Alex Horton

It's also just a good example to set because in a conflict, say with China, if you put torpedoes into 10 boats and in all 10 boats there were

There were Chinese sailors in the water and the next order was to strafe them with fighter jets and kill them without any ability for them to be rescued or patched up or wounded or whatever.

If China sees that, it says, well, why do we have to follow the rules?

If the U.S.

doesn't do it, then it doesn't matter what we do.

And there is this – in warfare, there is sometimes this tit for tat that they do it.

And therefore the gloves are off.

And that could happen in small ways and in big ways.

And you do not want to be an American sailor who goes down with the ship and see a Chinese plane coming and be like, man, I really wish my buddies in the other squadron didn't shoot up those survivors because that pilot's going to feel a whole different set of ways about whether he can kill me or not.

That is a concern.

I mean, it's still hypothetical, but this is why we want to have these guardrails in warfare so we can set an example.

But also, we need to be able to say we're doing the right thing, that we're following orders that are lawful, we have confidence in our leaders, and we will execute those orders.

That's something that really needs to be unspooled.

The fair and accurate answer is I don't know.

I can tell you what law of experts have sort of speculated on, but they still need more information because the other things that matter have consequence to that answer.

Did Adam R. Bradley misinterpret what Hegseth said?

Did Bradley figure that that boat was seaworthy or they needed to attack the drugs and the people were just collateral rather than trying to kill the people themselves is another thing.

During the ISIS war, there was a permissible target because fuel was being sold to finance terror operations that you could strike fuel depots.

And if civilians or others got caught up in it, you know, they would do a calculated assessment.

But there is a world where some civilians would be acceptable to risk in something like that if they determined it was worth it.