By Victor Davis Hanson

We’ve had more melodramas in the news about the relations between the Trump administration, the Pentagon, and interdicting drug transfers, smuggling by sea to the United States.

We all know the story that President Donald Trump has ordered these drug boats, which leave, mostly, the coast of Venezuela on their way to, essentially, spread poison in the United States, to be destroyed.

What is the point of contention now? One of the drug boats was not completely obliterated, but then a second hit was needed to finish the job. The Left immediately seized on that and said it was an execution of prisoners and that Donald Trump, via War Secretary Pete Hegseth, had ordered—or perhaps Pete Hegseth on his own had ordered—something like to “kill them all.” Even though The New York Times denied that very report from The Washington Post.

So, what is going on? We had Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and we had the admirals involved testify. And they said there was no “kill them all” order, but they did testify to what is logical.

And what is logical is, if you’re trying to take out a hostile boat or a hostile asset, and you partially take it out, then you always follow up, unless the people that were in there raise their hands or they swim away. But when they’re grabbing on the boat, as the video’s revealed, and the boat is still somewhat viable, then you’re going to do what? Say, “We only get one chance to stop you, and maybe you can get in the boat and go back and try again”? I don’t think that’s how it works in war.

If you’re in World War II and you’re in a Sherman tank and you see a Tiger, and you get a shot and you knock off the tracks, and all of a sudden you see people coming out of the tank and they don’t have their hands up and they’re clinging to the tank, you just say, “Well, we only had one chance to get them. I can’t shoot them now because they’re not as capable as they were before I first hit the … ” I don’t think that’s how it works.

But more importantly is the Left’s attitude. Two or three senators were suggesting, once again, that the military and the officers at the Pentagon and the regional commanders should think very carefully about obeying an order from Donald Trump. And the implication is: You can disobey them if you feel, in your considered opinion, as legal or psychiatric scholars, that they are unconstitutional.

This is very dangerous.

We saw the “Seditious Six,” the congresspeople who ordered, basically, 1.3 million in the military to consider very carefully the lawfulness or the legality of every order they receive from every commander, which would create chaos and destroy the military if anybody were to take them up on their views. But now we’re getting senators that are telling individual high-ranking officers, “You can disobey an order coming out of the White House.”

This is deja vu.

Does anybody remember the first administration? Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley did precisely that. He appointed himself as a lawyer and a psychiatrist, and he said, “If I get an order from Donald Trump that I feel is dangerous—i.e., existential—I’m gonna call up my PLA, People’s Liberation Army, counterpart in China.” And that’s what he did, perhaps on two occasions. And he said, essentially, and he bragged about this, “If I get an order, I will tell you first.”

So, basically, under pressure from the Left, he said, “Well, I told our communist enemies that if I ever get an order I disagree with and think is dangerous, I’m gonna tip off the communists that we may be attacking and therefore, I won’t attack.” That was high treason, if you think about it.

We had two lieutenant colonels in the first Trump administration, retired lieutenant colonels, who actually wrote and said that the military should remove Donald Trump from office and that they felt that Trump’s “little green men” would not be able to withstand the 82nd Airborne Division. So, you can see what they were envisioning, some kind of armed conflict over the succession of the presidency.

Then we had a number of high-ranking four-star generals and admirals who said things in the first administration that were absolutely contrary to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: “Donald Trump is a liar,” “Donald Trump is Mussolini,” “Donald Trump is Hitlerite,” “Donald Trump should be removed sooner than later.” That set the precedent, and now we’re seeing an exaggeration, an amplification, an increase in that very dangerous rhetoric.

And the fact is that no one has ever shown that anybody in the military got a “kill prisoners” order from the secretary of defense or the presidency.

On the other hand, as the admirals and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have testified, if you are supposed to take out an enemy who is conducting offensive operations against your country—and that’s what smuggling dangerous drugs that have killed 70,000 people a year is—and you hit them and it blows a portion of the boat up, and then you see people still on the boat and trying to get away, what do you say then? “Marquess of Queensberry Rules apply”? “We only get one hit and therefore, because you escaped us, we can’t do it again”? No. We don’t do that.

It wasn’t as if people swam off in the middle of the water and raised their hands up and said, “I surrender.”

What is going on here? It’s a deliberate effort by the Left to undermine the chain of command and ultimately, the commander in chief itself. And the irony is, all of these senators and representatives and the media are talking about unconstitutionality. What they’re doing is unconstitutional.

First published in The Daily Signal