White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 12, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
]The latest South Park episode nailed it: When “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth gets wind of a small Colorado town’s annual holiday race, he declares it an “Antifa uprising” and calls out the troops to crush it. While armed forces assemble their AK-47s, Hegseth struts around filming himself for well-coiffed social media content, unaware that his obsession with “lethality” looks unhinged.
South Park’s point, previewed during Hegseth’s shameful speech at Quantico, and his sophomoric tome championing war without rules, is that Donald Trump has reduced the US military to an absurdist prop so grotesque it raises questions of insanity.
After a series of US strikes in the ocean killed 87 peoplesuspected of trafficking drugs, strikes properly assessed as murder regardless of whether people died in the first, second, or whichever strike, Congress is finally alarmed as calls for Hegseth's impeachment grow.
Strikes cannot be justified
Two days after the Washington Post first reported that Hegseth issued a command to “Kill them all” in a September attack on the high seas, which led to a second strike that killed survivors, Hegseth posted a juvenile cartoon making light of his own crime. Hegseth’s post depicted a chubby turtle standing on helicopter skids, laughing as he fires a bazooka close-range at boats below.
Aside from depicting the slaughter of humans as a children’s war game, Hegseth’s post also perpetuates a lie: Neither drugs, nor rifles, nor weapons of any kind have appeared in any of the snuff videos Hegseth and Trump keep posting to brag about the killings. To date, the administration has offered no intelligence or evidence whatsoever, other than Trump’s personal opinion, to support the claim that the destroyed boats were carrying drugs, arms, or illicit cargo. Even if they were, military law requires interdiction, seizure and process, not unilateral, on-the-spot executions.
Hegseth also claims the strikes are in compliance with the laws of armed conflict, and “approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.” Except there weren’t any top lawyers left “up and down the chain of command” after Hegseth fired the top Judge Advocates General (JAGs) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force in February.
JAGs come back to haunt
The JAGS didn’t slink away quietly. After Hegseth fired them, they formed a watchdog. Former JAGs Working Group. now warning that Hegseth’s orders on the high seas “constitute war crimes, murder, or both.” They also echoed six Democratic lawmakers reminding servicemembers of their duty to disobey patently illegal orders, adding, “anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”
After Hegseth and Trump appeared to throw commanding officer Adm. Frank Bradley under the bus, blaming Bradley, not Hegseth, for the second strike that killed the survivors, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement that Bradley’s conduct was “well within his authority and the law directing the engagement.” Except, of course, it wasn’t.
The administration seems to be arguing that the strikes are lawful, despite not knowing the identities of anyone onboard, because Trump has “determined” that the US is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But Congress has not declared any such war, and one-sided orders to execute suspects do not constitute an ‘armed conflict’ under any military code.
The State Department’s designation of drug cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” does not provide legal authority to execute them because the “imminent threat” rulelimits lethal force to immediate threats to life. Trump/Hegseth’s assumption that these small boats: 1. are carrying drugs; 2. are destined for the US; 3. will make it that far; 4. without sufficient fuel; 5. will eventually cause deaths; 6. of some Americans; 7. who choose to use the drugs, does not support an “imminent threat” analysis under any law, for reasons that should be obvious from the string-along assumptions listed.
Guilt (and execution) by association
After the first boat strike on Sept. 2, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the military could have interdicted the vessel, which is how the Coast Guard normally responds to drug vessels, but chose instead to kill everyone on board because Trump wanted to “send a message.”
Hegseth continues to parrot Trump’s “message,” posting recently, “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” and, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
It matters little which strike ended the lives. Trump’s legally suspect campaign of executing people based on a suspicion that they are smuggling drugs didn’t start with Hegseth’s order to “Kill them all,” it started with Trump’s assumption that the presidency makes him judge, jury and executioner.
Legal authorities rejecting Trump’s assumption include the DOD’s Law of War Manual; the Hague Regulations; the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act; the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting extrajudicial killings; the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and state and federal statutes prohibiting murder.
People disinclined to read the law but inclined to think the government can execute people suspected of committing crimes should consider: If a police officer thinks I am going to beat my wife when I get home, can he shoot me in the face before I get there?
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.