War Secretary Pete Hegseth courageously served his country in uniform, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, even as he knows military culture from personal experience, Hegseth doesn’t appear to realize that emotional rants and barracks banter are ill-suited to his current role.
Take Hegseth’s response to the controversy surrounding his Sept. 1 order to destroy a Tren de Aragua drug cartel boat operating just off the Venezuelan coast. The Washington Post reports that Hegseth ordered the U.S. military to kill everybody on the boat. When a first strike left two of the 11 crew members alive, an admiral then ordered a second strike to eliminate the survivors. Critics say that Hegseth ordered a war crime.
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