What's your point? You seem to fail to understand that life matters. What is going on in international waters isn't war. It's policing and there are laws and regulations covering how these matters are handled.
We can agree that not everything legal is moral and that not everything moral is legal.
What we're talking about here is not the sanctity of life, but the legality of homicide. Sometimes homicide is legal, and historically the courts have given extremely wide latitude to the President to decide when it's legal for the president to use the military for homicide...particularly outside the boundaries of the US.
To be frank, in international waters a nation can essentially do whatever it's capacity of global violence and trade allows.
“The War Department categorically denies that any Pentagon lawyers, including SOUTHCOM lawyers, with knowledge of these operations have raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far because they are aware we are on firm legal ground,” Parnell said.
Whatever Colonel Meagher had to say, he didn't put it on the record. As a colonel, he's over 20 years...he can retire with an extremely comfortable retirement pay, a very soft sword to fall upon.
If an isn't illegal, why would there be a court marshal? No, an action is believed to be illegal before a court marshal and the court judges if the person is guilty of breaking as law or regulation.
The court-martial is to determine if the circumstances make it illegal. In most courts-martial, the issue not whether the defendant committed an act (that's why the conviction rate for courts-martial is in the 90% range). The issue is whether there were mitigating circumstances.
For instance, if a soldier refuses to obey what he believes is an illegal order, the first action of the court would be to place into record that the defendant did, indeed, violate UCMJ articles 90, 91, and/or 92 (refusal to obey an order or regulation from a person authorized to issue it). Finding the defendant guilty of that charge, the court will then determine whether there was an acceptable mitigating circumstance for that refusal.
You don't have the ability to interpret the Constitution, according to your posts.
I'm just repeating the interpretation of the Court when
ex post facto laws have come before it in the past.
These Congresscritters issued a statement that I fear will make many young troops think they have the authority to interpret the Constitution. They do not. The military does not have constitutional authority to interpret the Constitution. This statement is very likely to get a lot of troops in serious trouble. A Bad Conduct Discharge with federal felony prison time is highly likely, and that will dog a person for life.
People expect the military to be the cavalry that saves them from the result of their poor voting decisions over the last 20 years. The military does not have the power to do that. The nation voted for this plate of green wienies, and the nation is going to have to eat it.