Moral indignation has been thick in the air on Capitol Hill this week from both Democrats and Republicans following the revelation that the U.S. military in early September conducted a secondary missile strike on survivors of an earlier U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea.
In the Sept. 2 incident, which occurred as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s divisive campaign of lethal airstrikes on suspected drug traffickers in waters near Venezuela, a follow-on strike killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of an alleged drug-smuggling boat after an initial strike.
Moral indignation has been thick in the air on Capitol Hill this week from both Democrats and Republicans following the revelation that the U.S. military in early September conducted a secondary missile strike on survivors of an earlier U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea.
In the Sept. 2 incident, which occurred as part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s divisive campaign of lethal airstrikes on suspected drug traffickers in waters near Venezuela, a follow-on strike killed two survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of an alleged drug-smuggling boat after an initial strike.
“I think it’s outrageous. I think there’s no justification for it, and it’s against our own military’s code of conduct,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul when questioned about the double-tap boat strike. “This is something now that is … clearly illegal.”
“We need to know what happened [in the double strike on the boat] because our allies and partners—many of them are under the perception that we didn’t follow the laws of war, which undermines not just our moral authority but could jeopardize our operational effectiveness as well as the safety of our own military personnel moving forward,” said Republican Sen. Todd Young, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Young may have been alluding to the possibility that more countries could halt their intelligence cooperation with the United States if they conclude that the Trump administration is not following international rules of war. “That’s why it’s important that we hold an oversight briefing for all of the world to see that we take these matters seriously,” he continued.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has oversight responsibility for the military strikes in the Caribbean, said enough lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised their concerns to ensure a committee investigation into the Sept. 2 double strike by the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6.
“Most certainly, there’s enough of us that have expressed concern about getting all the facts,” Rounds said, adding that he wanted the hearing to be classified to enable the Defense Department to share more information with the committee. “I won’t get into what the military rules are, but that’s part of the fact-finding that we will do in terms of when you can make a strike, how you make the strike, and when you should not make a strike.”
It’s not yet clear what the actual consequences will be from all the recent Republican dismay and criticism.
But considering how acquiescent most congressional Republicans have been to nearly a year of Trump’s significant departures from decades of bipartisan foreign-policy agreement, the voicing of dissent by more than a handful of Republican lawmakers is a noteworthy departure.
Questions over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s culpability in the double strike have been at the center of bipartisan scrutiny even as the White House has defended his actions.
During a White House cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth said he’d watched the first strike take place “live” before moving on to another meeting. “I did not personally see survivors,” Hegseth said in response to a reporter’s question. “That thing was on fire, and it exploded … you can’t see anything. This is called the fog of war.”
The defense secretary also doubled down on his support for the controversial deadly attacks: “We’ve only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean.”
Paul, who has co-led multiple unsuccessful Senate votes to constrain the Trump administration’s war powers when it comes to conducting lethal strikes in the Caribbean, was scathing in his criticism of Hegseth: “There is a question, how can on Sunday Pete Hegseth say: ‘Absolutely, it did not happen, you guys are all fake news,’… then on Monday, say, ‘It happened.’ So, there’s only two possibilities: He was either lying on Sunday or was so incompetent that he didn’t know what happened.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly accused Hegseth and Trump of throwing Adm. Frank Bradley, the Special Operations commander who oversaw the strikes, “under the bus,” adding that the admiral has a “stellar reputation.”
Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, blamed Trump for creating the permissive legal environment that allowed the double strike to happen. “This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a president who says, ‘We’re going to go out and kill people.’ Not what presidents normally say, and when you have an unqualified secretary of defense, a guy who has basically zero qualifications for this job, that runs around on a stageyou know, talking about lethality and warrior ethos and killing people, they have set the environment for stuff like this to happen.”
Hegseth has ordered a department investigation into Kellya retired Navy pilot, for participating in a video last month with other Democratic members of Congress who are also military and intelligence community veterans. The video encouraged U.S. troops to not carry out illegal orders.
Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who participated in the video along with Kelly, said he has “privately” heard from multiple Republican House members about their concerns with the double strike.
“I’d like to see more public concern, because now is a moment where America needs to know that Republicans are willing to stand up and defend the rule of law and the Constitution,” Crow said.
