Truly outstanding planning, reconnaissance, and decision-making in the field. If I ever need some guys in swimwear taken out, I know who to call.
North Korean media likes to depict US soldiers as what can only be summarized as cruel demons. Depictions of US soldiers torturing and killing civilians are especially common[1]. If they were ever warming up to the west, this incident among others should serve as a good reminder to not alter course.
> [..] talks have fallen apart and North Korea has forged ahead with its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program.
I'd build more nuclear weapons as fast as I could as well if that's who I'm dealing with.
[1] Some examples of North Korean anti-American propaganda for your viewing pleasure: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/north-korea-anti-american-p...
Justified against unarmed civilians?
Can someone explain?
Were they believed to be militants? Were they recognized as civilians but they took up weapons? Is there a rule that you can kill a non-militant who might raise the alarm to militants, even if not at war? Were there unusual orders in effect for this mission? Something else?
Governments around the world have strong incentives to keep this kind of thing out of the news even when they are on the receiving end, so it is relatively rare for it to leak into the public sphere no matter which government ends up killing innocents.
Isn't this a pretty dangerous power and precedent to have, if you're the good guys?
Especially if you don't have a lot of confidence that the top of the command chain will always be of the utmost integrity and decency?
On the other hand, if you leave a bunch of dead bodies with bullets in them, a reasonably-competent government is going to figure out that something happened there, and if the cable is near there, it's a reasonably likely candidate...
Enemy combatants don't magically get immunity from war when they don't have a weapon on them, nor do military forces have to go into a state property and politely ask everyone without a weapon if they're an enemy combatant before they can fire on it and turn everyone into dust. Nor are they required to refrain from engaging enemy forces because someone else is likely to get hurt. Your entire line of assumptions and the questions that flow from them is detached from reality.
The military law of your jurisdiction, at a minimum, would be a good book to read, if you can afford it. I think a one-time purchase from Thomson Reuters for the California Code would cost you $41,000 USD and a pretty onerous contract. If you tried to take one from a library, I'm sure they'd only give you a couple nights in jail and a year of probation. I think you can get Hong Kong's for $90,000 if that's where you live.
Delivered with the same bland expression he uses when he's clearly lying.
It removes the focus of the killing of civilians and makes it "aw shucks, the mission didn't go as planned".
You also have to consider the possibility that the mission was intentionally designed as a distraction, such that the purpose was to leave evidence of a mission.
Some types of operations require explicit and direct sign-off by the President, which provides legal sanction for people doing the work. Even in these cases, the operational details are left to the career professionals.
That isn’t to say that organizations can’t leave the reservation (see: FBI under Hoover) but that over time they’ve built up a lot of internal structure to limit it with varying degrees of effectiveness. It is useful to note that almost all of this was invented out of whole cloth after WW2, so the US has had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way.
Though, what we can see recently of some checks on other extraordinary powers don't seem to be working well.
Instead, justice is blind for a reason. Your declared noble intentions are irrelevant.