US president Donald Trump has been known to give his political opponents nicknames – “Sleepy Joe” Biden and “Marjorie Taylor Brown”, for example – but now an official in his administration has been given some awkward nicknames of his own as the government stands accused of murder and war crimes.
In a post to X/Twitter on Friday, Defense/War secretary Pete Hegseth slammed what he called “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting” from “fake news” about soldiers “fighting to protect the homeland”.
He wrote: “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes’. 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.
“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.”
The post came amid a report from The Washington Post that he personally gave a verbal order to leave no survivors behind following a missile strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, carried 11 people accused of drugs trafficking, in September.
The outlet cites officials with direct knowledge of the operation and reports that when two people emerged from the wreckage, a Special Operations commander ordered a second strike to comply with instructions from Hegseth to “kill everybody”.
According to the report, the two men were “blown apart in the water”.
Brian Finucane, senior adviser with conflict policy nonprofit the International Crisis Group, told The Independent earlier this month that “the term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder”.
The Post quotes Massachusetts representative Seth Molton who said “killing survivors is blatantly illegal”.
“Mark my words: it may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder,” he added.
And Todd Huntley, former military lawyer and now director of the national security law programme at Georgetown Law, told the outlet that even if America was at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all of the occupants on the boat if they were unable to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime”.
Responding to Hegseth’s tweet, US Air Force veteran and California representative Ted Lieu said he read the legal memo on the strike.
“Nothing in the memo, or military law, authorizes a second kinetic strike against defenseless survivors. If the reports are true, then a war crime was committed,” he replied.
All of this has seen Hegseth nicknamed “Hagueseth”, in reference to The International Criminal Court located in the Netherlands:
“Just call him Pete Hagueseth from now on,” commented Massachusetts professor Daniel Drezner:
Others suggested an alternative name in the form of “Secretary of War Crimes”:
Podcaster Keith Olbermann replied: “So that’s a confirmation, Secretary of War Crimes Hegseth?”
The Department of Defense (rebranded to The Department of War by Trump, but not officially) has been approached by indy100 for comment.
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