Another Senseless Boat Attack

No government has the right to summarily execute people.

The president bragged about committing more murders at sea today:

President Donald Trump said the U.S. military again targeted a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, killing three aboard the vessel.

Whoever carried out the attack that killed these people was following an illegal order. If this really was a war, this would be a war crime. Since there isn’t a real armed conflict happening, it is simply the murder of a boatful of people.

No government has the right to summarily execute people. The president is using the military to kill people on the vaguest suspicion that they may be committing a non-capital crime. It is horrifying that the president is ordering these killings, and it is even more disturbing that those orders are being carried out apparently without question.

Trump amped up his rhetoric to justify the latest murders by stressing that these men were “extremely violent drug traffickers” who were bringing a “deadly weapon” to the United States. Whatever crimes these men may have committed in the past or present, no one should take the government’s word for any of this.

When the government brings charges against anyone, it has to present evidence that the accused is guilty of the crime in question. Trump has adopted the methods of the Queen of Hearts where he hands down the death sentence before the verdict can be reached. No one wants to live in a world where the world’s most powerful government can kill anyone it dishonestly labels as a “terrorist.”

Pretending that narcotics are some kind of weapon instead of an illegal substance is the most desperate kind of threat inflation. Maybe these men were criminals, or maybe they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, the U.S. military had no business attacking them.

Trump claimed the traffickers pose a threat to “U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests.” That’s ridiculous. People running drugs in speedboats aren’t a threat to the national security of the United States or our country’s vital interests. They are criminals, and law enforcement agencies can and should deal with them as they have for decades. It is absurd that this is even up for debate. It is a huge waste of resources and a gross abuse of presidential power to deploy military assets to assassinate drug couriers.

Trump wants to run U.S. foreign policy as if he were a gangster and the military acts as his enforcers. That can’t be tolerated. The military is not supposed to be the president’s plaything. U.S. military personnel are not supposed to be his hitmen. Each time that the president is allowed to get away with abusing the military in this fashion is another step towards a completely unchecked and tyrannical presidency.

Trump intends to have the military to go on a murder spree in the Caribbean. The president is promising to keep doing this indefinitely. Congress must put a stop to it.