The War on Everything Doctrine

Hegseth’s deadly missile strikes mirror Trump’s domestic priorities.

Still from a video of the September 2 missile attack President Trump shared on Truth Social. Video: Donald J. Trump/Truth Social

For weeks, we’ve been mired in a public debate about whether blasting shipwrecked castaways in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean is a war crime. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has overseen more than 20 missile strikes since September that have killed over 80 people; usually eager to flaunt the administration’s “warrior ethos,” he is suddenly hesitant to take responsibility. After a missile attack he had authorized killed 11 alleged smugglers on September 2, Hegseth proclaimed to Fox News that he “watched it live.” The secretary later hedged that he “didn’t stick around” for the whole mission, passing the buck to Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who commanded the operation and who Hegseth assured reporters “made the correct decision.”

At issue was increased scrutiny of footage of the strike, reportedly showing two survivors of the initial bombing waving at the sky as they clung, shirtless, to the hull of their capsized vessel while Bradley conferred with a lawyer before ultimately ordering the second missile, which killed them. Democratic representative Jim Himes of Connecticut called it “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

The justification for these attacks rests on purportedly stopping illegal drugs from entering the U.S. The Trump administration claims such drugs are weapons foreigners use to kill Americans, though fentanyl, by far the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S., predominantly does not enter the country by sea or from South America. But Donald Trump has not tried to obfuscate his ulterior — or, rather, primary — motive: setting the stage for military action against Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, he has long sought to depose. Instead, the administration has reconciled these seemingly unrelated objectives by saying it is waging war on narcoterrorists. When Bradley was grilled by lawmakers from both parties in December during classified briefings about the strike, he defended his decision by claiming he wasn’t trying to kill the survivors at all but to destroy the rest of the cocaine the administration still has not offered proof was onboard.

Trump, for his part, appears to be blaming Hegseth — “I rely on Pete,” he said. “I wasn’t involved” — while promising more of the same and worse, announcing that such killings will soon expand to the land. In the midst of the congressional briefings, the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a provocation the Venezuelan government called a “barefaced robbery and an act of international piracy.” Trump more or less confirmed this assessment when asked what he planned to do with the requisitioned oil: “We keep it, I guess.”

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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/venezuela-war-narcoterrorists-trump-hegseth-missile-strikes.html