If Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered American troops to “kill everybody” aboard a boat suspected of transporting drugs off the coast of Venezuela, he committed a war crime, conservative commentator Andrew C. McCarthy wrote Saturday night.
In a lengthy piece for The National Review, McCarthy wrote, “If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law. I say ‘at best’ because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict.”
“I don’t accept that the ship operators are enemy combatants — even if one overlooks that the administration has not proven that they are drug traffickers or members of designated FTOs (foreign trade organizations),” he also wrote.
But even if they were members of FTOS, something he described as an “untenable claim,” it would still be “a war crime to intentionally kill combatants who have been rendered unable to fight. It is not permitted, under the laws and customs of honorable warfare, to order that no quarter be given — to apply lethal force to those who surrender or who are injured, shipwrecked, or otherwise unable to fight.”
Hegseth dismissed the Post’s reporting as “fake news” in a lengthy post shared on X.
“As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes,’” he wrote. “The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
He added, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”
Reporting from The Washington Post this week claimed Hegseth gave orders for American troops to kill 11 people who were suspected of drug smuggling. The Pentagon has killed 80 people to date as part of a campaign the Post described as “unlawful.”
Former military lawyer Todd Huntley also described the potential killing as a war crime to the Post. The report was based on interviews with seven people who have “knowledge of the Sept. 2 strike and the overall operation.”
