In a rare instance of bipartisan alarm, Republican-chaired committees in the House and Senate announced that they have launched inquiries into an explosive Washington Post report alleging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a spoken order to “kill everybody” aboard a vessel carrying suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. The occupants included two people who had survived an initial missile strike on the vessel and were seen “clinging” to the wreckage.
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” the leaders of the House Armed Services Committee said in a joint statement on Friday.
“The Committee has directed inquiries to the [Department of Defense], and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” leaders in the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
The September 2 attack kicked off what has now been nearly two dozen attacks, killing at least 83 people, who the US military claims, without evidence, had been attempting to smuggle drugs into the US. The attacks, which President Trump justifies as a part of an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, have been likened to extrajudicial killings.
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona told CNN on Sunday that Hegseth’s actions, as reported by the Post, appear to be a war crime.
“If what has been reported is accurate, I’ve got serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over,” Kelly said. “We are not Russia. We are not Iraq. We hold ourselves to a very high standard of professionalism.”
Kelly is locked in a related battle of words with Hegseth after Kelly participated in a social media video with five other Democrats seeking to remind members of the military that they can “refuse illegal orders.”
Hegseth has blasted the *Post’*s reporting on the missile strikes as “fabricated.”
“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” he wrote on X.
Because the implication of “kill everybody” is that surrender will be refused, and issuing such a “no quarter” order is a war crime.
This is shortly after Hegseth fired a few judge advocate generals (military lawyers ish) since he viewed them as potential “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander-in-chief.”
That’s kinda my point though, to me both those incidents are small potatoes in comparison to bombing random boats in international water.
Why do those small new details make the Republicans concerned when they were okay with bombing/killing random people (which I’m pretty sure is already a war crime)?
Because there is a fig leaf of legality over the bombing.
The excuse they run is that they have designated the cartel as a terrorist organisation (this stretches the definition of terrorism past breaking point), they have asserted that the boats are operated by the cartel (this is heavily disputed) and they suggest that terrorists “attacking” the US by importing drugs are enemy combatants and legitimate military targets.
All of this is insane, but republicans have been going along with it with varying levels of enthusiasm.
The problem here is that even if you buy the justification that marks the occupants or the boats as enemy combatants, that still doesn’t legally permit war crimes.
The republicans in question agree with the method to paint them as enemy combatants, but don’t agree that war crimes are acceptable against enemy combatants.
Thanks, I appreciate the info/perspective.
Based on that reasoning it sounds like Republicans are okay with “accidentally” committing a war crime, but if done flagrantly then they have a problem.