“Kill Everybody” Allegation: How U.S. Boat Strikes Risk Legal and Strategic Damage

A recent media report alleges that, in early September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. forces to "kill everybody" aboard a speedboat in the Caribbean. After a missile shattered the vessel and set it ablaze, surveillance footage reportedly showed two people clinging to the wreckage; an admiral then authorized a second strike that may have hit those survivors. The White House publicly denied the account, saying the follow-up hit was intended to sink a navigation hazard, and the administration has so far declined to release unedited footage to Congress or the public.

Those facts — if confirmed — would raise grave legal questions. International humanitarian law and longstanding U.S. practice bar the deliberate killing of shipwrecked or otherwise defenseless persons, even in the course of military operations. Bipartisan oversight committees in both the House and Senate have opened investigations into the incident, and congressional scrutiny is essential to determine whether the strike violated domestic or international law.

Since September, public accounts report that the administration has carried out more than 20 lethal strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, resulting in the deaths of over 80 people. In each case, officials have asserted the targeted boats were transporting narcotics for criminal networks but have offered limited publicly verifiable evidence. In at least one instance survivors were detained and later released rather than prosecuted, raising further questions about the intelligence supporting lethal force.

From law enforcement to warfighting: a disputed rationale

Traditionally, drug trafficking has been treated as a criminal matter handled through arrest, prosecution, and judicial process. The current administration has argued that foreign drug cartels can be treated as terrorist or wartime adversaries — and that shipments of narcotics constitute attacks on the United States. Under that framing, the president claims authority to use military force to "secure our homeland from the drugs that are killing our people." Critics say this expands the concept of self-defense far beyond recognized legal boundaries and risks empowering the executive branch to employ lethal force against suspected criminals without trial.

Factually, the administration's focus on Caribbean and Venezuelan-linked shipments as a solution to the U.S. overdose crisis is questionable. Much of the recent surge in U.S. overdose deaths has been driven by fentanyl, typically produced in and trafficked from Mexico and Asia; cocaine from South America accounts for a small share of opioid overdose deaths. Public statements by senior officials making exaggerated causal claims have undermined the credibility of the operation in the eyes of many analysts.

Leadership, rhetoric, and the erosion of norms

Beyond the specifics of any single strike, this episode highlights a broader shift in rhetoric and policy from senior leaders who have expressed skepticism of the laws of armed conflict. Defense Secretary Hegseth has written and spoken in ways that question adherence to international legal constraints on warfare, urging more permissive rules of engagement. Selected passages attributed to his public writings include:

“Should we follow the Geneva Conventions? What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?”

“If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”

“If we’re going to send our boys to fight — and it should be boys — we need to unleash them to win. They need … to be the most ruthless. The most uncompromising. The most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.”

As a candidate and later as president, Donald Trump has also made public comments endorsing brutal measures in conflict, and both men’s public statements have been cited by supporters advocating for fewer restraints on force. Some commentators have openly defended extreme measures against alleged traffickers; others have responded with alarm at what they see as a normalization of practices long treated as war crimes.

Why legal norms matter to U.S. security

Respect for the laws of war is not merely a moral choice — it serves concrete strategic interests. Legal constraints reduce incentives for adversaries to fight to the death, increasing the likelihood they will surrender and thereby lowering U.S. casualties. Protections for civilian shipping preserve global trade routes and keep insurance and transport costs lower for American consumers. Weakening these norms risks greater instability and could invite reciprocal abuses by other states and nonstate actors.

Finally, loosening restraints on force increases the risk of escalation and wider conflict. Wars in distant regions have tangible spillovers — from energy price shocks to refugee flows and economic disruption — and the United States, as a global military power, plays an outsized role in either reinforcing or eroding the international rules that help deter such outcomes.

Congress’s investigations should establish the factual record of the reported strike and whether defenseless survivors were deliberately targeted. But even after the facts are examined, a larger democratic debate is warranted about whether senior leaders should be advancing doctrines that treat legal and ethical limits as optional. The strategic costs of abandoning those limits — to American security, to global trade, and to long‑term stability — argue strongly for preserving them.