I understand both sides of the argument about blowing up boats allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela.
There’s the coastal elite version of events: The United States is not at war with the drug cartels. There’s no armed conflict. There’s just some criminal activity, which should be controlled in the usual way. Drug boats should be stopped and searched, and their operators should be arrested and tried; they should not be blown up. The penalty for transporting drugs is years in prison, not immediate death without proof or jury. When a first bomb strike doesn’t kill everyone, survivors should be rescued and tried, not blasted into small bits as they sit atop a capsized boat in the middle of the ocean. As a society, what’s come over us?
But there’s another side of that coin, which I fully understand: Drug dealers are scum who ought to die. The military is probably pretty good at sorting out who the drug dealers are. If the military kills those bastards, that’s OK with me. It just saves us the cost of trying and imprisoning the creeps. And I don’t really care if the military is occasionally wrong when it kills people. If the military is right 97% of the time, and 3% of the people we’re killing are innocent, then that’s just collateral damage in the war on drugs. Innocent people get killed in the streets of American cities by drug dealers (and cops with bad aim) pretty regularly. That’s just collateral damage. If a few Venezuelan fishermen die the same way, I feel bad for them. But, on balance, what we’re doing is right. Only pointy-headed intellectuals don’t understand.
Those are the arguments, right?
I personally think the pointy-headed intellectuals have the better of this, but my gut says that the opposing viewpoint isn’t entirely crazy. A little bloodthirsty, maybe, but not crazy.
On the other hand, I simply don’t understand the argument over whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was wrong to use his personal phone to send messages to a Signal chat group giving advance notice of an American air strike to people who did not need to know about the operation.
Hegseth’s messages were really just humble-bragging in a remarkable way: “I was just made the Secretary of Defense! I know some cool stuff that even you don’t know! So I’m going to show off to the vice president and a bunch of other people by letting them in on the cool stuff even though they don’t need to know about the on-going operation.”
Hegseth thus recited confidential information on a Signal group chat, which is not an approved method for transmitting confidential communications. Hegseth disclosed what Libyan targets American planes would be bombing a couple of hours in the future. It turned out that Hegseth accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic in his group.
This is indefensible.
It’s indefensible if you’re a coastal elite thinking about the issue.
It’s also indefensible if you’re one of the folks who think Venezuelan drug boats should be bombed: Bombs in Venezuela are arguably defensible; Hegseth’s conduct is not.
Finally, Hegseth’s conduct is indefensible if you’re a Republican in Congress spewing talking points: “No one was actually hurt by what Hegseth did!”
So what? People could have been hurt, and that’s what matters. Why is the Secretary of Defense blathering to people (with no need to know) about an on-going operation? “No one was ultimately hurt” does not excuse this bad judgment.
Members of Congress have also said: “The Secretary of Defense has the power to declassify information. Hegseth was implicitly declassifying the information as he typed it into the Signal group.”
Are you high? (Was Hegseth?) First, this plainly was not what was actually happening. Hegseth was not choosing to declassify information. He was humble-bragging, because he was delighted to have been made the Secretary of Defense, and he wanted to show off. Use your common sense.
Second, even if Hegseth were implicitly declassifying information as he typed, why would Hegseth have thought it was intelligent to declassify confidential information hours before a strike was to take place? If the information was declassified, information about the timing and location of American air strikes could have been made public before the event. Indeed, only the good judgment of the editor of The Atlantic prevented this from happening. Make that editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Secretary of Defense; at least he’s not a moron.
There would be one plausible defense of Hegseth on slightly different facts: “What Hegseth did was wrong and stupid. He shouldn’t have done this. But he’s acknowledged the mistake and learned from it, and I don’t think this one mistake should force him to leave office.”
Hegseth of course has not acknowledged the mistake. Case closed.
Leave office.
Even if Hegseth did acknowledge the mistake, I’d still think the gross stupidity of disclosing details of an ongoing operation requires removing Hegseth from office. You might disagree with this. But, as I said, this is not what happened. Hegseth stands by what he did.
On the facts, there’s simply no plausible defense of Hegseth’s conduct. The entire defense is partisan grandstanding, and it should nauseate anyone who hears it.
In fact, let’s go back to bombing Venezuelans. At least I understand why someone would choose to do that.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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