About two months ago, President Donald Trump started a military campaign against drug traffickers in international waters, mostly in the Caribbean Sea. Trump has characterized it as “a war against narco-terrorists” transporting illegal drugs that he claims were destined for the U.S. to kill Americans. Never mind that such Americans want the drugs, buy them, and shoot them themselves or whatever with the serum of their own volition as addicts.
The U.S. “War on Drugs” Is Not Literal
To date, the U.S. military has followed Trump’s orders about this supposed war down the chain-of-command. And these orders have been carried out without official interdiction of the boat crews, which would be necessary in U.S. waters. Military personnel that carried out these orders were merely told that these boats were carrying illegal drugs. And they may have been told the boat crews were members of specific drug gangs. In the past two months, it has resulted in U.S. missiles being fired at small boats that were blown up, and about 80 people on board these boats were killed.
A Determining Factor: Code of Military Justice
It has been reported that these orders were given by Pete Hegseth whom President Trump installed as his Secretary of Defense, although Trump has tried to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. It now appears that people at the top of the military chain-of-command, including Secretary Hegseth and the commander who has carried out these operations, Admiral Frank Bradley (father of four), probably will be called before the Armed Services Committees in the House and Senate to answer questions about this. The reason is The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which every member of the U.S. armed services is supposed to know, forbids obeying illegal orders. These orders to kill drug traffickers without interdiction appear illegal.
Right now, the U.S. media, military analysts and lawyers, and members of Congress are focused especially on one of the first, if not the first, boat that was blown up, which was on September 2. It supposedly originated in Venezuela and had a crew of eleven. The U.S. missile strike killed nine people. The remaining two people were in the water clinging to the boat with their hands as was shown in a video of the incident. A second missile strike was then ordered to kill them, which it did. The Code of Military Justice has an exact incident as this, saying that it would be a war crime to kill such survivors.
The attention for the following weeks and perhaps months likely will be on Hegseth and Bradley. But the main problem, here, is that President Donald Trump is a lawless man. He believes in skirting the law and doing whatever he wants to do, and if legal authorities object to it, he just says, “See you in court!” That’s what he was taught by his first personal lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn when Trump was in the building trades.
But as President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.” Trump is the one who ordered all of this. So, I believe he should be the main person held responsible for such war crimes if the United States of America decides war crimes have been committed. But the problem with that is that the Office of Legal Counsel says a sitting president cannot be held accountable for a crime.
Until now, it has been believed that release of the Epstein files would likely to the foremost evidence that could bring Donald Trump down. But now, it looks like these military operations in the Caribbean could result in the charge of “murder.” Remember when Donald Trump was first campaigning for the U.S. presidency, in 2015 and 2016, and he was so enamored with his popularity and he boasted he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue in his hometown of New York City and get away with it. Could that come back to bite him in the you-know-where?
I Would Disobey Orders to Kill Drug Traffickers
I was in both the U.S. Army (six months active duty) and the Air Force (7 years reserve duty). When I first learned of this first boat incident, I thought about my time in the military and whether or not I would have obeyed such orders to kill drug traffickers. I said to myself, “No way Hosea!” These people were not attacking the USA. What they are doing was not an armed conflict. They supposedly were merely transporting illegal drugs. However, the Trump administration has refused to provide proof about any of these operations that this is indeed the case, which is typical of Trump. Moreover, we don’t know if these crew members were armed.
This reminds me of the times during U.S. wars when military personnel have executed unarmed enemy captives, which are clearly war crimes. Sometimes, these criminals have been court marshaled and imprisoned, but most of the time it never gets reported.
If I had been ordered by my military superiors to fire those missiles at those boats, I definitely would have refused to do it. We are not in a war no matter how the lying Donald Trump tries to characterize the drug trade. And none of those crew members are endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel or trying to do so.
I therefore might have faced a military tribunal, found guilty, and sentenced to incarceration. (I could have been “called up” to active duty during the Vietnam War even though I was playing full time on the PGA Tour.) But if this would have happened in my day, when I served, that would have gotten media exposure. And the American public may have sided with me. Moreover, I may not have been found guilty since I was refusing to carry out an illegal order. If that had happened, it is my superiors who likely would have been found guilty of issuing illegal orders.
Passing the Blame Onto Others
It remains to be seen how this episode is going to turn out. Today, Secretary Hegseth said he supports Admiral Bradley who gave the orders to kill people. People are agreeing that it looks like Hegseth is throwing Bradley “under the bus.” And Trump merely says he believes in Hegseth. This reminds me of the first sin go-round in the Bible. Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, and God came calling. Adam blamed the woman whom God gave him, and Eve blamed the serpent, i.e., the Devil. No one owned up to responsibility for their own sin.
Conclusion
It seems to me that if the U.S. President cannot be charged with a crime no matter what he does, yet all U.S. armed services personnel would be committing a punishable crime if they obey an illegal order, that would be a devastating contradiction of the legal system of what has been the greatest nation on earth! And if Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump is not held accountable for this if it is crime, but some in his military chain-of-command will be, that could have a horrendous affect on our military morale.
[See Kermit’s book published in 2022 and entitled Bible Predicts Trump Fall.]
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