Will Hegseth Face Consequences?

He already has…though not enough

Last week the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the murder of two survivors of an attack on a speedboat in the Caribbean in early September. The US claimed, dubiously, that the boat was carrying illegal drugs, and, even more dubiously, that it had the right to attack and sink the vessel. The final bit of lawless violence on top of all the other violence, according to the post, was a brutal attack on defenseless men floating in the water hoping for rescue. Hegseth reportedly said, “Kill them all,” and US forces complied by shooting and murdering the men. That’s an unambiguous war crime.

The Post story has generated a surprising amount of pushback from normally quiescent Republicans in Congress. In a bipartisan statement, the Senate Armed Service Committee, headed by Republican Roger Wicker and Democrat Jack Reed, announced that it would investigate. So did the House Armed Services Committee under Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Adam Smith.

The GOP has been largely indifferent to a range of illegal acts by the Trump administration. For example, there was almost no resistance to the shuttering of international aid without Congressional approval early in the year, which has led to the deaths of some 600k people and counting. Given that ghoulish legacy, people have been skeptical that these investigations into Hegseth will amount to much. Will Republicans really force the Defense Secretary to face consequences? Will he be forced out of office or prosecuted? Or will he get off with a slap on the wrist, or less than a slap on the wrist.

I share the skepticism and disgust at elite impunity in the Trump era. I think it’s important to recognize, though, that consequences are not limited to forced resignation or prison time. Investigations—even flawed, limited investigations —are themselves consequences. And those consequences matter, not least because they are a necessary first step towards more sweeping accountability, and towards a better US.

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Consequences and consequences

You can see that even the announcement of investigations have consequences because those announcements have been…well, consequential. Notably, President Trump, who usually revels in making irresponsible death threats, was careful to deny any responsibility for potential murder and war crimes. He insisted that Hegseth had not given an order to murder survivors, and then added, in a rambling denial, that he personally, “wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine, and if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence.” The White House (de)clarified that a second strike did happen, but claimed it was ordered by Admiral Frank Bradley and was (somehow?) lawful. It also insisted that Trump had the right to order the killing of “narcoterrorists” without due process—which is false and appears to be inadvertently accusing Trump himself of war crimes.

This is no doubt deliberate obfuscation. But it is also clarifying. Faced with a congressional inquiry, Trump, to protect himself, gave clear public orders to Hegseth not to murder survivors and commit war crimes. You may think this should go without saying. I may think this should go without saying. But obviously it does not go without saying—especially since the White House went on to maybe possibly contradict those orders.

Hegseth is currently making disgusting jokes about his own war crimes, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate that he doesn’t care about Congressional investigations. But bravado on social media is one thing; giving another “kill everybody” order when you know you’re going to have to testify about it under oath may be another. It is quite possible that Hegseth—who may well have been counting on a presidential pardon no matter what he did—will feel less sure of the pardon and will act with more restraint. It’s also possible that the people he gives the orders to may have concerns about their own criminal liability. This could save lives. That’s not real accountability for Hegseth. But it matters.

Further, even a half-hearted investigation will impose costs on Hegseth. Preparing for Congressional inquiries is time-consuming and stressful. The hearings themselves are likely to be humiliating, and potentially much worse than humiliating. Hegseth is by most accounts not popular in his department. He’s also clearly a bumbling fuck up. There are likely many people who are looking for an opportunity to damage him with revelations of his incompetence and wrongdoing; this will be the best chance they are likely to get. Admiral Bradley, and perhaps others, also has considerable incentive now to blame Hegseth for any and all war crimes, as Hegseth now has considerable incentive to blame Bradley. We could get revelations of a range of scandals linked to the boat attacks and perhaps scandals not linked to the boat attacks.

Again, this all depends on how serious the House and Senate take their work. But the fact that both chambers are conducting investigations suggests that Republicans do in fact want to find out what Hegseth did and to put him on notice that he’s being watched. There’s no guarantee that he will be removed—but if he were to be removed, or prosecuted, this would be how it would start. We have to go through here to get there.

No consequences are final

Getting there—to removing Hegseth from office and ideally prosecuting him for war crimes—is important. But so is the widening rift between Trump and congressional republicans right now. So is forcing the president who loves crimes to at least provisionally tell his Defense Secretary that he does not want him to commit this war crime. So is potentially reducing the influence of Hegseth as the administration attempts to build internal consensus for war.

People think of consequences as an end or a final dispensation. But often, and especially in politics, consequences are part of an ongoing effort to work towards desirable (or, alas, undesirable) outcomes. The long-term goal here is to make the US more equitable, more free, and less (much, much less) fascist. Removing Hegseth, or even sending him to the Hague, would be a step towards that goal, but it wouldn’t be enough in itself. We’d still need to work towards ending US imperialism, ending US racism, ending the war on drugs, and on and on.

Accountability is vital. But if it’s vital, then each move towards it is meaningful. In that context, getting Republicans to say that there are lines they won’t cross, getting them to say the Secretary of Defense should not murder people—those are consequences in themselves, and important ones. It would be better if we knew for sure we could count on congress to oppose flagrant war crimes, obviously. But we did not know that for sure, and any indication at this point that congress does care about flagrant war crimes is frankly a win.

This isn’t to say that any and all vaguely reasonable mouth noises from Republicans are helpful. Susan Collins furrowing her brow as a way to assure us all that she feels bad about voting for fascism is obviously not very impressive. But a bipartisan commitment to investigating the Secretary of Defense for possible flagrant war crimes is not an apology for fascism. It’s a concrete step, however halting, towards holding fascists accountable. We need a lot more of those steps—an endless number really.

That’s discouraging, and it’s understandable that people are tempted to just decry the first forward motion as inadequate and sit down. But I think we’re all better served by a sober acknowledgement of any ground gained, and by a demand that we keep going.