The war crimes were predicted, such that prevention was deliberately removed. This combination, say experts, means Hegseth created war crimes by policy. It was Hegseth’s 2026 attempt to make America look even more brutal and worse than the My Lai massacre.

One former Pentagon official, similarly speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bombing came as a natural result of changes made by the Trump administration to reduce staff to mitigate civilian harm and Hegseth’s emphasis on lethality.

When Hegseth took charge, he slashed the size of an office called the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, created at the direction of Congress in late 2022. That stopped the office’s work on updating “no-strike lists,” which are lists of protected sites such as hospitals, schools, churches and mosques, that the Pentagon keeps, said Wes Bryant, who began working at the office in 2024 as the Branch Chief of Civil Harm Assessments. When he was working at the Pentagon, it was well known that the list was out-of-date, he said.

Protection removed, updates stopped. Children bombed. Systematically dismantling the protective infrastructure so that predictable mass casualties are highly likely is worse than a coverup.

My Lai required denial and debate. Hegseth’s version says the American military no longer is professional, because from the top level it promotes barbaric war crimes:

• Can’t miss a civilian target if you won’t even acknowledge civilians exist.
• Can’t violate protections for little girls at school if you’ve already eliminated every protection.