As a veteran, I never imagined my own government would publicly acknowledge issuing an order that ended with the killing of defenseless survivors in the water. Yet the White House has admitted the order was given. That alone should tell every American this country has slipped off its constitutional foundation.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and under the Geneva Conventions, targeting civilians or shipwrecked survivors is illegal. There’s no ambiguity, no loophole, no “fog of war” excuse. That order crossed the red line marking the early stages of national moral collapse. Countries don’t fall in a single moment. They rot through a series of unlawful commands obeyed without question, until darkness feels routine and the unacceptable becomes ordinary.
Anyone in uniform who carried out that strike knowing those people were no longer combatants didn’t merely “follow orders.” They violated the very laws and values the uniform is supposed to defend. UCMJ makes this explicit: Service members must refuse unlawful orders.
And here’s the danger Americans must confront: If the military becomes accustomed to obeying unlawful commands abroad, that eroded boundary eventually reaches home. History is blunt — once law stops being the barrier, civilians inevitably become the battlefield. Not instantly, but through the slow decay of restraint.
I’ve stood in countries that crossed that line. You don’t see the moment it happens. You recognize it only when it’s already too late.
Prosecution cannot be symbolic. It must be ruthless in its clarity, unmistakable in its purpose and severe enough that future generations feel the warning echo through their bones.
Bill Werts Jr.
Bridgeville