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.
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.
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.
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.
Won’t or can’t. The dems are minorities in all branches. A bit late to be beating the blame game on the dems after they were voted out of literally all power.
And the only judges who are doing anything right now is a trump and bush appointed judges in which are just facing appeals. So that’s not on the dems either.
You really need to stop blaming dems for all the reps doing bad things.
I didn’t blame the dems for doing bad things. I blame the dems for doing nothing, or doing ineffective things. Especially when they did have the opportunity to do so.
Yeah, they can’t do anything now because they didn’t take advantage when they could.
So then by your own admission you do know they can’t do anything now. So why are you blaming the dems now? It can’t just be always the dems at fault even when the reps are clearly in the wrong here. It’s just a waste of energy and distraction at most from dealing with what is going on right now.
I don’t need to re-explain what I said.
And I disagree with your forcing a binary choice to remove attention from the dems. I can be pissed at the dems/DNC for helping, or at least not more forcefully opposing, the events that lead us to this point AND deal with “what is going on right now.”
You’re not looking for solutions. You’re looking to blame and be helpless and a perpetual victim. That’s your choice and I won’t waste more of my own time on such a person who chooses to spend their time in such a way.
Keep going please. Make more shit up about me to satisfy yourself.
You also jump up your own asshole cuz you enjoy the smell of it
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.
This excuse didn’t work in the Nuremberg trials so…
Yes that’s literally what OP’s pic is saying
Wait until he finds out his holy document was concocted by genocidal enslavers… Functioning as intended.
Presidential Executive Orders
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.
The same applies to most gang members.
“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.
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.
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
They could, but it would be a big mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Protection_Act
You may have heard it called the, “Invade the Hague Act.”
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.
Yeah, about that… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Protection_Act
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.
Thank you for the added context and time points!
Germany wasn’t exactly in a position to stop them from being on trial.
Like the US justice system gives a flying fuck about precedence anymore.
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.
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.
They will just be fired like everyone else who puts up resistance to the current administration.
Isn’t national guard a weekend thing? Honest question. I haven’t lived in the US since the Obama years
The National Guard is a combination of full time and mostly weekend reservists. Some are full time to keep everything running.
The National Guard is also state level and the most likely part of the military to refuse unlawful orders, at least from blue states. I expect those in red states to be pretty awful though, and they have already been tasked with enfocing immigration in states like Texas.
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.
