Thomas Massie is right to impeach Pete Hegseth for war crimes
By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin ·
There is a particular kind of arrogance that only arrives when a man believes he has outgrown the law.
# The Cost of Calling Civilians "Politically Correct"
Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence, believes he has outgrown the law. He dismissed the rules of engagement designed to protect non-combatants as "stupid" and "politically correct," according to Al Jazeera. When the man controlling the world’s most lethal arsenal views the safety of civilians as a social grace, policy objectives vanish. Only a void remains.
Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) attempted to fill that void on September 15, 2026, by introducing articles of impeachment. Massie charged Hegseth with launching strikes in Iran without a Congressional vote. He alleged the Secretary defied orders to withdraw and oversaw executions without trial. Reading from the House floor, Massie said Hegseth subordinated constitutional limits on military force to his own whims.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said the Department is "unified" behind a vision that puts "America first." In practice, this slogan often means the law comes second. The 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump provided a blueprint for how an executive treats official authority as a personal tool.
The Nuclear Ghost and the Executive Lie
The administration justifies the war in Iran—which began half a year ago—by claiming the conflict prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This is the White House's strongest argument. It relies on the fear of proliferation to justify preemptive strikes to save millions of lives. In Washington, "national security" usually stops the conversation.
Experts told NPR that Iran was not close to developing a nuclear weapon before the conflict began. If the administration justifies the war with a fabrication, the war is a crime. The Washington Post reported that Massie cited violations of three specific rules in the War Powers Resolution of 1973. By bypassing Congress, Hegseth ignored a statute and stripped the system of checks and balances that prevent one man from deciding who dies in a distant capital.
This is a pattern, not a mistake. During the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Department of Defense faced scrutiny over civilian deaths and chaotic evacuations. That failure should have proven that accountability prevents a military from acting without restraint. Instead, Hegseth treats those lessons as ideological hurdles.
Can the Law Reach the Secretary?
Massie’s move may seem pointless. He lost his primary in May to a Trump-backed challenger. The House remains under Republican control and will enter a recess this week, meaning the resolution will sit idle until the midterms in November.
The value of the impeachment lies in the record it creates. Massie invokes the principle of the Nuremberg trials: high-ranking officials cannot claim "state necessity" to excuse war crimes. At the dock in Nuremberg, the law was established to sit above the officer, not beneath him. By framing Hegseth’s actions as "high crimes and misdemeanors," Massie asserts that the Secretary of Defence is a subject of the law, not its author.
The House of Representatives will likely treat this as a symbolic skirmish. The resolution will probably fail, sidelined by a party more interested in the upcoming elections than the legality of its wars.
That a Republican leads this charge—alongside Democrat Ro Khanna and critic Tucker Carlson—suggests the friction has reached even the loyalists. Failing to impeach Hegseth would not be a victory for the administration. It would be a confession that the government has traded the rule of law for the rule of the strongman. When the laws of war are dismissed as "stupid," the military does not grow stronger; the world simply becomes more dangerous for those living in border towns and villages.