It has now become routine for U.S. Southern Command to post grainy videos online of boats being blown up, along with claims that “male narco-terrorists were killed,” even though the administration has not offered any evidence that even one of the people incinerated by U.S. firepower was engaged in drug trafficking, much less in terrorism. The administration is so averse to trying to prove wrongdoing in court that, when suspects survive a strike, they are released rather than arrested. Apparently, there is a secret Justice Department opinion justifying the strikes based on the fanciful premise that drug cartels are waging war on the United States.
But there is also a greater willingness by the U.S. armed forces to engage in illegal conduct. Echoing the view of many legal experts, Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser, told me, “These boat strikes — premeditated killings outside of armed conflict — implicate U.S. criminal laws prohibiting murder on the high seas, conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States, and murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” Even many conservative legal scholars agree that, as John Yoo wrote in The Post in September, the boat strikes “violate American law and the Constitution.”
Another mystery: What exactly is being accomplished by the strikes other than satisfying President Donald Trump’s bloodlust? Trump recently boasted on Truth Social that “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!” That figure is about as reliable as his claims that prescription drug prices have fallen by more than 100 percent, which is mathematically impossible.
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