Save Your Soul, Your Conscience, Your Sanity — STOP THE BOMBINGS!
[Mohamed Azakir/ Reuters]
By Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright
Nineteen years ago, during the Bush administration’s Axis of Evil regime and calls for attacks on Iran from members of Congress, including a “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” recitation by Senator McCain, I wrote an article entitled “An Appeal to Conscience to Those Who WOULD Bomb Iran.”
Nearly two decades and four presidential administrations later, the article is virtually the same, except that U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy pilots have now actually dropped ‘‘smart’ bombs on Iran’s nuclear program facilities and, according to Secretary of Defense Hegseth, the U.S. has targeted over 1700 locations in Iran, including civilian infrastructure of roads, bridges and water treatment plants as well as military targets.
Despite the 1976 executive order issued by President Ford banning the U.S. from engaging in political assassinations, a few hours into the first day of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, on the orders of President Trump, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, members of his family, and other senior leaders of the government were assassinated. In 1975, the U.S. Congress’s Church Committee report that examined U.S. involvement in plots to kill foreign leaders, stated that “assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order and morality” and that assassinations should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy.
U.S. missiles have destroyed many structures, including a school in Minab, Iran, where 168 persons, including over 100 school children, were killed in an unlawful attack. The U.S. Navy submarine, Hawaii-based USS Charlotte, torpedoed and sunk the Iranian naval frigate Dena, killing 104 sailors, including 20 missing, 2000 miles from Iran in the Indian Ocean as it was returning from regional military maneuvers, which the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command attended.
President Trump has allowed himself and his administration to be led into a war on Iran by Trump’s buddy, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, becoming the “neocon,” regime change advocate in a complete 180-degree turnabout from what he promised his MAGA base.
One former supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, summarized the feeling of much of the MAGA base: “We said “No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!” “We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech. Trump, Vance, basically the entire admin campaigned on it and promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again. My generation has been let down, abused, and used by our government our entire adult lives, and our children’s generation is literally being abandoned. Thousands and thousands of Americans from my generation have been killed and injured in never-ending pointless foreign wars, and we said no more.”
Did anyone tell Trump that if he ordered the U.S. military to attack Iran, that, by international law, Iran has the legal right to defend itself from aggressive action by another country, the U.S., Israel or any other country?
Are U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine pilots reminded that the Iranian attacks on the closest U.S. facilities to Iran, the many U.S. military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, are legitimate targets for the Iranians to attack in response to the U.S. attack?
For leaders of the Trump administration-Hegseth, Rubio, Cane, and pilots of Air Force and Navy jets and the missile operators of the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines- a reminder that after World War II, the United States executed German and Japanese military officers who were convicted of crimes against peace (wars of aggression) and for violations of the Geneva Conventions.
International Law is clear: The attack on Iran, or any other country that has not attacked the United States, is a crime against peace, a war crime. Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to an order of the Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him. Principle VI states: The following crimes are punishable as crimes under international law:
a. Crimes against peace: i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (ii).
b. War Crimes: Violation of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of o in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, town, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
c. Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation of other inhuman acts done against any civilian population or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done, or such persecutions are carried on in execution of, or in connection with any crime against peace, or any war crime.”
Those who drop bombs and fire missiles and torpedoes in an illegal war, a war of choice, a war of aggression, are violating the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions and the “Laws” of Warfare.
While I doubt that you should fear prosecution for commission of war crimes from an administration that ordered you to commit these actions, there will be future consequences that may be worse than spending time in jail for your actions-just ask the veterans who suffer from nightmares, erratic and dangerous behaviors, and drug and alcohol abuse, and who commit suicide from the wars that have endured. Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among military personnel, and in recent years, more military personnel have died by suicide than died in combat. Just ask the spouses and children of war veterans.
I appeal to the consciences of U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine pilots who fly the bombers and attack aircraft and to Navy, Air Force and Army personnel who command land and sea-based missile units and those who plan these attacks, to stop these criminal actions. Refuse unlawful orders that violate the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg principles. You have a “moral” choice. While refusal to drop bombs or fire missiles or torpedoes may initially draw punishment and the loss of one’s military career, those who refuse will save their souls, their consciences and their sanity.
In a video in 2025, Senator Mark Kelly (Navy) and Representatives Chrissy Houlahan (Air Force), Jason Crow (Army), Chris Deluzio (Navy), Senator Elissa Slotkin (former CIA), and Maggie Goodlander (Intelligence Officer), stated with conviction of the legality of their statement, the “threats to our Constitution” are coming “from right here at home.” They repeatedly urged military and intelligence personnel to “refuse illegal orders.”
Unsurprisingly and without legal basis, President Trump, who never served in the U.S. military and knows nothing about U.S. military law or the duty to disobey illegal orders, called them “traitors” who could face execution. He wrote on Truth Social: “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.”
The oath for commissioned officers is to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and not to a particular person or political party.
Military personnel can get assistance at the Center on Conscience and War, War Resisters League, Veterans For Peace, About Face: Veterans Against War, G.I. Rights Hotline, and Military Law Task Force.,VA Suicide and Crisis Lifeline website or Call 988.
Take action! CNN: Put the Pentagon on the Hot Seat!
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the Bush administration’s war on Iraq. She is a member of Veterans For Peace and is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
