Post Exposé of Hegseth ‘Kill Everybody’ Order Triggers Bipartisan War-Crime Inquiry

This episode echoes the 1968 My Lai cover-up and the 2011–13 U.S. “double-tap” drone strikes in Pakistan—moments when tactical brutality, justified as efficiency, later eroded strategic legitimacy. It also resurrects the late-1980s trend (e.g., 1989’s "Operation Just Cause" in Panama) of recasting counternarcotics work as warfare, now amplified by the blanket “terrorist” label. The deeper current is the century-long creep of executive power to employ lethal force without a declared war, from Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in 1861 to Obama’s 2011 al-Awlaki strike; each precedent normalises the next. Whether Congress reins this in or courts indict future officials will shape international norms on extraterritorial killing for decades—potentially determining if, by 2125, small-scale military force outside battlezones is exceptional or routine statecraft.