Thug Life

The Trump administration campaign of killing boatmen in the waters near Venezuela, part of its larger project of regime change aggression against the country, breaks, and blatantly defies, the most fundamental principles of American and international law. It’s a crime, and all of its perpetrators, from the grotesque thug Hegseth, to any sub-thug Admiral, to any officer, airmen or seaman who pushes the fatal button, to the ur-thug commander-in-chief who encourages and is responsible for it, should be prosecuted and imprisoned.

Proudly exhibiting videos of small, unarmed, civilian boats far from and unable to reach American waters being blown to bits under the entirely unproven and entirely irrelevant claim that they were transporting drugs, killing at least 87 people so far, including men who were clearly surrendering with their hands in the air and survivors clinging to wreckage, is not a good look. I hope the families of those killed, some of whose bodies have washed ashore, find a venue through which they can bring criminal charges against and/or sue the shit out of the United States Government and any and all of its personnel involved.

The thuggery here Is so blatant, and its perpetrators so stupid, that it’s elicited unwanted attention and reaction, including explicit discomfort from a Congress that’s for decades been extraordinarily and cowardly reluctant to impinge on Presidential war-making prerogatives. There’s been a congressional viewing of a double-tap video showing “two survivors, shirtless, cl[inging] to the upturned hull” of a wrecked boat before being blown up by a second strike ordered by Adm. Frank M. Bradley. According to the account of “two people with direct knowledge of the operation” cited by the Washington Post (and kinda-sorta challenged by others), Bradley was following a spoken directive by Pete Hegseth to “kill everybody.” Predictably, Republican congressmen like Tom Cotton found the action “righteous” while Democratic congressmen found it “disturbing” and “troubling,” although they “declined to weigh in” on whether this strike actually “constituted a war crime.”

Speaking for the administration, Vice President J.D. Vance made clear the Trump administration’s contemptuous indifference to any consideration of American actions in relation to “war crime” and other such standards:

War crime, schmor crime. You can’t really think we bother about such things.

Of course, the whole debate about a double-tap second strike avoids and obscures the main point: Any strike on small, unarmed, civilian boats far from and unable to reach American waters is illegitimate on every level. It’s no more legal or ethical to blow up people in boats in the Caribbean you claim are carrying narcotics than it is to shoot down a guy on the street corner you claim has drugs in his pocket. Nobody with a brain takes this seriously. The whole blatantly deceitful boat-strike campaign is pure murder, part of a larger, blatant regime-change campaign against Venezuela that is pure imperialist aggression.

Disobedient Spirits

One of the more contentious moments in all this came with the short video done by six Democratic lawmakers (Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, and Maggie Goodlander), all of whom were military or intelligence officers. Speaking “directly to members of the military and the intelligence community,” they warned them that “this administration is pitting our uniformed military intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” and reminded them that: “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”

This admonition that military and intelligence personnel “can” and “must” refuse illegal order, provoked fury from Trump, who called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” although it’s a well-known, black-letter element of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—as his own Attorney General, Pam Bondi, wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court: “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders, It would be a crime to do so.” (my emphasis).

Indeed, Pete Hegseth himself knows and has clearly stated this legal standard: “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders…If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There’s a standard. There’s an ethos.”

It’s just one of those standards that, once you get in power, you don’t give a shit about.

Nonetheless, we should recognize that it’s quite radical for sitting lawmakers to make such statements. When soldiers start disobeying orders en masse—which is exactly what the Democratic six are urging US soldiers and sailors to consider doing—things get seriously out of hand. Entire units and missions start to collapse under constant threat of mutiny. The last time mass refusal of orders happened seriously in the U.S. armed forces was in Vietnam, and it inevitably developed into situations where orders were refused with the toss of a grenade.

And that’s exactly the kind of thing you should expect and accept when an illegal order to commit a war crime or crime against humanity is issued, whether for a specific incident or a whole campaign—i.e., an imperialist aggression in Vietnam or Venezuela.

More pointed responses to the Democratic six are along the lines of “What illegal orders are you suggesting our troops have to disobey? Please don’t pretend you’re giving an abstract lesson in civics. You are former military and intelligence officers who obeyed every order you were given without question and have decided now to emphasize the necessity of disobeying illegal orders, in a discourse framed with urgency........

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