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How the US Military Is Pricing Working-Class Hawaiians Out of Their Homes
The US military presence in Hawai’i’s housing market puts an upward pressure on rental prices that freezes out locals.
May 28, 2026
On the surface, the affordability crisis that afflicts both tenants and prospective homebuyers in Hawai’i appears to resemble those of other housing-stressed states across the country. With a shortage of housing units accessible to working-class households, a high concentration of short-term rentals, and a strong demand from wealthy and out-of-state buyers, an increasing number of Hawai’i’s residents are priced out of paradise and forced to migrate outwards in search of cheaper housing.
But there is one element that makes Hawai’i’s housing market unique: the role of the US military. Our chapter in a new report finds that military presence in Hawai’i’s housing market puts an upward pressure on rental prices that freezes out locals. We estimate that troops in the private market raised housing prices by 7.1% in 2024.
Hawai’i is the most militarized state per capita in our nation. Not only does it have a high concentration of service members, but more than 230,000 acres of land out of the 4.1 million in the island chain are currently under military control.
A dense network of military bases is conspicuously scattered across the eight islands. And almost a quarter of the state’s most populous island, O’ahu—home to Honolulu and Kailua—is currently under what local activists and groups call a military occupation, contributing to land shortages and higher land prices that make real estate development even more expensive.
To help alleviate the inflationary impacts of military rental demand on the Hawai’i’s housing market, our report recommends that all active-duty service members be housed on base.
More than 98% of the 42,503 active-duty service members in Hawai’i were stationed in O’ahu in the summer of 2024. But not all of them lived on base. According to the Department of Defense, there were 14,700 active-duty service members who entered the private rental market. We estimate that they resided in 10.3% of the 142,130 renter-occupied units in Honolulu County.
Not only does the military have a significant presence in O’ahu’s rental market, but it also contributes to upward pressures on Hawai’i’s housing prices because of the tax-free stipends—known as Basic Allowance for Housing or BAH—that active-duty service members receive on a monthly basis.
Local residents have difficulty competing with compensation packages bolstered by BAH payments, making military renters more attractive to landlords.
An E5 Sergeant, a rank of enlisted personnel who have been promoted to lead a small team or section, with dependents and four years experience, had a base pay of $40,388 and a BAH of $39,852 in 2024 for a total of $80,240. This is $10,000 more than the average annual salary of an urban Honolulu worker, who earned $70,179 (a mean wage of $33.74) in the same year. This difference does not include food allowances and bonuses that military personnel also receive.
The graph below demonstrates that E5 non-commissioned officers with and without dependents can comfortably afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment while more than half of Hawai’i’s working-class residents are cost-burdened, i.e. they spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Other households struggle to afford to rent and are forced to leave Hawai’i altogether, particularly to Nevada, which is often jokingly referred to as Ninth Island.
It is clear that the BAH contributes to rental market tightness, and thereby higher prices. However, further analysis is stymied by a lack of data transparency from the Department of Defense. We know the DOD spent $27.9 billion to endow the BAH program in 2024, but we have no information on how those resources are distributed state-by-state nor how much BAH money enters the rental market.
Our report estimates that the DOD spent $1.1 billion on BAH just in O’ahu with more than half of that money—$648.9 million—entering the private rental market. The average BAH monthly payment per service member is $3,679, and we estimate this dynamic caused rents to increase by 7.1% in 2024. As a result, non-military tenants in O’ahu spent an estimated $234.8 million more in rent that year.
To help alleviate the inflationary impacts of military rental demand on the Hawai’i’s housing market, our report recommends that all active-duty service members be housed on base.
Vacancy rates at military installations should be 0%, and the number of service members in the private market should also be zero. The US military should disclose how many on-base housing units they own, operate, and monitor. And new, dense military housing should be built if necessary.
Critical tenant protections like rent control need to be implemented in order to provide immediate relief for renters. And the development of permanently affordable social housing is necessary to deliver high-quality and inexpensive housing. Sixty-five percent of all new units need to be set at 80% of area median income, and market-based solutions have proven incapable of delivering affordability to lower-income households.
Our findings demonstrate that the military plays a significant role in Hawai’i’s affordability crisis, but there are steps that can be taken to make Hawai’i affordable to the people of Hawai’i.
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The War on Wind Power Is 190-Proof Trumpism
A policy that feeds both President Trump's appetite for corruption and supplies his narcissistic hunger—well, that’s a twofer that can’t be missed.
May 13, 2026
Those of us who came up in a different age still occasionally harbor the belief that facts, truth, science matters; that it hasn’t all just vanished into a tweeting flash of nonsense. In service of this delusion, I’m dedicating this newsletter to the topic of wind, because I think it distills the corruption and irrationality of our sad moment into its purest essence—190-proof Trumpism, the stuff that blinds you if you guzzle it.
My rant is occasioned by the news that the administration has stopped all approvals on wind farms across the country. As Katherine Krawczyk explains, for 15 years wind farms have applied to the Department of Defense (DOD) where:
they’re supposed to undergo a “timely, transparent, and repeatable process to evaluate potential impacts” to national security and military operations. It’s a routine that has spanned presidencies, including the first Trump administration, and that typically revolves around making sure turbines don’t interfere with radars or federal airspace.
This has always been routine, until last summer when it became… impossible. Pete Hegseth’s DOD simply stopped replying, and didn’t explain why till last month when it sent a letter to developers saying it was “reevaluating how it reviews wind projects national security impacts.” Somewhere between 165 and 250 big projects are in limbo, and that’s obviously the point: Not only does it screw up their financing, it means they may not get done in time to qualify for what tax credits are left from the Biden Inflation Reduction Act.
Though sunlight must travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, there is no drone on Earth that can shoot the breeze.
To say that the national security grounds are bogus is to give them too much credit. As those radicals at the Financial Times explained, the security review used to take a “few days” to complete. These installations are on private land, far away from military bases. The government has used the same argument to try and block offshore wind farms, and the courts have overruled their objections. I imagine that in time judges will find in favor of these blocked onshore projects too, but the damage will have been done: No one in their right mind would invest in new wind power now, not when the president has declared quite frankly that his “goal is to not let any windmill be built.”
That this is stupid goes without saying. Those blocked projects constitute, the FT says, about 30 gigawatts of cheap clean energy at a time when we desperately need it. But it also goes without saying that the blockage serves two purposes. One is to artificially increase demand for fossil fuel (and the other Trump-favored power sources, like the expensive array of nuclear reactors whose development the government is currently generously funding). The other is to serve his febrile rage at the wind farm built off his Scottish golf course all those years ago. A policy that feeds both his appetite for corruption and supplies his narcissistic hunger—well, that’s a twofer that can’t be missed. Hegseth may have no idea how to win the war in Iran, but he knows how to win favor from dear leader.
Of course, it means indulging in a huge number of lies, from President Donald Trump’s claim that wind power is the most expensive energy on Earth (actually, second-cheapest, right behind solar) to his claim that it causes cancer (1 death in 5 on this planet comes from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel) to his claim that though the Chinese build and sell wind turbines they don’t actually use them. If he glances out the window of Qatar Force One on this week’s trip to China he’ll be forced to recant that one: The Chinese actually lead the world in producing not just wind turbines but wind energy. As Keith Bradsher reported last week:
Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast.
Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric.
In fact, perhaps his Chinese hosts could arrange a field trip to their newest wind turbine, installed this week off the shore from Yangjiang. It’s, what do you know, the largest single-unit floating wind platform ever installed on planet earth, a single windmill that will supply enough power for 24,000 homes. As Adriana Buljan reports at that must-read site OffShoreWindBiz:
The project incorporates several new technologies, including a novel mooring system, an active ballast system, a smart monitoring system, and a 66 kV dynamic subsea cable, the developer said.
The floater is secured by nine suction anchors, using a combination of anchor chains and high-performance polyester mooring lines, marking the first application of such polyester cables in China’s offshore wind sector.
It’s not just China, of course. A few weeks ago, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 3 in the North Sea, sent its first power back to the UK. When it’s fully finished at the end of next year, reports Evelyn Hart, it will “generate enough power to meet the average daily needs of a population larger than Greater Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds combined.” Earlier Tuesday the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi announced a big investment in the project, reflecting what the fund’s head called its “approach of investing alongside experienced partners in high-quality infrastructure assets that support energy transition and deliver long-term value.”
What might the Trump administration offer them as an alternative? Well, the administration has ordered the restart of fossil fuel drilling operations off Santa Barbara despite local and state opposition. On Monday an old platform in the area caught fire and burned—26 people were evacuated, and thankfully none were killed, though two were injured. Here’s what America’s technological prowess looks like today.
I think that sometimes wind gets shorter shrift than it should when we talk about renewable energy. It’s not quite as simple as a photovoltaic array—there’s still a moving part, that windmill blade. But of course this is just another form of solar energy (the wind rises when the sun heats the Earth more in some places than others) and it is a miracle. In fact, it’s a perfectly complementary miracle. Along a coast, for instance, because it takes a while for the sun to heat the air molecules that produce the breeze, wind tends to build in power later in the afternoon, as the photovoltaic effect begins to ebb. And the farther north you go, the stronger the wind gets, which is useful since Greece has more sunshine than Norway. And wind speeds tend to be higher in the winter than the summer, thanks to sharper temperature gradients.
If you want an in-depth technical explanation of this miracle, Mark Jacobson provides one in this 2021 study. Among many other things, he points out that:
In some locations, e.g. Europe, wind energy output follows heat load remarkably well on a diurnal basis. This is not only due to the day versus night wind speed peaks just discussed, but also due to the fact that low temperatures, which create heat loads, often occur behind cold fronts, where pressure gradients are strong, thus winds are fast. Low temperatures over land also often occur in the presence of strong temperature gradients, which produce strong pressure gradients and strong winds.
One irony of Trump’s anti-wind crusade is that this miracle was born here. Humans have long used wind, of course—to push boats, to grind grain. But we first put it to use to produce electricity on an industrial scale in the early 1940s at Grandpa’s Knob, about 50 miles south of my home in the Vermont mountains above the town of Castleton. An Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad named Palmer Putnam (and I was at MIT last week, and saw many impressive young people following in his wake) convinced the local utility to give him a shot at harnessing the Vermont winds (blowing 8 miles an hour in Castleton when I drove by this afternoon). Vannevar Bush—more irony here—was in charge of the nation’s scientific enterprises during World War II, and he thought it would be a good idea to see if we could produce power this way; Putnam’s design used two blades, each 66 feet long and weighing eight tons. It worked just fine from 1942 to 1943, when a shaft bearing failed, and wartime shortages meant no one could scrounge the part until 1945.
A study that year found that a block of six similar turbines similar to the prototype, producing nine megawatts, could be installed in Vermont for around US$190 per kilowatt. But in those days it was cheaper to get power other ways, and so the project was never replicated. In 2012 a new project was proposed for the area, but like all Vermont wind projects in recent years, local opposition doomed it, reminding us that Trump is not the only person who doesn’t like to look at windmills.
I do, though. I’ve always thought they were remarkably beautiful, Calder mobiles come to life. And they keep getting better. The first big American installation was on Altamont Pass, near Livermore California—6,700 small turbines lined either side of I-580. They produced lots of clean electrons, but because of their size and where they were sited, their fast-moving blades were a bit of a bird Cuisinart. To be clear, wind turbines never come within an order of magnitude of avian destruction compared with tall buildings and power lines, not to mention domestic cats, not to mention the effects of climate change now setting off a generalized extinction crisis on this Earth. But if bird mortality is not a reason to delay the move to clean energy, it’s also not something to be simply ignored. So here’s some good news: A recent “repowering project” on the pass replaced 569 of the old small turbines with just 23 newer and bigger ones, while still generating the same amount of electricity. Oh, and
Fewer turbines, spaced further apart, and equipped with modern bird-detection technology such as IndentiFlight, should reduce bird mortality in the Altamont Pass going forward.
“Brookfield Renewables has designed the [Mulqueeney Ranch] site and implemented state of the art technology to mitigate impacts to local and migratory avian species,” according to the MCE staff report.
“Turbines will be equipped with individual AI paired cameras to detect the presence of avian species which would trigger feathering/shut-off of specific turbines.”
And as Justin Gerdes reports, this kind of repowering could happen at every wind farm across the country:
“By replacing aging turbines with modern technology at existing sites, the United States could more than double its current onshore wind capacity and electricity generation without requiring new land,” write the authors of a Stanford University study published in March.
The study finds that repowering could increase the US’ onshore wind nameplate generating capacity from 153 gigawatts (GW) (as of 2024) to 314 GW at existing wind farms.
“Repowering is a key, yet overlooked, strategy to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy future in the United States,” the authors conclude.
Data from the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie confirms the near-term repowering opportunity in the US.
“The repowering market remains strong, as Wood Mackenzie projects that 18 projects will drive 2.5 GW of capacity additions in the next three years,” according to a December 2025 WoodMac press release.
I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of my line that though sunlight must travel 93 million miles to reach the Earth, none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, there is no drone on Earth that can shoot the breeze. This is where the planet desperately wants to go. Our job is to change our nation’s politics so the wind can blow free.
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Standing Witness to University Complicity in Criminal Wars of Aggression
Military-related research at universities like NC State helps the imperialist state find ways to more effectively kill people around the world who resist US domination.
Apr 05, 2026
On February 28, 2026, the Trump administration ordered US military forces to launch a criminal war of aggression against Iran. In the first wave of bombing, a US Tomahawk missile struck a girls elementary school in Minab, collapsing the roof and killing over 100 children. Since the attacks began, over 1,900 people have been killed and 24,800 wounded, according to media reports. The casualty numbers are preliminary, but otherwise these are uncontroversial facts.
Here are a few more observations that should be uncontroversial.
Many, perhaps most, US research universities, public and private, function in part to abet the imperialist state. Military-related research at these universities helps the imperialist state find ways to more effectively kill people around the world who resist US domination. Today, plain talk about these activities is rare, as is protest against them. For the most part, university aid to the capitalist class' projects of imperial domination either goes unmentioned, is normalized as morally unproblematic, or is celebrated under the aspect of nationalism.
Finally, here's a report from the non-Ivy province of academia: On March 12, 2026, the vice chancellor of research and innovation at North Carolina State University (where I am professor emeritus), Krista Walton, sent a campus-wide email titled "Investing in Our Research Infrastructure's Future." NC State, the email said, ranked "steady at 6th place among our peers (public universities without a medical school) in research expenditures." This sounds innocuous enough. The usual sort of institutional cheerleading.
I am thus appalled when universities are suborned into service of an imperial state. To use universities in this way is a betrayal of the enlightenment values that make universities humane institutions.
But where did the money come from? And what will building the university's research infrastructure entail? Walton goes on to explain.
Among the major funding sources noted in the email are the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy, and NASA. In DOD funding, Walton boasts, "NC State ranked second only to Duke University." As for building infrastructure, the email calls for "positioning the university to align with national priorities," and "build[in] on the great work our investigators are already doing in the defense and security sector." More specifically, building on this work will involve creation of a new "defense and security institute," for which faculty are invited to "help develop an aligned vision, mission, and goals."
Again, this email and the invitation to get on board—to help make the university more responsive to the needs of the imperial state—was sent less than two weeks after the criminal attack on Iran began, less than two weeks after the killing of more than 100 school children in Minab and the deaths of many more civilians in subsequent weeks. Though the email of course makes no mention of killing, it implicitly invites faculty, students, and staff to support the kind of reach-across-the-globe military violence that inevitably destroys innocent lives. To put it any other way amounts to moral self-deception.
Analysis is needed to explain how we've gotten to this point. I've done that sort of thing before. I've written about NC State's addiction to tobacco money, its multi-million-dollar deal with the National Security Administration, and its ties with criminal corporations. Administrators and their political backers putting the university's snout into the trough of military funding could be analyzed in the same ways: as the result of cuts in funding from general state revenues, of the nationalist ideologies in which Americans are steeped, of amoral careerism, of bureaucratic structures that let people separate intentions from consequences and thus join in causing great harms—holocausts, genocides, wars. A thorough analysis would consider all of these causes, and more.
But do we need more analysis right now, or are the results in? The facts are as I have stated them. No one should begrudge further good-faith interpretation of these facts and what they imply. Analysis, in this sense, has no end; it is the perpetual motion machine of academia. For now, however, I have reached a point where all I can do is stand as an appalled witness. I speak simply to profess—not to untangle any sociological mysteries but to make a public statement of conscience.
I believe universities should exist to freely create and transmit knowledge useful to all peoples; to promote peace based on rational discourse; and to develop understandings of our common humanity across the divisions created to foster elite domination. I am thus appalled when universities are suborned into service of an imperial state. To use universities in this way is a betrayal of the enlightenment values that make universities humane institutions. It is a revolting reduction of universities to instruments of nationalism and resource control, for the benefit of those who have captured the reins of the state.
I am further appalled at the violence this entails, and at how this violence is obscured or normalized. The NC State email from which I quoted earlier cheerfully asks us to align the university with "national priorities"—set by whom?—by building our research infrastructure in the areas of defense and security. And for what? To make the venal and powerful—the capitalist class or, as some have taken to calling it, the Epstein class—more powerful, if necessary by destroying the lives and infrastructure of others. To this, I object.
I object, too, to the hypocrisy of conducting this violence-abetting work behind the veil of liberal values, while the violence is perpetrated at a distance, so far away that it is hard to see the links between research done for the Department of Defense or military contractors, illegal wars of aggression, and dead schoolchildren. To refuse to see these links is not merely head-in-the-sand hypocrisy; it is rank dishonesty hidden inside an institutional shell that claims the pursuit of truth to be its distinctly virtuous mission.
North Carolina State University is just an example, and no special villain. The big leaguers at the military trough are MIT, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech, Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Maryland. To the extent that these institutions claim greater prestige—based on touting humane values and scientific achievements—their hypocrisy is all the more rank. To the extent that these institutions help to legitimate war-making research at less prestigious institutions like NC State—pretending it is compatible with freedom, equality, and democracy—the damage they do is all the worse.
In The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich argues that the psychic force driving fascism is repressed sexuality. As a social psychologist trained in sociology, I never put much stock in this argument. Most of what conduces to participation in collective acts of destruction can be traced to culture and social organization. Yet I think Reich was right when he said, looking back at the 1930s, "While we presented the masses with superb historical analyses and economic treatises on the contradictions of imperialism, Hitler stirred the deepest roots of their emotional being." Critical intellectuals offer similar analyses today. But if at the end of analysis we can't connect to our own emotional being—the part of us that stands appalled and says, No, enough!—those analyses will wither without effect, as they too often have in the past.
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Pete Hegseth's Holy War
The US now finds itself in a long-term war waged by an angry, fanatical Fox journalist, not a competent secretary of defense.
Mar 20, 2026
Pete Hegseth is carrying out a Holy War at the Pentagon and abroad. He has rightly come under fire for incompetent leadership and mediocre management of the Iran war. The war was a mistake in the first place, both because Iran did not pose an immediate threat to US interests, and because President Donald Trump assumed a rapid victory and regime change would secure oil for the US and its allies for decades to come. But motivated by Christian Nationalism, fueled by angry masculinity, and blinded by ideological certainty, Hegseth’s crusade was doomed to failure from the start. Within the Pentagon, the battle against “woke” ideas and diversity has shaken leadership and hurt morale.
On the international front, Hegseth’s religious conviction about the immorality of Iran’s Islamic leadership led him to the conclusion that his god would protect the US in any war. Yet devoid of real goals and plans, motivated by ignorance about Iranian society, and discarding the intelligence community’s dire warnings about the chances of failure, Hegseth pushed on. The US now finds itself in a long-term war waged by an angry Fox journalist, not a competent secretary of defense.
The Crusader
Hegseth’s worldview is steeped in mistaken views of the 11th century Crusades, infused with white male privilege, and seasoned with ideology rather than intelligence briefings. Hegseth developed his views at Princeton University where he studied politics. He became a frequent contributor to and publisher of the Princeton Tory, the school’s conservative newspaper. In his writings he “strived to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.” He attacked the university for encouraging and supporting “pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, and a general hostility toward faith and religion.” He declared that “the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.” He rankled at the buzzwords of diversity, tolerance, sexual liberation, and multiculturalism which he took to be anti-Western. He concluded that the university “has abandoned almost all its moral/truth-seeking guidance to undergraduates.”
Hegseth took advantage of Reserve Officers' Training Corps funding for his education at Princeton, seeking to overcome the dangers of multiculturalism by becoming a soldier of god. After graduation he joined the Army National Guard, becoming a major, and was deployed three times abroad earning two Bronze Stars. Hegseth’s tattoos carry his Christian nationalism for all to see: a Jerusalem cross on his chest, a Christogram here, a “Deus Vult” (“God Wills It,” a Crusader battle cry) there, an American flag here, crossed muskets there, and other grotesque inkings common in violent far-right communities.
Hegseth failed to understand that technology alone does not win a war, nor does his insistence on the elimination of “wokeness” in the Pentagon.
Hegseth’s holier than thou attitude about the need to wage war on “wokeness,” Islam, and other evils was hardly tempered by a whistleblower report on his tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), from 2013 until 2016, which describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated; sexually pursuing CVA female staffers; creating a hostile workplace; and drunkenly chanting in public, “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” A history of alcohol and sexual abuse suggests an individual unfit to lead the Department of Defense (DOD), and in fact Hegseth was forced out as chief executive of CVA amid allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.
Hegseth’s certainty that white males must control society seems confirmed by a string of abusive acts. His former sister-in-law claims that his second wife feared for her personal safety during their marriage, and often hid in a closet. She herself experienced an angry, intoxicated Hegseth screaming in her face. Claims of rape against Hegseth in 2017 did not result in charges against him, but did result in the future DOD secretary paying the woman in question a $50,000 settlement. His own mother, Penelope, sent him an email that said: “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” Married three times and fathering a child out of wedlock, Hegseth said, "I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully, I'm redeemed by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Ultimately, Hegseth found salvation in the narcissism of Donald Trump. In 2017 Hegseth became co-host of "Fox & Friends Weekend." He ingratiated himself to the president by incessantly promoting the lie that vot
er fraud had led to Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Purifying the Pentagon
Appointed secretary of defense by Trump, Hegseth announced, “We became ‘the woke department’… Not any more. We’re done with that shit.” He set out to purge the Pentagon of woke, gay, and transgender personnel that he believed weakened the US military. He said, “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons—based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.” Yet there were questions from the start about his own minimal “qualifications” as a Fox News host and Trump sycophant. In March 2025, only months into his Pentagon appointment, he risked the lives of US soldiers by proudly sharing classified war plans in unsecured communications with a journalist. Loyal to Trump, he kept his job.
Trump, who has no military experience, but four draft deferments and a FIFA soccer peace prize, began his second term by firing a distinguished F-16 fighter pilot, General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth followed along, carrying the president’s racist water by ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the Pentagon, and by purging defense department libraries and websites that addressed anti-racism and sexism. His racism carried so far as an order to stop classifying nooses and swastikas as hate symbols (this effort to permit Nazi symbols among the Coast Guard was abandoned). But his white Christian chest-thumping intensifying, Hegseth ordered the renaming of Navy ships that honored African Americans; the purging by Pentagon archivists of the biography of Jackie Robinson; and the removal of a picture of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the Enola Gay, because “gay” is forbidden.
Hegseth’s goal, he said, was to eliminate the “social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.” There would be “no more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or, gender delusions, no more debris.” There would be no more fat soldiers, but only fit ones. And there would be no beards, “no more beardos,” only the paramount clean-shaven look of individual expression. Calling for Aryan purity, he said, “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans, but unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refuse to call BS and enforce standards or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards.” Women could serve only if they could kill as effectively as Hegseth’s warriors. To mold these warriors, Hegseth determined to permit bullying and hazing “to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”
Why his anger at “beardos”? Hegseth said that anyone who needs a shaving exemption for more than a year would be forced out of the service. This ended a policy created mainly for Black and brown troops with pseudofolliculitis barbae, a skin condition that makes daily shaving lead to cuts, sores, and scarring. For Hegseth, “grooming standards” were commensurate with the “warrior ethos.” In the name of the warrior mindset, Hegseth extended his purge to women, gays, and transgender individuals. Hegseth eliminated the Women, Peace, and Security program at the DOD as “woke” and “divisive” although it is codified in a 2017 law that Congress passed unanimously and was signed by Trump. Hegseth’s Pentagon is now forcing transgender service members to leave in the name of military preparedness. (Hitler, too, despised homosexuality. He had Ernst Röhm and other gay SA members murdered in 1934 because of their "degeneracy"; the Nazi regime made the persecution of homosexuals a priority. Perhaps Hegseth studied the Wehrmacht at Princeton?)
White Christian Officer Training
US Ivy League schools, MIT, CalTech, Chicago and other universities were crucial to the US to wage the Cold War, strategize the arms race, and build radars and other weapons. But the anti-intellectual Hegseth decided to end officer training, fellowships, and graduate-level education programs at Ivy League and other top-tier universities starting in the 2026-2027 academic year because of their allegedly “woke ideology” and anti-American sentiment. He claimed the need to refocus “the US military on maximum lethality, warfighting, and accountability; prioritizing combat effectiveness, merit-based standards, and a direct, combative culture over political correctness.” He insisted that the DOD needs “more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers… more innovation, more AI… more space, more speed.” And he believes he can achieve these goals by shifting programs to conservative schools that stress Christian nationalist thinking.
Toward those ends, Hegseth announced the elimination of several senior service college fellowship programs for the 2026-2027 academic year and beyond. He desired “strategic thinkers through education grounded in the founding principles and documents of the republic, embracing peace through strength and American ideals, and focused on our national strategies and grounded in realism.”
The failure of the Trump-Hegseth Holy War against Iran underlines the need to divorce religious beliefs from declarations of war.
What he meant by this was doctrine steeped in the ideas of limited government, free enterprise, constitutional originalism, and Christian morality. The new partner institutions included such conservative beacons of white Christianity as Liberty University (whose past president resigned in the midst of a sex scandal); Baylor University (whose past president ignored a campus rape scandal, helped Jeff Epstein avoid prosecution, and who investigated Bill Clinton over real estate deals and Oval Office oral sex at a cost of $52 million); Regent University (that has long pushed the Christian orientation of its founder, Pat Robertson, who called for letting LGBTQ advocates and Muslims kill themselves); Hillsdale College (whose president at the time of the Clinton infidelity was allegedly having a long affair with his daughter-in-law who then committed suicide); and Pepperdine University (which was long embroiled in a lawsuit over sexual orientation of students). The trainees will be ready for religious wars, if morally ambivalent.
War Crimes and Holy War
The failure of the Trump-Hegseth Holy War against Iran underlines the need to divorce religious beliefs from declarations of war. While the medieval Crusades had largely political-military significance for control of the Holy Land, such Christian nationalists as Hegseth have recast that history as a holy war against Moslem infidels. In the ongoing war that the US launched on the Islamic Republic, Hegseth emphasizes that the Christian god is on his side. He said: “Our capabilities are better. Our will is better. Our troops are better. The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops, and we’re committed to this mission.” He asserted that the Trump administration was carrying out hold battle against “religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon.”
Hegseth’s reliance on religious justifications—and his certainty that Trump expected a quick victory to distract Americans from the Epstein scandal—hurried the US into its attack. But there was no justification: Iran was not within days of deploying ICBMs or nuclear weapons, and was hardly prepared to attack the US. Indeed, negotiators on both sides were close to a US-Iran agreement to forestall nuclear weapons development—and recreate the agreement that Trump abrogated in 2018 in the first place.
The great danger, now realized, was that Hegseth confused personal religious and ideological imperatives with military need. The Nazis conflated Bolshevism, Judaism, and Slavic racial inferiority, hurried into a war with the USSR that Hitler expected to win within days or weeks, yet plunged the world into war. So, too, Hegseth mixes hatred of Islam, Iran in particular, with religio-spiritual embrace of the Christian Bible, Western civilization, and a sacred mission for Israel, in the end transforming a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran into a religious crusade.
Hegseth: Waging War with No Plans
Hegseth ignored real time challenges that, after initial “victories,” have left the DOD in a bind as to how to move forward. In the first two days of the attack, the US spent $5.6 billion in munitions: More than 2,000 munitions were rained down on nearly 2,000 Iranian targets. But the armaments are hardly in an unlimited supply, must be replaced, and it will take months to do so, especially for precision, smart weapons. This will leave the US vulnerable elsewhere in the world. Hegseth failed to understand that technology alone does not win a war, nor does his insistence on the elimination of “wokeness” in the Pentagon. Hegseth assumed that initial firepower would bring Iran to its knees, but he has only strengthened the resolve of Iran’s leaders to stand up to the US, and has even brought its oppressed people into some agreement with the theocracy.
Hegseth has worried so much about beards, DEI, and Holy Wars that he attacked Iran without minesweepers that the DOD decommissioned in the autumn. These might have opened the Strait of Hormuz to the world’s oil traffic, one-third of which passes through the Strait. And without allies—Trump’s odious behavior and policies have turned away even England, France, and Canada—the US is isolated in this war. It has little recourse to their stockpiles, let alone their minesweepers. How long will Hegseth—and his witless president—wait to ask Congress to replenish the Pentagon budget and secure more munitions to continue “the most intense strikes”? And how can Hegseth justify the fact that, when planning for his Holy War, he ordered the Pentagon to buy up tens of millions of dollars of steak and crustaceans in order to spend its budget authorization before the end of the fiscal year?
For Hegseth, who embraces quick, empty responses and has forgotten any analytical tools he may have learned in college, any negative comment is “fake news.”
The troubling subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war aims in Ukraine has handicapped the Hegeth and Trump Iran fiasco as well. Trump has both refused to condemn Putin’s support for Iran through intelligence sharing, military cooperation, and providing drone components and satellite imagery all of which are likely harming US soldiers. Russia is generally prolonging a war in the Middle East that benefits its closest Middle Eastern partner in the fight against the US and Israel. Trump has eased sanctions on Russian oil, which is permitting Putin to earn millions of dollars in oil revenues to fund his four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. Recall that in his first month as defense secretary, Hegseth endorsed Russia’s territorial occupation of Ukraine. At the very least, Hegseth is uninterested in Russian support for Iran.
Hegseth still promises in this war “intense strikes,” “the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes; intelligence more refined and better than ever.” He ridicules the Iranians as “desperate and scrambling.” Likely to justify the US murder of 180 children, he announced, “Like the terrorist cowards they are, they fire missiles from schools and hospitals... deliberately targeting innocents." The missile hit midmorning when children would certainly be present. Where is the Christian morality? Committed to a different Jesus than the one in the Bible, Hegseth told US soldiers to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement. Hegseth smirked in couplets, “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
What Has the War Department Wrought?
Hegseth, the former Fox News host, knows how to manipulate the messages to confuse the public. He uses press conferences to attack the media for their reporting on his and Trump’s war—from its initial justifications, to his overconfidence, to miscalculations regarding closure of the Strait of Hormuz, to faltering world oil supply, and to the massive unpopularity of the war as US deaths and costs accumulate. He might as well say to the American people, “Let them eat lobster.”
Into the third week, the Iran war has led to the deaths of at least 13 US service members and has burned through more than $11.3 billion worth of taxpayer dollars. The Persian Gulf has been plunged into chaos as Iran mounts retaliatory strikes against military bases and oil refineries in the region. But for Hegseth, who embraces quick, empty responses and has forgotten any analytical tools he may have learned in college, any negative comment is “fake news.”
The secretary of military propaganda admonished the press to learn the craft of Fox: “Allow me to make a few suggestions… I used to be in that business, and I know that everything is written intentionally, for example, a banner or a headline.” He called for right-wing takeover of CNN and other media. Pete needs one more tattoo: “What, me worry?”
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To Threat of Troop Deployment, Minneapolis Mayor Vows City 'Will Not Be Intimidated'
"The best way to get safety is not to have an influx of even more agents and, in this case, military in Minneapolis," Mayor Jacob Frey said.
Jan 18, 2026
Responding to the news that the Department of Defense had put 1,500 active duty troops on standby for a potential deployment to Minnesota, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had a clear message for the Trump administration: "We will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government."
"This act was clearly designed to intimidate the people of Minneapolis, and here's the thing: We're not going to be intimidated," Frey told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning.
The news of the troop deployment was first broken by ABC and confirmed to the Washington Post late Saturday night. It came two days after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act due to widespread protests against a major federal immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities that has already led to the death of legal observer Renee Good and the shooting and injuring of Venezuelan migrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
It is not certain that the soldiers, who belong to two Alaska-based infantry battalions, will actually be deployed. The White House said it was typical for the Pentagon “to be prepared for any decision the President may or may not make.”
"I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government."
However, if they were deployed, Frey told Tapper it would be "ridiculous."
He noted that there are already around 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in the area compared with around 600 local police officers.
"The best way to get safety is not to have an influx of even more agents and, in this case, military in Minneapolis," he said.
Frey told Tapper that the situation that Minneapolis found itself in was "bizarre."
"I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government," he said.
However, he praised the response of ordinary people in the city: "One of the beautiful things that's taking place is that the people here in Minneapolis are not just resisting. They're standing up. They're standing up for their neighbors, they're loving people, they're making sure that they've got a ride to the grocery store, a safe walk to their car. They're making sure that they have those basic necessities that they need, because we've got a whole lot of people who are afraid to go outside at the risk of getting torn apart from their own families."
"In the face of a whole lot of adversity, I'm so proud to be from Minneapolis. I'm so proud to be the mayor of this awesome city with these extraordinary people," Frey said.
The news of the potential military deployment came the day after the revelation that the Department of Justice was investigating Frey as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz over their criticism of federal immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area.
Frey also spoke out against this second form of intimidation.
"If it were true, the targeting would be the product of performing one of the most basic responsibilities and obligations that I have as mayor, which is to speak on behalf of our great city, speak on behalf of our constituents," Frey told Tapper. "And that the federal government would be going after me because of that speech should be deeply concerning not just for people in Minneapolis, but for anybody throughout the country."
In addition to a potential federal deployment of the military, Gov. Walz also ordered the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize on Saturday.
"They are not deployed to city streets at this time, but are ready to help support public safety, including protection of life, preservation of property, and supporting the rights of all who assemble peacefully," the Minnesota Department of Public Safety wrote on Facebook.
Tapper asked Frey if he was worried about a situation in which ICE, CBP, and the military might end up physically fighting with the Minnesota National Guard and local law enforcement.
"We can't have that in America," Frey answered, adding that he hoped the judicial system would step up to restrict the Trump administration from invading American cities. Already, a federal judge has ruled that ICE must not retaliate against, pepper spray, or detain peace protesters and observers in Minnesota, and there are other lawsuits pending against the deployment.
Frey also appealed to people across the country.
"I know that you love your town, regardless of where you are," he said. "And just imagine what it would feel like if you suddenly had an administration deployment of troops, of agents come into you city by the thousands, vastly outnumber the police department, and cause chaos on your streets."
Frey added that there was a very simple way for ICE to resolve the situation.
"If the goal here is to create peace and safety and calm, there's a very clear antidote here, which is leave," he said.
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Experts Agree: It Was Illegal to Follow Hegseth's Illegal Orders
Under well-established law, those who complied with the orders cannot escape individual criminal responsibility for the killing of the two survivors in the event they are brought to trial.
Dec 02, 2025
The question of when it is lawful for US military personnel to refuse an unlawful order has become a point of discussion in the political arena. Those conversations took a turn with the Washington Post and CNN reporting over Thanksgiving weekend that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order to “kill everyone” in the initial US military strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, resulting in US special forces’ allegedly killing two shipwrecked survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of their vessel on Sept. 2, 2025.
In this article, we do not engage with the political discussion, but rather examine the law that applies to the alleged facts of the operation and Hegseth’s reported order. And with respect to the legal assessment of that operation, we will not be dealing with the broader question of whether the attack on the boat was unlawful as such, which it was (see articles published at Just Security by Marty Lederman; Michael Schmitt; and a podcast discussion with Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, and Rebecca Ingber). Instead, we focus on a narrower aspect of the strike, the purported order to kill all aboard the vessel and the resulting second strike on the boat that killed the survivors.
As a matter of law, there are two central issues to address. The first concerns the circumstances in which military personnel have a duty to refuse to obey an order and, relatedly, whether a superior order can relieve them of criminal responsibility. The second is whether the orders in this case triggered that duty or provided those involved a defense. As both issues are context dependent, we begin with the facts.
The Reported Order(s) and Military Operation
Without rehashing the well-known and fairly straightforward reported chain of events on September 2, it is essential to understand that there were apparently two different orders in the military chain of command.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s verbal order
The Washington Post reported:
The longer the US surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. "The order was to kill everybody," one of them said.
Note that “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered the military prior to the operation to ensure the strike killed everyone on board, but it’s not clear if he knew there were survivors prior to the second strike, one of the sources said,” CNN reported.
Presumably, this order was issued to the US Special Operations Command’s Commander, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, raising the question of whether he had a duty to refuse it.
Adm. Bradley’s order to conduct the second strike
The Washington Post reported:
Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed.
This order implicates the duty of subordinate commanders and those executing the strike to refuse to comply with unlawful orders.
Following the strike, Hegseth told reporters, “We smoked a drug boat, and there’s 11 narco terrorists at the bottom of the ocean, and when other people try to do that, they’re going to meet the same fate.” Note that according to an earlier report by the New York Times, the targeted boat had “altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started.”
The Duty to Refuse Unlawful Orders
From the perspective of those receiving them, unlawful orders raise two issues. The first is whether there is a duty to refuse them. The United States clearly imposes such a duty. In particular, the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Law of War Manual (2023) emphasizes the obligation, giving, as a paradigmatic example, an order to kill shipwrecked persons.
18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations. The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.
The Manual cautions, however, that “[s]ubordinates are not required to screen the orders of superiors for questionable points of legality, and may, absent specific knowledge to the contrary, presume that orders have been lawfully issued.” But in clear cases, the duty attaches. As the Manual for Courts-Martial explains, the general presumption that an order can be inferred to be lawful “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”
An even more granular explanation of the duty to refuse unlawful orders is provided in the US Navy-Marine Corps-Coast Guard Commanders Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (§ 6.1.3.2):
All naval personnel have a duty to comply with the law of armed conflict in good faith; prevent violations by others to the utmost of their ability; and refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of armed conflict. Naval personnel have an affirmative obligation to promptly report violations which they become aware. When appropriate, naval personnel should ask questions through appropriate channels and consult with the command legal advisor on issues relating to the law of armed conflict. Naval personnel should adhere to regulations, procedures, and training, as these policies and doctrinal materials have been reviewed for consistency with the law of armed conflict. Commands and orders should not be understood as implicitly authorizing violations of the law of armed conflict where other interpretations are reasonably available.
These US duties track international law, for, as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has asserted, under the law of armed conflict (LOAC), “[e]very combatant has a duty to disobey a manifestly unlawful order” (ICRC, Customary IHL study, Rule 154).
And refusal to obey an unlawful order is not an offense in the US armed forces. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, an offense occurs if the accused
(1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation; (2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by any member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or (3) is derelict in the performance of his duties (art. 92).
It is also an offense if a member of the armed forces “willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer” (art. 90). Thus, the fact that an order is unlawful precludes conviction for its violation. So, although orders may generally be presumed lawful, if they are clearly unlawful, US military personnel have an affirmative duty to refuse them and may not be prosecuted for doing so.
No Defense of Superior Orders
The second issue raised by orders is whether they constitute a defense available to those acting unlawfully, but pursuant to them. It has long been the case under customary international law that “superior orders” is no defense for war crimes. The Charter of the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo excluded the defense (arts. 8 and 6, respectively), as did the 1950 Nuremberg Principles (prin. IV). The absence of a superior orders defense has also been confirmed in the statutes of modern war crimes tribunals, including those of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (arts. 33, 7, and 6, respectively). Indeed, the defense is unavailable to international law violations generally. For instance, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons prohibit superior orders as a defense in national legislation implementing their prohibitions (arts. 2 and VIII, respectively).
As with the affirmative duty to disobey an unlawful order, the ICRC has accurately stated that under customary international law, “[o]beying a superior order does not relieve a subordinate of criminal responsibility if the subordinate knew that the act ordered was unlawful or should have known because of the manifestly unlawful nature of the act ordered.” (ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study, Rule 155).
US military law likewise rejects the defense of superior order in the Manual for Courts-Martial. Rule 916(d) provides, “It is a defense to any offense that the accused was acting pursuant to orders unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.” The touchstone case reflecting the principle is US v. Calley, which dealt with the murder of 22 children, women, and old men in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai. Lt. Calley claimed he was obeying an order because “he had been taught the doctrine of obedience throughout his military career” and that he “was acting in ignorance of the laws of war.” The US Court of Military Appeals held that,
the obedience of a soldier is not the obedience of an automaton. A soldier is a reasoning agent, obliged to respond, not as a machine, but as a person. The law takes these factors into account in assessing criminal responsibility for acts done in compliance with illegal orders.
The acts of a subordinate done in compliance with an unlawful order given him by his superior are excused and impose no criminal liability upon him unless the superior’s order is one which a man of ordinary sense and understanding would, under the circumstances, know to be unlawful, or if the order in question is actually known to the accused to be unlawful.
Thus, it is unlawful to obey an unlawful order, and merely following clearly illegal orders provides no defense. This being so, the questions in the September 2 strikes are whether Secretary Hegseth’s reported order to Adm. Bradley was clearly unlawful and whether Bradley’s apparent follow-on order to conduct the second strike was likewise manifestly unlawful.
What Law Applied to the Reported Orders?
Much attention has been focused on the laws of war as they may relate to the Hegseth order and resulting operation. In that regard, we must emphasize that LOAC did not apply to the September 2 strikes, because, as has been explained in multiple Just Security articles referenced above, the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. There is no international armed conflict because, inter alia, there are neither hostilities between States nor the requisite degree of State control over alleged drug cartels operating the boats. And there is no non-international armed conflict, both because the cartels concerned do not qualify as organized armed groups in the LOAC sense, and because there were no hostilities between the United States and the cartels on September 2, let alone hostilities that would reach the requisite level of intensity to cross the armed conflict threshold. For the same reason, the individuals involved have not committed war crimes.
However, the duty to refuse clearly unlawful orders—such as an order to commit a crime—is not limited to armed conflict situations to which LOAC applies. Nor is rejection of a defense of superior orders restricted to war crimes. In fact, the more restrictive rules of international human rights law applied instead. As will be explained, the alleged Hegseth order and special forces’ lethal operation amounted to unlawful “extrajudicial killing” under human rights law (see also here). The federal murder statute would also apply, whether or not there is an armed conflict. (See, e.g., Marty Lederman’s analysis).
That said, the administration has reported to Congress, stated publicly, and recorded in legal and operational memoranda that it believes one or multiple “non-international armed conflicts” exist between the United States and 24 organizations in Latin America (whether it views the situation as one armed conflict, 24 separate ones, or some other combination is unclear). This being so, before turning to the law that was actually violated through the September 2 and subsequent operations, allow us to counterfactually consider the law that would apply had the administration been correct in characterizing the operation as occurring during an armed conflict.
The Prohibition of Ordering Denial of Quarter or Denying Quarter
Assuming solely for the sake of discussion that there was a non-international armed conflict at the time of the September 2 strikes, the most relevant LOAC rule applicable to the Hegseth and Bradley orders is the “denial of quarter,” i.e., an instruction not to allow any survivors (see, e.g., Working Group of Former Judge Advocates Generals’ statement on the Hegseth order).
The status of the prohibition on the denial of quarter (and on ordering or threatening its denial) was settled well over a century ago. It is applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts as a matter of customary international law (ICRC, Customary International Humanitarian Law study, Rule 46). This is so with respect to its status as a violation of LOAC entailing the responsibility of the State concerned and as a war crime by the individuals issuing orders to deny quarter or carrying them out. We need not repeat here the major international texts and tribunal decisions that support that conclusion. One of us (Schmitt) walked through all of the relevant texts, from the US Civil War’s Lieber Code to the present, in a 2023 essay concerning a “kill everyone” order by the head of Russia’s Wagner Group (coauthored with LtCol John Tramazzo).
Here, suffice it to note that the DOD Law of War Manual is categorical: “It is… prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter. This rule is based on both humanitarian and military considerations.” The Manual further emphasizes that the rule “also applies during non-international armed conflict” (§ 5.4.7).
A closely related prohibition implicated in the September 2 strikes, which also applies in both international and non-international armed conflict, is on attacking those who are hors de combat, a condition that includes those who are “defenseless” because they are shipwrecked (see ICRC Customary International Humanitarian Law study, rule 47 and related practice). As the DOD Law of War Manual explains (§ 5.9.4),
Shipwrecked combatants include those who have been shipwrecked from any cause… Persons who have been incapacitated by… shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. In order to receive protection as hors de combat, the person must be wholly disabled from fighting.
The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations similarly provides, “Intentional attack on a combatant who is known to be hors de combat constitutes a grave breach of the law of armed conflict” (§ 8.2.3). Indeed, as noted in the Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare published by the US Naval War College’s Stockton Center, Geneva Convention II
sets forth a legal framework for the humane treatment and protection of victims of armed conflict at sea. The Convention requires parties to the conflict to, inter alia, respect and protect individuals falling within the scope of the Convention “who are at sea and who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked.” Parties to a conflict are thus required, after each engagement and without delay, to “take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick,” without discriminating between their own and enemy personnel.
To be clear, there is no exception to the prohibition on attacking those who are hors de combat due to being shipwrecked because they might escape or otherwise receive rescue assistance from their forces. The only basis for treating them as subject to continued attack is if they are, in fact, not hors de combat because they continue to fight.
Doctrine and Prosecutions on Denial of Quarter
This analysis of the LOAC rules merits being supplemented with three additional points. First, each US servicemember has an obligation to report evidence that any US operation potentially involved killing shipwrecked survivors or a denial of quarter. According to the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (§ 6.3; see also DOD Directive 2311.01):
All military and US civilian employees, contractor personnel, and subcontractors assigned to or accompanying a DOD component must report through their chain of command all reportable incidents, including those involving allegations of non-DOD personnel having violated the law of war.
Examples of incidents that “must be reported” include: (1) “Offenses against the Wounded, the Sick, [and] Survivors of Sunken Ships,” such as “willfully killing”; (2) “Other Offenses against Survivors of Sunken Ships,” including, “when military interests permit, failure to search out, collect, make provision for the safety of, or to care for survivors;” and (3) “Denial of quarter, unless bad faith is reasonably suspected” (§ 6.3).
Second, a landmark 1921 case emerging out of World War I clearly set forth the rule that killing shipwrecked survivors of a boat strike is a war crime and that superior orders offer no defense to such conduct, because such orders must be disobeyed. In the Llandovery Castle case, the Imperial Court of Justice considered a June 1918 incident after a German U-boat sank the Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship. The U-boat Commander claimed he thought the ship was carrying American airmen. In convicting the defendants for firing on the survivors who were in lifeboats, the court noted that by that point, the international legal prohibition on killing survivors of a maritime attack was manifest.
The firing on the boats was an offence against the law of nations. In war on land the killing of unarmed enemies is not allowed (compare the Hague regulations as to war on land, para. 23(c)), similarly in war at sea, the killing of shipwrecked people, who have taken refuge in life-boats, is forbidden.
…
The fact that his deed is a violation of international law must be well-known to the doer, apart from acts of carelessness, in which careless ignorance is a sufficient excuse. In examining the question of the existence of this knowledge, the ambiguity of many of the rules of international law, as well as the actual circumstances of the case, must be borne in mind, because in war time decisions of great importance have frequently to be made on very insufficient material. This consideration, however, cannot be applied to the case at present before the court. The rule of international law, which is here involved, is simple and is universally known. No possible doubt can exist with regard to the question of its applicability. (emphasis added)
Accordingly, the court held that the German crew could not claim to be following orders as a defense because such an order would be clearly unlawful:
It is certainly to be urged in favor of the military subordinates, that they are under no obligation to question the order of their superior officer, and they can count upon its legality. But no such confidence can be held to exist, if such an order is universally known to everybody, including also the accused, to be without any doubt whatever against the law. This happens only in rare and exceptional cases. But this case was precisely one of them, for in the present instance, it was perfectly clear to the accused that killing defenceless people in the life-boats could be nothing else but a breach of the law. … They should, therefore, have refused to obey. As they did not do so, they must be punished.” (emphasis added)
The DOD Law of War Manual cites and quotes the Llandovery Castle case to illustrate the point that clearly illegal orders must be refused (see DOD Law of War Manual, § 18.3.2.1).
Notably, in its sentencing assessment, the court stated that “the principal guilt rests with” the U-boat Commander who issued the order, while his subordinates could obtain some mitigation of sentence given the pressure entailed in refusing a military order.
Third, a famous World War II case involved a similar set of facts. In the 1945 Peleus Trial, a British Military Court sitting in Hamburg considered a March 1944 incident in which a German submarine sank a Greek ship chartered by the British Ministry of War Transport. Upon the orders of the German commander Heinz Eck, the U-boat members fired a machine gun and threw grenades at Peleus’ crew members who had survived the first attack but were shipwrecked in the water. The prosecutor and the judge advocate (who at that time served as the court’s legal adviser) both relied on the Llandovery Castle case. In response to the defendants’ plea of superior orders, the judge advocate stated:
The duty to obey is limited to the observance of orders which are lawful. There can be no duty to obey that which is not a lawful order. …
It is quite obvious that no sailor and no soldier can carry with him a library of international law, or have immediate access to a professor in that subject who can tell him whether or not a particular command is a lawful one. If this were a case which involved the careful consideration of questions of international law as to whether or not the command to fire at helpless survivors struggling in the water was lawful, you might well think it would not be fair to hold any of the subordinate accused in this case responsible for what they are alleged to have done; but is it not fairly obvious to you that if in fact the carrying out of Eck’s command involved the killing of these helpless survivors, it was not a lawful command, and that it must have been obvious to the most rudimentary intelligence that it was not a lawful command, and that those who did that shooting are not to be excused for doing it upon the ground of superior orders? (emphasis added)
The court sentenced Eck and two other defendants to death, another to life imprisonment, and the fifth defendant to 15 years imprisonment.
Assuming the facts as reported about the September 2 strike, and if LOAC and war crimes law had applied (they do not), Secretary Hegseth and Admiral Bradley’s orders were self-evidently unlawful because they ordered no quarter. Moreover, the second strike on the boat would qualify as an attack on those shipwrecked persons who are hors de combat. Whether Secretary Hegseth knew there were shipwrecked survivors is unclear, but Admiral Bradley reportedly did and ordered their attack anyway.
If those involved believed they were engaged in an armed conflict, we find it difficult to imagine they could not have known that the orders were unlawful. The more military training and experience they have, the more implausible such a claim is.
Applying International Human Rights Law to the Alleged Facts
The law of armed conflict is generally a more permissive legal regime for the use of military force than international human rights law (IHRL). In particular, the LOAC permits targeting members of the armed forces, including members of organized armed groups, based on their status, and others if and for such time as they “directly participate in hostilities,” which encompasses more than conducting attacks. By contrast, targeting based on status outside an armed conflict is prohibited. Acts opening the door to the use of force against an individual are generally limited to situations in which they pose an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm. If the Hegseth and Bradley orders and the ensuing second strike had been violations of LOAC in a non-international armed conflict, they would, a fortiori, have violated human rights law as a matter of peacetime law enforcement.
With respect to the US lethal strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels at issue here, two of us (Schmitt and Goodman, along with coauthor Marko Milanovic) have explained why “there is absolutely no question that the US lethal strikes on the boats are a violation of international human rights law.” Without rehashing that analysis here, the bottom line is that the US strikes on suspected drug traffickers at sea are clearly arbitrary deprivations of the right to life under IHRL, an obligation that the United States acknowledges applies extraterritorially. As they wrote:
The widely-accepted standard for arbitrariness prohibits the use of force likely to cause death or grievous bodily injury “except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life, to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape, and only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives” (Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials; see also UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment 36, para 12).
If the lack of an imminent threat of death or serious injury on the part of individuals suspected of trafficking drugs at sea (quite plausibly here, ferrying cocaine from Venezuela to a transhipment point for onward distribution in Europe) is obvious with respect to the campaign as a whole, it is doubly so with respect to a vessel that, as has been reported, had turned around prior to the US strike. It is even more patently obvious that it is an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life—i.e., murder—to fire on the shipwrecked survivors of that strike, as has now been reported.
In sum, there is simply no plausible argument that the reported killing of two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage of their stricken vessel could be anything other than an extrajudicial killing. It is equally clear that, according to long-standing law (including prevailing US legal interpretations), the reported Hegseth and Bradley orders to fire on them were manifestly unlawful, and that those carrying out that order cannot rely on a superior orders defense if prosecuted for those actions due to the egregious illegality of the order.
Concluding Thoughts
The September 2 strikes on the purported drug boat neither violated the law of armed conflict nor amounted to war crimes, because they did not occur during an armed conflict. However, if the facts are as reported, there is little question that the order by Secretary Hegseth and the ensuing order by Admiral Bradley to conduct the second strike were unlawful, because the killing of the two survivors was a serious violation of international human rights law.
Moreover, both orders were clearly unlawful. Under well-established law, those who complied with the orders cannot escape individual criminal responsibility for the killing of the two survivors in the event they are brought to trial in a US military court-martial, a federal trial, or a domestic criminal proceeding in another State that has jurisdiction, for instance, based on the nationality of the victims. If actually issued, these orders irresponsibly and unlawfully placed all those involved in the attack in serious legal jeopardy. If the reporting is accurate, those orders should, as a matter of law, have been refused.
Editor’s note: Readers may also be interested in Jeremy Chin, Margaret Lin, and Aidan Arasasingham, Timeline of Vessel Strikes and Related Actions
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‘Most Loser Shit I Have Ever Seen': Pete Hegseth’s Unhinged Speech to Generals Sparks Instant Ridicule
One critic expressed astonishment that Hegseth "summoned all the US generals from around the globe at great expense to fat shame them."
Sep 30, 2025
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday sparked instant ridicule among critics for delivering a speech in front of American generals in which he railed against "dudes in dresses," "climate change worship," and "fat" soldiers.
During the address, which US military leaders around the world were summoned to attend in Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth rattled off a long list of culture war grievances that he claimed had weakened the American military, which he asserted is forced to follow “stupid rules of engagement” that limit members of the armed forces. Hegseth has spent much of his tenure taking steps to remake the military into what he has said will be a more aggressive force, including by firing top lawyers.
Among many topics, Hegseth, a former Fox News host, took aim at some American soldiers' physical appearances.
"Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations and see fat troops," Hegseth fumed at one point. "Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals."
Hegseth also said that the Trump administration had moved to systematically "to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department."
What this means in practice, Hegseth elaborated, was "no more identity months, [diversity, equity, and inclusion] offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship."
"We are done with that shit!" he emphasized.
Elsewhere in his address, Hegseth announced he was "overhauling" the inspector general process that has been used to investigate allegations of misconduct against military officers. According to Hegseth, the current process has put "complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver's seat."
"No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers, no more walking on eggshells!" Hegseth exclaimed.
US President Donald Trump, who spoke at Quantico after Hegseth's address, called the defense secretary's speech "great," even as it was being pilloried as "embarrassing" and "ridiculous" far and wide online.
Watch the complete speeches by both Hegseth and Trump.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie described the speech as "some of the most loser shit I have ever seen in my life" and he marveled that Hegseth had hauled in military leaders away from their jobs to watch it.
"Can you imagine sitting in that audience as a three-star flag officer—decades in the service, multiple post-grad degrees, and a virtually unequaled level of command expertise—and being forced to watch this dunderheaded dry drunk give an off-brand Jordan Belfort seminar?" Bouie asked.
Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, also asserted that senior military personnel likely felt insulted watching Hegseth's speech.
"I just can't get over the lack of shame—the unabashed confidence," she said. "Can you imagine what those generals are thinking being lectured to by someone so inexperienced and incompetent?"
Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, expressed astonishment that Hegseth "summoned all the US generals from around the globe at great expense to fat shame them."
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick argued that Hegseth would open up US defense policy to significant vulnerabilities if he were to move forward with banning the American military from discussing the impacts of climate change.
"Climate change may be the single greatest geopolitical wild card of the next century—a reshaping of countries' agricultures, economies, and even literal geography," he wrote. "And here a guy who never rose above the rank of Major says the U.S. military shouldn't even consider it. We are screwed."
Attorney Max Kennerly took aim at Hegseth's comments on military service members' physical fitness, which he said showed a deep ignorance of how the modern military fights wars.
"I can't get over how the right-wing doesn't understand modern militaries, with the majority serving non-combat roles," he explained. "You think the best IT security and logistics personnel spends two hours in the gym every day to look like the cast of 300? They're at furry conventions and model train shows."
Following Hegseth's speech, the president's lengthy address included defenses of his policies, including his decision to deploy federal troops to US cities to fight what he called "the enemy within." Trump has ordered federal troops to cities including Washington, DC; Chicago; and Portland to remove unhoused people from the streets, arrest immigrants, and fight anti-fascist protesters.
"We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” said Trump.
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The White House Wages War at Home
Trump is a King George of the modern era, testing constitutional limits and mobilizing the coercive power of the state against the citizenry.
Sep 26, 2025
President Donald Trump has treated the US military less as an instrument of national defense than as a personal tool for enforcing political will. National Guard units have been deployed to Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and other cities under circumstances that critics argue constitute intimidation rather than legitimate security operations. Citizens and green card holders have reportedly been detained without clear legal authority, raising urgent questions about the erosion of civil liberties. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has been rhetorically rebranded as the Department of War, signaling a broader offensive posture not just abroad, but potentially at home.
Trump presents himself as a modern Washington or Jefferson, the fearless guardian of American virtue. Make America Great Again promises a return to a mythic past. In practice, however, his administration functions as a laboratory for authoritarian experimentation, exposing the fragility of constitutional and institutional safeguards designed to survive the ambitions of overreaching executives.
George Washington could have claimed lifetime rule; he refused. Trump refused to accept defeat in 2020, attempted to subvert electoral results, and incited the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Washington built a democracy capable of outliving him; Trump has tested one that explicitly rejected him. Law, the Founders warned, is the scaffold of liberty. Trump has repeatedly tested those boundaries, obstructing justice, dodging subpoenas, and converting the Justice Department into a tool for personal protection.
The deployment of National Guard forces to US cities highlights a deeper problem: the militarization of domestic governance. Trump has framed these deployments as necessary for “security,” yet the timing, targets, and accompanying rhetoric—such as memes depicting him as a cavalry commander in Apocalypse Now—signal political theater intended to intimidate and assert personal authority over the citizenry. While he later denied plans to “go to war on Chicago,” the casualness of the threat reveals a disturbing comfort with the idea of domestic coercion.
The central question is not abstract: Will Americans exercise the tools the Constitution provides to resist authoritarian drift?
Thomas Jefferson warned that democracy cannot survive without an independent press. Trump calls journalists “the enemy of the people,” excludes them from briefings, and spreads misinformation to undermine public trust. James Madison designed a system of checks and balances to prevent executive overreach. Trump treats Congress and the courts as obstacles, delegitimizing oversight and eroding judicial independence. Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a strong but accountable executive is inverted: Presidential power becomes indistinguishable from personal empire.
Some defenders argue that Trump remains constitutionally constrained, that executive orders, emergency declarations, or selective enforcement are permissible exercises of presidential discretion. Yet repeated incidents, illegal detention of residents, militarized policing in domestic spaces, emergency declarations used to bypass Congress, demonstrate a pattern of authoritarian experimentation rather than lawful discretion. These are not isolated incidents; they are structural tests of the system’s resilience.
The consequences for democracy are tangible. Norms are eroded incrementally: The legitimacy of elections is challenged, opposition figures are threatened, and civil liberties are subordinated to political calculation. Militarized policing and the casual threat of domestic war are tools of coercion, not patriotism. Democracy does not collapse in a single moment; it atrophies when citizens fail to defend institutions designed to protect them.
Trump’s reorientation of the military, alongside his willingness to violate norms of civilian oversight, illustrates a critical tension: The executive branch is designed to be strong but accountable. When accountability is discarded, the instruments of the state—courts, the military, law enforcement—become mechanisms for consolidating personal power. This undermines the very social contract that binds citizens to the state.
From a class perspective, this militarization has profound implications for working people and marginalized communities, who disproportionately bear the brunt of aggressive policing and state coercion. The deployment of troops in urban areas, framed as protection against “threats,” often intersects with systemic inequalities, reinforcing patterns of surveillance and control over populations that lack political power.
The Founders, for all their limitations, provided tools for resistance: the vote, civic participation, oversight, and the defense of separation of powers. These mechanisms remain available, but they are contingent upon citizen engagement and political literacy. Trump is neither Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, nor Hamilton. He embodies the archetype of executive overreach that classical republicanism sought to preclude—a King George of the modern era, testing constitutional limits and mobilizing the coercive power of the state against the citizenry.
The central question is not abstract: Will Americans exercise the tools the Constitution provides to resist authoritarian drift? The blueprint exists, but it requires active defense. Democratic institutions are not self-sustaining; they depend on the vigilance, courage, and collective action of citizens. Failure to act risks normalizing domestic militarization and the gradual erosion of civil liberties.
In this sense, Trump’s presidency is both a warning and a test. It challenges us to confront the vulnerabilities of our political system, to insist upon accountability, and to recognize that democracy is not merely procedural, it is relational, contingent on a society willing to defend it against those who would wield power as an instrument of personal dominion.
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The Department of Defense Has Always Been the Department of War
The reversion of the Defense Department to the War Department should be seen less as a rupture than a revelation. It strips away a euphemism to make far plainer what has long been the reality of our world.
Sep 19, 2025
The renaming of the Defense Department should have surprised no one. US President Donald Trump is an incipient fascist doing what such figures do. Surrounded by a coterie of illiberal ideologues and careerist sycophants, he and his top aides have dispensed with pretense and precedent, moving at breakneck speed to demolish what remains of the battered façade of American democracy.
In eight months, his second administration has unleashed a shock-and-awe assault on norms and institutions, civil liberties, human rights, and history itself. But fascism never respects borders. Fascists don’t recognize the rule of law. They consider themselves the law. Expansion and the glorification of war are their lifeblood. Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini put it all too bluntly: The fascist “believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace… war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it.”
Pete Hegseth is now equally blunt. From the Pentagon, he’s boasting of restoring a “warrior ethos” to the armed forces, while forging an offensive military that prizes “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” The message couldn’t be clearer: When the US loses wars, as it has done consistently despite commanding the most powerful military in history, it’s not due to imperial overreach, political arrogance, or popular resistance. Rather, defeat stems from that military having gone “woke,” a euphemism for failing to kill enough people.
The recent rechristening of the Department of Defense as the Department of War was certainly a culture-war stunt like Trump’s demand that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. But it also signaled something more insidious: a blunt escalation of the criminal logic that has long underwritten US militarism. That logic sustained both the Cold War of the last century and the War on Terror of this one, destroying millions of lives.
When Hegseth defended the recent summary executions of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers on a boat in the Caribbean, he boasted that Washington possesses “absolute and complete authority” to kill anywhere without congressional approval or evidence of a wrong and in open defiance of international law. The next day, in responding on X to a user who called what had been done a war crime, Vance wrote, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” It was the starkest admission since the Iraq War that Washington no longer pretends to operate internationally under the rule of law but under the rule of force, where might quite simply makes right.
While such an escalation of verbiage—the brazen confession of an imperial power that believes itself immune from accountability—should alarm us, it’s neither unprecedented nor unexpected. Peace, after all, has never been the profession of the US military. The Department of Defense has always been the Department of War.
American Imperialism and “Star-Spangled Fascism”
The US has long denied being an empire. From its founding, imperialism was cast as the antithesis of American values. This nation, after all, was born in revolt against the tyranny of foreign rule. Yet for a country so insistent on not being an empire, Washington has followed a trajectory nearly indistinguishable from its imperial predecessors. Its history was defined by settler conquest, the violent elimination of Indigenous peoples, and a long record of covert and overt interventions to topple governments unwilling to yield to American political or economic domination.
The record is unmistakable. As Noam Chomsky once put it, “Talking about American imperialism is like talking about triangular triangles.” And he was hardly the first to suggest such a thing. In the 1930s, General Smedley Butler, reflecting with searing candor on his years of military service in Latin America, described himself as “a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism… I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests… I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.”
Historically, imperialism and fascism went hand in hand. As Aimé Césaire argued in his 1950 Discourse on Colonialism, fascism is imperialism turned inward. The violence inherent in colonial domination can, in the end, never be confined to the colonies, which means that what we’re now witnessing in the Trumpian era is a reckoning. The chickens are indeed coming home to roost or, as Noura Erakat recently observed, “The boomerang comes back.”
Yet for a country so insistent on not being an empire, Washington has followed a trajectory nearly indistinguishable from its imperial predecessors.
In their insatiable projection of power and pursuit of profit, Washington and Wall Street ignored what European empires had long revealed: that colonization “works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him… to degrade him.” English novelist Joseph Conrad recognized this in his classic 19th-century work of fiction, Heart of Darkness, concluding that it wasn’t the Congo River but the Thames River in Great Britain that “led into the heart of an immense darkness.”
Imperialism incubates fascism, a dynamic evident in the carnage of World War I, rooted, as W.E.B. DuBois observed at the time, in colonial competition that laid the foundations for World War II. In that conflict, Césaire argued, the Nazis applied to Europe the methods and attitudes that until then were reserved for colonized peoples, unleashing them on Europeans with similarly genocidal effect.
War Is Peace
In the postwar years, the United States emerged from the ruins of Europe as the unrivaled global hegemon. With some 6% of the world’s population, it commanded nearly half of the global gross domestic product. Anchored by up to 2,000 military bases across the globe (still at 800 today), it became the new imperial power on which the sun never set. Yet Washington ignored the fundamental lesson inherent in Europe’s self-cannibalization. Rather than dismantle the machinery of empire, it embraced renewed militarism. Rather than demobilize, it placed itself on a permanent global war footing, both anticipating and accelerating the Cold War with that other great power of the period, the Soviet Union.
The United States was, however, a superpower defined as much by paranoia and insecurity as by military and economic strength. It was in such a climate that American officials moved to abandon the title of the Department of War in 1947, rebranding it as the Department of Defense two years later. The renaming sought to reassure the world that, despite every sign the US had assumed the mantle of European colonialism, its intentions were benign and defensive in nature.
That rhetorical shift would prove inseparable from a broader ideological transformation as the Cold War froze geopolitics into rigid Manichean camps. President Harry Truman’s March 1947 address to Congress marked the start of a new global confrontation. In that speech, the president proclaimed the United States the guardian of freedom and democracy everywhere. Leftist movements were cast as Soviet proxies and struggles for national liberation in the former colonial world were framed not in the language of decolonization and self-determination but as nefarious threats to American interests and international peace and security.
In Europe at the time, a civil war raged in Greece, while decisive elections loomed in Italy. Determined not to “lose” such countries to communism, Washington moved to undermine democracy under the guise of saving it. In Greece, it would channel $300 million to right-wing forces, many staffed by former fascists and Nazi collaborators, in the name of defending freedom. In Western Europe, Washington used its position as the world’s banker to manipulate electoral outcomes. In the wake of the 1947 National Security Act that created the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA (the same bill that renamed the War Department), the agency launched its first large-scale covert operation. In 1948, the US would funnel millions of dollars into Italy and unleashed a torrent of propaganda to ensure that leftist parties would not prevail.
Across the Third World, the CIA perfected that template for covert interventions aimed at toppling democratic governments and installing pliant authoritarians. The overthrow of Iran’s Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 marked the beginning of a series of regime-change operations. More assassinations and coups followed, including of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961, Sukarno in Indonesia in 1965, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The utter contempt for democracy inherent in such actions was embodied in National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s remark: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
In the aftermath of each intervention, Washington installed anticommunist dictators who had one thing in common: They murdered their own citizens, and often those of other countries as well, dismantled democratic institutions, and siphoned national wealth into personal fortunes and the coffers of multinational corporations.
By the 1980s, the CIA was bankrolling proxy wars spanning the globe. Billions of dollars were being funneled to the Afghan mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras. In both Afghanistan and Nicaragua, those US-backed “freedom fighters” (or, as President Ronald Reagan termed the Contras, the “moral equals of our founding fathers”) deployed tactics that amounted to scaled-up terrorism. The mask occasionally slipped. As historian Greg Grandin has noted, one adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff described the Contras as “the strangest national liberation organization in the world.” In truth, he conceded, they were “just a bunch of killers.”
“The Greatest Purveyor of Violence”
As with the CIA, the not-so-aptly-renamed “Defense Department” would oversee a succession of catastrophic wars that did nothing to make Americans safer and had little to do with the protection of democratic values. Within a year of its renaming, the US was at war in Korea. When the North invaded the South in 1950, seeking to reunify a peninsula divided by foreign powers, Washington rushed to intervene, branding it a “police action,” the first of many Orwellian linguistic maneuvers to sidestep the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war.
The official narrative that the communists launched the war to topple a democratically elected government in the South obscured its deeper origins. After World War II, Washington installed Syngman Rhee, an exile who had spent decades in the United States, as South Korea’s leader. He commanded little popular legitimacy but proved a staunch ally for American officials determined to secure an anticommunist foothold on the peninsula. Far from embodying liberal democracy, his regime presided over a repressive police state.
Washington reserves for itself the unilateral right to intervene, violently and antidemocratically, in the affairs of other nations to secure what it considers its interests.
In 1948, two years before the war, an uprising against Rhee’s corrupt rule broke out on Jeju Island. With Washington’s blessing, his security forces launched a brutal counterinsurgency that left as many as 80,000 dead. Far from an aberration, Jeju epitomized Washington’s emerging Cold War policy: not the cultivation of democracies responsive to their citizenry (with the uncertainty that entailed), but the defense of authoritarian regimes as reliable bulwarks against communism.
The Korean War also marked a growing reliance on air power. Carpet bombing and the widespread use of napalm would reduce the North to rubble, destroying some 85% of its infrastructure and killing 2 million civilians. As future Secretary of State Dean Rusk would later admit, the US bombed “everything that moved in North Korea.” The only “restraint” exercised was the decision not to deploy atomic bombs, despite the insistence of Air Force General Curtis LeMay who would reflect unapologetically, “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off… 20% of the population.”
A remarkably similar pattern unfolded in Vietnam. As revealed in the Pentagon Papers, the United States initially backed France in its attempt after World War II to reimpose colonial rule over Indochina. After the French forces were defeated in 1954, the partition of the country ensued. Elections to reunify Vietnam were scheduled for 1956, but US intelligence concluded that the North’s communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, would win in a landslide, so the elections were cancelled. Once again, Washington placed its support behind the unpopular, repressive South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, chosen not for his legitimacy but for his reliability in the eyes of American policymakers.
The result was a futile slaughter. The US would kill well over 3 million people in Southeast Asia and drop more than three and a half times the tonnage of bombs on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos as were used in all of World War II. That orgy of violence would lead Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967, to denounce the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” The same has held true for nearly the entire span of the past 80 years.
Empire or Democracy
The human toll of the Cold War exceeded 20 million lives. As historian Paul Chamberlin calculated, that amounted to some 1,200 deaths every day for 45 years. To call such an era “cold” was not only misleading but obscene. It was, in truth, a period of relentless and bloody global conflict, much of it instigated, enabled, or prolonged by the United States. And its wars also produced the blowback that would later be rebranded as the “War on Terror.”
The names of America’s adversaries may have changed over the years from Hitler to Stalin, Kim Il-Sung to Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein to Xi Jinping, but the principle has remained constant. Washington reserves for itself the unilateral right to intervene, violently and antidemocratically, in the affairs of other nations to secure what it considers its interests. The reversion of the Defense Department to the War Department should be seen less as a rupture than a revelation. It strips away a euphemism to make far plainer what has long been the reality of our world.
We now face a choice. As historian Christian Appy has reminded us, “The institutions that sustain empire destroy democracy.” That truth is unfolding before our eyes. As the Pentagon budget tops $1 trillion and the machinery of war only expands in Donald Trump’s America, the country also seems to be turning further inward. Only recently, President Trump threatened to use Chicago to demonstrate “why it is called the Department of War.” Meanwhile, US Customs and Immigration Enforcement, or ICE, is set to become among the most well-funded domestic “military” forces on the planet and potentially the private paramilitary of an aspiring autocrat.
If there is any hope of salvaging this country’s (not to speak of this planet’s) future, then this history has to be faced, and we must recover—or perhaps discover—our moral bearings. That will require not prolonging the death throes of American hegemony, but dismantling imperial America before it collapses on itself and takes us all with it.
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The Department of Forever War
Trump's rebranded DOD promises more boats to blow up, more people to bomb, and more foreign resources to steal in the pursuit of a “victory” that never actually arrives.
Sep 16, 2025
My fellow Americans, my critical voice has finally been heard inside the Oval Office. No, not my voice against the $1.7 trillion this country is planning to spend on new nuclear weapons. No, not my call to cut the Pentagon budget in half. No, not my imprecations against militarism in America.
It was a quip of mine that the Department of Defense (DOD) should return to its roots as the War Department, since the US hasn’t known a moment’s peace since before the 9-11 attacks, locked as it’s been into a permanent state of global war, whether against “terror” or for its imperial agendas (or both).
A rebranded Department of War, US President Donald Trump recently suggested, simply sounds tougher (and more Trumpian) than “defense.” As is his wont, he blurted out a hard truth as he stated that America must have an offensive military. There was, however, no mention of war bonds or war taxes to pay for such a military. And no mention of a wartime draft or any other meaningful sacrifice by most Americans.
Rebranding the DOD as the Department of War is, Trump suggested, a critical step in returning to a time when America was always winning. I suspect he was referring to World War II. Give him credit, though. He was certainly on target about one thing: Since World War II, the United States has had a distinctly victoryless military. Quick: Name one clear triumph in a meaningful war for the United States since 1945. Korea? At best, a stalemate. Vietnam? An utter disaster, a total defeat. Iraq and Afghanistan? Quagmires, debacles that were waged dishonestly and lost for that very reason.
You can’t win wars by fighting for unjust causes, especially in situations where military force simply can’t offer a decisive solution.
Even the Cold War that this country ostensibly won in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union didn’t lead to the victory Americans thought was coming their way. After much hype about a “new world order” where the US would cash in its peace dividends, the military-industrial-congressional complex found new wars to wage, new threats to meet, even as the events of 9-11 enabled a surge—actually, a gusher—of spending that fed militarism within American culture. The upshot of all that warmongering was a soaring national debt driven by profligate spending. After all, the Iraq and Afghan Wars alone are estimated to have cost us some $8 trillion.
Those disasters (and many more) happened, of course, under the Department of Defense. Imagine that! America was “defending” itself in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere, even as those wars killed and wounded significant numbers of our troops while doing far more damage to those on the receiving end of massive American firepower. All this will, I assume, go away with a “new” Department of War. Time to win again! Except, as one Vietnam veteran reminded me, you can’t do a wrong thing the right way. You can’t win wars by fighting for unjust causes, especially in situations where military force simply can’t offer a decisive solution.
It’s going to take more than a rebranded Department of War to fix wanton immorality and strategic stupidity.
We Need a Return of the Vietnam Syndrome
Hey, I’m okay with the Pentagon’s rebranding. War, after all, is what America does. This is a country made by war, a country of macho men hitching up their big boy pants on the world stage, led by the latest (greatest?) secretary of war, “Pomade Pete” Hegseth, whose signature move has been to do push-ups with the troops while extolling a “warrior ethos.” Such an ethos, of course, is more consistent with a War Department than a Defense Department, so kudos to him. Too bad it’s inconsistent with a citizen-soldier military that’s supposed to be obedient to and protective of the Constitution. But that’s just a minor detail, right?
Here’s the rub. As Trump and Hegseth have now tacitly admitted, the national security state has never been about “security” for Americans. Rather, it’s existed and continues to exist as a war state in a state of constant war (or preparations for the same), now stuffed to the popping point with more than a trillion dollars yearly in taxpayer funds. And the leaders of that war state—an enormous blood-sucking parasite on society—are never going to admit that it’s in any way too large or overfed, let alone so incompetent as to have been victoryless for the last 80 years of regular war making.
And count on one grim reality: That war state will always find new enemies to attack, new rivals to deter, new weapons to buy, and a new spectrum of warfare to try to dominate. Venezuela appears to be the latest enemy, China the latest peer rival, hypersonic missiles and drone swarms the new weaponry, and artificial intelligence the new spectrum. For America’s parasitic war state, there will always be more to feed on and to attempt (never very successfully) to dominate.
Mind you, this is exactly what President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against in his 1961 Farewell Address. Sixty-plus years ago, Ike could already see that what he was the first to call the military-industrial complex was already too powerful (as the Vietnam War loomed). And of course, it has only grown more powerful since he left office. As Ike also wisely said, only Americans can truly hurt America—notably, I’d add, those Americans who embrace war and the supposed benefits of a warrior ethos instead of democracy and the rule of law.
Again, I’m okay with a War Department. But if we’re reviving older concepts in the name of honesty, what truly needs a new lease on life is the Vietnam Syndrome that, according to President George H.W. Bush, America allegedly got rid of once and for all with a rousing victory against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 (that would prove to be anything but).
That Vietnam Syndrome, you may recall, was an allegedly paralyzing American reluctance to use military force in the aftermath of disastrous interventions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s. According to that narrative, the US government had become too slow, too reluctant, too scarred (or do I mean scared?) to march speedily to war. As President Richard Nixon once said, America must never resemble a “pitiful, helpless giant.” To do so, he insisted, would threaten not just our country but the entire free world (as it was known then). America had to show that, when the chips were down, our leaders were up for going all-in, no matter how bad our cards were vis-à-vis those of our opponents.
If nothing else, no country had more chips than we did when it came to sheer military firepower and a willingness to use it (or so, at least, it seemed to Nixon and crew). A skilled poker player, Nixon was blinded by the belief that the US couldn’t afford to suffer a humiliating loss on the world stage (especially when he was its leader). But the tumult that resulted from the fall of Saigon to communist forces in 1975 taught Americans something, if only temporarily: that one should hasten very slowly to war, a lesson Sparta, the quintessential warrior city-state of Ancient Greece, knew to be the sign of mature wisdom.
Spartan wannabes like Pete Hegseth, with his ostentatious displays of “manliness,” however, fail to understand the warrior ethos they purport to exhibit. Wise warrior-leaders don’t wage war for war’s sake. Considering the horrific costs of war and its inherent unpredictability, sage leaders weigh their options carefully, knowing that wars are always far easier to get into than out of and that they often mutate in dangerously unpredictable ways, leaving those who have survived them to wonder what it was ever all about—why there was so much killing and dying for so little that was faintly meaningful.
What Will Trump’s “Winning” War Department Look Like?
Perhaps Americans got an initial look at Trump’s new “winning” War Department off the coast of Venezuela with what could be the start of a new “drug war” against that country. A boat carrying 11 people, allegedly with fentanyl supplies on board, was obliterated by a US missile in this country’s first “drug war” strike. It was a case where President Trump decided that he was the only judge and jury around and the US military was his executioner. We may never know who was actually on board that boat or what they were doing, questions that undoubtedly matter not a whit to Trump or Hegseth. What mattered to them was sending an ultimate message of toughness, regardless of its naked illegality or its patent stupidity.
Similarly, Trump has put the National Guard on the streets of Washington, DC, deployed Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles, and warned of yet more troop deployments to come in Chicago, New Orleans, and elsewhere. Supposedly looking to enforce “law and order,” the president is instead endangering it, while disregarding the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits a president from deploying active-duty troops as domestic law enforcers.
If America isn’t a nation of laws, what is it? If the president is a lawbreaker instead of an upholder of those laws, what is he?
Whatever else one might expect from America’s “new” Department of War, you can bet your life (or death) on a whole lot of future body bags.
Recall that every American service member takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Warriors are driven by something different. Historically, they often just obeyed their chieftain or warlord, killing without thought or mercy. If they were bound by law, it was most often that of the jungle.
Knowingly or unknowingly, that’s exactly the kind of military Pete Hegseth and the new Department of War (and nothing but war) are clearly seeking to create. A force where might makes right (although in our recent history, it’s almost invariably made wrong).
I must admit that, from the recent attack on that boat in the Caribbean to the sending of troops into Washington, I find I’m not faintly surprised by this developing crisis (that’s almost guaranteed to grow ever worse). Remember, after all, that Donald Trump, a distinctly lawless man, boasted during the Republican debate in the 2016 election campaign that the military would follow his orders irrespective of their legality. I wrote then that, with such a response, he had disqualified himself as a candidate for the presidency:
Trump’s performance last night [3/3/16] reminded me of Richard Nixon’s infamous answer to David Frost about Watergate: “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal." No, no, a thousand times no. The president has to obey the law of the land, just as everyone else has to. No person is above the law, an American ideal that Trump seems neither to understand nor to embrace. And that disqualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief.
If only.
In retrospect, I guess Trump had it right. After all, he’s won the presidency twice, no matter that his kind of “rightness” threatens the very foundations of this country.
So, color me more than worried. In this new (yet surprisingly old) age of a War Department, I see even more possibilities for lawlessness, wanton violence, and summary executions—and, in the end, the defeat of everything that matters, all justified by that eternal cry: “We’re at war.” At which point, I return to war’s miseries and how quickly we humans forget its lessons, no matter how harsh or painful they may be.
Someday, America’s soon-to-be War Department, led by wannabe warrior chieftains Trump and Hegseth, will perhaps seem like the ultimate blowback from this country’s disastrous wars overseas since its name changed to the Defense Department in the wake of World War II. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, this country allegedly waged war in the name of spreading democracy and freedom. That cause failed, and America’s own grip on democracy and freedom only continues to loosen—perhaps fatally so.
In harkening back to a War Department, perhaps Trump is also channeling a nostalgia for the Old West, or at least the myth of it, where justice was served through personal bounties and murderous violence enforced by steely-eyed men wielding steel-blue pistols. Trump’s idea of “justice” does seem to be that of a hanging judge on a “wild” frontier facing hostile “Injuns” of various sorts. For men like Trump, those were the glory days of imperial expansion, never mind all the bodies left in the wake of America’s manifest destiny. If nothing else, that old imperial Department of War certainly knew what it was about.
Whatever else one might expect from America’s “new” Department of War, you can bet your life (or death) on a whole lot of future body bags. Warriors are, of course, okay with this as long as there are more boats to blow up, more people to bomb, and more foreign resources to steal in the pursuit of a “victory” that never actually arrives. So hitch up those big boy pants, grab a rifle or a Hellfire missile, and start killing. After all, in what might be thought of as a distinctly victoryless culture, it seems as if America is destined to be at war forever and a day.
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