A MAJOR COMPLAINT POST-9/11 HAS BEEN THAT LAWYERS HAVE PLAYED TOO BIG A ROLE IN OUR WARMAKING. THAT MAY BE CHANGING. Navy’s top admiral steps in, drops charges against second SEAL charged in war crimes case. There are lots of ways to look at this, and at yesterday’s prosecutorial medal-revocation, but one of them is to see that the lawyers have lost influence, and will see their future role lessened.

Related: The Overlawyered War.

Plus: “When I arrived back in 2001 I found 10,000 lawyers in the Department of Defense.”

Also: “This is war-fighting as HR-office handbook. You can’t win that way.” And we haven’t.

And: “This is a war that has been overlawyered from the beginning — see this piece by Tom Ricks from 2001 about how the Pentagon’s requirement that lawyers approve airstrikes let leading Taliban and Al Qaeda figures escape.” “The Central Command’s top lawyer — in military parlance, the judge advocate general, or JAG — repeatedly refused to permit strikes even when the targets were unambiguously military in nature, an Air Force officer said.”

Me, then: “I love lawyers. I am a lawyer. But there are plenty of places where the role of lawyers should be limited, and war is certainly one of them.” Nothing has happened since to make me think I was wrong.