patrick.net

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a widely covered story under the dramatic headline, “Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime.” War crimes! Already! The sub-headline sneered, “Top Republicans have joined Democrats in demanding answers about the escalating military campaign the Trump administration says is aimed at targeting drug traffickers.”

The ‘controversy’ —if there is any— arose after an anonymous whistleblower (sound familiar?) told the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered a “double strike” on a narco-terrorist boat. A first strike had disabled the decidedly non-fishing boat, and the second strike made sure that the boat and the terrorists on board were completely destroyed. ...

Democrats (and a few wobbly Republicans) are howling like wolves whose zookeeper has missed two consecutive feedings in a row. But how quickly they forget. Behold this headline from twelve years ago in 2013, under Obama, from the BBC:

Drones kill rescuers in 'double tap', say activists
22 October 2013

Here’s what sneaky Obama was getting up to: The military (or CIA) would launch a missile at a wedding or funeral where a terrorist was suspected of showing up. Then they would wait ten or fifteen minutes, and send a second missile, to kill all the rescuers and first responders who rushed in, hoping to capture a few more bad guys.

Needless to say, all this double-tapping caused an unpleasant degree of collateral damage. And I will give you one guess what Democrats said about Obama’s double-tapping at the time.

Nothing, that’s what. They were fine with it. They never demanded evidence, called for hearings, or threatened any war crimes investigations.

“President Obama,” the UK Times reported at the time, “claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’” You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few Pakistani firemen.

Plus, it all depends on what you mean by huge numbers of casualties. “Research by the Bureau,” the UK Times continued, “has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed— including more than 60 children.” Remember, those figures were only as of April, 2012. Obama kept it up for years longer.

That’s not even counting double-tapped terrorists. Those figures just reflect the bloody tally of peaceable civilians. Now —I’m just saying— but under Trump, we’ve killed zero civilians and even fewer children. So.

We wonder whether, in 2012, Democrats demanded investigations into Obama for war crimes? Nope. No, they didn’t. Democrats defended Obama’s strikes and double taps. No less a rotten apple than John Brennan, then Obama’s ‘counterterrorism advisor’, claimed that killing terrorists was legal anywhere, anytime...

In other words, to the extent any legal ambiguity actually exists, that ambiguity was created by Congress. And Congress lets it continue, on purpose. Nor did they get particularly wound up when Obama was killing hundreds of kids and first responders as unfortunate collateral damage in double-taps.

So I really don’t care what they think about whatever Pete Hegseth said or didn’t say.