Over the last two weeks, while the U.S. and Israel have been pummeling Iran with bombs, the Christan fascist "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth declared that U.S. troops are not bound by “stupid rules of engagement.” And as this massively criminal war continued, Hegseth said, “We will keep pressing, we will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” 

Military “rules of engagement” are supposed to guide how troops fight, constraining actions to be consistent with international law. Hegseth considers it "stupid" to even pretend to care about international law. 

“No quarter” means killing "enemy combatants" with no allowance for surrender. Even calling for this is considered a war crime.

"No mercy" means to show no compassion, restraint or leniency. It means punishment without forgiveness.

In its whole history of criminal wars, the U.S. military has repeatedly given "no quarter" and "no mercy" to those they are fighting. And despite Hegseth's bald-faced lie that "the United States never targets civilians," they have also engaged repeatedly in mass slaughter of civilians. Just since World War 2, 14 million people have been murdered due to U.S. wars, coups, bombings and slaughter. From Vietnam to El Salvador, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and many, many, many more. (This is covered regularly in our American Crime series.) But in carrying out these crimes against humanity, the U.S. has claimed to be operating under legal "rules of engagement." And there have been rare instances of prosecutions when these "rules of engagement" have been clearly and egregiously violated.

No more. To the extent these rules and laws provided any constraint whatsoever, that's out the window, and under Hegseth's open direction, all the initiative—and backing—will go to the most brutal and sadistic. Hegseth is stripping away even any pretense of legality—he brags about this openly and repeatedly. This is a military doctrine aiming at forging the existing U.S. military—the largest machinery of mass death and destruction—into a fascist fighting force: a force ready and willing to carry out illegal orders and kill civilians at the say-so of the fascist commanders.

When the top military official OPENLY calls for such war crimes and decent people do nothing but shake their heads and post some comments, this represents a leap into knowing complicity. Instead, millions need to urgently oppose this madness.

And while doing so, people need to take up what the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has said are three things that have to happen "in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better":

1) People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this.

2) People have to dig seriously and scientifically into how this system of capitalism-imperialism actually works, and what this actually causes in the world.

3) People have to look deeply into the solution to all this.