Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is currently in the crosshairs of some members of the military and Congress after details of a September strike on alleged drug boats went wide. With President Donald Trump’s backing, SecWar Pete Hegseth appears shifty yet defiant on the orders to take out the boats, raising more questions than providing concrete answers.
At the root of the discussion is a September 2 operation near Venezuela involving alleged drug trafficking boats that was struck once, with some surviving the hit. It was reported by the Washington Post that a “kill them all” order came from Hegseth, which some consider a violation of international convention.
In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday (December 2), Hegseth spoke with confidence that the strikes will continue under his orders, but curiously wouldn’t pin the aforementioned order to his vest. In fact, Hegseth said he wasn’t present for the second strike that killed the survivors, adding that he entrusted Admiral Mitch Bradley’s leadership on the matter in a social media post on Monday (December 1).
From X:
Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.
America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptofWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it.
During the Cabinet meeting, Hegseth clarified his position.
“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting,” Hegseth said to reporters as reported by The Hill.
Hegseth claims Bradley made the kill order to take out the survivors, despite it going against the very laws in a manual first administered by the Department of Defense (now War).
Republican Party Senator Roger Wicker, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Democratic Party Senator Jack Reed issued a joint statment last weekend stating that they will investigate the order.
According to reports, 11 people were killed in the September 2 strikes, according to the Trump administration, an operation that was widely shared on the president’s social media accounts as a show of might.
While it appears that SecWar Pete Hegseth is attempting to move beyond the controversy and forge ahead, former military members such as Sen. Mark Kelly, who has drawn the ire of Trump and other GOP members for telling military members to deny illegal orders.
Further, many see Hegseth’s words as an attempt to pin the strike on Bradley to avoid international war crime charges. Adding to this, Admiral Alvin Hosley, who is Black, announced that he was retiring in October amid tensions with Hegseth over the drug boat strike operation and will leave his post at the end of 2025.
On social media, some are looking at the maneuvers of the Department of War and Hegseth in particular. We’ve got some of those reactions below.
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Photo: Getty
