No matter how you slice it, Trump’s call to “take out” terrorist families would made war crimes our policy. The fact that he’s either ignorant or uncaring of that fact makes it worse, not better.
For soldiers seeking to earn a green beret, the final test they have to pass at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg is a mentally and physically demanding field exercise called “Robin Sage.”
The student “alpha teams” are inserted (by parachute, mule, helicopter or on foot) in the North Carolina pine forest to reach a mock guerrilla” camp. Their mission is to earn the guerrillas’ trust and begin to train them in our ways of war.
At some point, each team is faced with being compelled by circumstance or ordered to participate in a war crime. The few who do never get a green beret. Donald Trump couldn’t pass that test.
Before the Dec. 15 debate, Mr. Trump said, “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.” He said it again during the debate, so it wasn’t a slip of the tongue.
There’s a fundamental problem with Mr. Trump’s idea: What he advocated — twice — would be a war crime. The intentional killing of noncombatants obviously violates the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. If any U.S. soldier — officer or enlisted — were ordered to do it he or she would be duty-bound and legally required to refuse to obey.