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. 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. 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?
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Published at: 2025-12-08 22:43:51
Still want to read the full version? Full article
