The Oxford 2025 Word of the Year is rage bait, defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive.” Could this be what we are seeing with regard to growing war crimes claims against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth? Or did Mr. Hegseth commit a genuine violation of the US code regarding military actions?
Were the survivors legitimate targets?
At the center of the controversy is a Washington Post story about a September 2 attack staged by US forces on a boat believed by officials to be ferrying drugs. The article reports that Mr. Hegseth gave a spoken directive: “The order was to kill everybody,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the operation. A US missile then struck the vessel, igniting it in a blaze from bow to stern. When the smoke cleared, a live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the smoldering wreck.
According to the Post article citing “two people familiar with the matter,” the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered a second strike to comply with Mr. Hegseth’s instructions. The two survivors were then blown apart in the water.
Lawmakers from both parties are now raising the term war crime in response. They point to “18 US Code § 2441 – War crimes,” which states that such a crime occurs when someone “intentionally kills . . . one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.”
Some experts argue that those who survived the first strike would fall under this description. If so, Mr. Hegseth could be held legally culpable.
However, the commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, stated that the survivors were legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo. He reportedly ordered the second strike to fulfill Mr. Hegseth’s directive that everyone be killed.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting yesterday, Mr. Hegseth told reporters that he had authorized the operation but that he left the room ahead of the second attack for another meeting. However, he added that the admiral had “the complete authority” to order the strike and “eliminate the threat.”
There is much more to this unfolding story, but media reports are overlooking an aspect that transcends the political, legal, and military issues making headlines these days.
My greatest personal regret
I was born in Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, to an electronics salesman and his wife. I grew up primarily in an apartment complex in southwest Houston. We had enough but not more than enough. Our family was not only not famous—we didn’t know anyone who was.
Because of my father’s horrific experiences in World War II, we never went to church or even discussed spiritual things in our home. My father had his first heart attack when I was two years old and lived nineteen years on what the doctors called “borrowed time” before a second heart attack took his life when I was in college.
While my parents were wonderful to my brother and me, if I could have chosen the circumstances of my early life, I might have wanted them to be famous and wealthy. I might have chosen to be born into privilege and prosperity, with a father and mother who were deeply involved in God’s work and raised me to know and love our Lord.
I might have wanted my father to be healthy and live to old age. The greatest personal regret of my life is that my father never met my sons or their families.
If you could, I would imagine you might have made changes to your family and early life as well.
How insignificant was Jesus’ hometown?
It therefore bears remembering that Jesus was the only baby in human history to choose his parents, the place of his birth, and the persons who would attend his birth.
He could have been born in a Jerusalem palace to parents of cultural prestige and still come as the Jewish Messiah. He could have grown up in the Holy City and displayed his divine capacities to a national audience.
Instead, he chose a mother and adoptive father so impoverished that their offering at his birth was the one specified for the poor (Luke 2:24). He chose to be born in a cave where animals were kept and where his infant body would be laid in a stone feed trough. For his attendants, he chose field hands so ritually unclean that they could not enter a synagogue or the Temple. He grew up in a town so insignificant that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament and was a joke in its day (John 1:46).
He called followers who were not Pharisees and Sadducees but fishermen and tax collectors. He touched leprous limbs and dead bodies, befriended Samaritan sinners and Gentile demoniacs, and welcomed all who welcomed him.
“Christ’s wounds are your healings”
Accordingly, if the Christ of Christmas was commenting on the missile strike with which I led today, I suspect that he would focus less on legalities and military strategy and more on the immortal souls of those who perished.
Jesus would not minimize the crimes they are alleged to have committed or the urgency of protecting our nation from the influx of deadly drugs. His word makes clear the priority of lawful order and self-defense (cf. Romans 13:1).
But he would remind us that we are each sinners in our own way, that we have each done things worthy of the reprobation of society and the judgment of God (cf. Romans 3:23; 5:12; Jeremiah 17:9). And he would remind us that he chose before the foundation of the world to die for those on that boat and for the rest of us as well (Revelation 13:8 NIV).
Matthew Henry invited us:
“Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are your healings, his agonies your repose, his conflicts your conquests, his groans your songs, his pains your ease, his shame your glory, his death your life, his sufferings your salvation.”
How will his invitation change your Christmas?
Quote for the day:
“There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.” —John Owen (1616–83)
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