Abdication of Responsibility

Has the line been crossed?

Two war criminals.

As the scandals and policy failures of his own making pile up around him, Donald is doing what any reasonable, responsible, mature leader would do: he’s denying responsibility for any of it.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that, on September 2 of this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of two men who survived an initial attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea. This was another in a series of 21 bombings carried out by the U.S. military on those the Trump regime claims are suspected of engaging in “narco-terrorism.”

I wish it hadn’t taken the extra-legal killing of 80 people by the United States military, but finally Republicans have joined Democrats in publicly questioning the legality of these boat strikes in general and the possibility that the second bombing ordered amounts to a war crime. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have launched bipartisan investigations. This is the most significant oversight effort yet into the bombings Donald has ordered our military to carry out in the region.

Donald is responding to this scrutiny by claiming he knew nothing about Hegseth’s order, which is the opposite of what the Commander-in-Chief should say under the circumstances:

REPORTER 1: Can you talk a little bit about the strikes and the controversy around Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth?

DONALD: I don’t know anything about it. [Hegseth] said, he said he did not say that, and I believe him.

REPORTER 1: So, you don’t know about the two men, the second strike killed the two men?

DONALD: No, he said he didn’t do it.

REPORTER 2: Would you be okay with that? If he did?

DONALD: He said he didn’t do it, so I don’t have to make that decision.

So far, we have the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Defense both saying that they have no idea why the United States military killed the two survivors of that initial bombing, which begs the question—who broke the chain of command in order to give the order?

REPORTER 1: If there were a second strike that killed wounded people, even in the first strike . . .

DONALD: I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence.

REPORTER 1: He’s saying there was no second strike?

DONALD: I don’t know. I’m going to find out about it. But Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.

The Commander-in-Chief of the United States military doesn’t know what happened? He doesn’t yet have any information about the incident? He doesn’t know whether there was a second strike, or, if there was a second strike, who ordered it? This only makes sense if Donald is willing to accept Hegseth’s version of events because it aligns with his own, or if he is so incompetent that he is not in control of his own military. Either would be disqualifying and I believe both to be true.

Both Hegseth and Donald know exactly what happened; they are directly responsible; they are guilty.

Former military lawyer Todd Huntley told The Post that killing the two survivors of the initial strike “amounts to murder.” He added that even during war, commanding troops to kill opponents who are unable to defend themselves would be a war crime.

According to a report in The New York Times:

A broad range of legal experts reject [the contention of the Trump regime that suspected drugs traffickers are lawful military targets]. But even if this were an armed conflict, it is a war crime to kill enemies who are out of the fight. That category includes enemy fighters who have surrendered or are otherwise defenseless and pose no threat.

‘Members of the armed forces must refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations,’ the Pentagon’s law of war manual says. ‘For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.’

It also says that it is ‘prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter.’ which means refusing to spare the life of an enemy who has surrendered or is unable to fight.

The second strike obviously was without question a war crime, but every single other strike that has been carried out by the U.S. military, at the direct orders of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, has also been in contravention of international law and the rules of war. Alleged criminals were denied due process and, as a consequence, over 80 people have been murdered. The only justifications the White House has offered for these attacks have been pre-textual and any evidence of alleged wrongdoing was potentially destroyed in the strikes.

It’s a positive development that at least some Republicans in Congress are finally paying attention, that there is a line they’re willing to draw in the sand. Will it matter? That, of course, remains to be seen. But as things currently stand, the United States government is guilty of crimes against humanity and there is no end in sight.