“War criminal!” exploded social media last Friday when the Washington Post released a purported “bombshell” revelation about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The paper alleged that Hegseth had ordered a second strike to kill drug smugglers belonging to a designated terrorist organization who had survived the first American attack on a Venezuelan boat on Sept. 2.

The story was based on two anonymous sources who, if they indeed exist, claimed to have knowledge of the War Department’s workings on the matter. On Sunday, the Post’s story was contradicted by President Trump, who told reporters Hegseth had authorized no second strike. Trump’s explanation was consistent with a New York Times report Monday, which cited five other anonymous sources, all of whom said Hegseth had not ordered a second strike. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the same day that then Joint Special Operations Command Chief Admiral Frank M. Bradley had ordered the second strike. Hegseth confirmed this during a televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the establishment commentariat is still crying for Hegseth’s ouster and prosecution, as well as that of all military personnel involved in a situation for which there is little actual evidence. But if anyone thinks blowing up narcoterrorists smuggling thousands of tons of deadly drugs to the United States is a bad thing, let us recall a previous incident in which U.S. forces attacked men in the water.

On Jan. 26, 1943, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Dudley “Mush” Morton’s submarine USS Wahoo torpedoed the Japanese transport ship Buyo Maru off the coast of New Guinea, where American land forces were engaged in brutal combat against Japanese ground troops who had occupied the island the previous year. Correctly reasoning that survivors from the Buyo Maru would be picked up and promptly redeployed to fight Americans, Morton surfaced and ordered his crew to machine gun the survivors who, like the Venezuelan narcoterrorists eliminated in September, were literally “men in the water.” A total of 87 Japanese combatants died that day.

Were Morton and the sailors under his command disciplined? Was his commanding officer, Submarine Force Pacific Fleet chief Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, implicated as a war criminal? Was Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson fired before any evidence emerged, investigated by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and put on trial? Was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration dismissed by biased mass media as a “sickening moral slum,” as the Post’s nominally “conservative” opinion writer George F. Will put it?

Of course not! Morton remained in command of the Wahoo, which he commanded on four more patrols before Japanese air and naval forces sank it with all hands in the La Pérouse Strait on Oct. 11, 1943. Before he met his fated end, Morton sank a total of 19 Japanese vessels, equaling 55,000 tons. This made him America’s second-highest-scoring submarine commander in World War II, the highest being Richard “Killer” O’Kane, who served as Morton’s executive officer on the Wahoo when it sank the Buyo Maru and went on to his own command.

Morton was never disciplined for his heroic actions, as many current commentators would likely demand (in the unlikely event they ever heard of him or have more than a passing knowledge of our nation’s proud military history). As Morton continued in command of the Wahoo in his remaining months of life and service, he was awarded the Navy Cross with three gold stars (each gold star being the equivalent of a subsequent Navy Cross), as well as the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Service Cross. In 1959, the U.S. Navy commissioned a destroyer named in his honor, the USS Morton, which remained in active service until 1982. He is credited as the first American submarine captain to lead his vessel into an enemy harbor and sink a vessel therein, as well as the first to sink an entire enemy convoy single-handedly. If today’s ridiculous standards were applied, he would have been removed from command and consigned to a brig.

Admiral Lockwood, the Pacific Submarine Fleet commander and Morton’s superior officer, later wrote,

When a natural leader and born daredevil such as Mush Morton is given command of a submarine, the result can only be a fighting ship of the highest order, with officers and men who would follow their skipper to the Gates of Hell … And they did.

Our nation should be blessed with men of such audacity, and as events in the Caribbean have recently shown, we are. Unfortunately, we are also cursed with a failed establishment that values the supposed “rights” of foreign narcoterrorists more than the lives of American citizens.