Uh, and what's important to understand about where war crimes fit into the president's threats this week?

Well, I think the most important thing to recognize is that under the laws of war or international humanitarian law, those two terms are synonymous.

The legality of attacking a target has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether attacking that target will offer a definite military advantage in relation to a particular military operation.

So out of the gate, when the president basically drew a circle around Iran and said, "I am going to direct an attack on every element of the energy infrastructure, every bridge, every oil-producing facility," that was, uh, legally overbroad and was in e- in essence, a threat to engage in indiscriminate attacks.

Now, many of those assets may actually qualify as legitimate and lawful military objectives in the particular circumstance of the campaign.

The problem as I see it is that at that point, even if our commanders, our operational commanders, went through the proper analysis, identified lawful targets, and attacked them, it would carry the perception that they were executing this excessively broad order-

Do you think that military, uh, experts or leadership, uh, should try to reason with the president about not doing this?

Well, my sense is that these bombastic statements are filtered out at the operational level.

Talk to us about what led you to this suggestion, this idea, the operational needs and other needs you saw that you thought this might address.

Well, first off, thank you for having me.

I'm honored to be up here with these distinguished panelists and grateful for the invitation.

I wouldn't overstate the, um, proposal in the article as a broad strategic plan.

My focus was on the process of decision-making, attack decision-making by commanders.

I was at a conference, uh, some of you, this will resonate with some of you, that w- we were talking, a group like we're in today, and the topic came up of reverberating effects.

Should a commander have to consider reverberating effects in a proportionality analysis? And the, the, the, the sides coalesced very quickly.

What was your takeaway from that experience?