Killing survivors is not a legal or moral gray area

OVER THE LONG weekend, new reporting from the Washington Post indicated that U.S. forces conducting counter-drug operations in the Caribbean have fired second missiles at people who survived an initial strike and were left swimming in the water.

- JON DUFFY GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Department of Defense Rapid Response
THE U.S. has destroyed more than 20 boats since early September, killing at least 83 people.

Should the reports be confirmed, this would mark a stark departure from longstanding U.S. military practice and from the most basic prohibitions in the laws of war.

If the United States has been firing second missiles at the survivors of its own strikes, we are no longer debating policy. We are describing a nation committing the very acts it once prosecuted others for. We have become what we once condemned.

There is a rule every professional military knows it cannot break: You do not kill people who can no longer fight. This restraint is not because it is merciful or sentimental. You don't do it because the moment you do, you are no longer engaged in war. You are no longer fighting an enemy. You are killing for the state.

For weeks, the country has argued over legal memos, theories of presidential authority and the semantics of "armed conflict." All of that obscures a simpler truth. Killing survivors is not a legal gray area, a battlefield innovation or a partisan dispute. It is a war crime. Full stop.