The defense secretary has posited a claim that warrants scrutiny. A too-rapid House impeachment finding would confirm claims of a political stunt.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came out swinging today in public remarks defending himself against the House impeachment gambit led by Representative Thomas Massie, the libertarian Republican from Kentucky.
Although Massie is a zealous anti-Trumper (who in fact will no longer be in Congress after this year because the president encouraged what turned out to be a successful primary against him), his strident opposition to presidential war-making in the absence of congressional authorization was consistent throughout his congressional career, going back to his objections to President Obama’s threats to attack Syria and strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. (I couldn’t find a record of Massie’s objecting to Obama’s use of force in Libya without congressional authorization, but that happened in 2011 and Massie did not enter Congress until late 2012.)
To be clear, I am not a Massie fan; to my mind, he is weak on national defense and loathsome on Israel. But I do not believe his protests against Trump’s unilateral uses of force (in Trump 1.0 as well as the ongoing term) stem from partisanship (he’s a Republican, after all), or from disdain for Trump and Hegseth — though he does plainly disdain them, and they him.
I mention this because Hegseth, in his remarks today, did two things worth noting.
First, he accused Massie of conducting a farcical “political spectacle” based on “partisan policy disagreements” — adding that the people advancing those disagreements “want to politicize our military.” It seems to me that Hegseth would be in a much better position to make this argument persuasively had he not habitually politicized our military for the past two years, generally over partisan policy disagreements and score-settling.
As I’ve detailed, one of the proposed impeachment articles concerns Hegseth’s exploitation of command authority to harass, censure, and intimidate a Trump political opponent, Senator Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), over a policy dispute — specifically, the use of force, unauthorized by Congress, against suspected drug boats, at a time when there was no armed conflict and the boats posed no military threat to the United States (which induced Kelly and other Democrats to remind our forces that they needn’t obey illegal orders). Hegseth also made political campaign appearances (including on behalf of Massie’s primary opponent) and spoke out against use of the military to advance woke training, political indoctrination, progressive environmental policies, transgenderism, and diversity. That I happen to agree with him about much of this hardly means he is not politicizing the military (and often doing so in crude rhetoric that is itself unbecoming).
Second, Hegseth fronted his main defense: Every order he gave to use force “was a lawful operation ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress and executed by American warriors who did their jobs.” [Emphasis added.]
In an earlier post today, I contended that it was up to Congress how rapidly impeachment proceedings go forward and, saliently, that when there are no material facts in dispute, it is unnecessary to hold hearings. In my view, Hegseth has now put a material issue in dispute: Were the unilateral executive uses of force lawful?
Does Congress want to demonstrate that Hegseth is wrong and that this really is not a partisan race to, essentially, censure the defense secretary — i.e., to brand him with the stigma of impeachment under circumstances in which a Senate conviction is very unlikely and the impeachment would embolden our Iranian and Houthi enemies? The House could exhibit seriousness by directing the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee to assess Hegseth’s claims that these military operations have been lawful — especially since, if he’s right on that point, most of the allegations against him falter.
Most of us who follow such affairs are versed in the Justice Department theories for why unilateral presidential uses of force were supposedly justified — in the former Yugoslavia, in Libya, in Syria, and so on. Despite the lack of a threat against the United States, the government lawyers rationalized that force was constitutionally valid, often by stretching what a “national interest” under purported threat is, or by claiming the use of force at issue was too limited to be deemed a “war” that would trigger Congress’s war powers — even though Americans would never tolerate such a position if the United States had been similarly attacked. I think it would be very healthy for the nation to explore these theories. Regrettable that it would be in the dire context of impeachment? Sure, but that would underscore the gravity of the matter.
With respect to the allegations against Hegseth in particular, I would be very keen to have Congress investigate his claim that the killings of operators of suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Western Pacific are lawful operations. The targets at issue present no military threat to the United States and may not even have been shipping drugs to the United States. The unproven claim that the boats are tied to terrorist organizations should be scrutinized — no evidence has been presented connecting the boats to drug cartels the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations, and narcotics trafficking does not qualify as terrorist activity under federal law. And even if it did qualify, a terrorism designation is not an authorization to use military force; Congress has made drug trafficking a crime and has not authorized the president to treat it as an act of war.
Massie, I don’t doubt, wants Hegseth’s scalp before riding off into his involuntary retirement. But Hegseth has raised a serious issue in his defense. I happen to think he is wrong, but his claim warrants examination, especially given the stakes involved. There is no exigency requiring Secretary Hegseth’s prompt removal — as all acknowledge, he is carrying out President Trump’s orders, and there’s no reason to believe any successor would do otherwise. So why not have the appropriate House committees investigate his claim rather than rush a quick impeachment vote that would simply enable Hegseth supporters in the Senate to dismiss the impeachment articles as a partisan stunt?