you assume war crimes, but which war crimes?
In general international law is much more lenient than people are willing to believe. e.g. it's legal to kill civilians if you are attacking a military target which is important enough
In general international law is much more lenient than people are willing to believe. e.g. it's legal to kill civilians if you are attacking a military target which is important enough
Hegseth allegedly double tapping survivors is almost certainly against the Geneva Conventions [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/us/hegseth-drug-boat-stri...
So I don't think double tapping is a war crime, any more than bombing a car with terrorists in the first place and that doesn't seem to be regarded internationally as a war crime. However, they could have done better to highlight Venezuela actual involvement with terrorism (which is real but not enough for this) rather than magically declare them terrorists just to not go through Congress
Regarding double tapping, that's exactly the modus operandi of assassinations, as the UAVs goal is not the car/ship but the people inside.
That said, the Venezuelan case is a huge overreach
That's not to say that I would in any way support extrajudicial killings, in many cases the high civilian/bystander casualties have been completely unsupportable. I just wanted to point out the stark difference between "normal" extrajudicial killings and these murders.
There are some credible war crimes accusations (in fact, some pretty flagrant war crimes), but the most critical crime is actually not a war crime, but one precedent to their being a war at all, the crime of aggression.
Rudolph Hess, notably, was convicted and imprisoned for life solely for this crime.