Hegseth ignored military officials when he slashed offices that limit risk to civilians

Source: Politico

The Defense secretary's decision to cut offices that mitigate civilian harm faces renewed attention as the Pentagon investigates a strike that killed hundreds of Iranian children.

Top military officials warned the Pentagon unsuccessfully last year not to gut oversight offices that limit risk to civilian casualties and investigate responsibility for their deaths, such as the recent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed hundreds of children.

Then-Central Command chief Erik Kurilla and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown pushed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not to slash the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and other similar initiatives at American command posts, according to Wes Bryant, the Pentagon's former chief of civilian harm assessments and two other people familiar with the matter.

Opponents of the move, which also included Adm. Christopher Grady -- the former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs -- argued that the staff were critical to preventing risks to civilian populations before U.S. strikes and to probing deadly Pentagon attacks, according to the people, and would ultimately save resources for military operations. Hegseth instead chose to reduce the number of employees working on the issue from 200 to less than 40.

The high level of opposition to the cuts, which has not been previously reported, hints at the tension between top military officials and their civilian leader over the rules of engagement in combat, which the Pentagon chief has called "stupid." It also comes as preliminary reports suggest the U.S. may have accidentally targeted the elementary school, which killed more than 170 students and is the largest U.S.-led killing of civilians in decades.
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Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/13/military-leaders-warned-hegseth-not-to-gut-offices-that-limit-risk-to-civilians-00827722

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Hegseth must be sent to the Hague to face justice. By dismantling 80% of the people and infrastructure responsible for preventing even a RISK of civilian casualties, he demonstrated a criminal disregard for civilian life. It seems to me that his declarations of "No stupid rules of engagement" and "'We will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing - no quarter, no mercy for our enemy" are, by themselves, war crimes. And there is a straight-line connection between firing those responsible for protecting civilian life and the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school atrocity

A declaration of "No quarter," has been defined as a war crime since, at least, 1863 in the Lieber Code during the Civil War:

"It is against the usage of modern war to resolve, in hatred and revenge, to give no quarter. No body of troops has the right to declare that it will not give, and therefore will not expect, quarter; but a commander is permitted to direct his troops to give no quarter, in great straits, when his own salvation makes it impossible to cumber himself with prisoners"

While the Lieber Code defined an exception, there were NO EXCEPTIONS to the prohibition against an order of "no quarter" in the 1899 Hague Regulations (Article 23) or under any modern international law. A 1907 revision to the convention strengthened the prohibition as follows: “it is especially forbidden … to declare that no quarter will be given”.