Former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall opens with an observation that should send chills down the spines of those of us who remember how the public bought into such flagrantly unconstitutional legal maneuvers as civil asset forfeiture weaseled its way into acceptability. When imposed, the marketing pitch was that it would only be used “to take the profit out of crime” for drug kingpins and mobsters.

Who doesn’t hate drug kingpins and mobsters? Who doesn’t want to take the profit out of crime? And so Americans shut their eyes and believed it when they were told it would never happen to them, never be abused, never be used to take cash from travelers. After all, we weren’t drug kingpins or mobsters. We now know better.

So Kendall recognized that the rationalization for blowing up boats on the open seas and summarily executing their occupants won’t evoke much public sympathy.

While there may be little sorrow over the deaths of alleged drug dealers somewhere in the ocean, Americans should all be concerned about how our military is being used by the Trump administration, and what that implies for the future of our country.

After all, they’re “narco-terrorists.” Trump says they are, and Trump has “officially designated” them as such by Executive Order, even though there legally is no such thing and he just made it up as if his word is a substitute for law. As of now, 64 human beings have been executed. Maybe they are bad dudes for whom we shouldn’t feel sad, but we don’t know. It’s not as if there have been trials where evidence was presented to prove they were even drug smugglers, no less “narco-terrorists,” whatever that means. But we’re assured by such trustworthy voices as Trump and Hegseth that their lives were taken for good cause, so let it go.

But for those in the military, charged with executing the orders from on high, the legality of their actions will eventually be judged after Trump is gone and Hegseth moves on to making hair gel, pocket square commercials and Tequila commercials. What are they to do?

Our military leaders are trained to evaluate the legality of orders they are given. As part of their professional education, the American values of respect for and compliance with the law are reinforced throughout military officers’ careers. They all understand that they have a duty to challenge any order they believe may be illegal — and disobey any order they know to be illegal.

So? Outside of the military, there is near universal agreement that these actions are flagrantly illegal. Even John Yoo, the author of the torture memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, says it’s illegal. But what about inside?

The order to preemptively execute alleged drug traffickers at sea has never been considered a legal act before. The Justice Department informed Congress that it considers the strikes to be lawful and not to require congressional authorization under the War Powers Resolution.

Mind you, the Justice Department has never provided a rationale for its position, but why bother with explanation when conclusions are all that matters. And this is where the Catch-22 comes up.

There is a protocol for what members of our military should do when faced with this type of situation. If an officer is concerned about the legality of an order, he or she turns to the unit’s organizational legal authority for a legal opinion. If needed, there is a legal chain of command that can provide higher levels of legal authority, too. That chain starts with military judge advocates within all major commands, rises from there to that Military Department’s judge advocate generals, the general counsel of the Department of Defense, and then the White House Office of General Counsel and the attorney general of the United States.

It’s not up to “warfighters” to decide what’s lawful and what’s not, but to the JAGs in their commands to provide legal opinions when the question of lawfulness arises. Unlike Trump, commanders don’t have the hubris to declare what the law is regardless of what the law is because they are superior to the law and get to proclaim lawful whatever they want to do. At least that isn’t the way it’s supposed to work.

In the course of Mr. Trump’s second term, there has been a concerted and successful effort to put compliant and supportive lawyers in positions of legal authority within the administration and within the military chain of command. This is true in the White House, in the Justice Department and in the Department of Defense. Pete Hegseth has been very direct about this. One of his first actions as defense secretary, along with firing several senior leaders he viewed as too woke, was to fire some of the Military Department’s most senior judge advocate generals. He has openly bragged about prioritizing “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”

In other words, the JAGs who would provide honest and legitimate opinions as to the legality of military actions have either been canned or chilled upon fear of being canned. The ones left are the JAGs who will rubber stamp any order Trump and Hegseth give, whether approving murders on the sea or Marines in our cities, armed with full metal jackets aimed at their fellow Americans.

This puts our military leaders in an untenable position. While they may question the legality of an order, once the department’s legal authority has ruled that the order is lawful, disobeying it becomes a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They could be court-martialed for disobedience; to defend themselves, they must prove the order was illegal. Facing this situation, a few officers may, as a matter of conscience, still say no.

Kendall applauds Admiral Alvin Holsey for giving up his command of the United States Southern Command rather than be complicit in murder, but that means that his seat will be filled with someone more compliant. It’s not as if the executions aren’t continuing, or any other officer has refused an unlawful command. Instead, we’re back to Richard Nixon’s “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” Except Nixon was wrong and murder is still very much illegal, even if the president can’t be prosecuted for it.