For years, I’ve asked my students a difficult question: What do we owe people who can no longer fight back? What would you do for a wounded soldier reaching for help, or an ejected pilot whose parachute is snagged in a tree? How we treat people at their most vulnerable — wounded, surrendered, or adrift — is the truest test of our ethics, and the events of and since September 2nd show why the answer still matters. The erosion of hors de combat protections—through executive overreach, legal ambiguity, and normalization of extrajudicial force—marks a dangerous collapse of the line between war and crime, and that modern service members now bear a legal and ethical duty to refuse unlawful orders.
I have been teaching ethics, politics, and global issues for over 15 years, including the history of international and humanitarian law. One of the most effective tools I use is the case study Major Knight and Cambodia (Part II), developed by the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics. It places students in situations where every choice is uncomfortable, forcing them to ask: “What would I do?”
In discussions with current or former military personnel, the initial answers often seem straightforward — but then they are reminded that the legal protections we take for granted today, including the right to refuse unlawful orders, did not exist at the time. Although United States v. Keenan was decided by the Court of Military Appeals in January 1969, it did little to clarify the position of officers in the field. The decision neither created meaningful legal protection for refusal nor articulated an affirmative duty to disobey unlawful orders. By March 1969, when bombing in Cambodia began, the UCMJ still provided no statutory definition of what constituted an unlawful order, the Manual for Courts-Martial had not yet absorbed the “manifestly unlawful” standard, and no operational doctrine insulated officers from discipline for noncompliance. Major Hal Knight thus operated in a legal landscape marked less by guidance than by ambiguity—one that offered neither clear protection nor a clearly articulated obligation to refuse.
Within that context, the value of humanitarian law and professional ethics becomes tangible. Civilians rarely understand the weight of obligation to the chain of command. At the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center officers painfully articulated this duty; they told me it can require following orders that feel wrong and making life-or-death decisions in moments of extreme pressure. In the U.S. the Military Whistleblower Protection Act (1988, strengthened in 1998) provided the first “safe” alternatives to compliance and protections against retaliation.
Formal, protected avenues for questioning or refusing orders without facing automatic punishment—were effectively absent during the Vietnam War. Such mechanisms began to appear in the late 1970s and 1980s, but they were neither consistent nor institutionalized. It was only in the post-Cold War period, with expanded whistleblower protections and the routine integration of operational legal advice, that officers could reliably exercise alternatives to compliance without incurring immediate career or legal jeopardy.
“Civilized war,” an oxymoron if ever there was one, emerged as an effort to temper the brutality and reduce the unconscionable horrors of armed conflict. Across the globe, it was recognized that certain spaces and people — hospitals, schools, civilian populations, or the sick and wounded who could no longer fight — deserved protection. The concept of hors de combat, or “out of combat,” is one such distinction. Everyone has seen some version of this, even in cartoons: weapons are laid down, hands are raised, or a white flag signals surrender. These symbols, simple as they may seem, codify the principle that even in war, some protections are inviolable.
Recently, U.S. policies have become entangled in this complex web of ethics and legal protections. A former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has argued that these air strikes would constitute crimes against humanity: “These are criminals, not soldiers. Criminals are civilians.” Civilians are, by definition, hors de combat. It is unlawful to relabel an extrajudicial execution as a military strike. In an even more appalling scenario, a strike left survivors at sea who, according to the Geneva Conventions, should have been treated as hors de combat — captured, cared for if wounded, and protected rather than targeted again.
The description, provided by the Atlantic’s Pete Hegseth Is Seriously Testing Trump’s ‘No Scalps’ Rule (Dec. 5) is harrowing:
“the suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a U.S. airstrike, were sprawled on a table-size piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift as they repeatedly attempted to right what remained of their boat. At one point, the men raised their arms … Then a second explosion finished the men off, leaving only a bloody stain on the surface of the sea. Footage of the two men’s desperate final moments made some viewers nauseated, leading one to nearly vomit.”
Normally, a ‘no scalps’ rule protects the dignity of the defeated. The rule appears designed to shield the administration from political cost rather than to protect human dignity. He wants to avoid embarrassment and resignations; he seeks political trophies, not human decency. The dead, stripped of protection, pile up for his theatrics, a grim reminder that every service member bears the responsibility to refuse unlawful orders. This is also a location for measuring executive drift, it is easy to focus on his apparent malice, but there is deep meaning in the movement away from institutional norms. Hors de combat is not merely a humanitarian ideal, but the clearest legal and moral line between war and crime—and that line is being erased again.
Just as Major Knight faced a dilemma — what to do when every option feels wrong? — today’s operators may confront similar pressure. Major Knight complied. His compliance contributed to catastrophic civilian casualties, as thousands of sorties dropped millions of tons of ordnance. It began with a chain of command and a chain of ‘yes.’ A single ‘no’ might have stopped it all before it started, but at minimum it could have interrupted, delayed, or force reconsideration of plans. There was no functional right to refuse unlawful orders for him, but now it is a responsibility.
Who, in practice, is positioned to determine whether suspected drug traffickers are civilians or combatants? The Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Constitution are complex documents with long histories and careful nuance. Yet on September 2nd the strike was carried out, and Trump called it “war,” beginning the 60‑day clock for securing Congressional authorization — the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a phrase I had hoped never to hear invoked again. Congress has not authorized force, yet the executive continues the strikes. The disgust is palpable not hyperbole. Whether through ignorance or indifference to due process and humanitarian law, the graphic blood stain is proof that the lesson has still not been learned.
The reported 2026 U.S. operation to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife sharpens the executive drift and its dangers further. Whatever one thinks of Maduro’s legitimacy or alleged crimes, a sitting head of state and his spouse are not combatants by default, nor does criminal accusation transform civilians into lawful military targets. The operation was framed as a hybrid act—part arrest, part strike—yet it relied on military force rather than extradition, judicial process, or international mandate. In doing so, it bypassed the very distinctions that humanitarian law exists to preserve. Hors de combat protections are not limited to the wounded on a battlefield; they reflect a broader principle that force must cease when individuals are not actively engaged in hostilities. When the executive claims the authority to unilaterally decide who counts as an enemy, and to use military power to seize rather than surrender or capture under law, that principle erodes. What disappears first is not sympathy, but restraint—and with it the line separating war from crime, and command authority from unchecked power. The purpose of the U.S. military is not law enforcement, it is national defense not arresting fugitives.
Many are surprised that I work with the military given my commitment to nonviolence. What I see consistently is a clear separation between those serving and those issuing orders. Overwhelmingly, the most successful operations are noncombat: building bridges, providing aid, and preventing harm rather than dropping bombs. All of this informs my perspective: rules like hors de combat, proportionality, acceptance of surrender, and other principles are absolutely essential — both for protecting civilian populations and for safeguarding those serving, whether volunteers or conscripts.
“Kill everything that moves” was the order Captain Ernest Medina gave before the My Lai massacre. Such instructions were unconscionable then, and they remain unconscionable now, precisely because of the principles of hors de combat. The lessons are not abstract: legal constraints, ethical obligations, and the humanity of those in and out of combat are what prevent the worst atrocities. We reject the unconscionable because history has already shown us what happens when we don’t, and the lesson, again, is ours to remember.
The post The Lesson, Again: We Look Away When People Are Hors de Combat appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Wim Laven.