AMY GOODMAN: In addition to historian Dana Frank, we’re joined by Spencer Ackerman, the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning reporter, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump and author of the Forever Wars newsletter. You wrote a very interesting piece, Spencer, “The Legacy of The War on Terror Reaches South America.” As we talked to Rodolfo Pastor and Dana Frank, can you talk about this moment, where President Trump has said he’s going to pardon a major convicted drug trafficker, who was supposed to spend the rest of his life in jail, and the bombing of supposed drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and the closing of the airspace over Venezuela, saying he’s about to attack it for drug trafficking, he claims?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, Amy.

I think we’re at a really dangerous point in American history right now. Naturally, I don’t need to tell you or your guests the legacy of the American dirty wars in Latin America of the 1980s on the “war on terror.” But now we’ve got the war on terror reflected in the way that the Trump administration is targeting Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras — I’m sorry, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras and beyond.

We learned over the weekend that the initial strike on these fishermen boats back in September was a double-tap strike ordered by the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth himself and executed, with the full approval of the, at the time, Joint Special Operations Command commander, Admiral Mitch Bradley, who is now the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. This was beyond even many of the illegal actions taken of the war on terror. However, this shows the moral degeneracy that the war on terror has left as a legacy in the U.S. military, not just the tactic of a drone strike, but the willingness to kill civilians.

The double-tap strike, the strike means that that’s a second strike on a target already struck, to ensure no survivors. If those were in fact people with whom the United States is at war with, as the Trump administration claims, then the second strike is a blatant violation of the law of armed conflict. You are supposed to leave survivors and not give no quarter. If we are not in fact at war, as for other purposes the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel says when it’s trying to avoid congressional authorization of these sorts of strikes, then this is simply, like every other strike, that has killed now over 80 people, simply a criminal act of murder.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have now Republican-led committees in both the House and the Senate saying they’re going to hold oversight hearings to investigate the Pentagon’s attacks on the boats, particularly that one September 2nd, where two men survived, were hanging onto the boat, and they struck it again. You have President Trump trying to defend Hegseth, who, sources say, was the one who ordered the second strike. And what did he do last night? That’s Secretary of Defense Hegseth. He tweeted out or put on social media a meme of the children’s cartoon character Franklin the Turtle opening fire from a helicopter on boats below. Both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, like Senators Reed and Wicker, calling for an investigation into war crimes here. And this goes together with the senators and — the senator and — Senator Kelly in Arizona and the other congressmembers, former military and intelligence, saying, “Do not follow illegal orders. It doesn’t matter if you are ordered from a superior. You will not be protected if you engage in war crimes.”

SPENCER ACKERMAN: This is a make-or-break moment for American democracy. We need Hegseth impeached. We need Bradley impeached. Obviously, there’s a separate question about Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this. But these men must not be permitted to remain in their jobs. They are turning the military into a criminal operation.

We can have a great historical debate about all of the steps necessary to produce that point, and previous examples of military commanders following illegal orders. But this is unambiguous. This is as bright line a violation as it gets. This turns the military into something that I think even those Republicans on those committees, who have been willing to put up with and have been complicit in so much — as, frankly, have the Democratic members — this is a step too far. But if there is no accountability for this moment, we should expect it to repeat.

AMY GOODMAN: And you also have at this point, in addition to Republicans and Democrats calling for investigation, the top Pentagon lawyers, the military lawyers, who would say to Hegseth, “This is illegal,” he fired them many months ago.

SPENCER ACKERMAN: As well as he fired the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman simply for being Black. This is someone who never should have been anywhere close to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful offices in the world.

I want to — I want to point out a really important forthcoming date. That’s December 12th. Reportedly, December 12th is the final day that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the SOUTHCOM commander who apparently quit to refuse these criminal orders, is out of his job and out of the military. It’s going to be crucial to bring Holsey in front of congressional hearings to talk about exactly what he did ahead of his decision to quit, what Hegseth ordered him to do, what others inside the secretary of defense’s office ordered him to do, that apparently he was not willing to do. This is going to be a crucial moment of investigation, if we are to recapture any semblance of lawfulness over the U.S. military.

AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, founder of the Forever Wars newsletter, I want to thank you for being with us and ask you to stay with us, because we want to ask you at the end of the show about a piece you just wrote, “He Killed for the CIA in Afghanistan. Trump Blames Afghan Culture Instead of Langley’s.” We want to ask you about that. But I also want to thank Dana Frank for joining us, professor of history emerita at UC Santa Cruz, speaking to us from California, and Rodolfo Pastor, Honduran politician, former secretary of the presidency under President Xiomara Castro, speaking to us from Honduras.

Next up, the Trump administration has stopped issuing visas for Afghan nationals after an Afghan man who once worked for the CIA opened fire near the White House, shooting two members of the West Virginia National Guard, killing one. Stay with us.