Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the White House shifted responsibility for controversial strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat to a decorated Navy admiral.
The second of the September strikes in the Caribbean has been called “illegal” by some because of how two survivors were seen clinging to the vessel, but were then killed, according to The Washington Post.
While Hegseth has been criticized after the Post claimed the embattled 45-year-old authorized an elite military force to kill all those on board, those in Trump’s orbit are beginning to shift responsibility.
Hegseth on Monday night said that Frank Mitchell Bradley, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, “is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support.” Hegseth claimed Bradley made the “combat decisions” during the attack.
“I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since,“ Hegseth, 45, wrote on X. ”America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptofWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it.”
Among Bradley’s decorations are the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon. An Afghanistan War veteran, he held several military command roles before assuming his current position in early October.
Bradley, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday, was authorized by Hegseth to conduct the Sept. 2 strikes.
“Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. 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,” Leavitt said. “This administration has designated these narco terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations.”
Yet critics of the strikes have come from both sides of the aisle.
“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal,” Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat, told the Washington Post, which first reported on the order to “kill everybody” on board. “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”
Meanwhile, attorney and conservative commentator Andrew McCarthy wrote for National Review that if the Post’s report was correct, what had happened was “at best, a war crime under federal law.”
“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,” McCarthy argued.
On Monday night, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said Hegseth was clearly “passing the buck.”
“He sort of sees the freight train that is coming, right, that both Republicans and Democrats are coming to the conclusion that this was an illegal, wildly immoral act,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “And he is shifting the blame. It‘s the opposite of the buck stops here. And boy, it‘s a chilling signal to everyone in the chain of command that the secretary of defense does not have your back.”
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