Loosening Rules of Engagement and Leniency for War Crimes

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly planning a major overhaul of the military's legal system, aiming to loosen the rules of engagement and change how charges are brought against service members.

Hegseth is pushing for more aggressive battlefield actions and more leniency against soldiers accused of offenses, including war crimes, according to sources who spoke to The Guardian. He has enlisted attorney and former naval officer Tim Parlatore to oversee the effort. Parlatore has previously represented Hegseth, Trump, and Eddie Gallagher, a former Navy SEAL accused of war crimes.

This reported shift in strategy comes after the administration fired the top lawyers for the Army and Air Force without explanation last month. The Pentagon is also reportedly halting all civilian harm mitigation work within the military, according to leadership at a center focused on advising commanders.

Hegseth has long criticized what he sees as a culture of excessive caution within the military, mocking the judge advocate general's corps, known as JAGs, and calling them "jagoffs." In his book "The War on Warriors," he argued that Americans should not fight by rules written decades ago and claimed that military units were often hampered by excessive rules and regulations.

During his time as a soldier in Iraq, Hegseth reportedly ignored a commander's order not to fire on someone unless they raised a weapon to shoot at American soldiers first. He told a podcast that he instructed his platoon to engage the enemy before they had a chance to point their weapons.

While at Fox News, Hegseth successfully urged Trump to pardon U.S. service members accused, and in one case convicted, of war crimes. The U.S. military has a history of obscuring and undercounting the number of civilians it kills during operations, only disclosing civilian death tolls beginning in 2018 and often failing to conduct full investigations into the aftermath of attacks gone wrong.