is coming.
The series overall is too credulous of the SEAL's self-aggrandizing mythology generally. But there are some good points. Especially the analysis of moral injury from Bill Russell Edmonds, who wrote an important book on the subject: http://pegasusbooks.com/books/god-is-not-here-9781605987743-hardcover
And @dtaberski is an excellent storyteller. I've really liked his previous podcasts, especially "Surviving Y2K." Getting the courtroom tapes makes excellent audio. The series is well produced. But the law issue is fundamental to the show's whole message & it's significantly off.
Listen, there is a lot of moral ambiguity in war. There are morally abhorrent actions that are legal. And I don't just mean killing "the enemy." I mean, it can be legal under IHL to kill hundreds of civilians if they are co-located with a significant military target.
That's a grey area, perhaps. But that's not the Gallagher case.
IHL provides tremendous flexibility for militaries to fight. It is written by and for armed forces, to provide the absolute minimum protection for civilians, lay out the barest bones of what is clearly over the line. Like extrajudicial executions and targeting civilians.
Taberski notes that @amnesty didn't definitively accuse the US of war crimes in Mosul. This is true. The legality of a case sometimes relies on knowing the commander's intent for an airstrike, knowing what information they had.
This is why we said US actions in Mosul "may amount" to war crimes. It's not that the line is blurry, it's that we didn't have all the information to know whether the line had been crossed in every case. https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1466102017ENGLISH.PDF
So why does this matter? This isn't a nerdy legal dispute. This is about 20 years of war skewing America's compass. That the country thinks executing prisoners might be normal. That purposely targeting old men getting water from a river is just a "hard thing" about war, ....
... the cost of doing business, "war's hell" and all that. But it's not. Executions are not a grey zone that the country asks of its SEALs. It is a war crime. Full stop. Don't be confused. /end
