Revisiting Wasserman’s Laws of War
In the early 1970s, as a student at Tuskegee Institute, I came across a set of mimeograph papers left behind by Professor Louis Wasserman after he departed for UCLA. These treatises on the laws of war have stayed with me among my files ever since.
Wasserman’s thesis was unsettling. He argued that the laws of war should not be treated as morally supreme. He dismantled two common defenses: first, that they embody fundamental moral distinctions; second, that adherence to them produces desirable effects. For Wasserman, both claims were inadequate. Rules alone could not prevent atrocities, nor could they absolve us of deeper moral responsibility.
As a young student, I puzzled over how his position could help resolve the My Lai massacre of 1968, where U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. The man in charge, LT. William L. Calley, Jr., faced a court-martial and was convicted of killing 21 Vietnamese civilians. The tragedy seemed to demand rules—explicit prohibitions, accountability, and enforcement. Yet Wasserman’s skepticism suggested that codified laws were insufficient to prevent such horrors.
Today, I find myself revisiting those faded mimeograph pages in light of recent reports from the Caribbean. On September 2, 2025, U.S. forces struck a suspected drug-trafficking boat, killing 11 people. Survivors clung to wreckage, only to be targeted in a second strike reportedly ordered to “kill everybody.” Since then, at least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Families, like that of Colombian fisherman Alejandro Carranza, have filed human rights complaints alleging extrajudicial killings. Congress has opened bipartisan inquiries, with lawmakers warning that such actions may rise to the level of war crimes.
The echoes of My Lai are unmistakable. Then, villagers were massacred under the fog of war. Now, suspected traffickers—or perhaps fishermen—are killed under the banner of counter-narcotics operations. In both cases, the invocation of rules—the Uniform Code of Military Justice then, the “laws of war” now—has failed to shield civilians from violence.
Sidebar Reflection: My Lai and the Caribbean
When I first read Wasserman’s treatises at Tuskegee, I wondered how his skepticism about the laws of war could help resolve the horror of My Lai. Wasserman was not around when I arrived on campus in the fall of 1970. He left over the summer, and I could not query him with my questions. The massacre showed that rules were present—the Geneva Conventions, the Uniform Code of Military Justice—but they failed to restrain soldiers from killing hundreds of civilians. The “moral content” of the rules was powerless in the face of atrocity.
Fast forward to the Caribbean in 2025. My thoughts flashed back to that fading mimeograph handed out to Tuskegee students in the spring of 1970. U.S. forces, operating under rules of engagement, struck a suspected drug-trafficking boat, killing 11 people. Survivors clung to wreckage, only to be targeted again under a reported “kill everybody” order. Here too, the rules are invoked—this time to justify lethal force against vessels that may have been fishing boats. The supposed “consequentialist safeguard” of regulations, promising order and restraint, collapses when survivors are deliberately targeted.
Wasserman’s warning comes into sharp focus: rules can legitimize violence as easily as they restrain it. At My Lai, they failed to prevent the massacre. In the Caribbean, they risk becoming a shield for impunity. Wasserman’s faded mimeograph pages remind me that the most challenging questions of war are not about legality, but about humanity.
Wasserman’s critique resonates across decades: codified laws did not prevent atrocity at My Lai, nor are they preventing questionable killings today. The lesson is clear: justice requires more than adherence to rules. It demands moral courage, restraint, and accountability beyond the letter of the law.
All of the military service personnel who took part in these atrocities at sea must be held accountable for their actions. This includes the person who pulled the trigger to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America, who ordered the Secretary of Defense to willfully attack ships at sea without knowing who or what was on board those ships.
Admiral Alvin Holsey, a Morehouse Man, must have read Wasserman’s white paper on the rules of war, because he is the only member of the military who had the decency to refuse to obey an unlawful order. There is an adage in the HBCU community: “You tell a Morehouse Man, but you can’t tell him much.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth learned the hard way that you can’t tell a Morehouse Man to carry out an unlawful order in the fog of war. He will suffer the consequences before he harms helpless people in the middle of the ocean.