The Mafia shows more restraint than Trump as 'casual butchery' becomes US norm: column

Veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn used his weekend column in The i Paper to argue that President Donald Trump's second term has normalized the killing of civilians, and that the administration's conduct resembles organized crime.

"For the US government, casual butchery of the innocent has become the norm," Cockburn wrote in the Saturday piece.

The column, headlined "Trump looks like a mobster past his peak," pointed to two campaigns: the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran, and the ongoing U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Iranian authorities put the Minab death toll at at least 165 people, most of them schoolgirls between 7 and 12. CNN reported earlier this month that senior U.S. commanders bypassed embedded warnings that targeting intelligence was badly out of date, a decision two sources said was made for "expediency." The Pentagon has not released its investigation. A White House official told CNN the inquiry is ongoing and that "the United States does not target civilians."

Cockburn tied that to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's cuts to the Pentagon's Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program, which CNN reported reduced the Central Command team from 10 staffers to one. Hegseth has summarized his approach as "maximum lethality, not tepid legality" — a phrase already drawing fire from more than 120 House Democrats.

The columnist argued the administration behaves like "the gangster underworld, pitiless in targeting the weak and defenceless," adding that the American Mafia "arguably operates with greater moderation," because it distinguishes civilians from rivals.

Amnesty International, which counted nearly 200 killings at sea in a May statement, said the strikes are "becoming normalized." More than 200 people have died in the boat campaign since September 2025, and senators have moved to freeze Hegseth's travel budget until the Pentagon turns over unedited strike footage and its Minab findings. Trump initially blamed Iran for the school strike, though U.S. defense officials disputed him.