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Illegal Orders and the Criminals Who Give Them

Jon Stewart to Sen. Mark Kelly: If Venezuela Boat Strikes Are Illegal, What About Obama's Drone Strikes?

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly with John Stewart on The Daily Show Jan. 6, 2026

by John LaForge

The president and secretary of defense have failed in their effort to see to the execution of six members of Congress after the lawmakers urged members of the U.S. military to obey the law.

The six Democrats — Representatives Jason Crow of Colo., Maggie Goodlander and Chris Deluzio of New Hampshire, and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, as well as Senators Mark Kelly of Ariz. and Elissa Slotkin of Mich. — aired a 90-second video last year reminding military personnel that they “must refuse illegal orders.”

When the video aired, President Trump called for the execution of all six. Then, Washington, DC prosecutors sought to charge all six with federal crimes, including treason, sedition, and subversive activities – some of which can carry the death penalty.

Of course, urging the rank and file to obey military law and the laws of war is not a criminal act or a violation of any law, so [on February  10] a grand jury refused to indict the lawmakers.

Senator Kelly is a former astronaut and commander of the Space Shuttle, and a retired Navy Captain with 25 years in the Marine Corps. Sen. Kelly spoke to John Stewart on The Daily Show about the video and reported, “We said, ‘don’t follow illegal orders.’ We stated the law. Donald Trump didn’t like that,” and he “called for me to be hanged.”

The president’s berserker reaction speaks volumes about the administration’s hair-raising criminality and its pursuit of police state impunity. (As when VP Vance claimed falsely that ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis, is “protected by absolute immunity.”) Because the lawmakers’ video message directly implied that certain orders from today’s chain of command (headed by Hegseth and Trump) could be illegal — orders, say, to kill civilians in the open sea, in Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, in Nigeria, Minneapolis, or elsewhere — the two TV stars lost their heads.

At the time of the video’s airing, Hegseth hurried to the press and lied outright about the lawmakers’ message. He said Sen. Kelly had told military personnel “not to follow lawful orders” — knowing full well that his blistering falsehood would go viral and be reported as fact. The Pentagon’s formal Jan. 5 memo attacking Sen. Kelly corrected Hegseth’s lying and noted that the senator had said, “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.” To John Stewart, Sen. Kelly confirmed, “It’s what we said, and that’s the law.”

Leave it to the twice-impeached, convicted felon and sex predator Trump — and to Hegseth, who once doled out $50,000 to quash a sexual assault accusation — to be politically apoplectic by the video’s insinuation that the administration’s unconstitutional and undeclared acts of war around the world and across the United States might be criminal and require lawful military insubordination.

The gruesome irony of Mr. Trump’s “they should be hanged” outburst is that, after WWII, Nazi war criminals were hanged for following illegal orders. The defendants claimed “superior orders” as justification, but prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunals, led by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, thundered in response: “Following orders” is no defense.

Legally, the same goes for U.S. military attacks on civilians in Iraq or Caracas, civilians in fast boats, or attacks on sovereign independent states, including Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria that have not attacked the U.S. In opening the military tribunals in Germany, Justice Jackson spoke partly to the victorious Allied powers who presided, warning: “While this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and, if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment. … [T]he record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.”

Recent U.S. military aggression in Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, and on the High Seas seems to violate the laws of armed conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is partly based on the Nuremberg Judgment. And at least Admiral Alvin Holsey, who was Commander of the U.S. Southern Command and in charge of missile attacks on civilian fast boats, seems to have seen the writing on the wall. Adm. Holsey offered to resign and left last December after reportedly questioning Pete “kill them all” Hegseth about the legality of the attacks. ###

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, and edits its newsletter. This comment was first published at Counterpunch (https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/13/illegal-orders-and-the-criminals-who-give-them/)

 

 

 

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Global Majority of Countries Now Signed onto UN Nuclear Ban Treaty

As of September 26, Kyrgyzstan has signed, and Ghana has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), raising the number of states that have acceded, signed, or ratified the treaty to a global majority. Now, 99 out of 197 eligible states have taken legal action under the treaty. This is a key milestone for what is still a young treaty which was adopted by the UN just over 8 years ago and only entered into force 5 years ago. The TPNW outlaws nuclear weapons and all activities associated with them, including production, possession, testing, threats or use. As we know from the evidence from the United States’ nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago, the effects of nuclear weapons are uniquely cruel and inhumane because of the indiscriminate, lasting, intergenerational harm they cause. The fact that a global majority of states now respect and heed the treaty sends a strong signal to the nuclear-armed states and their allies which support the use of nuclear weapons in their military strategies that they are the minority and increasingly regarded by the international community as irresponsible actors threatening global security. — ICAN Sept. 26, 2025. This article was originally published by ICAN, and has been shortened for space.

ICAN - International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

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First Nation Stalls Planned Canadian Radioactive Waste Dump Near Ottawa River

According to the Journal de Montréal, the 365 Anishinabeg residents of the Kebaowek First Nation reserve in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, have halted the multi-million-dollar Canadian radioactive waste dump sited on their homelands. The intended permanent abandonment site, which would hold up to one-million cubic meters of radioactive and other toxic wastes including plutonium, was conceived of by a consortium of multinational corporations hired by the federally-owned corporation Atomic Energy of Canada. The proposal would sandwich the waste in a mound of clay, sand, and an insufficient membrane close to the surface and near the Ottawa River, drinking water for many downstream. The mound is engineered to last 550 years, but Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility points out that 19 of the 29 radioactive substances destined for the dump have half-lives of more than 5,500 years. In February, Federal Courts ruled that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission did not obtain free, prior, and informed consent of affected Indigenous communities — required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — before green-lighting construction. In March, Federal Courts found the dump threatens several at-risk species. The proposed dump is opposed by 130 Quebec municipalities. — Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Sept. 22; Journal de Montréal, Sept.19, 2025

We the Nuclear Free North – Join us to oppose nuclear waste burial in ...

We the Nuclear Free North – Join us to oppose nuclear waste burial in Northwestern Ontario

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Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Renews Prohibition against Nuclear Weapons

By Nukewatch Staff

In Iran, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has again prohibited Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has for decades declared that nuclear weapons production would violate the principles of the government’s holy book The Quran. Speaking in Tehran on January 21, the day after the presidential inauguration, Ahmadreza Pourkhaghan, the head of Iran’s Armed Forces Judiciary, said, “The late Imam Khomeini did not allow the use of chemical weapons or any illegal and unconventional weapons, even against enemy forces,” and therefore, “it is based on this doctrine that the Supreme Leader does not permit the armed forces of the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons.”

In 2019, the radio broadcast The World reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “said that Iran was not looking to acquire nuclear weapons for a surprising reason — that they were illegal under Islamic law.” In apparent apostasy, on February 8, Iranian military commanders took the extraordinarily unusual step of urging the Ayatollah to revoke the religious fatwa, says the London Independent, which reported that the regime’s military leaders asserted that Iran must have nuclear weapons “to survive.” — London Independent, Feb. 8, 2025; Newsweek, Jan. 22, 2025; The World, May 30, 2019

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Nuclear Abolition Is Focus of UN Meetings in New York

by John LaForge, 5 March 2025

All this week, dedicated nuclear weapons abolitionists have been meeting at the United Nations in New York. The up-beat gathering is the 3rd “Meeting of States Parties” (MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The TPNW is extraordinary because — in the words of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons which helped shepherd the treaty through the UN negotiating process and won a Nobel Prize for it — it’s “the first globally applicable treaty that categorically prohibits the most destructive, inhumane instruments of war ever created.”

This prohibition applies to states that ratify, which means the U.S. and the eight other nuclear powers can continue the 80-year-long legacy of cancer-causing radioactive pollution and global bomb threats — known quaintly as “deterrence” — a rationalization of terror and globalized risk-taking that most of the rest of the world has renounced.

Along with the TPNW’s 73 states parties at this week’s meetings are over a dozen treaty “signatory states” from the Americas — putting the USA’s absence to shame — including Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Combined, the TPNW’s parties and signers total 94, or half of the United Nations’ 193 members, a colossal accomplishment of common sense, defogging, and popular good will that triumphed over public and private pressure, threats, and intimidation by nuclear armed states that pretend their doomsday devices still serve a needed function.

Enthusiasm for the TPNW is most pronounced in the global south where economies, environments, and health statistics could improve dramatically if the increasingly isolated nuclear-armed states would renounce their civilization-ending weapons and redirect the resources, scientific expertise and patriotic zeal to human needs.

The treaty’s appeal continues to grow in part because of today’s shooting wars involving nuclear-armed states.

This year, Nukewatch co-director Kelly Lundeen is in New York leading a small delegation of colleagues. Their particular focus among NGO activities is the treaty’s Article 6, requiring states parties to provide medical care, rehabilitation and psychological support for individuals affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons. Widespread radioactive fallout from bomb testing has harmed millions in the Marshall Islands and Nevada (bombed by the U.S.), Australia (UK), Algeria (France), Kazakhstan (USSR), and at Lop Nor in China’s Gobi Desert.

Do you still believe “nuclear deterrence” policy retains validity? Consider the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The West’s nuclear weapons were always justified as the “deterrent” that kept Russia from taking military action in Europe. Perhaps the unmasking of this charade, which holds us all in such terrible danger, can help see it be renounced and abandoned.

There is another grim and indeed mortifying reason nuclear weapons can be eliminated: they are unnecessary for war-makers bent on mass destruction. Today’s photos of a rubblized Gaza,  2003 footage of the Shock-and-Awe rubblized streets of Baghdad, and the horrific destruction of Ukraine’s electrical power stations by Putin’s invasion of the sovereign state, show devastation caused by non-nuclear Israeli and U.S. explosives. Modern “conventional” weapons are so devastating, so powerful, that nuclear attacks are redundant, only make the rubble bounce, and can be disavowed and revoked.

The world’s economies, its peoples’ nervous systems, its natural ecosystems, and the status of international relations would all improve.

###

Originally at PeaceVoice.org.

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