"The Order Was to Kill Everybody."
Pete Hegseth's murders. And our War Crimes President.
Before the first Caribbean boat strike on September 2, Secretary of War Defense, Pete Hegseth reportedly issued a blunt order: Kill them all. According to the Washington Post, Hegseth gave the verbal directive that meant there would be no survivors. Or prisoners.
“The order was to kill everybody.”
As ordered, a missile was fired, destroying the boat as the US military watched. But “as the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.”
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Amid the fog of war, clarity is often hard to find. But, if this story is true, there is nothing unclear or ambiguous about it. Here are five crucial points:
This was either a war crime (if we believe that the killings are covered by the laws of war) or it was simply cold-blooded murder.1 Via Michael Sellers:
In the law of armed conflict, a blanket directive to kill all occupants of a vessel — regardless of status, circumstance, or capacity to resist — is known as a “no-quarter order,” — and such orders are one of the oldest and clearest prohibitions in the entire body of international law. To be very clear, International law treats a no-quarter order as one of the few absolute red lines in the law of war: it is inherently illegal the moment it is spoken, regardless of circumstances. Every modern military — including the U.S. — teaches that such an order must be disobeyed immediately, because carrying it out constitutes a war crime. Full stop.
Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith writes that even accepting all of the Trump/Hegseth assumptions about the boat strikes, “killing helpless men is murder.”
(If you are unclear on this point, check out this footnote below.2)
The murders dramatically highlight (and explain) the warnings from six members of Congress who reminded members of the military that they did not have to obey illegal orders. In fact, in the words of 18.22.4 of the DOD’s Manual on the Law of War, they have a duty “to refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.”3
In this case, the illegal orders were obeyed by subordinates including Seal Team 6. But nota bene: the top admiral overseeing the operations resigned abruptly amid drug boat strikes.
Pete Hegseth is not denying the murders, instead insisting that we just can’t handle the truth. Last night he posted on X: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
And finally — and this the most important point — the “kill them all” order is absolutely consistent with Donald Trump’s own longstanding fetish for war crimes.
Happy Saturday. A note to readers:
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Our War Crime President
It is not an exaggeration to say that the extrajudicial killings are Trumpism in Full, because Trump has told us so.
Indeed, Trump has a kink for brutality, especially when it is committed by what he regards as his military. In 2019, the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer described him as a “War crimes enthusiast,” which was simply a description of known facts.
On the campaign trail, Trump frequently invoked a false story about General John Pershing crushing a Muslim insurgency in the Philippines with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, declaring, “There was no more radical Islamic terror for 35 years!” He vowed to impose torture techniques “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Trump declared that he would “take out the families” of terrorist suspects, assuring skeptics that the military would not refuse his commands, even though service members have a duty to refuse orders that are manifestly illegal. “If I say do it, they’re going to do it.”
As president, Trump has repeatedly defended actual war crimes and staged high-profile pardons and commutations of some of the worst offenders. In November 2019, against the advice of officials in his own Pentagon, Trump granted pardons to two service members and restored the rank of a third:
Clint Lorance: An Army lieutenant convicted of second-degree murder for ordering his unit to fire on unarmed Afghan civilians.
Mathew Golsteyn: An Army major facing a murder charge for killing an alleged Afghan bomb-maker.
Edward Gallagher: A Navy SEAL acquitted of murder but convicted of posing with a corpse, whose rank was restored by Trump.
In its formal announcement, the White House cited “extenuating circumstances” in the cases. But, as Serwer noted, Trump himself made no such distinction.
Instead, he argues that the crimes of which the men are accused are not truly crimes at all. As the president put it on Twitter, “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!”
That, noted Serwer six years ago, “is a philosophy that makes no moral distinction between killing combatants and killing the innocent."
**
And that’s the point. You can be shocked by Trump’s penchant for extra-judicial murders, but you can’t be surprised, because he’s been talking about them for years. In January 2023, I wrote a column about his fascination with summary killings.
Speaking to supporters at Mar-a-Lago in November (2022), Trump threatened that, as president, he would send the military into American cities, even if local officials objected, and repeatedly stressed his eagerness for executing drug dealers and human traffickers after quick, summary trials.
Trump set up his pronouncement with feigned reluctance. “I don’t like to say this,” he protested. But obviously he loves it, repeating his proposals to kill drug dealers several times during the announcement….
[He] recounted a conversation he claimed that he had with President Xi Jinping of China, when the Chinese strongman explained why his country had no drug problem: drug dealer trials that took two hours and ended in execution.
“By the end of the day you’re executed,” he related to an enthusiastic audience.
Trump is himself so enthusiastic about the executions that he put his own gruesome (and probably ahistorical) twist on the story.
“I don’t know if anybody wants to know this or if it’s too graphic,” he said, “but the bullet is sent to their families. You know that, right? Sent to their families. It’s pretty tough stuff. No games. So they have no drug problem whatsoever.”
Trump especially loves stories about bloody bullets….
Trump also praised the extra-judicial murders endorsed by former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whom he congratulated for doing “an unbelievable job on the drug problem.” The State Department’s 2016 Human Rights Report estimated that police and vigilantes had killed more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers in the months since Duterte came to power.
Exit take. Trump has been lusting for this kind of violence for years, maybe decades. And he has made no secret of it. This is what he wanted, and this is what he is doing right now. Expect much more.
Trump 2.0 By The Numbers
At least 225 judges have ruled in more than 700 cases that the administration’s new policy, which also deprives people of an opportunity to seek release from an immigration court, is a likely violation of law and the right to due process. Those judges were appointed by all modern presidents — including 23 by Trump himself — and hail from at least 35 states, according to a POLITICO analysis of thousands of recent cases. The number of judges opposing the administration’s position has more than doubled in less than a month.
In contrast, only eight judges nationwide, including six appointed by Trump, have sided with the administration’s new mass detention policy.
**
Reuters: Trump’s campaign of retribution: At least 470 targets and counting
What began as a provocative rallying cry in March 2023 – “I am your retribution” – has hardened into a sweeping campaign of retaliation against perceived enemies, reshaping federal policy, staffing and law enforcement.
A tally by Reuters reveals the scale: At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies. The count excludes foreign individuals, institutions and governments, as well as federal employees dismissed as part of force reductions.
The Trump vengeance campaign fuses personal vendettas with a drive for cultural and political dominance, Reuters found. His administration has wielded executive power to punish perceived foes – firing prosecutors who investigated his bid to overturn the 2020 election, ordering punishments of media organizations seen as hostile, penalizing law firms tied to opponents, and sidelining civil servants who question his policies. Many of those actions face legal challenges.
At the same time, Trump and his appointees have used the government to enforce ideology: ousting military leaders deemed “woke,” slashing funds for cultural institutions held to be divisive, and freezing research grants to universities that embraced diversity initiatives.
Saturday dogs
We’re expecting 8-11 inches of snow here today, so Eli is planning a mellow day of hibernation.
George Conway, ‘It’s murder. Period’:
“There is no war between us, Venezuela and these people were not sailors or soldiers fighting with weapons against us, so that the law of war doesn’t even [apply],” he explained. “You don’t even get to the law of war. But even if it were, even if these guys were a naval ship armed to the teeth and the ship was blown up and these guys were in the water, firing against them would be an act — would be a violation of the laws of war.”
“No matter how you look at this, you can apply civilian law, military law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, international law, foreign law, domestic law, federal law, state law. No matter what legal regime you apply to, the second strike, it’s murder. Period,” he added. “It’s not even an argument — that’s how outrageous this is.”
Section 5.4.7 of the DOD Law of War Manual says:
Prohibition Against Declaring That No Quarter Be Given. It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given. This means that it is prohibited to order that legitimate offers of surrender will be refused or that detainees, such as unprivileged belligerents, will be summarily executed. Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations. This rule also applies during non-international armed conflict.
The Hague Regulations of 1907: “it is especially forbidden . . . [t]o declare that no quarter will be given.”
The 1863 Lieber Code—the U.S. government rules governing military conduct during the Civil War: “Whoever intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy, or who orders or encourages soldiers to do so, shall suffer death, if duly convicted, whether he belongs to the Army of the United States, or is an enemy captured after having committed his misdeed.”
Current DOD Manual, Section 5.9 states clearly that persons “placed hors de combat may not be made the object of attack.” The Manual defines “hors de combat” to include “persons . . . otherwise incapacitated by . . . shipwreck.”
18.22.4 Acting Pursuant to Orders Does Not Relieve a Person of Responsibility.
“That a person acted pursuant to orders of his or her Government or of a superior does not relieve that person from responsibility under international law, provided it was possible in fact for that person to make a moral choice.
“This principle has been reflected in the statutes of international criminal tribunals. It may also be understood as part of a broader principle that military personnel cannot justify committing unlawful acts by producing the order of their superior.
“Although it is clear that merely the fact that the act at issue was committed pursuant to superior orders does not constitute a defense to criminal responsibility under international law, the precise extent to which superior orders may constitute a defense or excuse may vary according to the forum in which a violation is tried….”
Treating captives/survivors with brutality has needlessly put our troops in danger of reciprocal treatment. Not only is this dishonorable, it’s STUPID.
Survivors are witnesses and may say what HEGSETH must hide. Pure evil.