Alex Horton

It would be the same thing if they shot protesters in downtown L.A.

They're not lawful military targets, and you can't use them that way.

Then the question becomes, well, is it this other thing?

Are they saying that they're fighting a group of combatants and they're really just killing civilians who are criminals?

I'm not a legal expert, and I don't know what venue this would be discussed, but these are the questions that The Hill and others are trying to ascertain of where do we go from here, who's culpable, and for what.

Yes.

During that operation, he was operating in the position of Joint Special Operations Commander.

Since then, he has been promoted to the four-star position of Special Operations Commander, which is above what he was doing before.

So now he oversees all matters of special operations within the military.

But an important point about his background is a couple things.

One, he's in the Navy, right?

So he is attuned and has the cultural and institutional fluency of what you do in a maritime situation.

It's part of the culture.

I was in the Army.

I didn't know this stuff.

I was a land guy.

He's a sea guy.

He would understand this much better when it comes to the maritime restrictions and legalities of who you can strike and when you can strike them in the water.

The second part of that, though, is throughout his Navy career, he came through that Navy SEAL pipeline.

You know, he was a member of SEAL Team 6, you know, the same group that carried out the mission.