Can you not see why that is the problem?
If your commanding officer tells you to fire anywhere, you should be expected to know where that is. Obviously “grunts” should have some kind of visual access to the target they are firing at, so they can decide for themselves if it is a military law crime. Otherwise you are just preforming the Milgram shock experiment with real consequences.
If you were to throw a rock or fire a bullet, you are expected to LOOK where that projectile is going. You are held accountable for that action even if you miss your target. Only a child is deemed unaccountable for that sort action (up to about age 2). This is magnitudes more important when the missile explodes in a radius the size of a house. So there’s NO EXCUSE for the grunt on any level who pushes the button, and doesn’t LOOK or know where it is going. Are you saying military grunts are to tried as toodlers?!? for the crimes they commit?
Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. Did something like this happen to you or someone you know? It did indeed happen to a couple of my family members, but that doesn’t make it excusable. Growing up in a military city has taught me there is no end to the amount of technical mumbo-jumbo an organization will come up with to dodge accountability for an immoral act.
They assist their grunts in this accountability-dodging too, for better compliance (so they don’t go home and shoot themselves). The better part of them choose to drink themselves to death anyways because they know, deep down, that what they have done is wrong regardless of how many loopholes you try and bake in to the process.
This is why the PROCESS needs to change. We need to find some way to give them the information they need, the accountability, AND the permission to deny orders without repercussion.