Pete Hegseth is a murderer. He meets all of the legal qualifications to be a murderer. He should be charged with murder for his role in killing unarmed civilians on boats in the Caribbean.

Hegseth claims that the murders are authorized because the United States is “at war” with… drug cartels and “narcoterrorists.” Since September, under Hegseth’s direction, the US military has conducted 21 strikes (that we know of) on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean. These attacks have killed an estimated 83 civilians. The term “civilians” is important, because these people are not combatants. They are not waging war against the United States.

For a certain kind of morally stunted MAGA sycophant, the administration’s claims that these 83 victims were involved in illegal drug running is enough of a justification for their deaths. But that is just not how the law works. The government cannot kill people unless they pose an imminent threat of violence. It cannot simply declare somebody a “narcoterrorist” (whatever the hell that means) and summarily execute them without trial.

The entire boat-strike operation is a murder conspiracy being carried out by the US government. Each one of these deaths is an execution without trial. You don’t need to go to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to hold Hegseth accountable. The guy is ordering hits on unarmed civilians he has deemed a threat without trial or jury. His actions are criminal by any definition of “criminal law.” The Department of Justice should charge him with crimes under the normal federal murder statute, and the DOJ should criminally charge all of the people willing to carry out his illegal, homicidal orders.

Hegseth, and a load of other MAGA Republicans, including President Trump, seem to think that calling this a “war” absolves Hegseth and the military of all accountability. That is also false. First, we’re not at war. Second, even if we were, there’s no proof that these boat victims are combatants in this purely hypothetical, undeclared war. And third, even if we were at war, and even if there were proof that the people in these boats were combatants, there are laws of war that should prevent these kinds of attacks.

On September 2, according to reporting from The Washington Post, Hegseth ordered a second strike on survivors of one of his boat strikes. Hegseth allegedly said “kill everybody” when authorizing the second strike. Hegseth denies that he said this (he and the White House now claim that Adm. Frank Bradley ordered the second strike… because the buck always stops somewhere else with these cowards), but he also wrote on Elon Musk’s Twitter: “As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’ The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”

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This doesn’t sound like a denial to me. Hegseth effectively suggested that since the strikes were intended to kill, any person who survived an attack could still be killed in a secondary, mop-up attack.

Again, that is just not how the laws of war work. It is a war crime to kill defenseless people, even in a theater of war, after they’ve laid down their arms. George Washington University law professor Laura Dickinson spoke about this with Time magazine, and her quote puts it plainly: “In an armed conflict, the intentional killing of a protected person—someone who is a civilian or a person who is ‘hors de combat’ because they have laid down their arms or are shipwrecked at sea—is a war crime.”

What it all comes down to is this: If we’re not at war, Hegseth is a murderer; if we are at war, Hegseth is still a murderer. Hegseth and MAGA keep trying to throw up justifications to allow them to kill 83 defenseless people without evidence, and I’m telling you that the laws are designed specifically to prevent that from being OK.

Having established that the law regards Hegseth’s actions as murder, the next obvious question is, what is the law going to do about it? The immediate way to hold Hegseth accountable for his extrajudicial murders would be for Congress to impeach and remove him. Politicians from both parties have talked about conducting congressional oversight of the boat-strike operation, but given that Mike Johnson is in charge of the House, I can’t imagine those hearings going anywhere. Still, there are midterm elections coming up, and should Democrats retake the House, impeaching Hegseth must be a priority for the Democratic caucus. He’s out there murdering people, and removing him from office might be the only way to make him stop.

In a normal country, the Department of Justice would also get involved. But in our country, the DOJ is run by the same fascist stans who are praising the murders. Sadly, we can’t expect Pam Bondi’s DOJ to enforce the law.

Outside the United States, Hegseth could be held accountable by the International Criminal Court, which is responsible for prosecuting war criminals. The problem is, the US is not a party to the ICC. The US signed but never ratified the “Rome Statute,” which established the court. That decision was made by the George W. Bush administration, but successive administrations have refused to sign on, unwilling to put Americans at risk of international judgment. Hell of a “world’s greatest democracy” we’ve got going here. I would vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, who thought that perhaps the United States should be a party to international treaties. That being said, if I were Hegseth’s lawyer, I’d advise him to not travel to any law-abiding country.

Another option would be to use international tort law. The family of Alejandro Carranza, a Columbian fisherman who was a victim of Hegseth’s strikes, has filed a formal complaint against the United States—in which Hegseth is named as the perpetrator—under the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a treaty to which the US is a party. Unfortunately, that commission does not have the authority to impose penalties on bad actors—like fines or, what is needed most, imprisonment.

Domestically, the Uniform Code of Military Justice would have more teeth when it comes to holding Hegseth accountable. Again, even during actual wars, killing unarmed civilians is a crime. I have some hope that the military will do something to rein Hegseth in because, while Hegseth is primarily responsible for these killings, his orders put other military personnel at risk. Hegseth might be politically protected (for now), but every single service member involved in killing unarmed civilians (I’m looking under the bus at you, Admiral Bradley) could also be charged with a crime.

In fact, these military courts are my best bet for accountability for Hegseth and all his willing underlings—once there is a change in our regime. That is what happens (at least sometimes, on rare occasions) when crimes are committed. The regime that authorizes the war crimes never self-police. We have to wait until that regime is out of power.

When people like Senator Mark Kelly remind soldiers that they are not supposed to follow illegal orders, they are trying to help those soldiers. They are trying to save those underlings. They’re trying to remind them that “I was just following orders” is not a legal defense. Of course, we’d like to hold the commanders responsible. But each individual is also responsible for their actions. If you’re ordered to kill a defenseless person clinging to the wreckage of their boat that you just bombed, and you do it, you too can face justice, even when all the political appointees who ordered you to do it are back in their jobs on Fox News.

Pete Hegseth is putting everybody in the US military in a terrible position, including himself.

He is a murderer. The law might not be able to do anything about it now, but the law has a long memory. There is no statute of limitations on murder.