Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Tess Bridgeman: Thanks so much for having me.
Bridgeman: The thing to keep in mind zooming out is that The United States is quite simply not at war. There is no armed conflict going on between the United States and any criminal gang or cartel operating in the Western Hemisphere. Transporting drugs is not an act of war. It’s not a hostile act, and it can’t get you into an armed conflict. So whichever way you go about it, whether you look at the administration’s claim that transporting drugs that end up harming or killing some Americans constitutes an armed attack—that doesn’t hold water.
Sargent: And they’re killing people who are civilians. Basically what experts have said is, OK, even if these people are doing bad things by smuggling drugs and doing things that could hurt the United States and hurt Americans, this should be subject to police action and the administration by turning this into a war, sort of reimagining it as a war, is essentially giving President Trump the authority to execute civilians, right?
That is the clean break from the past that should be terrifying and chilling to us all. The idea that the president can misuse the military in this way and has thus far gotten away with it until Congress recently started applying some much-needed pressure—that is something that we should be focused on as the big story. Of course, there are lots of other wrinkles that we can get into, but asking the military to use force outside of the law and the military carrying that campaign out is the bottom line of what’s going on here.
Bridgeman: Yeah, absolutely. So again, important to start with the premise, as you just said, that the laws of war don’t even apply here. So these aren’t war crimes on their face. They are murder. That applies to the first nine people who were killed on that first September 2 strike. And it applies to the two survivors who were killed in the subsequent strike.
So once it was clear—and it should have been clear as soon as the smoke cleared and you could see two individuals clinging to the wreckage of their burned-out vessel at sea, defenseless—it’s what the term of art in the law of armed conflict context is: hors de combat, which essentially means defenseless. It should have been obvious to anyone seeing that video or who was informed of it in real time that the two survivors clinging to the wreckage of their burned-out vessel were simply defenseless or hors de combat, as it’s considered in the law of armed conflict, which means they posed no threat. And in fact, there was a duty, if feasible, to rescue them.
Sargent: We’re now getting new details about how bad this actually is and how clear-cut it is. Lawmakers viewed the video of the second strike last week, and The New York Times reports that, according to people who saw it, the two men appeared to be waving at something, which indicated to these lawmakers that they were attempting to surrender or beckoning for a rescue.
Bridgeman: Absolutely. And again, that’s what should have been crystal clear to anyone who was involved here. First and foremost, though, there was no fight for them to be surrendering from. And that’s why this really horrific set of events clarifies the mind about the broader campaign.
It’s absurd to think about the scenario through a law of war lens when you’re not at war, but even if you were operating in that paradigm, it is just blatantly obvious that you cannot strike these two survivors. And I think that’s something that congressional oversight will continue to get to the bottom of and will shed light on the broader campaign.
Pete Hegseth (voiceover): Later on, couple hours later, I was told, hey, there had to be a re-attack because there were a couple folks that could still be in the fight, access to radios. There was a link up point of another potential boat. Drugs were still there. They were actively interacting with them. Had to take that read. I said, Roger, sounds good. From what I understood then and what I understand now, I fully support that strike.
Bridgeman: Well, the thing to keep in mind here is that there’s absolutely nothing, no set of facts, right, that you could look at that would make these individuals in the fight, right? The fact of radioing for help, for rescue—that certainly doesn’t make a shipwrecked survivor of an attack on their boat “in the fight,” right? The idea that there might have been cocaine in the water—which, by the way, is contradicted by others who saw the video—that certainly wouldn’t make these survivors “in the fight” if there were still packages of cocaine bobbing around in the water. So there’s nothing that they could have been looking for, right, given there’s not even an allegation that these individuals were armed in the first place that could have made it lawful to presume they were still in the fight based on what was being seen on that feed.
Bridgeman: It is, and you know, again, within the paradigm that the law of armed conflict somehow magically applies to this purported criminal activity. What we’re looking at here might be a kind of legal theory that essentially holds that things being sold to finance a war effort are themselves targetable. And that’s known as war-sustaining objects.
And that means even if there were drugs that were targetable as war-sustaining objects—which, again, is not the world we’re in because we’re not at war, but even if that were the case—the individuals themselves would not be targetable. And so the fact that they went back and blew up two more people after they had destroyed the boat with the drugs on it, it’s just unconscionable if that’s indeed the theory they were operating under.
Sargent: Well, there are signs that Republicans are quietly starting to move away from Hegseth. Senator Jim Justice says he’s quote-unquote “not comfortable” with the second strike. Representative Don Bacon strongly criticized Hegseth over another scandal involving sensitive information shared by text with a reporter, saying Hegseth’s recent decisions have “ruined his credibility.”
Bridgeman: Correct. And that’s what’s been missing to date is some Republican support for basic oversight. And this is really basic oversight. It’s: Can the Armed Services committees view the video that their leadership was already permitted to see in unedited versions?
If, on the other hand, it sort of shrouds the basic illegality of this entire killing spree, we may have a bigger problem on our hands. So I hope this is the beginning of true bipartisan oversight that gets to the bottom, not just of the September 2 strike, which was so manifestly unlawful that it boggles the mind how anyone in the chain of command could have countenanced it, but hopefully also the broader campaign as a whole that’s killed, I think, 87 people to date.
Bridgeman: That’s the question. I think we’ll see this play out in different ways over the short, medium, and long term. I think in the short term, we may get some version of accountability for that second September 2 strike, just through what Congress is now showing signs that it’s willing to look at, which is: Within the parameters even that the executive branch has set out, could this even be lawful?
I’m under no illusions that the Trump administration is going to start prosecuting people, let alone Secretary of Defense Hegseth for these crimes, because they are crimes at the end of the day, not war crimes, just regular crimes under U.S. federal law. I do think what we might start seeing over time, though, especially if congressional investigations get more facts brought to light, is we could see more cases brought in international tribunals.
Sargent: And I want to underscore for people that if you want oversight and accountability, you’re going to have to elect a Democratic House. That’s the only way we’re going to get the extensive oversight you’re talking about. Tess Bridgman, thank you so much for coming on. That is really harrowing stuff, though, I will say.
Bridgeman: It is. I wish we were talking about a different topic, but thanks for breaking it down and it was good to be on.
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