SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Pete Hegseth is under increasing fire for a double-tap strike, first reported by The Intercept in early September, in which the U.S. military killed two survivors of the Trump administration’s initial boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2.
The Washington Post recently reported that Hegseth personally ordered the follow-up attack, giving a spoken order “to kill everybody.” Multiple military legal experts, lawmakers, and now confidential sources within the government who spoke with The Intercept say Hegseth’s actions could result in the entire chain of command being investigated for a war crime or outright murder.
“Those directly involved in the strike could be charged with murder under the UCMJ or federal law,” said Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on Joint Special Operations task forces conducting drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, using shorthand for the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “This is about as clear of a case being patently illegal that subordinates would probably not be able to successfully use a following-orders defense.”
I guess I don’t understand why the second strike is worse than the first one?
Because the vast majority of Western nations (including the US) consider it to be a war crime to deliberately make a military strike against survivors of an attack that pose no active threat.
Even that assumes that the original strike has military merit in the first place, which isn’t really the case when they are blowing up unarmed boats that might or might not be carrying drugs.
The UCMJ uses “firing on shipwrecked persons” as a specific example of an illegal order.
Firing on an operating crewed ship is, in a very, very broad sense, potentially justifiable. Firing on a disabled ship whose crew is not firing back is not.
I see. I guess me thought is…they wrecked their ship.
Exactly, and because the ship was wrecked the people in the water were no longer a threat.
The loophole they will try to use is those are war crimes.
We are not at war.
They are going to try to frame this as killing criminals, not enemy combatants. It’s transparently evil, but that’s what they’ll do to get away with it.
Or just say fuck it and issue pardons for all involved. If they even get charged in the first place.