Senate Opens Probe into Hegseth’s Alleged “Kill Everybody” Order in Sept. 2 Narco-Boat Strike

Great-power militaries have faced blowback before for killing those rendered hors de combat—e.g., Britain’s 1901 ‘no prisoners’ Boer War orders and the U.S. My Lai massacre in 1968—events that later reshaped doctrine and law. The Hegseth episode fits a century-long pattern of Washington stretching war authority (from the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the 2001 AUMF) into Latin America, now rebranding narco-crime as terrorism to bypass courts and Congress. If Congress acquiesces, it normalises lethal drone policing far from declared battlefields; if it pushes back, it may reassert waning legislative war powers. On a 100-year horizon the precedent matters more than the 83 deaths: it signals whether the U.S. will keep expanding “forever war” logic into realms—drug smuggling, cybercrime, piracy—once policed by judges, not missiles. Latin American memory of interventions from 1954 Guatemala to 1989 Panama suggests today’s strikes could harden regional resistance and invite future legal or diplomatic isolation for Washington.