Key takeaways

• Donald Trump’s broader aerial campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean (almost certainly) violates international law.

• Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have repeatedly called on the US military to commit more war crimes throughout their careers in public life.

• Violating the laws of war undermines America’s national security interests.

In early September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the US military to “kill everybody” aboard a speedboat in the Caribbean.

A missile then shattered the vessel and set its fragments ablaze. When the smoke cleared, US surveillance drones showed two people clinging to the smoldering wreckage. An admiral then ordered a second strike against these flailing survivors — an act that violated a wide array of international and domestic laws.

Or at least, this is what a recent report in the Washington Post alleges.

The Trump administration publicly insists that the Post’s account is “fake news.” In closed-door briefings with lawmakers, Pentagon officials have reportedly claimed that the second strike was not intended to kill survivors, but rather, to sink the boat so as to clear a navigation hazard for other vessels. Yet, the administration has refused to provide either the public or members of Congress with unedited video footage of the bombings.

In a social media post Friday, Hegseth argued that the strikes were “lawful under both U.S. and international law.” Many in Congress are skeptical, with the bipartisan House and Senate Armed Services Committees both vowing to investigate the incident.

Such oversight is vital. It’s important to determine whether America’s Defense Secretary authorized the killing of wounded, shipwrecked persons. Both international and US laws forbid the killing of anyone who has already been rendered defenseless, even amid warfare.

And yet, there is also something a bit disingenuous about this debate.

By all appearances, the White House’s true position is not that its actions are consistent with the laws of war but that it should not be bound by such laws. The president and defense secretary have not only conveyed this belief implicitly through their actions; they’ve also explicitly advocated for the commission of war crimes throughout their time in public life.

The biggest scandal facing the US military therefore is not that it appears to have committed a lawless strike on defenseless victims, but that it is indisputably led by men who believe such criminality is morally permissible and strategically sound.

America’s war in the Caribbean is based on a lie

We do not yet know with certainty that the US military targeted survivors of a boat strike at the Defense Secretary’s encouragement. But, we do know that the bombing in question was illegal, regardless.

Officially, Hegseth ordered that attack to combat drug trafficking. Since September, the administration has conducted more than 20 lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing over 80 people. In each case, the White House claimed that the targeted vessels were transporting narcotics on behalf of drug cartels,........

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