In basketball when there is 2 minutes left on the clock and your team is behind, the coach will grab the worst players and throw them in the game simply to foul the opposing teams ball handler. He does this to stop the clock and hope for the rebound off the penalty shot. He uses his worst players for the task, because it's a dirty deed and the player committing the foul needs to be expendable.
I see a similar strategy here with the DOD and Dept. of Interior. They are indeed using none military personal to stop the clock, while not putting themselves in harms way legal wise.
When civilians participate willingly in military affairs should they be defacto militants, and subject to military law ?
No, they are not trained soldiers, nor have they taken an oath to follow the chain of command. In an instance such as this, the perps should be arrested and tried by a military style counsel, but serve their sentence in a regular jail. They cannot be tried by a regular court, because it is not setup to handle international law. It can be held in military court because they do handle international law, but you cannot court martial a civilian - duh - so the next best thing would be to convict them of a war crime and then translate that into an appropriate civil sentence.
Often times though civilians are granted immunity when things like this happen. So I doubt you'll see a thing happen. Hence the loophole you spoke about.
Go out and shred already.
~Damon Mathews