Caribbean Boat Strike

An interesting column by The Washington Post‘s Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima. “Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: “Kill them all.”

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

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 (the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere) 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.

Hegseth’s order (which has not been previously reported) adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign (which has killed more than 80 people to date) is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The Wrong Action

Rather than intercept the boat on the high seas, Pete Hegseth decides to blow it up in what could be considered an act of war (my opinion). An interesting action by Pete. Collecting captives could have established a true basis for additional action. Instead, the present administration and the head of the Department of Defense decide blowing the ship up and murdering two people in the water is the right and legal move. They were defenseless.

Maybe they were carrying illegal drugs and maybe they were not. Murdering two in the water is not acceptable. Why not intercept the boat and board it? “The traffickers were posing no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not (as the Trump administration has tried to argue) in an ‘armed conflict’ with the U.S. as officials and experts say.”

Maybe a village was harboring Viet Cong and maybe it was not when a decision was made. It was proven to be free of enemy at the time. Still My Lai villagers paid a price.

Just some Sunday talk about how the Tru_p administration and Pete Hegseth are getting it wrong.

More on Getting It Wrong:

“Honduras: US Officials Should Not Intervene in Other Countries’ Elections,” CEPR