While true, most of them are likely one paycheck away from having their family living in the streets. That's a powerful deterrent against refusing orders that the US has somehow mastered. That too.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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“I was just living paycheck to paycheck” won’t be a valid defense either :P
Of course, but most people will prioritize their own family members over others. It's an explanation, not an argument against being moral.
My go-to in nuance situations that require clarification is "explanation is not justification"
Except it will. As will "I was just following orders". It works for cops. It worked in Vietnam. Hell, it even worked for the majority of Nazi's; only a small percentage actually faced reprocussions for their actions.
Welcome to real history, where the good guys don't always win and the bad guys don't always lose.
The same applies to most gang members.
However it was deemed a valid defence in the trials of US war criminals in the Vietnam War.
The US literally sanctioned the ICC judges. There's not gonna be a Nuremberg trial for them lol.
I have no idea if the gaurdian is a good source but I had no idea about this so I figured I'd grab an article link for anyone who also had no ideas this happened recently
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/05/marco-rubio-sanctions-icc-judges-israel-gaza
(Feel free to reply with links to better sources if you'd like :)
The guardian in general is a pretty trustworthy source afaik.
Could change rapidly. I doubt Nazi Germany started under the purview of the ICC. (I think ICC was created in response.)
There was no jurisdiction at the time. The Nuremberg trials were essentially kangaroo courts with no solid basis in law, performed because the gravity of the Nazi crimes was so great something had to be done. As such some of the judges were uneasy about handing down death sentences, as many of the crimes they were charged with were not crimes in the Third Reich, and international law hadn’t developed sufficiently to take over.
The ICC came around in the 1990s, partially in response to calls from those involved in the Nuremberg trials for provision for a more robust and legal process, that didn’t rely on conquest first.
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American soldiers aren’t in the jurisdiction of the ICC or any international court anyway.
That really isn't how that works. The US has declared that they won't allow the international courts to get involved, but that doesn't necessarily prevent those courts from disagreeing.
"Jurisdiction" is only a thing when a court answers to some higher authority who has limited what that court can do. Since the international courts theoretically don't answer to the US government, they can make any ruling they like.
They're unlikely to bother, since they probably won't be in a position to enforce any ruling against typical foot soldiers, but they absolutely could if it came to that point
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America isn't in the jurisdiction of the ICC, but American soldiers who commit crimes within ICC countries are. This means that American soldiers according to international law can, for example, be prosecuted for crime they commit in support of Israel's genocide.
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The British soldiers at the Boston Massacre and Nazi war criminals of the Holocaust had their day in court.
That's what due process is. Everyone -everyone - enemy or not, gets a trial. That's how it should be, that's how it needs to be, or there is no justice.
That's why "expedited removal" is nothing but fascism. No due process, no justice at all.
That's only partially true.
For starters, nearly everything German soldiers did was legal under German law.
Side tangent: GDR soldiers who killed civilians trying to flee the country could easily be prosecuted after reunification because this was explicitly illegal under GDR law.
It's harder to prosecute "legal" crimes. It requires establishing there are "natural laws" which stand above any law humans put in place. For instance, slaughtering civilians is one such violation of "natural law". It's more complex but that's the rough summary.
Besides, most German soldiers simply became prisoners of war and faced little to no legal consequences. The Nuremberg trials were mostly for those who gave the illegal order - no one has time for millions of legal cases.
I have little to no clue about US law but as far as I can tell, executive orders are legal until deemed illegal by a court. The order would therefore have to violate "natural law" - not the constitution - or be so obviously illegal beyond any reasonable doubt to allow for prosecution of those who follow it. Both of those are a very high bar to clear.
This is a reason why I kinda like the psudo religious concepts that back US founding documents.
Now before everyone gets to typing about annoying evangelicals or whatever (trust me I understand) you don't have to believe in christianity or any other religious institution for the "natural law" concept to work. All it takes is an understanding that human rights are a default and don't magically disappear because your area's govt says so.
It's summed up nicely by this quote from John Locke.
"And where the Body of the People, or any single Man, is deprived of their Right, or is under the Exercise of a power without right, and have no Appeal on Earth, there they have a liberty to appeal to Heaven, whenever they judge the Cause of sufficient moment."
All it takes is an understanding that human rights are a default
Unfortunately, there is considerable disagreement about what the default human rights are.
It is important to add that even though the US has committed atrocities, for decades, from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos through Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza; illegal invasion, torture, genocide, war crimes; nothing meaningful ever came from it. There has never been Nuremberg trial equivalent for the United States, and there never will be. Every single president since Eisenhower, every single one, no exceptions, has been a war criminal by the standards of the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo tribunal, and not one of them ever spent even a day in court for it.
There are no consequences for war crimes committed by Americans. None. Aside from 9/11, but the ones who died, the ones who suffered, were not the ones responsible for the atrocities committed by the US. So sure, "just following orders" isn't a valid defense, but you won't need one anyway.
The Nuremberg trials did not happen because the Nazis were wrong. They happened because the Nazis lost the war.
Skipped right over killing 25% of the Korean population that just happened to be so unlucky to live in the northern half at the time, as is tradition. No one remembers the Korean war for some reason.
I remember, but pragmatism wins over factual correctness sometimes. If you're trying to convince someone that American imperialism is bad, and they get a whiff of what they might misconstrue as being pro North Korean, they dismiss what you're saying outright.
I also didn't mention Indonesia, Timor, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and so and and so forth. And that's not because I don't think America is responsible for truly gut wrenching things there (I think Guatemala is especially egregious), but because people aren't as familiar with these as they are with the Vietnam War and the war on terror. And the latter two have the added benefit that it's generally agreed upon by liberals (after the fact, of course, never during) that they were a bad thing.
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It's known as the forgotten war for a reason, mostly because it wasn't as big as WW2 and not as much of a clusterfuck as Vietnam. For all the shit that happened it basically just returned to status quo, honestly out of all the non Korean participants it was most notable for the Chinese. For UN forces it was a test run and for the Soviets it was a decent area to test new post WW2 tech and dump some surplus.
I mean we're talking about the US here which explicitly reserves the right to invade the Netherlands if any of their soldiers end up in The Hague for any reason.
Like the US justice system gives a flying fuck about precedence anymore.
The National Guard of this country has murdered American citizens on numerous occasions in our country's history without a peep about prosecution later on from anybody. Don't expect it to change this time. And really don't expect them not to fire. These Weekend Warriors love the idea of killing Americans. It's what they dream of.
Remember that in reality the US saved the top Nazis and made them head of NATO.
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I have faith that there are many people in the military chain of command who are smart enough to ‘interpret’ orders and posture deployments in a way that does not escalate and lead to killing.
ICE and the civilian LEO have less discipline and the risk of escalation is immensely higher. I’d take the National Guard who follows orders and is subject to court martial over the jack boots any day of the week.
Hopefully you're right. Because they're going to send in Marines next.
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Nazis are Nazis. They knew what they were doing from the get go. They were just too cowardly to say it out loud.
Punch Nazis. Or they will punch you.
I was on a camping trip. What happened?
Trump is sending 2000 national guard troops to LA in response to anti-ICE protests there, over the explicit objection of Governor Newsom, who would normally be involved in any National Guard deployment in his state. The protests were mostly peaceful, and the local police were handling them, so this is entirely an effort to escalate the situation and show force against a state that doesn't want Trump interfering.
THE FUCK?!
Yep. Sorry for the abrupt transition back from camping.
Holy shit
The only reason such a rationalization was ever brought forward is because they were brought to face judgement by a group of powers seeking to enact some form of justice for the atrocities committed.
IOW, “just following orders” will never be a defense offered if there’s nobody to put them on trial.
It’s a huge assumption that there will be anyone to put those kind of people on trial in the US and dispense any meaningful justice at this point. Current dems won’t do anything. Current judges can’t seem to pass sentences that stick.
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I will NOT thank you for your service, I will resist you and shame you to my final breath for letting the allure of guns and patriotism lead you into at best complacency towards fascism.
Remember that we had to fight a world war before we got to decide that just following orders wasn't an excuse?
There are steps between 'Human rights and abuse of power' before we get to 'put on trial for atrocities'. We're not preparing for those steps right now.
It's an annual training requirement, they all know.
This excuse didn't work in the Nuremberg trials so....
Yes that's literally what OP's pic is saying
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