There was no fog of war

The strike was clear. Helpless men were killed. The justification doesn't add up.

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, on Sept. 30, 2025. - Andrew Harnik | Reuters via AP

On Friday night, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth took to X to address one of the growing scandals surrounding him — what increasingly looks like murder, war crimes, or both.

“The Department of War will never back down,” Hegseth wrote. “America First. Peace Through Strength. Common Sense. For the warriors, always.”

In addition to the gaping holes in Hegseth’s story about the killing of two survivors of a Sept. 2 airstrike on alleged drug smugglers — inconsistencies that will catch up to him at his inevitable congressional testimony — the entire months-long mission to take out supposed drug boats in international waters has required incredible suspensions of reason to square with reality.

Of course, Hegseth and many others are clearly lying about much involving the strikes, which have killed 87 people since September. The Trump administration hasn’t presented a single piece of evidence that the targets of the attacks are drug smugglers, that the drugs are even headed to the United States, or that the strikes are any more necessary than the non-lethal drug interdiction operations that have been in effect for decades.

Instead, we’ve gotten grainy videos shared bombastically on social media and questionable legal justification for a “war” on “narco-terrorists.”

At Public Notice today, I’ve got a breakdown of how these airstrikes are evidence of an erratic and largely leaderless administration running purely on the instinct of morally depraved strivers like Hegseth trying desperately to impress Trump by looking tough. But I wanted to take a moment here to address Hegseth’s (apparent) claim that the strikes necessitate a “never back down” stance by the U.S. military.

Let’s start with…

America First

The administration has claimed the strikes are necessary to take out drug dealers whose drugs are killing Americans. One problem: the boats are coming from South America and carrying mostly cocaine.

More than 70 percent of American drug deaths are from fentanyl, not cocaine. If the Trump administration wanted to save American lives, it would be better off doing something about the fentanyl flooding American streets, much of which comes from China.

Peace through strength

Nothing says strength like the most powerful military in history obliterating speed boats piloted by, in some cases, Venezuelan fishermen.

If the disproportionate use of force weren’t enough, we’re also now in the business of killing helpless non-combatants.

After a first strike killed nine men on Sept. 2 and separated their boat in half, two men clung to the craft’s wreckage.

Democrats who viewed video of the strike said that the two survivors may have been waving their arms in surrender or begging for mercy. Showing strength, our military fired on these helpless souls.

Common sense

Is it “common sense” to spend untold millions (or billions) of dollars on military strikes to take out low-level drug smugglers? Does that same common sense apply to Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted by U.S. courts for smuggling 500 tons of cocaine into the country?

You are the enemy for the forthcoming 'war within'

For the warriors, always

Maybe there are some members of the military who are proud of their work raining hellfire upon speedboats in the Caribbean, I don’t know. What I do know is that this isn’t likely what they signed up for.

It therefore must take a significant amount of energy to convince oneself that these strikes are necessary to protect Americans. Are these strikes “for the warriors” then?

When Hegseth says, “for the warriors,” he means these strikes are for people like himself — men with little to no combat experience who have romanticized conflict well past its brutal realities. It’s a desperate attempt at self-actualization from a man with a mediocre-at-best resume — an unintentional admission of his own insecurities.

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