A fishy reek is emanating from the latest scandal about President Donald Trump’s military campaign against drug runners in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. forces have so far attacked more than a dozen fast boats on known drug routes, destroying them and their cargo and killing some 80 members of their crews.
One might assume the fishy thing is the lack of full video of the first attack on Sept 2 that triggered the latest controversy. One might jump to this conclusion because the Pentagon has proudly distributed other videos of successful operations in which boats are seen on grainy video in the crosshairs of missile guidance systems and are suddenly incinerated in a flash of sophisticated ordnance.
So why isn’t there video of subsequent hits in the first attack, near Trinidad? Could it be, suspicious or oppositional minds assume, that it’s because two survivors were reportedly clinging to their wrecked boat and were killed by a later missile? It is against the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. military code to kill survivors of a shipwreck, and Democrats have accused the administration of committing war crimes. As usual, however, they’re doing what they accuse the administration of doing — shooting first and asking questions only later.
Because it now seems clear that War Secretary Pete Hegseth did not give an order to “kill everybody” after seeing video of the two survivors. Indeed, he revealed at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that although he approved and watched the initial strike, there were flames and smoke — “the fog of war” — and he did not see any survivors, the missile strike that dispatched these men took place an hour or so after he’d gone to another meeting. He supported Adm. Mitch Bradley, head of Special Operations Command, who ordered the later missiles fired to sink the flaming vessel and destroy its contents.
Administration critics squeeze as much political juice as they can out of such incidents before congressional oversight has been able to discover the truth. They seize on the chance to depict administration actions in the darkest colors as quickly as possible, fearful that a true and acceptable account of events might emerge from sober and objective analysis of the facts.
Every military engagement has different details, and it seems clear that Bradley ordered the later missile hit entirely properly. But you would never have thought this possible after reading early news coverage. A lie travels around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
So, back to that fishy smell. Isn’t it extraordinarily convenient for Trump’s opponents that a story should emerge to justify a clamor about war crimes only a week after bipartisan criticism has rained down on congressional Democrats for inciting members of the military to disobey orders from the officers commanding them and ultimately from the president? The airing of tendentious accounts of a military engagement, suggesting egregious illegality of the highest order by the administration, is suspiciously helpful to the party of the Left. It is also what we have come to expect from much of the news media.
For months, Democrats and their activist base have tried and mostly failed to stop Trump’s use of military force both against seaborne drug traffickers and against illegal immigrants. They have failed to show illegality in these actions, which voters broadly approved by reelecting Trump. Isn’t it just too convenient that their helpmeet media should now find, without the facts being made plain, an incident that can be depicted as a war crime?
The current scandal fits as though custom-made into Democrat messaging. Billboards outside Southern Command, where Bradley was giving his orders, tell troops not to break the law by participating in the attacks on the drug boats; members of Congress publish a video on X telling military personnel to refuse illegal orders; former military lawyers accuse Hegseth of “war crimes, murder, or both.”
TRUMP SAYS VENEZUELA STRIKES COMING SOON
Such helpfully related actions do not happen by coincidence. Neatly reciprocal elements in a political campaign do not arrive by spontaneous combustion. A broad and varied smear on this scale has to be planned, organized, and paid for.
You might argue that the latest controversy just shows the Democrats and the Left were right, and that Trump is using the military illegally. If you do, you are probably being naïve or dishonest. The fact that accusers reached their conclusion before most facts were known, and that these facts trickling out into public view appear to exculpate the administration and military, makes it plain that the reek of falsehood has come from the accusers, not the accused.
