#articles of war

[geethr75]

Review of The Devil and the Dark series by R.M. Olson

This series is also not complete, but I’ve read all seven books that are released so far. Going to hound someone for an ARC of Book 8. In the meantime, I’m reading another series by the author set in an entirely different universe. Devil to Pay (Book 1) Blurb “I didn’t know that I wanted to read a science fiction series that feels like age of sail ships duking it out in space until I picked…

Review of The Devil and the Dark series by R.M. Olson

[cliffsecord]

rolling up to the group of reenactors: hey I’m having trouble understanding this Article of War, is there anybody cute who can help demonstrate article eye-ex with me?

[cliffsecord]

So I was looking through the December 1749 version of the royal navy Articles of War and I wasn’t expecting so much of it to be along the lines “you must be christian and adhere to the doctrine of the Church of England also treason is awful we’ll execute you”

I’m not a religious person but it still was surprising to see so much emphasis put on christianity; I’m culturally Jewish but aside from that I’m not devout in any sense

If I was on the boat, I’d still dutifully say grace before meals but I think that the wires would get crossed in my head and I’d begin with “for the nourishment we are about to receive let the lord make us truly grateful” and then it would turn into the Latin “nos morituri salutamus” (what Roman gladiators say: those of us who are about to die salute you, Roman emperor)

[girlzoot]

Heck did not know any French, and he listened to these people talking with some awe, some distrust -- a part of him had trouble believing people could communicate by sounds so alien. And all around lay the detritus of war, scattered along the beaches and across the field and into odd corners of the countryside: discarded gas masks, tires, gasoline cans, empty food tins and cartons, fallen telephone cables, parachute containers, deserted gun emplacements, overturned and exploded transports and boats and tanks, rolls of concertina wire, stacks of life belts, mildewed underwear.  Homes reduced to door frames.  Burned and abandoned bulldozers.  The skeletons of goats, cows, dogs, horses.  Plastic sheets and bags in all sizes.  Paper handbills and flyers strewn amid smashed furniture, fragments of shattered glass.  In town the treads of passing tanks were rapidly destroying the cobble streets.  The fallen shop buildings and churches and hotels and houses had the appearance of sand castles bludgeoned by a wrathful child. In one hedgerow, an American Sherman tank hung precariously in a gap it had created only to meet there its demise.  Looking at the disabled German panzer tanks lying about, Heck though unhappily that they appeared considerably larger and more fearsome than the American Shermans.  In training he had been assured that the American tanks were faster and more agile, but when it came down to it, he thought, wouldn’t anyone rather have more steel and a bigger gun? ---Nick Arvin/Articles of War

[ceresprime]

the realization that I could be tried for desertion

(Articles of War 1778, section VI article III)

[littleastrobleme]

Catch me violating the 33rd Article of War and "behaving in a scandalous, infamous, cruel, oppressive, or fraudulent manner, unbecoming the character of an officer."

[karadin]

Trump was stopped from assassinating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad according to Bob Woodward’s new book

A bellicose President Trump wanted to kill Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad after he launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2017, according to the new White House tell-all by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.

The commander-in-chief called Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and issued the deadly order.

“Let’s f–king kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f–king lot of them,” Trump said, according to the book, the subject of a lengthy article in the DC paper on Tuesday.

Mattis told the president that he’d get right on it.

But after hanging up, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.”

The president’s national security team then prepared a plan for a conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

Trump tweeted a day later that the military attack against Syrian targets was a “Mission Accomplished!”

But the Syrian civil war still grinds on after seven years of fighting — and Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian allies, reportedly is prepping for a massive assault on Idlib Province, the rebels’ last stronghold, which observers fear could kill hundreds of thousands of civilians.

According to The New York Times, Trump’s advisors propose to lift “bureaucratic hurdles” to killing decisions, expand CIA authority to kill in Afghanistan, and relax a key Obama-era requirement limiting lethal strikes to “high-level militants” who pose “a continuing and imminent threat to Americans.” If the rules are relaxed, the policy would permit lethal force against what the Times — apparently itself accepting the war paradigm outside the context of war — refers to as “foot-soldiers.”

Each of these is a step in exactly the wrong direction. Take the last, for example. The “continuing, imminent threat” requirement was itself a malleable, made-up limit, and rather a nonsensical one, as the administration’s interpretation of imminent meant anything but imminent. But look what’s being considered now — killing low-level suspects, far from any battlefield, who don’t actually pose a threat to Americans. What meaningful basis is there to decide who lives or dies? What limit is left to the government’s claimed killing authority? It does not seem that the new rules will impose any meaningful geographic or temporal constraints. It appears that the Trump administration proposes to kill people engaged in so-called Islamist insurgencies in many parts of the world. If so, how does this not turn America into the world’s military, acting at the behest of or to protect notorious rights-violating regimes like the one in the Philippines? As we have warned, under Trump, the limits of war as we know it could virtually dissolve.

Trump’s advisors apparently propose to keep in place a requirement of “near certainty” that no civilians will be harmed in strikes. However, that provides little comfort because we don’t know who the Trump administration defines as a civilian. Moreover, lowering the threshold for who is killed and removing even internal layers of executive branch oversight surely increases the risk of wrongful killing and abuse, as well as the likelihood that no one will be held accountable when things go wrong.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be new, for there has been no accountability for any alleged wrongful strike , limited transparency, and no meaningful public assessment of the human and strategic costs of lethal strikes. This is the killing program the Trump administration is seeking to expand.

During the Obama years, we argued that the administration’s claims of meaningful limits on killing authority essentially boiled down to “trust us.” Many Americans did. Now, the Trump administration wants the same trust. And more people will die.

[theamericanparlor]

Confederate Articles of War 1861 · Richmond, Va.

generally copied from U.S. Army Articles, reflect the deadly serious nature of the rebellion: "All officers and soldiers who have received pay, or have been duly enlisted in the services of the Confederate States, and shall be convicted of having deserted the same, shall suffer death, or such other punishment as, by sentence of a court-martial, shall be inflicted."