Pete Hegseth Confessed to a War Crime — And America Shrugs

by Cliff Schecter

I exited the suburban movie theater last night, pondering the powerful portrayal of The Nuremberg Trials I’d just witnessed in the film “Nuremberg” (side note: Russell Crowe is spellbinding as Hermann Göring).

A reminder of when the world—or at least what was left of it—dragged itself out of the rubble, looked at the mass murder and destruction on an industrial scale it had just survived, and said: Never again.

Not “never again, unless the former back-up weekend Fox-bro turned bantam-weight, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth felt like committing a war crime.” Not “never again, unless murdering other humans breaks Trump out of his deep slumber of dementia and misdirects Americans from the Epstein Files.”

No, it was quite simply: never again.

The Allies built an entire system of law around that idea. Forged wholly new international law and a new international culture of cooperation. It was as radical a break with the past as the Declaration of Independence or Emancipation Proclamation, and as beneficial to the world.

(This, btw, is the entire architecture—the last 75 years, that Putin wants to destroy with all his various attacks on the West. For pretty obvious reasons.)

They created the Geneva Conventions. The UN, the World Bank, NATO, and more, a new architecture of peace and cooperation to help prevent countless deaths, destruction, and ease the suffering of many struggling peoples around the world.

They made war crimes prosecutable. They established the principle that even the worst monsters deserve a trial, because restraint is what separates civilization from the abyss.

We didn’t shoot defeated Nazis in the streets or line them up against a wall. We didn’t dump them in a ditch. As you can imagine, there was sentiment among Allied bigwigs to do just that. Yet, political, legal, humanist, religious, and philosophical voices realized the opportunity they had.

We were not the Nazis; we should not act like the Nazis.

So we dragged these Nazis into court. We made them answer for it—in public. With evidence. With rules. With humanity. So not it wasn’t just never again. It was never again, because next time we’ll possess the precedent for prosecution, and you will be judged.

United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, on leave from America’s highest court to be the lead American prosecutor at Nuremberg, said it plainly:

“We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.”

And then—because the universe enjoys a sick joke, and what is the Trump Administration but that—I woke up this morning to learn Pete Hegseth ordered the bombing of boats after they were disabled. With survivors still inside.

Let me translate from Fox Male Small Dick to English: Pete Hegseth admitted to blowing human beings into pieces who posed no threat. Our cut-rate, frat-rat, dumb-bro Christian Nationalist masquerading as a serious government official.

In this equation, he’s not Robert Jackson. He’s Hermann Göring.

That this whiskey-soaked sod not only illegally bombed the boat—as he has many others—but ordered the commander to attack a second time by saying“kill them all” should be revolting to any civilized human being.

But it’s not “tough.” And it’s not “war.” It’s page one, paragraph one of the “Here’s a War Crime” handbook.

I ask you to think about this for a second: Robert Jackson, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, whomever you want to credit (and their British and French equivalents) captured men who exterminated over 12 million civilians in camps, tens of millions more in a war of aggression.

They wished for a more civilized world so they tried the monsters in a court of law. Hegseth saw a boat with (maybe?) drug smugglers and couldn’t be bothered to capture or try them. Then when he had the same success rate with bombing as he’s had using Signal, he went back again to ensure the slaughter.

This is why “Nuremberg” is not just some historical footnote with men in gray suits. It is a film about the moment the world stopped and decided: civilization doesn’t survive if we let murder become policy. And if we don’t constantly enforce it, there will always be more Pete Hegseths.

Adam Kinzinger, former U.S. Rep and Air Force veteran, and someone who’s actually been shot at unlike a certain former Fox host whose mother hates him, didn’t mince words.

“Pete Hegseth is admitting to a war crime.”

Not implying. Not suggesting. Admitting.

And whichever military official obeyed Hague-seth and broke international law with that second lethal attack—or in Nuremberg parlance, lined the Nazis up against the wall, sans trial, and shot them all—may wanna talk to a lawyer.

This is exactly the kind of order those six Democrats who caused Trump to fetch his second Depends of the morning were saying you refuse. And what Justice Robert Jackson warned about during the Nuremberg Trials:

“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people.”

And what’s clear from their own words, is it wasn’t a slip, or a misremembered moment in the fog of war. This was branding. And precisely the conduct the Geneva Conventions were drafted to prohibit.

This is how nations begin normalizing atrocity. As the Tribunal wrote:

“Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.”

The Nuremberg Charter specifically mentions “Violence against persons on the seas… killing of shipwrecked survivors..” Awkward, Pete-y, I think they’re talking about you.

Whether a general, a foot soldier, a cable-news influencer, or some a-hole in over his double-digit IQ-mixed-with-sweet-vermouth head, thinking he’s an 80s action hero doing 50 pull-ups for the cameras (which he couldn’t finish, lol)…

The law is the law. And a war crime is still a war crime, pal.

Call to Action: Investigate Pete Hegseth Now

If the United States still believes in:

— the rule of law
— military honor
— the Geneva Conventions
— anything we said we stood for after 1945

Then Pete Hegseth’s confession cannot simply be ignored because…Trump feels like it.

America’s veterans deserve the reassurance laws they fought under mean something. Americans need to know we still live under laws. War crimes don’t stop being war crimes because a roid-raged bro-sef is a mook who brags about it under klieg lights.

If Nuremberg meant anything, Pete Hegseth didn’t confess to a controversial opinion. He confessed to a goddamn crime. All four of the Nazis were charged with: Conspiracy, Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity.

Pretending otherwise would be the real disgrace.

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