MS NOW - After three months of deadly U.S. military strikes against civilian boats in international waters, the Trump administration has generated a great many questions, though a simple one has hovered near the top of the list: Are these operations legal?
A great many experts have argued that the White House policy of extrajudicial killings is plainly illegal. Evidently, the senior military lawyer for the combatant command overseeing the lethal strikes came to the same conclusion, as did a variety of other legal voices within the administration.
These questions grew considerably louder late last week, with striking reporting from The Washington Post. In an article published on the day after Thanksgiving, the Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive to military personnel to kill everybody on a vessel carrying 11 people. From the piece:
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. 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 … 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.
The Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, emphasized the fact that the men targeted in the second strike posed “no imminent threat of attack” and were not in an “armed conflict” with the United States.
Hegseth has struggled for months with leaks from within the Defense Department, with insiders who have appeared eager to undermine the former Fox News host, but this takes matters to a new level.
Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised special operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, told the Post that this second deadly strike “amounts to murder.” This is not an uncommon reaction to the allegations.
Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Pentagon, described the allegations as a “textbook” example of a war crime. Jack Goldsmith, who led the Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush, added that if the Post’s reporting is accurate, “it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder.” A group of former military lawyers issued a joint statement that concluded that the allegations raised in the Post’s report “constitute war crimes, murder, or both.”
This, among other things, also adds fresh context to the hyperaggressive response to Democratic veterans who advised service members not to follow illegal orders.
Complicating matters for the White House, some congressional Republicans have raised related concerns.
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