On Sept. 2, 2025, U.S. forces fired a missile at a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing nine in the initial blast and leaving two survivors clinging to the wreckage. Under international law and U.S. military law, these two men were “shipwrecked,” meaning the United States had a duty to rescue and render them aid. Despite that duty, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave the order to “kill them all,” with a second missile strike leaving no survivors. More damningly, U.S. forces then fired another two missiles at the empty wreckage.
This Caribbean strike was far from an isolated incident. Hegseth’s entire tenure is defined by the illegal use of force from the Caribbean and Venezuela to Iran and Yemen. Under Hegseth, the office of Secretary of Defense has been used to wage one illegal war after another, leaving thousands of civilians killed in his wake. Unless checked, this pattern will continue to claim innocent lives abroad and corrode constitutional order at home.
That pattern was visible not only in the strike itself, but also in Hegseth’s response to it. After reports revealed he ordered troops to “kill them all,” he denied personally giving the order but insisted he “would have made the same call” — a denial directly contradicted by SOUTHCOM’s statement that the strike was conducted “at the direction of” Hegseth. That denial is hard to take seriously given his own rhetoric. Hegseth has derided “stupid rules of engagement,” praised “maximum lethality,” said U.S. forces should be free to “hunt and kill” without restriction, and prayed to God for “overwhelming violence” against those he said “deserve no mercy.”
The deeper issue, however, is not limited to the Sept. 2 strike. The attack was part of a broader campaign against what the administration called “narco-terrorists operating in and around the Caribbean Sea,” a campaign the White House itself reported to Congress as a “military action.” That report was submitted “consistent with the War Powers Resolution” (WPR), the federal statute governing the introduction of U.S. forces into hostilities. Passed in the shadow of the Vietnam War, the WPR was designed to restrain the very kind of unchecked presidential war-making that plagued that era.
Under the WPR, the executive branch may introduce U.S. forces into hostilities only with congressional approval or during a “national emergency.” Once hostilities begin, the statute requires the President to consult Congress “in every possible instance,” report within 48 hours, and terminate the use of force within 60 days unless Congress provides specific authorization.
By submitting its Sept. 4 report to Congress under the WPR’s 48-hour reporting requirement, the Trump-Hegseth administration explicitly placed their campaign within the statute’s authority. The administration then had 60 days to secure congressional authorization or terminate the use of force. Congress provided no such authorization, yet the administration continued hostilities anyway after the 60-day clock expired.
Hegseth argued that the strikes were not WPR-governed “hostilities” because they did not directly endanger American personnel. That argument fails for three reasons. First, Congress used the broader term “hostilities” specifically so the WPR could govern even more limited uses of force, such as these Caribbean strikes. Second, the administration itself has claimed it is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” (NIAC) with various cartels, and “hostilities,” as written in the WPR, necessarily include “armed conflict.” Third, the administration’s initial report to Congress admitted the campaign was governed by the WPR.
More fundamentally, even this WPR framework assumes the targeted boats were lawful military targets, when they likely were not. As established by international law and quoted by the Department of Defense Law of War Manual (LoWM), an NIAC requires “protracted armed violence” between a state and “organized armed groups.” The cartels Hegseth targeted are not “organized armed groups” engaged in “protracted armed violence” against the United States; they are criminal enterprises engaged in drug trafficking.
Without an armed conflict, neither the boats nor the people aboard them could be treated as military objectives. The people Hegseth killed were therefore civilians, which means the Sept. 2 strike was murder under U.S. law and an extrajudicial killing under international law. More broadly, Hegseth’s wider campaign therefore amounts to crimes against humanity, which the United Nations defines as any “systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”
Either way, Hegseth was guilty of a grave crime on Sept. 2: a war crime in an illegal war if the administration is correct or the murder of civilians if it is wrong.
Unfortunately, Hegseth’s contempt for American and international law is not limited to his Caribbean campaign but extends to every region he gets his hands on. On Jan. 2–3, 2026, U.S. forces under Hegseth conducted a midnight raid in Venezuela, abducting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. That raid was plainly governed by the War Powers Resolution, yet the Trump-Hegseth administration undertook it without congressional authorization or consultation, violating the WPR. Furthermore, hostilities against a member of the United Nations require authorization by the UN Security Council or a valid self-defense theory. The Trump-Hegseth administration obtained neither justification before attacking Venezuela, meaning the operation also violated international law.
Hegseth’s war in Iran reveals the same pattern of his complete disregard for the United States Constitution. The Trump-Hegseth administration neither consulted Congress nor received its authorization, blatantly violating the WPR’s statutes once again. That disregard for Congress was matched by an equal disregard for restraint in the war itself. In his March 4 briefing, Hegseth boasted that the United States was winning “decisively, devastatingly and without mercy” and pledged to show “no quarter” and “no mercy for our enemies.”
Indeed, there was neither quarter nor mercy for the Iranian people. On Feb. 28, 2026, guided Tomahawk missiles targeted and destroyed Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, killing 168 people, including over 100 young children. The violence did not stop at schools. Hegseth also attacked hospitals and residential areas, killing at least 1,443 civilians in 130 separate incidents between Feb. 28 and Mar. 23 alone.
This same pattern of mass civilian bloodshed was already visible the year before during Hegseth’s 2025 war in Yemen. On Mar. 15, 2025, U.S. forces under Hegseth targeted Ras Issa Port — where Yemen receives 80% of its humanitarian aid — while hundreds of noncombatants worked the docks, killing 84 civilians. Then, on Apr. 28, 2025, an American airstrike attacked a migrant detention center in Sa’ada, killing another 68 civilians.
This pattern of atrocities is not simply the chaos of war, but the natural consequence of an administration determined to dismantle the military’s safeguards. As this column has repeatedly shown, Hegseth has punished merit and rewarded dangerous incompetence. Hegseth’s leadership is filled with individuals whose sole qualification is personal loyalty to him. He has gutted every major oversight body from JAG and the OIG to independent military journalism, leaving the Pentagon a hollow shell where war crimes become inevitable.
In less than two years as Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has already inflicted catastrophic damage on America’s armed forces and civilians across the world. His indiscriminate use of unilateral violence has left a path of destruction from Latin America to the Middle East. He has shown, repeatedly, that he will choose excessive violence where the law demands restraint.
For these reasons, I strongly support Rep. Ansari (D-AZ) in her effort to impeach Pete Hegseth. In his never-ending war on peace, he has become a danger to both the constitutional order at home and civilian life abroad. The country cannot endure another two years of Pete Hegseth, a man who has demonstrated time and time again that he cannot responsibly hold his office. The American military needs a leader capable of exercising restraint under pressure, not a war criminal as inept and reckless as Hegseth. How many more civilians need to die before we decide enough is enough?
