Congress Is Finally Going To Look Into Trump’s Boat Strike Killing Spree

Legal Issues

from the department-of-murder dept

It was never enough to simply expel migrants as quickly as possible for the Trump administration. A massive conglomerate of federal officers was incapable of hitting Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s 3,000 arrests per day quota, no matter how many rights it violated. Any pretense of only going after migrants with criminal records was discarded during Trump’s previous administration, even though every administration spokesperson is guaranteed to repeat the lie in defense of every act of brutality.

For a few months now, the administration has been killing people in international waters. The supposed justification is that the people killed are transporting drugs destined for the United States. Maybe some of those killed were engaged in drug trafficking, but prior to Trump’s second term, the accepted approach was to intercept these boats and arrest their occupants.

That’s apparently unacceptable to Trump and the ex-Fox News commentator he elevated to the top position in the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Our country is now engaged in extrajudicial killings (more accurately: murders) in international waters under the pretense that the trafficking of drugs is the equivalent of engaging in actual war against the United States.

The zero due process executions in open waters would be distressing enough. But it’s even worse than that. The US military — under the direction of Hegseth and Trump — is making sure no one survives the initial attack.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

This is America. We kill what we have no desire to save. Land of the Free (but for MAGA faithful only) and home of the people so brave they’re willing to circle back around to murder people clinging to life after an initial military strike.

If not war crimes, why war-crime shaped, one might ask. No one in the administration cares. It’s what the regime wants to do. Nothing else matters other than it getting done.

The consolation prize in the middle of this murderous race towards authoritarianism is this: some people — even some Republicans — are extremely uncomfortable with this operation, which definitely sports a war crime silhouette.

Republican-led committees in the Senate and the House say they will amplify their scrutiny of the Pentagon after a Washington Post report revealing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea several weeks ago.

[…]

Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the committee’s top Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.” The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

These two lawmakers have since been joined by Rep. Mike Rogers (a Republican) and Rep. Adam Smith (Democratic Party), who have stated they’re interested in a “full accounting” of Trump’s international waters-based boat strike program. That brings the House in alignment with the Senate, ensuring both branches of Congress involved in US military oversight are involved.

While this is a positive development (given the political affiliation of everyone involved), we won’t know what this actually means until this investigation is well underway. On one hand, this could just be Republicans playing nice with Democratic party members in hopes of finding some way to justify these strikes after the fact.

On the other hand, even MAGA Republicans are probably upset they’ve been left out of the loop on this. The administration has steadfastly refused to allow congressional reps to directly interact with the OLC lawyers who couldn’t be bothered to reverse engineer a justification for extrajudicial killings until well after several killings had already taken place. Whether or not these Republicans agree with Trump, it’s becoming clear they’d like to be considered part of the process, rather than simply expected to cheer from the sidelines.

Blowing up boats the administration claims (after the fact) were filled with drug traffickers is one thing. (And what a fucking thing it is.) Sending in another strike to ensure no one survives the attacks is quite another. Never mind the moral obligations. The United States has legal obligations to survivors of military strikes, especially when it’s clear (as it is here in the case of people clinging to wreckage) they pose no danger to anyone.

A group of former military attorneys who have scrutinized the Trump administration’s military activities in Latin America released an assessment Saturday outlining relevant international and domestic laws, and said that regardless of whether the U.S. is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military operations, the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited.

Under the circumstances The Post reported, “not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war,” the group said in a statement circulated to news media. “Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”

While this may seem not all that different from the drone/military strikes authorized by the Obama administration — some of which involved several passes to ensure anyone merely wounded would be completely dead — it definitely isn’t the same thing. The extrajudicial killings authorized by Obama involved people in areas where the US was already engaged in military conflicts. The boat strikes, on the other hand, involve people from a country we’re not occupying or invading (Venezuela) and people who the administration openly admits are doing nothing more than moving drugs from one place to another.

Claiming these drugs are headed to the US is an allegation without basis in fact. And the killing of people suspected of nothing more than acts that could only be prosecuted if the traffickers and their drugs attempted to cross the US border while they’re still in international waters hundreds of miles away from the United States is nothing more than straight up murdering people just because you think you can get away with it. So far, the administration has. Maybe what’s happening now will bring this to a halt. But until it does, the Trump administration will continue to ensure every American has blood on their hands, whether they voted for him or not.

Filed Under: boat strikes, defense department, doj, extrajudicial killings, jack reed, pete hegseth, roger wicker, trump administration, venezuela, war on drugs