To the editor: A few weeks ago, two survivors of a missile strike were rescued from the water and eventually released to their home countries.
If those two survivors had been thrown back in the water and machine-gunned, would that be a war crime (“Killing survivors is not a legal or moral gray area,” Dec. 2)? In the alleged double-tap incident, does using a missile make it less of a war crime? What would be the difference between a second missile strike and machine-gunning the survivors?
In World War II, a German U-boat commander ordered his sailors to machine-gun survivors of a torpedo strike. The British tried and convicted him of a war crime and executed him.
Has the use of drones and missiles made violations of the Geneva Convention and of the U.S. Department of Defense’s own Law of War Manual less of a war crime?
Mark Henderson, El Dorado Hills
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To the editor: If any other country in the world was attacking small boats off the coast of sovereign countries and in international waters, killing their crews and their passengers who had been accused of drug trafficking seemingly without evidence, the United States government would usually be calling for charges of war crimes against that country. The silence is deafening.
Donald Peppars, Pomona
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To the editor: The drug problem in this country is a matter of supply and demand. Remove the demand, and the supply takes care of itself. The demand is homegrown, so why does the United States continue to punish beleaguered countries for apparently meeting that demand (“Trump weighs options on Venezuela strikes amid congressional alarm,” Dec. 1)?
While the U.S. is conducting extrajudicial killings of seamen departing from Venezuela allegedly smuggling drugs, why the saber-rattling by a president who claims to end wars and not to start them? Wouldn’t it be more efficacious to work on the demand side of the equation here at home?
Denys Arcuri, Indio
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To the editor: I flew American planes during the lamented Vietnam War. One of my missions was to patrol the coastal waters of Vietnam, seeking and perhaps destroying boats that were supplying enemy troops in the south. Most of the boats we encountered were innocent fishermen. These looked exactly like enemy supply craft, so there was not much we could do other than report each contact to headquarters in Saigon.
I cannot read of today’s destruction of small boats, as well as the cold-blooded killings of the crews on these boats, when there is no more direct evidence of a threat than there was by innocent fishermen in days gone by.
Stephen Sloane, Lomita
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To the editor: It is indisputable that giving no quarter is a violation of well-established rules of war and the American code of military conduct. What also needs to be recognized is that if our military ignores these rules, it provides an incentive and excuse for our adversaries, whether already predisposed or not, to give no quarter to our military personnel when they’re hors de combat or captured. What goes around often comes around.
Howard R. Price, Beverly Hills
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To the editor: If our president is so intent on killing drug-smuggling “terrorists,” I’m having difficulty understanding why is he pardoning Honduras’ former president, who is a convicted drug trafficker (“Trump says he’ll pardon former Honduran President Hernandez, convicted of drug trafficking,” Nov. 28). Is this what they call “cognitive dissonance”?
How about, more simply, “what President Trump does makes no sense”?
Henry Rosenfeld, Santa Monica
