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I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, I'm pretty sure that if the ship still has significant ability to fight despite it's disability, a belligerent would be permitted, under the rules of war, to continue attacking the ship until it no longer poses a threat. Even if the continued attacks will inevitably result in crew deaths.
In my experience, the rules of war contain very few bright line safe harbor rules. Because such rules inevitably would invite abuse.
That being said, I am happy to consider your claim with an open mind. Can you please provide a specific cite to the provision of international law which you believe applies here?
If this is your claim, that it's a war crime to specifically attack the survivors of a ship that is disabled and sinking, then this is a more defensible position. But note that you changed two facts: (1) you changed the ship from merely "disabled" to "disabled and sinking"; and (2) you changed the attack from one which knowingly killed the crew (but perhaps was done for other reasons) to one where the point of the follow-up attack was to kill the surviving crew.
So I guess I would ask you to set forth what exactly you believe to be a war crime. Because I suspect you are setting up a motte and bailey argument. An attack directed at surviving crew of a disabled and sinking ship can be argued to be a war crime, but it's pretty unlikely that's what happened here. A follow-up attack on a partially disabled ship (which happened to kill the remaining crew) is more likely what actually happened, but that's much harder to argue to be a war crime.
So again: What is the exact war crime you are alleging here and do you have a cite?
Appreciate the thoughtful response -- I don't think we actually disagree very much here.
Agreed. I was using "disabled" to mean "firmly out of action", i.e. removed from combat and neutralized as a threat. So:
The ship literally sinking is not necessarily part of my claim, it could be dead in the water, but I agree that if the enemy ship is still moving or shooting it is plainly a legitimate target. I would phrase my claim as "it is a war crime to intentionally attack the surviving crew of a ship which has been neutralized or sunk."
I am not a lawyer and at best an armchair historian, but yes, I was able to find this portion of the Geneva Conventions, which should at least be illustrative: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gcii-1949/article-12/commentary/2017. This comes from the 1949 version of the Conventions; I believe that there is some similar provision in older versions or in some other older treaty, I think from the Hague in 1899, but I couldn't immediately find a source for that. It is considered applicable today, in any case. I also believe there are similar provisions in some other treaties (e.g. UNCLOS) but again I think the Geneva Conventions are illustrative enough on their own (also, if memory serves, the USA is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions but not of UNCLOS anyway). I am fairly confident that what is formalized in the Geneva Conventions was considered the proper way of doing things by custom for a long time, but I admittedly don't have a source at hand for that, it's just from my vaguely recollected history knowledge. Regardless, the historical aspect is only tangential to what is being discussed here.
Anyway. The relevant portion is the discussion of "wounded, sick, and shipwrecked" combatants, under Article 12. The set of [wounded, sick, and shipwrecked] is used throughout the convention as a coherent category, and in short the point of the convention is that [wounded, sick, and shipwrecked] enemy personnel should be rescued as POWs and given medical attention, to the best of the ability of the prisoner-taking side, and generally treated as required by all other protections for POWs. This is all pretty clear and straightforward, so what is at issue here is who counts as "shipwrecked". This is defined as follows:
Further:
And:
So, this quite directly supports my claim. If a US Navy officer ordered a follow-up strike on a neutralized ship in order to kill its crew, that would indeed be a war crime. Crucially, for the act to be criminal, the victorious party must knowingly fire on a disabled ship, and that's what's really at issue in the present case. The Geneva Convention discusses repeatedly that it is important for the defeated crew to be "refraining from hostilities", which generally seems to be interpreted as not firing (not remotely at issue here) and not maneuvering or otherwise attempting to complete a mission. This is what I was trying to get at in my first post. If the Navy simply fired two missiles at the boat, one after the other, that clearly would not be a war crime. If the Navy fired on the boat, believed it to still be operational, then fired again to sink it, this would not be a war crime. If the Navy fired on the boat, confirmed through surveillance that it was disabled but had survivors, then fired again to finish off the crew, this would be a war crime.
You dismiss the second case as "pretty unlikely", but that is exactly what the Navy/DoD is being accused of doing, which is why it is being treated as a Big Deal. In previous strikes on drug boats the Navy has released very clear targeting footage from drones and other aircraft showing the weapon impacts and aftermath, so it's unrealistic to think that they outright could not see the boat. In the absence of any released targeting footage it is impossible for the public to determine conclusively whether a war crime was committed. All we know for a fact is that two missiles were fired at the boat. If targeting footage shows two swift impacts that would plainly disprove a war crime. If targeting footage shows an impact, then a clear view of a burning boat with crew either on the deck or in the water, then another impact, that would prove a war crime, or at least would be very strong evidence. They would have to somehow prove that the second shot was fired without knowing that the boat was disabled and/or without knowing there were surviving crew members.
I've heard talk the the survivors reboarded the not-disabled boat and tried to recover the
drugscargo. If that is true, does it moot everything you've said thus far?You can see the pictures now, they've released some of them. It was obviously a drug running boat, and the only reason it would be something else is if they were running guns instead.
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Apparently Article 13 sets forth the list of persons that would be protected under Article 12. I am skeptical that drug smugglers would be considered protected persons, but anyway . . .
Here's a question for you: Suppose the US were in a bona fide war with another signatory to the applicable Geneva convention. Suppose further that the enemy's merchant marine were transporting vital war materials on the high seas and it was important to us to stop these war materials from moving. Suppose further that our first strike against the transporting vessel rendered it inoperable but the war materials were still salvageable and there was a genuine concern that the enemy would salvage the war materials. In that case, can we agree that it would be permitted to launch further strikes against the disabled ship even if doing so would necessarily kill surviving members of the enemy's merchant marine?
This is, in substance, the unrestricted submarine warfare debate.
If a surface warship has found an unescorted enemy merchantman, or driven the escorts off a convoy, it is in sufficient control of the situation that it can reasonably be expected to hail the target, board it, seize the ship, the cargo, or both, and take crew prisoner if necessary. (Warships carry much larger crews than merchant ships). If the merchantman doesn't respond to a hail and gets fired on, the warship is able to rescue survivors and either seize the cargo or allow it to go down with the crippled ship - including if necessary by using a deck gun to pound the crippled ship into flotsam after the crew have successfully evacuated.
If a submarine finds an unescorted enemy merchantman, it could in principle offer the same courtesy (and occasionally in WW1 this actually happened - WW1-era torpedoes were unreliable and you didn't have many of them, so allowing the crew to evacuate and then sinking the ship with the deck gun was the way to go). But obviously the sub doesn't have the ability to seize cargo or take survivors on board in the way a surface ship would so the crew are left drifting in a lifeboat.
But more realistically, the submarine normally has a sound military reason for hitting and running - either the aim is to torpedo a merchant ship in a convoy without being spotted by the escorting destroyer, or to attack an unescorted merchant ship in an area where enemy destroyers are operating so you want to get away fast before one shows up. So in practice, when you use submarines to interdict enemy merchant shipping (which was the main use case for submarines in both world wars) you are sending merchant ships to the bottom with all hands on board. Given the customs of the sea that would later be institutionalised in the 2nd GC, the vast majority of sailors (including plenty of uncucked naval officers) saw unrestricted submarine warfare as per se perfidious and/or piratical. British Admiral Arthur Wilson favoured hanging submariners as pirates, leading to a backlash and ultimately to British submarines proudly flying the Jolly Rodger - the most recent example being HMS Conqueror when it returned to port after sinking the Belgrano in the Falklands War. Ultimately, the world's navies decided that USW was too militarily useful to be illegal, and Donitz was acquitted on that charge at Nuremberg.
Using small drones operated from a safe distance is more like submarine warfare than surface warfare - you don't have the resources to do things the old-school way so if you want to effectively interdict the commerce in illegal narcotics, you have to be willing to send boats to the bottom with all hands. A surface navy or coast guard officer who sank a boat with all hands "to send a message" when he was on the scene and able to board would be considered a moral monster by everyone who has ever set sail - and doubly so if he took a second shot on a crippled boat to make sure it sank without rescuing the crew. This is quite apart from any criminal liability under the UCMJ or 2nd GC - naval law implements sailors' understanding of morality.
Here we have a case where the US has admitted that they could have interdicted the drug boats the old school way with a surface warship, but chose to use drones. Hegseth said that the point was to use lethal force which wasn't strictly necessary "to send a message", which, regardless of legal technicalities, is evilmaxxing for the evulz from the perspective of maritime custom and tradition. If Hegseth is bullshitting and the real motivation is to interdict more boats with less resources, then this is in the territory of "is USW militarily necessary in a way which overrides sailors' gut feeling that it is piratical?"
Umm, does that mean "yes"?
Would you mind linking me to the source of your quote? I am skeptical.
I made a mistake - it was Rubio and not Hegseth. I found it on Lawfare Media. Googling gives many examples of MSM coverage such as this in Politico, although I note that most of the MSM articles don't use quotes, so it is possibly a paraphrase.
I clicked on a hyperlink in your article and here's what Rubio apparently said:
Looks to me like another case of an uncharitable reading in order to demonize the outgroup.
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