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The question of the day seems to be whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a war criminal. It’s a complicated question, in that the civilian Venezuelan boat crews that he ordered be killed were not at war with the United States. So, the real question is whether he’s a criminal, plain and simple.
Hegseth himself probably finds the question absurd because, as he has stated many times, he rejects the very concept of “war crimes,” viewing the killing of suspected bad guys in combat as justified, even laudable, whatever military lawyers might say.
Now that he’s seen as playing a role in actual killings, not merely defending others accused of murder on the battlefield, President Donald Trump must decide whether he shares Hegseth’s insouciance. If he doesn’t share his cavalier views on the subject, Trump needs to fire him. If he doesn’t fire him, Trump in effect tells the world—including the 2 million service members of the U.S. armed forces—that he too is indifferent to the laws of war, sending a message that they can be indifferent as well.
Trump’s choice—canning Hegseth or letting him stay on—could affect civilian–military relations for decades to come, demoralizing countless officers and enlisted personnel while emboldening others to violate a variety of their oaths.
The controversy surrounds the spate of boat sinkings committed by U.S. Special Forces in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—at least 22 so far, killing 80 people onboard, all suspected of smuggling narcotics, though no evidence has been produced in public. Hegseth has directed these operations with gleeful enthusiasm, though the policy itself was instigated by Trump.
Hegseth’s unique crime, alleged in a Washington Post story just this week, was that before the first sinking, back in September, he barked an order to “kill them all”—i.e., to kill everyone onboard the ship—and that, in compliance, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command, told his pilots to launch a second attack on the boat in order to kill two of the 11 crewmen who had survived the initial strike.
Many military-law experts have disputed Trump’s claim that the U.S. is at war with the entity running these drug-smuggling missions. (Neither Trump nor Hegseth has produced evidence that the boats were drug smugglers.) Even assuming these were legitimate military operations (and thus beyond the capacity of the U.S. Coast Guard, which routinely intercepts and arrests drug vessels without shooting anyone), it is against the law—national, international, and military law—to kill enemy combatants who are unable to fight back, especially (and explicitly) if they are survivors of a shipwreck or a boat-sinking.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly states that members of the U.S. armed forces are not obligated to obey “unlawful orders”—and that, in fact, they are obligated not to obey such orders. There are ambiguities, of course. Enlisted personnel are not generally disposed (even if they are abstractly trained) to decide on their own whether an order is unlawful; even officers might rather avoid such trains of thought.
However, the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual highlights the particular crime of obeying orders that are “clearly illegal” or that “the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal.” The clause adds: “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
So, did Hegseth give an order to “kill them all”? The Washington Post story attributed the claim to “two people with direct knowledge of the operation.” Hegseth has since denied the story, calling it “fake news.” Trump said he believes Hegseth’s denial “100 percent.” Since then, spokesmen have since tried to put the blame on Adm. Bradley, the Special Ops commander, spurring many—including some Republicans—to criticize the White House for pushing Bradley “under the bus.” Then again, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Bradley was operating under Hegseth’s orders. The cover story clearly hasn’t been fully hatched.
Whatever the precise chronology, it’s beside the point. Back in September, shortly after the attack, to fend off suspicions that the boat might not have been carrying drugs, Hegseth told reporters that he knew who was on the ship, what they were carrying, and where they were going, adding that he watched the attack as it happened. It hadn’t yet been reported that a plane came around to launch a second attack to kill the survivors. However, if Hegseth watched the attack in real time, it’s clear in retrospect that he must have seen the second attack in progress as well—and did nothing to stop it.
In other words, whether or not Hegseth said “Kill them all,” he is culpable for allowing the second attack to happen—for being in charge of the operation while watching the follow-on occur. And Adm. Bradley is culpable too.
Both of them should be fired, if not indicted.
Hegseth’s penchant for vigilante justice should be no surprise. He first came to Trump’s attention as a Fox News anchor who launched a huge crusade on behalf of three military officers being court-martialed for murdering civilians in Afghanistan. Their war crimes were clear; several of their own men testified against them at the trial. Trump pardoned them and even invited them to join him on the campaign trail in the presidential election.
A former major in the National Guard, Hegseth has long held the concept of military law in contempt. An article in today’s Guardian notes that in a passage in his book The War on Warriors, which was published last year, Hegseth recalled that as a platoon commander in Iraq, he told his men to ignore the legal guidance that a military lawyer had given them in a briefing—and said that he would back them up if they were caught violating it.
One of Hegseth’s first steps upon becoming defense secretary was to fire some of the top military lawyers in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. At several forums, notably before hundreds of generals and admirals, whom he convened for a pep talk in September, he denounced by name several retired generals who had paid too much fealty to military law, and hailed “maximum lethality” as the military’s key, if not sole, mission. He rallied to change the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War, deriding the old name—which dates back to 1947—as “woke.” In reaction to the reports about “Kill them all,” he said that “we’ve only just begun” to sink narco-terrorists to the ocean floor, and promised to kill more “narco-terrorists.”
Simply put, Pete Hegseth is a thug—and proud of it.
Trump almost withdrew his nomination of Hegseth after allegations spread of his sexual harassment and frequent drunkenness. But aides convinced the president that letting Hegseth go, under pressure, would be seen—and exploited by his foes—as a defeat. Trump did weigh asking Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis to replace Hegseth, but Senate Republicans nixed that idea, so he stood his ground. Even in the otherwise pliantly Republican Senate, Hegseth was confirmed only in a tie vote broken in his favor by Vice President J.D. Vance.
Since then, Hegseth has been, even by his Cabinet-mates’ standards, fanatically loyal to the president, treating inquisitors from Congress and the press with a dismissive contempt that Trump must appreciate.
But the latest round of queries about Hegseth’s qualifications and moral maturity may—it’s worth italicizing, may—be altering the equations. Asked about reports of the second round of shooting in the first boat-sinking, in order to kill the vessel’s two survivors, Trump replied, “I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike.” If Donald Trump thinks you’ve been inhumane in dealing with narco-terrorists, then you know you’ve gone too far.
