Trump Administration Now Murdering People In International Waters Just Because

Legal Issues

from the 5th-avenue-but-it's-the-Caribbean dept

The “fresh hell” administration keeps on rolling. There’s no need to actually ask what fresh hell awaits. You need do nothing more than exist and a new fresh hell will be delivered, almost daily.

Here’s the freshest: the US military decided to blow up a boat traveling in international waters — one carrying eleven people, all definitely dead — because… well, no one really seems to be able to say definitively.

There’s a whole lot of vibes going on, but not much else. The man presumably capable of making a final call on extrajudicial killings during war time — famed accused day drinker and Signal chat enthusiast Pete Hegseth — said some stuff that lacked substance or, more importantly, any legal backing while being chatted up by PravdaUS:

The Trump administration has not offered any legal rationale. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing,” although he did not offer evidence.

For whatever reason, Secretary of State Marco Rubio felt compelled to offer his comments on the offshore murders, which went about as well as anything ever does for Marco:

Mr. Rubio had said on Tuesday that it was going to Trinidad, while Mr. Trump said the United States. On Wednesday, Mr. Rubio changed his version, saying the drug-laden boat was bound for the United States.

The secretary said in Mexico City that drug cartels and traffickers, including those on the boat, “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period.”

But no one actually offered any rationale for what happened (and was boasted about by Trump on Truth Social). While officials said some vague stuff about drug trafficking and made unsubstantiated claims about the eleven victims of this attack being Tren de Aragua members, the government was busy working its way backwards from the killings to find some reason for having already killed people:

Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.

A day later, the Defense Department must still have been working on a semi-plausible excuse for breaking all the rules of crime-fighting — especially one in which it certainly appears the US government destroyed a boat carrying eleven people but probably not much (if any!) drugs. The footage of the strike shows a boat more likely carrying refugees/migrants to another country (possibly even Trinidad). Half-mumbled claims about drug dealing and terrorism being pretty much the same thing were made by many in Trump’s cabinet.

The only official comment offered after statements by Rubio and Hegseth was even more useless and insipid than the ones they delivered:

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, emphasized in a statement late on Wednesday that the strike took place in international waters and did not put American troops at risk. She said that Mr. Trump had directed the attack in “defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations who have long suffered due to the narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities of such organizations.”

“The strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict,” Ms. Kelly said.

First things fucking last: NO ONE WAS EVER IN THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED ABOUT THE SAFETY OF US TROOPS. This answers a question no one asked and does nothing more than pad an answer that really isn’t an answer. It’s just more of the same deflection and dribble from the Trump administration. Saying it took place in international waters doesn’t mean — like far too many people believe — that all bets are off and any country can do whatever it wants in waters that don’t actually belong to any single country.

Finally, saying the strike was “consistent” with the “law of armed conflict” only means something if the strike, in fact, complied with law of armed conflict. Simply saying it does doesn’t actually make it legal. That’s what judges call a “conclusory statement” and that’s one of the most worthless things any entity can offer in defense of its actions.

If it was indeed “fully consistent” with the law, you’d think the administration would have already released a memo or statement from the White House Office of Legal Counsel explaining (with citations) why this strike complied with all applicable laws.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, we got some people saying it’s defensible because drug cartels have been called “terrorists” by Trump and another person saying “this was legal because I’m saying it was legal.” Instead, what we’ve been given is an extrajudicial killing, followed by some administration gloating, followed by some administration deflection, which is now followed by the unsettling feeling that this is just beginning of a new wave of awfulness. As Charlie Savage’s headline for the New York Times puts it plainly: Trump has claimed the power of summary execution, which aligns him directly with authoritarian leaders he so obviously admires.

And as if all of this weren’t horrifying enough, here’s the president’s official “War Room” account responding to Senator Rand Paul’s obvious question about the morality of summarily executing people only suspected of committing a crime:

This administration has no use for slippery slopes. It races all the way to the bottom of them and then dares anyone to do anything about it. There’s nothing too unethical, immoral, or illegal to be taken off the table when accomplishing its end goals. The justification for the means can always be generated after the fact and if that fails to hold up to judicial scrutiny, the administration will simply move on to the next lawless act on the authoritarian to-do list — whatever it takes to convert the land of the free into the “vast ecumenical holding company” of the GOP’s fever dreams.

Filed Under: defense department, dod, donald trump, evil, extrajudicial killing, marco rubio, murder, pete hegseth, tda, trump administration, venezuela, war on drugs