An Insane Few Days

Where to even begin?

The boat is probably where we should begin.

According to press reports, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the military to kill unarmed individuals floating in the sea after their boat had been blown up. Andrew McCarthy, a far better lawyer than I, does not believe blowing up the narcoterrorists is legal to begin with, but notes that even if we presume legality of the attacks, it is a violation of federal law to kill the military survivors of an attack.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions were ratified by the United States. Consequently, Common Article 3 (CA3) of the convention binds our government. CA3 prohibits “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,” of “persons taking no active part in hostilities” (emphasis added). According to CA3, persons taking no active part in hostilities include “those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.”

That includes persons who have been wounded in an attack and are shipwrecked. If that were not obvious enough on its face, Jack Goldsmith, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush 43 administration, notes that the Department of Defense Law of War Manual defines hors de combat to include persons “otherwise incapacitated by . . . shipwreck.” (This appears in an essential post on Goldsmith’s Substack, Executive Functions.)

Hegseth, for his part, has not actually denied that this is what happened. However, some reports out of the Administration are now claiming the second strike was because the boat was still floating, not because there were survivors. That is a plausible excuse.

That being said, while I favor treating narcoterrorists as enemy combatants, I would note that federal law defines narcotics trafficking as a criminal act, and I actually do not know that the President can, as a matter of law, suddenly declare an act Congress has decided is a crime to be an act of war.

Trump defenders will, naturally, defend this, but I suspect that the six Democrats who produced that video about unlawful orders were tipped off by someone at the Pentagon that lines had already been crossed. Based on some press reports, the military lawyers did not sign off on that second strike. Carrying it out could get a soldier in trouble.

At a bare minimum, there is an investigatory role here for Congress, which should, in fact, start asking questions.

That Gets to Mark Kelly

The Arizona Senator was on television yesterday, insisting that soldiers should not carry out unlawful orders, and he claimed a reasonable soldier can tell the difference. Several people with knowledge of the matter tell me military lawyers vet the attacks before the attacks occur, and if the military lawyer signs off on them, they are legal for the soldier to carry out.

If a military lawyer had not approved the second attack, a soldier could be in trouble.

All that said, what bothers me is that these Democrats really do seem to be taking the position that, should they get power back, they will retroactively punish soldiers complying with orders and they are, in fact, putting soldiers in a position to have to decide to follow orders or attempt to mutiny — the latter of which is a crime punishable by death.

But Trump

We have arrived here because the President has decided to push the bounds of his office as far as he can. In doing so, he is declaring Venezuela a no-fly zone, which is an act of war, by definition. Only Congress can declare war. But the idea that congressional Republicans will rein in the President is laughable.

The President is also sending mixed signals.

While declaring narcoterrorists to be enemy combatants, the President just pardoned the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is, himself, a narcoterrorist.

The prosecution of Hernandez began under President Trump’s first term and stretched into Joe Biden’s term. A federal jury found Hernandez guilty of a massive conspiracy of drugs and weapons trafficking. The pardon by the President appears to be an attempt to shape the outcome of an election in Honduras. It also undermines the legitimacy of an investigation that President Trump’s own team began in his first term. It undermines the work of a federal prosecutor and jury.

It also undermines the President’s concerns about narcoterrorists when he is willing to pardon the leader of an international narcoterrorism crime syndicate.

The Terror Attack

The terror attack in D.C. was awful, tragic, and the press would have you believe completely avoidable but for the President putting soldiers in harm’s way. Harm’s way, of course, is the streets of D.C.

The National Guard has helped bring down crime in Washington rapidly. The press’s attitude seems to be that the soldiers were natural targets, but the presumption is that they were natural targets of the left. An Afghan radical allowed in under Joe Biden was the wild card.

What’s crazy is that, in the upper income mostly white power corridors of elite reporters, they just take it as fact that the soldiers would be targets for being on the D.C. streets. And they presume the perpetrators would be white progressives. And they blame Donald Trump for the audacity of making D.C. safer. The rush to blame the President for the attack, instead of the perpetrator, distracts from the fact that not only did Joe Biden let a lot of Afghans in, but the Democrats in the Senate killed a Republican measure that would have increased the vetting and security of those Afghans.

It goes without saying that an Afghan willing to work with the CIA to kill other Afghans is not necessarily the criteria one should use to determine whether he can be assimilated into the United States.

The Social Media Tirades

While all of this was going on, President Trump was on social media calling for the arrest of Joe Biden and other assorted tirades.

There is clearly something off now about the Administration, and the President seems to be unleashing his frustration by tweet. The problem is that his various and assorted tweets do nothing about the cost of living. In fact, he is still dogmatically convinced that tariffs are making everything better.

One of the President’s posts again suggests tariffs could be a replacement for the income tax. But we know how much income taxes bring in, and we know how much tariffs bring in. The latter barely makes a dent in the budget. Also, if they are bringing in as much as the President says, that burden falls on Americans, not foreigners.

Practical Solutions

If the President wants some practical solutions, I have a few.

1. Get rid of the tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber, which are directly contributing to the high costs of construction and auto manufacturing right now.

2. Get rid of any food-related tariff.

3. Work through Congress to make student loans dischargeable through bankruptcy again. There is a direct correlation between ending the dischargeability of student loans and college education exceeding the rate of inflation. Once colleges knew they could saddle kids with debts that could never be wiped out, they had no incentive to restrain their costs.

Do those things now and then work with states on land and building regulations for houses. But those are an easy start.

Kashless Bailout

Kash Patel continues to make waves in a bad way. From using the FBI’s private jet during the government shutdown to go to concerts, to using the FBI SWAT team to protect his girlfriend and then berating them when they left the event because security was already adequate, to tweeting that the FBI had thwarted a terror attack prematurely that allowed one of the perpetrators to escape; to falsely claiming Charlie Kirk’s killer was in custody when he was not, Kash Patel has shown himself to be in over his head and not exactly competent.

Now, he has dazzled the White House again by declaring a full manhunt for the shooter of the guardsmen in D.C. after the terrorist had been caught. Piling on top of that are the FBI regulars who are starting to vent to their Republican congressmen about dysfunction and disarray. Things are not going well there.

The Island of Misfit Toys

The President needs a house cleaning and a reboot of seriousness. He has surrounded himself with loyalists, but too many are from the Island of Misfit Toys — politicos who were marginalized in establishment Republican administrations for their pettiness and incompetence. Now, loyal to Trump and placed in charge, instead of governing competently, they are treating the second Trump term as a chance to settle grievances and get rich quick.

The corruption of those in the Trump orbit and their vain and petty need to get revenge for past sleights instead of govern competently will see a massive wave of resistance build in the midterms. It is still possible to mitigate what is coming. But when you see Trump loyalists like Troy Nehls of Texas giving up a safe seat for retirement, you can read the writing on the wall. Republicans are giving up and do not think the present problems will be fixed before annihilation comes at the hands of angry voters who feel betrayed.

This is all so tragic because it is fixable, but the President and his team now seem caught up, not in the act of governing, but in the act of settling scores before Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker.

One can hardly expect Trump voters to engage in the midterms when those in charge seem like they have already given up the fight. The Island of Misfit Toys may be in charge, for now, but their ruthlessness, coupled with their incompetence, will doom the final part of Donald Trump’s second term unless things change.