Controversy is swimming around the Department of War, with Democratic lawmakers accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of committing war crimes in its strikes against Venezuelan narco-terrorists, while the president mulls over military action against the Venezuelan regime.
On September 2, the president and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth authorized a lethal drone strike against a narco-terrorist vessel transporting drugs from Venezuela to the U.S. The first drone strike reportedly killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) international criminal gang and foreign terrorist organization (FTO). However, a Washington Post report claimed that two TdA members survived the first strike and clung to the wreckage of their drug-shuttling vessel before Hegseth verbally ordered a second strike to kill the two survivors. That report has lawmakers demanding accountability.
In a series of interviews on Sunday, Senate Democrats circled Hegseth and the War Department like hungry sharks. Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) called for congressional investigations into the matter. “I hope it’s not true, what is being reported. That would be very disturbing,” he said regarding The Washington Post’s report. “If that is true, if what has been reported is accurate, I’ve got serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over. We are not Russia. We’re not Iraq,” he continued. Kelly, a former captain in the U.S. Navy, has found himself in hot water over the past two weeks following the release of a video in which he and a handful of other congressional Democrats called on American military servicemembers to disobey the president. Nevertheless, the senator accused Hegseth of wrongdoing. “I think there needs to be an inspector general investigation. Pete Hegseth, who is totally unqualified to be secretary of Defense, he fired a bunch of the IGs within the department. That makes this more challenging,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of confidence that he’s going to investigate that. That’s why in the Armed Services Committee in the Senate and the House, we’re going to have hearings. We’ll have public hearings. We’ll put people under oath. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) also charged Hegseth and the War Department with potential war crimes and possibly outright murder. “I think it’s very possible there was a war crime committed. Of course, for it to be a war crime, you have to accept the Trump administration’s whole construct here,” he said in a Sunday interview, referring to the Trump administration’s declaration that the U.S. is involved in an armed conflict with narco-terrorists. “I’m saying that it’s either murder from the first strike, if their whole theory is wrong, and I think, you know, the weight of the legal opinion here is that they have concocted this ridiculous legal theory. But even if you accept their theory, then it is a war crime, and so I do believe that the secretary of Defense should be held accountable for giving those kind of orders.”
Likewise, Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) echoed the “war crimes” narrative. “If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the [Department of War’s] own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” the Virginia Democrat said Sunday. “It’s time for Congress to rein in a president who is deciding to wage war on his own say so, which is not what the Constitution allows,” he added. Independent Senator Angus King (Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats, called the second strike “a stone-cold war crime” and “also murder.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a press conference Monday that the second strike did occur, but defended the move as lawful. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially-designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,” she said. She shared that the strikes were overseen by Admiral Frank M. Bradley, who was acting under Hegseth’s direction. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”
Hegseth himself also defended the strikes as lawful, saying that they were “approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.” Referring to The Washington Post report, he wrote in a social media post, “As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland. As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’” The secretary of War continued, “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.” He further accused former president Joe Biden and his deputies of taking a “kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.”
The debate over the strikes against narco-terrorists comes as the president is reportedly considering military action against the Venezuelan government, which he has consistently accused of aiding, abetting, and even directing narco-terrorist actions against the U.S. and neighboring countries. In October, the president authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin conducting “covert operations” against the government of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, prompting suspicion that the U.S. would soon begin conducting military strikes against Venezuelan-based narco-terrorists on land as well as at sea. According to the Miami Herald, the president pressured Maduro to resign and flee the country in a phone call that took place in late November. “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” the president reportedly told the dictator. The U.S. would guarantee safe passage for Maduro and his family if he agreed to resign during the call, the Miami Herald reported, but Maduro refused, instead suggesting that he would hand legislative authority over to the opposition party but maintain command of the Venezuelan military.
The president was joined Monday night by Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and top military commanders to discuss potential military action against Venezuela. Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow and senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, appeared on “Washington Watch” Monday evening to preview potential actions the U.S. may take. “He’s trying his hardest to convince Maduro, who is not the legitimately-elected leader of Venezuela, to leave peacefully, or people around Maduro to encourage him aggressively to leave peacefully,” Montgomery said of the president’s strategy. He noted that the president recently declared the airspace over Venezuela to be “closed,” which the admiral interpreted as a warning to Maduro. “What the president here did was … signaling. He said, ‘I’m going to shut it down,’ and what he really meant was, ‘I’m going to occupy it with my forces at a time and place of my choosing,’ and I think that was a strong signal he was sending.”
“I think what’s really going to happen is we’re going to conduct airstrikes through that airspace. And when we do that, we will put out a notice to mariners saying, ‘Stay clear’ to everyone out of a certain area that’s much larger than the area we’re operating in, so [not to] give away our exact flight planning,” Montgomery anticipated. “And then we will probably begin to destroy the … the factories [on land], the storage units that are used by the narco-cartels for the production and distribution of cocaine from Venezuela to the United States and Europe,” he added. “I think we’ll conduct strikes against … the production and stowage of cocaine, we’ll also strike their military assets that could impact us, their aircraft and air defense systems, and their airfields.”
Montgomery explained that the president perceives the flow of drugs, chiefly fentanyl and cocaine, into the U.S. as a national security threat. The trafficking of fentanyl, which is fueled predominantly by China, is “a politically and militarily more touchy issue” than the flow of cocaine, which comes largely from Venezuela and Colombia. “President Trump did not run as the candidate who will bring you regime change, but I think what he ran as was the president that will bring you a secure homeland, and to him, a secure homeland means secure borders … but also part of that secure border is that we won’t allow illicit drugs in,” the admiral suggested. “We’ve been shooting ships coming out of Venezuela and coming out of Colombia — a total of 21 now — and destroying them. But that’s like shooting arrows instead of shooting the quiver. The quiver [is] the drug production facilities, and the ones in Venezuela, I imagine, are heavily targeted right now by the United States in preparation for an attack over the next few days.”
“We’re not going to stop cocaine flow the United States by sinking individual ships, small ships. It comes in by way too many paths,” Montgomery observed. The president is “saying, ‘Maduro, you’re a narco-terrorist, you run a narco-terrorist state. The state supports the narcotics cartels in the production and distribution of cocaine. I’m going to remove you and hopefully install the democratically elected leadership, and they will take a more aggressive attitude towards blocking drugs coming to the United States,’” the admiral continued. “But at its core, this is a Homeland Security issue to President Trump. It’s about keeping the homeland secure from drugs.”
AUTHOR
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
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