Whether or not you buy the story that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave “an oral directive” to “kill everyone” on a suspected drug-smuggling speedboat in the Caribbean after two survivors were seen clinging to the craft; whether or not you think the White House threw the commander overseeing the strike, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, under the bus, or perhaps the boat, by naming him and saying he “worked well within his authority” by allegedly personally ordering a second strike on the vessel, one thing is quite clear: How do we know if the laws of war are being followed when the administration won’t say if this is a war?
President Donald Trump once again tries to have it both ways here. He says he has “determined” suspected drug smugglers are “combatants” against the United States. He ordered a huge military response, 21 strikes killing 83 people. But he won’t ask Congress to call this war a war.
During war, “Members of the armed forces must refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations,” the Pentagon’s law of war manual says, adding: “For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”
In any case, this can’t be allowed to become a matter of semantics. Our military is engaged in combat operations, so let’s call it war. Where there is war there can be war crimes, and that is why it’s not just opposition Democrats but many Republicans in Congress who are concerned about this case.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, says his committee will conduct a congressional investigation of the second strike.
Likewise, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, issued a joint statement declaring they “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 facts matter here and a full review is certainly warranted.
As Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, put it, “It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight.”