Trump’s Illegalist War Gets Illegaler
LegalEagle
0:00 On Easter morning, as billions of Christians
0:02 celebrated the resurrection of the Prince of Peace,
0:04 Lord Jesus Christ, President Trump had a special holiday message for Iran.
0:08 Open the straight, you crazy bastards.
0:11 You'll be living hell.
0:12 Just watch.
0:13 Praise be to Allah.
0:14 And if they refuse, he'll do a bunch of war crimes on Tuesday.
0:17 On Tuesday morning, he then threatened
0:19 to genocide the entire Iranian civilization.
0:22 But with less than an hour to go before the 8:00 p.m.
0:24 deadline, Trump's Holocaust Tuesday fizzled
0:26 as Pakistan brokered a temporary ceasefire.
0:28 So, you know, more of a casual Taco Tuesday at the office kind of thing.
0:32 The president's comments constitute one of the most outrageous violations
0:36 of the laws of war ever uttered by an American president.
0:39 And as of recording,
0:40 the US and Iran are maybe negotiating a deal that would open the straight
0:44 and earn Iran $2 million in Bitcoin for every ship that passes through.
0:48 The US would get something, maybe.
0:51 The details are murky.
0:52 But the terms being proposed in the ceasefire deal are,
0:54 just like Trump's comments, stupid, dangerous, and very, very illegal.
0:59 Now, all of this is about oil.
1:00 Iran's got a lot of it, gas prices are skyrocketing,
1:03 and Trump has a funny way of being clear about his intentions.
1:06 But Iran's greatest asset is its peak geography.
1:09 About 20 to 25% of the world's oil supply,
1:11 not to mention a tremendous amount of the natural gas supply,
1:14 is transported through the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz.
1:17 A passage so thin that only two tankers can go through at a time.
1:21 Surrounding the straight is mountainous terrain with more tunnels, bunkers,
1:24 and Shahed drones on standby than the US military could ever
1:27 feasibly secure without taking over the entire country at tremendous cost.
1:31 So, a ceasefire here is probably the best option.
1:34 As of recording, this deal isn't a formal signed agreement,
1:37 it's a last-second conditional pause brokered through Pakistan.
1:40 The core exchange was supposed to be straightforward.
1:42 Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and scale back attacks,
1:45 while the United States agreed to halt
1:47 imminent strikes against Iranian infrastructure for 2 weeks.
1:50 President Trump said he had received a 10-point proposal from Iran,
1:53 and the two parties would work together on a plan to end the war.
1:56 So, this agreement is either a mutual off-ramp or yet another Taco moment.
2:01 You decide.
2:02 But it soon became clear that the parties
2:03 to the deal had very different understanding of its terms.
2:06 This showed up almost immediately when Iran claimed it would
2:09 charge tolls for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
2:11 Iranian officials have floated fees as high as $2 million per vessel,
2:15 with some reports suggesting payments would be
2:17 made in Bitcoin to avoid sanctions enforcement.
2:19 Before the war, around 138 ships a day passed through the straight.
2:23 If the toll system was in place,
2:25 Iran would be raking in roughly hundreds of millions of dollars per day.
2:28 That's not only an incredible windfall for Iran's new regime,
2:32 the arrangement is almost certainly illegal under international law.
2:35 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
2:37 which governs global ocean rules, establishes what's called transit passage
2:41 through straits used for international navigation.
2:44 That means ships have a right to pass through
2:45 places like the Strait of Hormuz freely and without interruption.
2:48 Coastal states can't require permission,
2:50 and they can't charge tolls just for letting ships pass.
2:54 They can charge for specific services like pilotage or tug assistance.
2:58 But those fees have to be limited,
2:59 non-discriminatory, and tied to an actual service.
3:02 A general transit fee of the kind Iran has
3:04 floated would run directly against widely accepted international norms.
3:08 Now, Iran, like the United States,
3:10 has not formally ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea.
3:12 However, Iran was not charging tolls before the war began,
3:15 and the US views most of the convention as customary international law,
3:19 only objecting to the portions of the convention
3:21 that dealt with the deep seabed and mining.
3:23 The US views free navigation through international straits
3:25 as a bedrock principle of customary international law.
3:28 The US Navy does freedom of navigation operations all the time,
3:31 even in the hotly contested waters of the South China Sea.
3:34 So, given these facts, you'd think that Iran's intent to charge tolls
3:38 would be a total non-starter for the US.
3:40 But you'd be wrong.
3:41 When asked about the tolls, President Trump didn't reject the idea.
3:44 Instead, he described a potential US-Iran toll joint venture,
3:48 which would be a beautiful thing.
3:51 I Would it?
3:52 We don't actually know if the joint venture was
3:54 an actual plan the parties are considering or the fever
3:57 dream of a 79-year-old man who never passes up
3:59 the chance to make the founding fathers look like fools.
4:01 Well, actually, probably a fever dream, since days later he posted,
4:05 "There are reports that Iran is charging
4:07 fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait.
4:09 They better not be, and if they are,
4:11 they better stop now." I I don't know, maybe he just wants his cut.
4:14 But it does reinforce the broader issue with the ceasefire.
4:17 All of the parties seem to have
4:18 a completely different understanding of what the ceasefire entails.
4:22 Iran and Pakistan said the ceasefire extends to Israel,
4:24 and that Israel promised to stop bombing Lebanon.
4:27 Israel denied being part of any agreement
4:29 and continued operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
4:31 Meanwhile, Iran sent drone strikes to Kuwait,
4:33 Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
4:35 But don't worry, guys,
4:36 the Trump administration announced that it'd be sending Larry, Curly, and Moe.
4:39 I I mean, J.D.
4:40 Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner to negotiate further.
4:43 I'm sure they'll close the deal
4:45 as quickly as they've resolved the Russia-Ukraine war.
4:47 As I record this, the ceasefire is still technically on, but it's tenuous.
4:51 And even if the deal is incoherent, the law of armed conflict is not.
4:55 Now, whether it's surveillance cameras or data breaches,
4:57 it really feels like we're losing out on our right to privacy these days.
5:00 Your cell phone number, home address,
5:02 email address, private social media accounts,
5:03 and tons of sensitive data are shockingly easy to purchase by anyone online.
5:07 But malicious actors can't hurt you if they can't find you.
5:10 So, you can fight back and take control
5:11 of your private information by signing up for today's sponsor, Incogni.
5:14 Because Incogni wipes your personal information
5:16 from the internet by searching the internet,
5:18 reaching out to data brokers and websites directly on your behalf,
5:21 and forcing them to remove your private information.
5:23 If they resist, Incogni will take care of that, too,
5:25 because Incogni fights back.
5:27 But what makes Incogni truly powerful in taking
5:29 control of your privacy is the custom removals feature.
5:32 It allows you to flag an unlimited number of sites where your data is exposed,
5:35 and you can even have Incogni's privacy experts review
5:37 and tackle the most uncooperative data brokers and people search sites.
5:40 Now, I've been using Incogni for years now, and in that time,
5:43 you can see I've been on hundreds of lists,
5:45 some of which had a high sensitivity score,
5:47 meaning the broker had tons of data on me.
5:49 Luckily, Incogni has completed hundreds of take-downs for me in that time.
5:53 Now, I could never do this myself,
5:54 so thank you to Incogni for saving me weeks worth
5:56 of work and adding me to over 40 suppression lists.
6:00 And Incogni will continue to conduct ongoing removals,
6:02 because even if the broker removes your data once,
6:04 they'd always collect it and publish it again.
6:07 So, if online privacy is important to you, give Incogni a try.
6:10 If you scan the code on screen or click on the link in the description,
6:12 you'll get 60% off their unlimited plan.
6:15 Or you can try Incogni risk-free for 30 days.
6:17 And if you do decide you want to keep it,
6:18 you'll still get the 60% off discount so long
6:20 as you use my code Legal Eagle, all one word.
6:23 So, sign up for Incogni, or I'll see you in court.
6:26 In the days leading up to the deadline,
6:27 Trump said all hell will rain down on Iran.
6:30 He added, "Glory be to God." Spoken like a true Ayatollah.
6:34 Trump then warned Iran that Tuesday will be the power
6:36 plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one.
6:39 But international law doesn't allow an aggressor to destroy
6:42 every bridge and power plant in another country.
6:44 As I recently explained,
6:45 the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law,
6:48 rests on three foundational principles:
6:50 distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
6:53 Let's look at these obligations one by one.
6:55 Distinction requires parties to distinguish between people and objects
6:58 that are part of the military and those that are civilian.
7:01 Military objectives are limited to things that, by their nature,
7:04 location, purpose, or use, make an effective contribution to military action,
7:08 and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage.
7:11 Civilian objects, such as power grids, water systems,
7:14 bridges used primarily by the civilian population, are presumptively protected.
7:19 Of course, the line between civilian
7:20 objects and military objectives isn't always simple.
7:23 Power plants can supply electricity to both homes and military facilities.
7:27 Bridges can carry civilian traffic, but also support troop movements.
7:30 These are the kind of questions
7:31 that international law has grappled with for decades.
7:34 But that complexity doesn't erase the rule.
7:37 The law still requires commanders
7:38 to make a case-by-case determination about whether
7:40 a particular object is contributing to military
7:43 action in the circumstances at hand.
7:45 You don't get to skip over the analysis.
7:47 So, when someone says they're going to destroy
7:49 every power plant and every bridge in a country,
7:52 that's not a difficult judgment call,
7:54 that's a declaration that the individualized targeting analysis
7:57 required by distinction isn't being done at all.
8:00 Next up is proportionality, which prohibits attacks which may be expected
8:03 to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians,
8:06 damage to civilian objects, or a combination,
8:09 which would be excessive in relation
8:11 to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
8:14 In simple terms, the punishment you're planning to inflict has
8:17 to be proportional to the threat posed by the other side.
8:20 And here, President Trump's position is legally incoherent.
8:23 Before he threatened to end Iranian civilization,
8:26 he said that the US had already won the war.
8:28 And according to Pete Hegseth,
8:30 the war was an overwhelming victory that destroyed Iran's military.
8:33 Given this overwhelming victory,
8:35 what exactly would justify destroying every bridge
8:38 in the country and bombing every power plant?
8:40 Well, the continued blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.
8:43 But knocking out a national power grid is grossly
8:46 disproportionate to the strait being closed to some commercial traffic.
8:49 Under the law of armed conflict,
8:50 attackers have to consider the downstream impacts of their action.
8:54 The International Committee of the Red Cross says
8:55 this includes reverberating effects of losing essential services.
8:59 So, the question isn't just what does this bomb hit,
9:01 it's also what happens after the lights go out.
9:04 If the US destroyed the whole power grid, hospitals would stop functioning,
9:07 water treatment plants would shut down, food supply chains would collapse.
9:11 These are the predictable consequences of targeting energy infrastructure.
9:15 These acts would destroy an entire society.
9:18 The third consideration is military necessity,
9:20 which requires planners to assess targets individually,
9:23 choose methods that meet the military need but minimize harm,
9:26 and cancel attacks if the risk to civilians becomes excessive.
9:29 President Trump threatened to eliminate Iran's civilization,
9:32 which implies hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties.
9:36 That's the opposite of military necessity.
9:39 But the Trump administration contends that we're seeing this the wrong way.
9:42 In their opinion, Trump can blow up every bridge and power plant if
9:45 he wants to, because any object with military utility is a lawful target.
9:49 Fox News host Jesse Watters put it this way.
9:51 Bill Clinton destroyed Serbia's entire energy infrastructure.
9:56 Both Bushes took out Iraq's electricity grid.
10:01 Rolling Thunder, North Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson took out the power plants.
10:05 You do it under the laws of warfare, proportionality, dual-use systems.
10:10 It can be done humanely.
10:11 So, what happens when infrastructure serves both civilians and the military?
10:15 The analysis doesn't really change.
10:18 Dual-use is not a standalone legal category in international humanitarian law.
10:23 The law does recognize that some
10:24 objects serve both civilian and military functions,
10:27 but it doesn't create a separate category of targets that become
10:30 lawful simply because they serve both civilians and the military.
10:34 A commander must establish for each specific target that it makes
10:37 an effective contribution to military action in the circumstances at hand,
10:41 and that its destruction offers a definite military
10:44 advantage that is not outweighed by expected civilian harm.
10:47 Obviously, President Trump didn't do any of that in his Truth Social posts.
10:51 He didn't mention military necessity.
10:53 Instead, he made blanket threats to destroy every bridge and every
10:56 power plant because he wanted Iran to reopen a commercial shipping route.
10:59 And the threat was directed at the civilian population's ability to survive.
11:03 We don't know what orders commanders were mulling over
11:05 when Trump decided not to go through with it.
11:07 If he really did order them to destroy Iran's infrastructure,
11:10 war crimes could be on the table, but some members of Congress and a few
11:14 legal scholars went further than war crimes.
11:16 They used the G word.
11:18 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Trump's statements a threat
11:22 of genocide that merits removal from office.
11:24 Senator Bernie Sanders called it the ravings
11:26 of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual,
11:28 which yes, but alas, that's not a legal standard.
11:33 Even Pope Leo the 14th got in on it saying the threats were truly unacceptable,
11:37 which again, accurate, but His Holiness is not filing a brief in court.
11:41 So, is this actually a threat of genocide,
11:43 or is genocide just the word you reach
11:45 for when regular atrocity vocabulary isn't strong enough?
11:48 Under 18 U.S.C.
11:49 section 1091, genocide is a federal crime,
11:51 whether committed in time of peace or war.
11:54 Congress passed it to implement the U.S.'s
11:55 obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
11:58 The statute covers anyone who with specific
12:00 intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial,
12:03 or religious group in whole or in substantial part kills members of that group,
12:07 causes serious bodily injury, or subjects the group to conditions
12:10 of life intended to cause its physical destruction.
12:12 It applies to U.S.
12:13 nationals regardless of where the offense occurs.
12:16 According to the Department of Justice,
12:17 the mens rea requirement is that the person had the specific
12:20 intent to destroy in whole or in part a national,
12:23 ethnic, racial, or religious group.
12:25 This standard, which is called dolus specialis in international law,
12:28 is genuinely high, and is what separates genocide from other violent crimes.
12:33 Genocide prosecutions are rare,
12:35 even in the most egregious cases internationally,
12:37 and applying this statute to a sitting
12:39 president raises extraordinary legal and political obstacles.
12:43 But President Trump's own words were,
12:44 quote, "A whole civilization will die tonight,
12:47 never to be brought back again." His described methods,
12:50 destroying all power plants and all bridges in the entire country,
12:53 do in fact track closely with the statutory definition of subjecting
12:56 a group to conditions of life intended to cause its physical destruction.
13:00 Now, I want to be careful here, because this is the part where you have to be
13:04 a lawyer and not just a person who's mad online.
13:07 That standard is high.
13:08 The International Court of Justice has said that in the absence of a confession,
13:12 you have to show that genocidal intent is
13:14 the only reasonable inference from the pattern of conduct.
13:17 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,
13:19 after the actual Rwandan genocide,
13:21 still spent years working through intent questions case by case.
13:25 This is not a charge you throw around lightly,
13:27 and courts have consistently resisted lowering the bar
13:30 even when the underlying facts are horrifying.
13:33 So, when Trump said, "A whole civilization will die tonight," was
13:36 he signaling his intent to cause a genocide?
13:39 Maybe.
13:39 Maybe he meant it metaphorically.
13:41 We don't know for sure if this was apocalyptic
13:43 bluster intended to pressure Iran to open the strait,
13:46 or if Trump was preparing to launch a nuclear weapon.
13:48 Thankfully, we didn't find out.
13:50 But the basic offense isn't the only charge available.
13:53 As we've discussed before, the U.S.
13:55 has its own laws prohibiting war crimes.
13:57 The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs U.S.
13:59 military conduct, requires personnel to refuse patently illegal orders.
14:03 If they commit crimes, they could be prosecuted under federal law in the future.
14:06 Notably, the chain of command faces legal
14:08 exposure even if the president does not.
14:10 Trump's threats to kill civilians would have
14:12 to be carried out by members of the U.S.
14:14 military.
14:14 Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and a member
14:17 of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this directly.
14:20 Targeting civilians en masse would be a clear violation of the law
14:22 of armed conflict as laid out in the Geneva Conventions,
14:25 as well as the Pentagon's Law of War Manual.
14:27 This kind of focus on civilians is
14:28 exactly what we accuse our adversaries of doing,
14:31 and what our military trains to avoid.
14:33 Can confirm.
14:34 She went further, warning that service members ordered to carry
14:37 out such strikes are put in very real legal jeopardy,
14:40 and urging those up and down the chain of command to refuse illegal orders.
14:44 This is just the kind of thing that got Senator Slotkin in trouble before.
14:47 The Department of Justice opened
14:48 an investigation into Slotkin, Senator Mark Kelly,
14:50 and other lawmakers because they filmed a video
14:52 reminding troops not to follow illegal orders.
14:54 A grand jury declined to indict them, effectively ending the case,
14:57 but their warning about obeying the laws of armed conflict was prescient.
15:00 So, nothing the president posts to Truth
15:02 Social immunizes military personnel for their own actions.
15:05 But will anyone be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C.
15:07 section 1091?
15:08 Definitely not under the current Justice Department.
15:11 After threatening to end Iranian civilization,
15:13 Donald Trump announced a ceasefire.
15:15 And then he floated the idea of the U.S.-Iran
15:16 toll joint venture on the Strait of Hormuz.
15:19 "Give us a cut of your geographic resources,
15:21 or we'll do a genocide" is a sentence that has never
15:24 before appeared in a policy document produced by the United States government.
15:27 Although, as I say that, I realize
15:29 some American Indians may object to that statement.
15:32 Let's set aside for a moment whether this joint venture is real,
15:34 and ask the more interesting question,
15:36 what does international law have to say about agreements extracted at gunpoint,
15:39 or in this case at civilization point?
15:42 The answer starts with the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,
15:44 which is basically the rulebook for how
15:46 countries make binding agreements with each other.
15:48 Article 52 is the relevant provision.
15:50 It reads in its entirety,
15:52 "A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat
15:56 or use of force in violation of the principles of international
15:58 law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations." Agreements procured
16:02 by the threat of force are void and have no legal effect.
16:05 The rationale was specifically designed for situations like this one.
16:09 Before the modern era, international law actually accepted coerced treaties.
16:12 If you won the war, you got to dictate the terms, and those terms were binding.
16:16 The League of Nations and then the U.N.
16:18 Charter changed that.
16:19 Article 2 sub 4 of the U.N.
16:20 Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against
16:23 the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.
16:26 The Vienna Convention then followed the logic to its conclusion.
16:29 If you can't threaten force to get what you want,
16:31 you certainly can't enforce a deal you got by doing exactly that.
16:35 The Yale Law Journal,
16:36 analyzing this exact question in the context of Ukraine, put it this way,
16:40 "A treaty procured by the threat or use of unlawful force is as invalid
16:44 as the original threat or use of unlawful
16:45 force itself." That sounds cut and dry, but there's some big complications.
16:51 Almost every peace agreement in the history of warfare is,
16:54 in some sense, concluded under duress.
16:56 The losing side doesn't sit down to negotiate because they feel like it.
16:59 They negotiate because their alternative is continued devastation.
17:03 By that logic, Article 52 would void most of the peace treaties ever signed.
17:07 And that's not what it does.
17:08 International legal scholars and courts have developed a rough,
17:11 but important, distinction.
17:12 If what you're negotiating is a cessation of hostilities,
17:15 like an end to a declared war, or a mutual agreement to stop shooting,
17:18 or exchange prisoners, or open a humanitarian corridor,
17:21 that's not the kind of coercion Article 52 was designed to void.
17:24 The logic is pragmatic, right?
17:26 You can't end wars if a legal rule prevents you from ending wars.
17:30 The mere fact that one side is losing doesn't make the armistice itself illegal.
17:34 But this exception has limits.
17:36 What Article 52 was specifically designed to prohibit
17:38 is an aggressor using force to extract territorial concessions,
17:42 economic concessions,
17:43 or political capitulation beyond the cessation of hostilities itself.
17:47 The classic case is, "Stop fighting, and also give us your resources,
17:50 and also acknowledge our right to take a cut
17:52 out of your shipping lanes." That's not a peace treaty, that's mafia extortion.
17:56 The condition for stopping the bombing wasn't just stop fighting,
17:59 it was open the Strait of Hormuz.
18:01 And that's a demand about navigation rights and commercial traffic.
18:04 That could be a forced economic concession
18:06 extracted under the threat of civilizational destruction.
18:09 Which means that if the ceasefire was a binding international agreement,
18:12 it would have a serious Article 52 problem.
18:14 But there's yet another twist here,
18:16 because Trump didn't just threaten Iran into a ceasefire,
18:19 he then apparently spontaneously proposed that the U.S.
18:21 and Iran go into business together running
18:23 toll operations on the Strait of Hormuz.
18:25 Let's think about what this actually describes.
18:27 The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway,
18:29 and under customary international law, all ships have a right of free
18:33 transit passage through straits used for international navigation.
18:36 Iran, by floating fees up to $2 million per vessel,
18:38 was already pushing against that rule.
18:40 Iran's entire annual GDP is around $400 billion.
18:44 They were proposing to collect that in less
18:46 than 2 years just from ships going past.
18:49 Trump's proposal doesn't fix the legal problem,
18:51 because what he was describing was the United States,
18:53 after threatening to destroy Iranian civilization,
18:55 agreeing to share in the proceeds
18:57 of an illegal toll regime on an international waterway.
19:00 That is, to use a technical legal term, a shakedown.
19:03 The fact that one party is offering the other
19:05 a cut of its illegal tolls doesn't launder the coercion,
19:08 it just makes the aggressor a business
19:10 partner in the arrangement that they extorted.
19:12 Yeah, I know.
19:13 Everything I just described makes international law seem like a farce.
19:16 And a predictable response to this is cynicism.
19:18 These rules are not enforced, great powers do whatever they want,
19:21 and international humanitarian law is nothing more than a legal
19:23 fiction that powerful states enforce
19:25 against smaller states while exempting themselves.
19:28 This cynicism is understandable, and it's not entirely wrong.
19:31 The U.S.
19:31 has never ratified Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions
19:34 in part to avoid restrictions on its own military operations.
19:38 The U.S.
19:38 has even on occasion violated international humanitarian law.
19:41 The Abu Ghraib torture scandal, for example,
19:43 drew widespread international condemnation as a clear
19:45 violation of the Geneva Conventions.
19:47 We have to own that.
19:48 But here's the problem with simply dismissing
19:50 international humanitarian law as When the United States
19:53 commits or is credibly accused of international humanitarian
19:56 law violations and fails to hold itself accountable,
19:59 it hands bad actors ammunition.
20:01 Slobodan Milošević used NATO's conduct in Kosovo to muddy
20:04 the waters at his own war crimes trial.
20:06 Putin invoked the 2003 Iraq War to justify his invasion of Ukraine.
20:11 These are cynical deflections, but they become harder to dismiss when
20:14 the United States continues to provide fresh examples.
20:17 And that is precisely why Trump's threats are so damaging,
20:20 even beyond the immediate legal violations they may represent.
20:23 Every time the United States signals that civilian
20:25 infrastructure is a legitimate target or the laws
20:27 of war are stupid rules to be discarded
20:29 as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put it,
20:32 it gives every authoritarian and every war criminal more power.
20:35 It gives them precedent.
20:37 The argument "America did it in Iran" will
20:39 be used against us in conflicts for decades.
20:41 This is how norms disappear.
20:44 And that leads us to the most concrete
20:45 practical argument for observing international humanitarian law, reciprocity.
20:50 The laws of war on US power, they're safeguards for US troops.
20:55 And they apply to both sides, regardless of who started the fight.
20:57 That's the whole point.
20:59 The law separates why you go to war from how you fight it.
21:02 In real terms, that means a US airman shot
21:04 down over Iran is entitled to prisoner of war protections.
21:07 But those protections depend on reciprocity.
21:10 If the United States signals it won't follow the rules,
21:12 it makes it that much harder for captured Americans to claim them.
21:15 The laws of war exist not because states are trustworthy,
21:18 but because the alternative is unlimited warfare against which we
21:22 already know from two world wars is catastrophic for everyone,
21:25 and powerful nations are not exempt from that.
21:28 But the laws only work when they are taken
21:30 seriously by states that have the capability to violate them.
21:32 The United States has long positioned itself
21:34 as the anchor of the rules-based international order.
21:37 That position is difficult to maintain while
21:39 threatening to extinguish civilizations on social media.
21:42 Now, all this highlights why it's so important to get
21:44 a great lawyer when you're dealing with your own case.
21:46 Now, after I started this channel,
21:47 every week I'd get hundreds of comments and emails
21:49 from viewers who are dealing with legal problems.
21:51 And they'd ask, "Can you help me find a lawyer?
21:54 How do I know if this attorney is any
21:55 good?" And there's a massive gap in our justice system.
21:57 It's that people don't know how to find
21:59 the right lawyer for their specific situation.
22:01 They're scared, they're overwhelmed,
22:03 and they end up doing nothing or hiring the first attorney who calls them back.
22:06 And that really bothered me.
22:08 So, I started to wonder, "What if there was a different way?
22:10 What if we could build a law firm that actually lived
22:12 up to the values that I talk about on this channel?
22:14 Transparency, accessibility,
22:15 and putting clients first instead of chasing billable hours.
22:18 A firm where you don't need to pay anything up front,
22:20 and your lawyers only get paid if you
22:21 do to maximize your opportunity for justice." So,
22:23 a few years ago, I decided to fix that problem.
22:26 I decided to start my own personal injury law firm.
22:28 And honestly, it wasn't an easy choice.
22:30 But I realized I was in this unique position.
22:32 I had this platform, this community, and the experience.
22:35 Not to get rich, trust me,
22:36 there are easier ways to make money than starting a law practice.
22:39 But we did it because access to justice shouldn't be a luxury.
22:42 Because finding the right legal representation shouldn't
22:44 feel like playing Russian roulette with your future.
22:46 And when you work with my firm, you're not just getting a lawyer.
22:48 You're getting a team that understands that behind
22:50 every case is real person with real stakes.
22:52 If we can't represent you or you're in a state where we don't practice,
22:54 we'll take the time to try to match you
22:56 with an attorney in my personal network of lawyers.
22:58 A national network of some of the best lawyers
22:59 in the country who actually specialize in what you're going through,
23:02 located right where you are, not just whoever happens to be available.
23:06 So, if you're dealing with a personal injury,
23:07 a car crash, a data breach, sexual harassment,
23:09 a social security or workers' comp issue,
23:11 give us a call at the number on screen or click on the link below.
23:14 Now, I can't represent everyone that watches this channel.
23:16 I wish I could.
23:17 But what I can do is make sure that when you need legal help,
23:20 you have somewhere to turn to that you can trust.
23:22 So, whether it's me handling your case
23:23 or the incredible attorneys we partnered with, you'll
23:25 get the same principles of honesty and education that we bring to every video.
23:28 And if you're dealing with a legal issue and you're not sure where to start,
23:31 check out the link in the description.
23:32 Let's have a conversation about how we can help you find not just a lawyer,
23:35 but the right lawyer for your situation.
23:37 Because at the end of the day, that's what this is all about.
23:39 Making sure that when life gets complicated, you don't have to face it alone.
23:42 Which is why when you need a lawyer,
23:43 you don't just need a legal team, you need the Eagle team.