Did Hegseth Go Too Far? What Critics Are Saying

Pete Hegseth and the White House deny allegations that anything improper unfolded when special ops troops unleashed two separate missile strikes on a suspected drug boat—the second of which killed two survivors clinging to the wrecked vessel. But the issue only seems to be gaining steam. Background and opinions:

• Background: On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave a verbal order to "kill everybody" on the boat in the Caribbean. Two men survived the first strike and were clinging to the damaged boat, and the mission commander then ordered the second strike to fulfill the "kill everybody" order, according to the newspaper.
• Justification: "Because this administration has designated these narco-terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations, the president has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate—which is what they are doing," White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Monday, per Mediaite.

Not so fast, say critics:

• In a post at Executive Functions, Jack Goldsmith spells out stipulations in the Department of Defense Law of War Manual and other regulations that expressly prohibit killing, or ordering the killing, of captured or wounded enemy combatants. "In short, if the Post's facts are correct, it appears that Special Operations Forces committed murder when the 'two men were blown apart in the water,' as the Post put it," writes Goldsmith.
• Jennifer Rubin has a similar take at the Contrarian on Substack. "Putting aside for the moment the legitimacy of the underlying order to shoot these boats out of the water ... it is impossible to imagine any Pentagon lawyer blessing this action," she writes. "The concept of hors de combat—literally, out of combat—is a fundamental aspect of the law of war that prevents harming those disabled from combat."
• A detailed analysis at Just Security, also citing specific military rules, concludes that Hegseth's "kill everybody" order and Adm. Frank Bradley's subsequent order of the second strike were both "clearly unlawful," and it puts the word "clearly" in boldface. "The Sept. 2 strikes on the purported drug boat neither violated the law of armed conflict nor amounted to war crimes, because they did not occur during an armed conflict," reads the post. "However, if the facts are as reported, there is little question that the order by Secretary Hegseth and the ensuing order by Admiral Bradley to conduct the second strike were unlawful, because the killing of the two survivors was a serious violation of international human rights law."

• President Trump has backed Hegseth, asserting that "Pete said he didn't order the deaths of those two men." But Trump also made clear that he would not have wanted a second strike in this instance. Politico Playbook found the president's full comments notable: "More than two days after WaPo broke the story, the president can offer no assurances about what actually happened, says he would not have supported a second strike on the ship and will now be figuring out what happened himself. It's hardly a ringing endorsement of the Pentagon leadership."
• At the National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy also suggests Hegseth went too far. "Even if one accepts the administration's dubious premise that our forces are in an armed conflict against nonstate actors (the cartels) whose operatives are enemy combatants, the second September 2 strike against the shipwrecked survivors of the first strike cannot be justified," he writes. "I continue to believe, to the contrary, that none of the strikes can be authorized. The controversial second strike on September 2 is singular only in that its lawlessness is more blatant."