We're All Criminals Now!

The defense secretary gave the order. According to the Washington Post, Pete Hegseth's instruction was unambiguous: "Kill everybody."

Eleven men were on a boat off the coast of Trinidad. The United States launched a missile. The boat burned. When the smoke cleared, two survivors clung to the wreckage. They posed no threat. They had no weapons. They were floating in the ocean, holding on.

Admiral Frank Bradley ordered a second strike. The two men were blown apart in the water.

This is not warfare. This is murder. All of it. And every American citizen is complicit.

The First Crime

The initial strike was illegal before the missile ever left the tube.

Drug trafficking is a crime. It has always been a crime. And for decades, the United States treated it as one—intercepting boats, arresting suspects, putting them on trial. The Coast Guard handled interdiction. The Justice Department handled prosecution. Suspects had lawyers. They faced juries. They went to prison or they went free. That's due process. That's the Fifth Amendment: no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.

The Constitution contains no exception for suspected drug smugglers. It never has.

The trump administration's workaround was to declare the cartels "terrorists" and claim the president has authority to wage war without congressional approval. But drug smuggling is not armed conflict. Speedboats carrying cocaine are not military targets. The men on that boat—whatever they were carrying, whoever they worked for—were civilians under international law. Killing them without trial is not counterterrorism. It's extrajudicial execution.

The senior military lawyer at U.S. Southern Command, the JAG officer responsible for advising on the legality of these operations, concluded the strikes were unlawful. He was overruled. The administration wanted missiles, not lawyers.

Senator Rand Paul, no Democrat, called it what it is: "extrajudicial killing." The ACLU says the strikes violate both the federal murder statute and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Legal experts across the political spectrum agree: there is no credible argument that the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels. The president simply declared it so, and started killing people.

Our military. Our missiles. Our tax dollars. Our crime.

The Second Crime

Then came the survivors.

Two men in the water. Clinging to wreckage. No weapons. No threat. Under the law of armed conflict—even if you accept the administration's fiction that this was a war—they were hors de combat. Out of the fight. Protected. You don't execute prisoners. You don't shoot the wounded. You don't blow up men who are floating in the ocean waiting to drown.

Admiral Frank Bradley ordered the second strike anyway.

Bradley committed a crime. The men who carried out his order abetted him. Every person in that chain of command—from the drone operator who pushed the button to the officers who relayed the order—participated in the unlawful killing of two defenseless human beings. "I was following orders" stopped being a defense eighty years ago at Nuremberg.

Bradley has since been promoted. He now commands all of U.S. Special Operations. Hegseth is still giving orders and posting on X that they've "only just begun to kill narco-terrorists." Nobody has been held accountable. Nobody has even been questioned publicly.

Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran, said it plainly: "Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder."

He's right. The law is clear. The precedent is established. What happened off the coast of Trinidad was not a military operation. It was a crime—twice over. Committed in our name, with our resources, by people who swore an oath to the Constitution we claim to revere.

We are all criminals now.

The Man Who Said It Out Loud

And now the president wants to execute the people who reminded the military of the law.

Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona joined five other Democratic lawmakers—all veterans of the military or intelligence services—in a video stating what every soldier learns in basic training: you can refuse an illegal order. You must refuse an illegal order. The oath is to the Constitution, not to the commander-in-chief.

For this, trump called them traitors. He said their actions constituted "seditious behavior at the highest level." He said it was "punishable by DEATH." He shared a post reading "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!"

The Pentagon, taking its cues from its master, opened an investigation into Kelly. The charge: misconduct. The threat: recall to active duty and court-martial.

Mark Kelly is not some backbencher looking for attention. He is a retired Navy captain who flew combat missions in Desert Storm. He was shot at by anti-aircraft fire dozens of times. A missile exploded next to his aircraft. He survived. He went on to become a NASA astronaut, flew four Space Shuttle missions, commanded two of them, and spent fifty-four days in orbit. His wife, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot in the head by an assassin in 2011. Kelly stood by her through years of recovery, then ran for Senate and won.

This is the man trump wants hanged.

Kelly's offense was speaking the truth: that the oath every service member takes is to the Constitution, and that illegal orders must be refused. This is not sedition. This is the law. The 1969 case United States v. Keenan established it explicitly: obedience to a lawful order is justified, but obedience to a patently illegal order is not.

Kelly knows this. Every officer knows this. trump either doesn't know it or doesn't care.

"I've had a missile blow up next to my airplane, been shot at dozens of times by anti-aircraft fire, and launched into orbit—all for my country," Kelly wrote. "I never thought I'd see a President call for my execution."

Neither did I. But here we are. In a country where reminding soldiers of the law is treason, and murder is policy.

The Honor of the Service

A hundred years of military service in my family. A hundred years of believing the uniform meant something. That the United States, for all its flaws, held itself to a standard. That we were not the country that executed survivors. That we were not the country that threatened to hang senators for citing the law.

We are now.

The honor of the military does not rest on victories. It rests on conduct. On the willingness to fight hard and still follow the law. On the discipline to refuse the illegal order even when refusal costs you. On the understanding that some lines cannot be crossed, no matter who gives the command.

That honor is broken. Not by enemies. By our own leaders. By officers who knew better and followed orders anyway. By a secretary of defense who watched men die on a drone feed and called it success. By a president who threatens execution for anyone who reminds the troops that the Constitution still exists.

Two men were in the water. They were no threat to anyone. And the United States of America killed them anyway.

Because Pete Hegseth said to kill everybody.

And nobody had the honor to say no.

As a member of a military family and a citizen of the United States, I am ashamed.

You should be too.