A top conservative voice has torched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “kill everybody” command as “at best, a war crime” in a blistering piece for a right-wing outlet.
Hegseth ordered a second strike to kill survivors of a missile attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, after the first strike left two people clinging to the vessel, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
“If this happened as described in the Post report, it was, at best, a war crime under federal law,” conservative commentator Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in the right-wing magazine National Review. “I say ‘at best’ because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict.”
Hegseth, who wants to be called “Secretary of War,” brushed off the Post’s report as “fake news” in a lengthy X post and defended the legality of the boat strikes by saying they are “specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes’” and that “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”
The 45-year-old former Fox News host claimed, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict…”
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…— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) November 28, 2025
McCarthy, a Republican lawyer who long served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for New York, wrote that even if “the administration has a colorable claim that our forces are in an armed conflict with non-state actors … the laws of war do not permit the killing of combatants who have been rendered hors de combat (out of the fighting) — including by shipwreck.”
He also pointed out that Hegseth, in his X post, “doesn’t actually rebut any assertion in the report.”
“I don’t mean to be melodramatic (especially because, as I’ve discussed with [National Review editor-in-chief] Rich [Lowry] on the podcast, President Trump is undoubtedly going to pardon any administration officials in potential legal jeopardy), but the penalty for a war crimes violation is life imprisonment, or death, if the criminal act results in death,” McCarthy added.
Senate Committee on Armed Services chair Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and SASC member Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, released a joint statement Friday promising “vigorous oversight” into the facts regarding a Sept. 2 drug boat strike.
Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer, told The Washington Post that the attack “amounts to murder,” because Venezuela and the U.S. are not in an armed conflict.
The order to kill everyone on board “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” he said.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman and Senior Adviser, has called the “entire narrative” surrounding the strikes “false.”
When reached for comment on McCarthy’s op-ed, the Pentagon referred the Daily Beast to Hegseth’s Friday X post.
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