Nuremberg 2025

Washington DC 8 JAN 2025

“I was only following orders”

This was the Nazi defense at the Nuremberg war crimes trials after WWII. It was rejected by the court as immoral and an all too convenient excuse for war crimes and genocide.

The Nuremberg standard was simple. Military forces of civilized counties could only be ordered to follow lawful orders. The definition of a lawful order should be self evident to a military member using common sense. If a situation is particularly complex or gray, those giving the order and those refusing, understand that their decisions in the moment will be adjudicated at a later time and place by the proper authorities according to the rule of law.

Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that any official act by an American President is, by definition, legal. To quote Nixon's self defense in the media after Watergate: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal". Nixon was a navy combat veteran of WWII.

In court arguments, different scenarios were presented to test the proposition, including the use of US special forces to arbitrarily execute Americans who opposed the president. “Opposed” in this instance meaning mere disagreement. It did not include any threat or use of violence.

Sotomayor raised it first while questioning Trump attorney John Sauer. She pointed back to an earlier exchange Sauer had in a lower court proceeding.

"I'm going to give you a chance to say ... if you stay by it: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military, or orders someone, to assassinate him -- is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?" she asked during oral arguments.

"It would depend on the hypothetical," Sauer answered. "We could see that could well be an official act.".

The immunity decision in Trump v US negates the Nuremberg standard. Consequentially, members of the US armed forces MUST now engage in war crimes and genocide, if so ordered, or face court martial.

As extensively documented on this Substack, maga has long favored executions for all those who oppose Trumpism. It does not take a huge leap to envisage scenarios where “old school” military personnel reject an order as unlawful due to its inherent lawlessness and/or immorality resulting in court martial for treason with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. After a few show trials and executions, summary “battlefield executions” for failure to follow orders cannot be far behind. Absolute power corrupts absolutely quickly if it remains unopposed.

If illegal orders cannot be legally opposed, that only leaves conscientious objection. Color me cynical, but I suspect that too will end in cries of treason and the firing squad or rope. Afterall, these guys pride themselves on being the baddies.

Of course all of this will likely seem wild to readers who may not have been following any of this closely. To those readers I merely respond that the kind of scenario I have in mind was played out in the supreme Court and accepted as legal under new standard.

Roberts and Alito dismiss the SEAL Team VI scenario as implausible. Yet they did not exclude it from the protection of immunity. This makes immoral and illegal acts not just plausible but permissible. They knew what they were doing.

This upends civil-military relations. Trump can order a hurricane to be nuked and no one can disagree. He can order the Joint Chiefs to attack Mexico with hundreds of missiles and to pretend they came from somewhere else. Or he can order the immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Europe and Asia and the order must be followed.

These are not academic examples. These are all orders Trump issued in his last term that were ignored by the national security apparatus as being illegal. That excuse no longer exists.

The door is now open to any outrage no matter how small or large. Will Sunday talkshow Pete refuse to nuke France because it cut off Brie supplies over Trump's tariffs on the French film industry? Actually that's a bad example, not because the premise is insane (therefore plausible) but because nuclear command and control rests solely with Trump. Talkshow Pete can't stop him even if he wanted to, supreme Court or none.

America is a serious country, in a serious international moment with a deeply unserious regime about to take power with absolutely no legal limits on anything it does. If we escape without a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world it will be an absolute miracle.

When you realize that maybe you are the problem…